“She’s got a right to worry,” I told him. “You disappeared for the longest. Then got her hopes up writing you had WPA work up here, only to disappear again. You know what she thought? She was scared you’d been hurt or killed. She should have known it was just you not holding a job.”

“It wasn’t a job. It was welfare. I told your ma the first time I tried relief work it wasn’t for me. It demeaned me.”

“And walking out on your family—and letting them down again—that didn’t?”

I turned away in disgust but then turned back. “I don’t know why I’m even surprised. Walking out’s been your story all along, ever since our farm got sold.

“You could have hung on,” I told him. “Uncle Lee said he’d take you on full-time in his shop, but no. You had to root us all up and head us to California. And when the trip got too much for Ma, you left her and us.”

I caught myself up short, appalled by all the rage I’d thought was behind me. What Pa did two years ago wasn’t the point now. Now I needed him to take hold and take back responsibility for our family.

Suddenly I knew who he’d reminded me of: all the men I’d ridden in boxcars with.

“Pa,” I said, “what are you planning to do?”

“Oh, I’m biding my time,” he said. “Looking around for where I might open my own garage.”

“With what?” I asked, thinking I couldn’t have heard right. “How are you going to pay rent? Buy tools?” His eyes were looking glazed. “Anyway, who’d hire a drunk to fix their cars?”

“I’m not a drunk,” he said.

“You could have fooled me,” I told him. “You stink of whisky, and you’ve got the trembles.”

I stopped. He was looking whipped, like a dog getting hit every which way. Angry as I was, I hadn’t meant to do that to him.

Then, he kind of gathered himself together, pulling bones up straighter and getting back a little of how he used to be, years before.

He said, “You get a civil tongue in your head before you come around me again.”

As he walked off, I called, “Where are you going?”

He didn’t answer, but I saw him duck into a saloon.

I considered following him and decided against it. All we’d do would be to argue more.

I slipped into a vacant lot across the street and settled down to wait, my back against a building.

I was already feeling terrible for disrespecting him the way I had.

And I was hating him for giving me a reason to.

Chapter 3