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I can’t. It’s only a few bullets. Five, six. Or could it be more? How many did he take? I can’t remember.
Enough to save me, maybe. Enough to get some food. Enough food while I get strong, while I find more. If I can only stay alive and fed for a few more days—for a week—
I don’t know. Maybe I’ll still die. Probably I’ll still die, but I have to try, don’t I?
I haven’t been back there. To his grave. Not since the day he died. But I remember exactly where it is. I can still see that day every time I close my eyes. Crack, jerk, dead. I see it in my dreams when I don’t see my mother’s empty face.
I remember then the last time I saw my dad, before coming here. The last time he ever visited us. I used to wonder why he never came again, after that, but thinking about it now is like re-reading a book when you’re older, all the jokes suddenly making sense.
My mom and I were decorating a Christmas tree. She would lift me up so I could reach the top branches, but most of the ornaments were still clumped down where I could reach, because I wanted to hang them all. She was only allowed to hand them to me. And then there was a knock on the door, and Mom went to open it. She told me to keep hanging ornaments, and I did, singing carols until suddenly the voices at the door weren’t just talking, they were arguing.
I crept over to see what was happening. Mom didn’t get angry very often; she was always so calm and reassuring. It was part of what made her a good pilot. It was part of what made us so different.
There was a man on the porch. I didn’t know him. He had shopping bags sitting next to him, maybe a dozen of them, and he was gesturing and talking loudly, and my mother was almost shouting at him, but they both shut up the second they saw me.
“Who’s that?” I asked, or something like that. I remember my mom not saying anything for a really long time, and then she smiled.
“Your dad’s come for Christmas,” she said. I recognized him then, or maybe I just convinced myself I did. I ran and gave him a hug, and he scooped me up into the air.
He came in, and he brought out present after present to put under the tree, more than I could count (not that I could count very high). He told me jokes and we drank hot cocoa with tiny marshmallows in it, and Mom set an extra place for dinner and didn’t say much of anything at all. I thought it was a big Christmas surprise she’d arranged for me. Now I realize he showed up without permission. Without warning her at all. He was there for a day and then he vanished without saying good-bye to me. I cried for days. I think I’d gotten it into my head that he was home for good. That he was my Christmas present.
Mom didn’t say anything about it. She never really said anything bad about him, or if she did, it would just be one short sentence and then she’d change the subject like she hadn’t meant to. It meant I didn’t grow up with her anger for him piled on top of my own, but it also means I don’t know much about him at all. She didn’t exactly trot out all the good stories, either.
Before I came here, that was my most recent memory of seeing him, touching him. And every year I thought about it and it got less cheerful, more messed up. But thinking about it now, my brain keeps trying to make it happy again. When I think about the time I spent here with him, it seems like the most amazing, wonderful time, even though I know it wasn’t. Even though I know I was miserable.
I think I love my father more now that he’s dead than I ever did when he was alive. Or maybe it’s just that I miss him, and that’s different. He’s not the same in my mind anymore. I keep thinking that if he was here he’d protect me and love me and everything would be okay, and it’s hard to care that we argued. In my fantasies, he’s more like the father I imagined when I was little. He fusses over me. He brings me rabbits, he keeps the fire going. Sometimes I hear the stories he told with Griff that made me laugh so hard. It’s like he’s alive.
If I go back to the grave, he won’t be. Going to the grave is like killing him all over again.
Not just going there. Digging him up.
I feel sick.
An acid taste burns in my mouth. My stomach lurches. What will I even find? A skeleton? My father, eyes closed but looking like he did, looking like when he died?
I have no idea. I don’t want to think about it.
But I have to. I have to live. I have to stay alive. Dad would want me to. Wouldn’t he?
I don’t actually know what Dad would want. I don’t know what he’d do for me. He was willing to give me up when I was small. He refused to give me up when it might have been better for me. It’s his fault I’m here—but if he was here, I’d be okay. It’s all a horrible, screwed-up mess and it’ll never be sorted out, because I’ll never really know him. He only got to be a person to me for a few days before he was a corpse.
A corpse doesn’t get a vote—that’s what he’d say. He’s not here to make the decision for me. I have to make it on my own.
“Okay,” I say. Bo jumps a little, sees it’s only me, and settles back down. “I don’t know what Dad would want, but I know what Mom would want. She would want me to live. She would want me to do anything at all to survive, and never mind anyone else.”
I bite my thumbnail. I think Dad would want that, too.
The imaginary version of him in my head would.
I have to do it.
I have a shovel head. I got it from the shed ages ago. I even tied it to one of my walking sticks, and unlike the ax, it mostly works. I’ve just used it to dig temporary “outhouses.” This’ll be a lot harder. And the ground is hardening up with the frost, and I’m not very strong.
Which is all the more reason I have to do it now. If I wait, I won’t be able to.
I have to try. Before I think about it too much more and talk myself out of it. Before I get any weaker. I don’t think I’m strong enough, but I’ve surprised myself before.
“All right, Bo,” I say. My voice shakes. “Let’s go find Dad.”
