Page 22 of The Damage Man

Blake stands up. His posture is impeccable, likely to maximize his height. The relief on his face is palpable. He wipes his palms on his jeans, shifts from foot to foot. “I guess then…” He’s trying for the right words but seems no better at it than Evan. “Thank you.”

His shoulders make a quarter turn toward his father on the opposite end of the couch. He cannot meet Rusty’s eyes but he gives the faintest nod that way, a possible expansion of his gratitude.

Evan takes out Blake’s phone, spins it on his palm. An offering.

Blake takes it, pauses. His face is twisted with frustration, Evan believes, at not being able to convey what he wants to convey. “Thank you,” he says again, with great feeling. His hips sway slightly toward his father but he can’t bring himself to complete the turn, instead walking out.

The door clicks shut after him, and Evan and Rusty breathe in the quiet.

“I don’t know how to … How can I repay you?” Rusty says.

“Find someone else who’s in a desperate situation with no one to help them. Pass on my phone number to them—1–855–2-NOWHERE.”

“That’s what you do? Just go around … helping people?”

“Yes.”

Rusty coughs out a note of awed disbelief. “You must’ve been raised right. I bet your folks’re real proud of you.”

Evan says, “Okay, then,” and starts out.

“I will never forget what you did for us. Me and Blake. I mean, he’ll be okay now even if it’s not how I hoped it would end between us.”

Evan pauses with his back mostly turned. He says, “Maybe it’s not over.” And walks out.

Blake is crouched at the rear of his vintage Camaro, working the tire jack. The body jerks its way unevenly upward as he cranks the handle.

That rear left tire seems to have given out entirely. He’s already set out the spare at the edge of what passes for a front lawn.

He’s focused on the work, doesn’t notice Evan as he moves up the walk and climbs into his truck.

The RoamZone chimes.

A text from Joey.

That contains the address for the Count Your Blessings Hospice Home.

What he feels first is a slow burning anger, calm enough to be resentment. At who? Joey, for pushing the issue? No. At his in-name-only father, languishing this minute in a hospice bed, racked by a death-rattle cough, an archetype that could never be bothered to find its feet and fill out its form. Jacob Baridon’s pending death promises neither illumination nor grief of a personal nature, just the undeniable snuffing out of the last flame-flicker of some mythic promise.

When Evan looks up, Rusty is standing on the porch.

He is frozen there, staring across the dead lawn at his son, now down on his knees spinning the tire iron. Blake works on, unaware he is being watched. One lug nut pings onto the concrete and then the other.

Observing the two men feels bizarre, as if Evan has stumbled upon some wildlife scene: Deer and Fox Sharing Water Hole.

Blake swipes at his forehead and begins to wrestle the tire off the wheel studs.

Evan pans back over to Rusty. His face is blotched red with emotion. At his sides, his hands clench loosely, release, clench again. As if he is working up his nerve.

And then he starts walking toward his son.

He is most of the way across the dead lawn when Blake takes note of him. He looks up, his expression completely unmasked, that of a little kid.

Rusty moves around him.

Squats at his side and flips the spare tire up onto its tread.

He rolls it over and he and his son take it together and guide it onto the wheel studs.