Chapter 15 #4
Casey was helping Bill in a professional capacity, he explains, at first. He helped Bill update the technology, and then do some desperately needed maintenance around the farm, and then fixed the billing system, and then the water filtration system, and then the hole in the farmhouse floor.
It was around this time that he asked Bill if he could move into the farmhouse, less because he minded sleeping in his car and more because Bill couldn’t explain the hole, or so many of the other problems, and once Casey moved in, it was obvious why.
During the middle of the day, he was more with it, but early morning, or later at night, Bill would forget.
He’d forget who Casey was, or that he’d moved into the house; he’d mix Casey up with Will, or with his own father, or with people Will might have been able to place in those circumstances, comparing names or details against his own knowledge of his father’s life, but who Casey, more or less a stranger, could not.
He muddled through, though, apparently. Casey tells Will, quite earnestly, that for a while it was fine—nice, even.
When Bill was lucid, he was grateful for the help, for someone to confide in, and he was lucid more than he wasn’t, at first. And for Casey, it was—though Will has to read this between the lines—nice to have someone relying on him, and something around which to orient his own life.
A bit of much-needed lead, maybe, in boots that had a tendency to go haring off at a moment’s notice.
“But then,” Casey admits, on a heavy sigh, “it…wasn’t fine anymore.
We both knew it; he was getting erratic during the day, and in ways that were dangerous.
Dangerous for him, but for the farm and the customers, too: One afternoon, he took the tractor out and started trying to clear down the back fields.
Problem was, it was the first week of June, and pick-your-own strawberry season.
He took out a huge patch of beautiful berries and nearly ran down a nine-year-old, although luckily, she had the good sense to get out of the way in time. ”
“Jesus,” Will mutters.
“Yeah,” Casey says, his jaw working; it’s obvious the memory still pains him.
“Anyway, after that, we had a conversation and made a deal. He said he’d seen all the work I’d put into the place over the years, and that if I helped him, you know, close things out with dignity, or whatever, he’d—he’d leave me the farm.
” He glances over at Will with an anguished expression on his face, and says, “Please believe me when I say that I—I didn’t know about what had happened between you two, all right?
Not the real story, anyway. And, regardless, I knew…
I knew making a deal like that with someone in his condition was like writing a contract in sand.
I knew , and I don’t expect—” Casey blows out a harsh breath before he finishes, “I’m not telling you this because I think I’m entitled to anything, okay?
I just… I want you to know the whole story.
After all this, if anyone deserves to know it, it’s you. ”
“Okay,” Will says quietly, his mind too overfull to begin to think of saying anything else.
“Anyway,” Casey says. He’s talking quickly now, like the words are searing his tongue as they land, and he can’t wait to get them out of his mouth.
“I didn’t do it for the farm, I knew it probably wasn’t legal, that he probably—forgot, or whatever.
I just wanted to help him, because it was sad and he’d been—oh, I don’t know.
I wanted to. So I found him a nursing home, one that wasn’t too far away, and I helped him pay for it?—”
“You helped him pay for it?!” Will nearly yelps this, and wants to scream, actually scream, when Casey shrugs uncomfortably .
“Oh, sure,” he says, like it doesn’t matter.
“He couldn’t have afforded it on his own, and I’m—more or less allergic to rent, honestly, so.
I have a lot more saved up than most people do, and anyway, it’s not like he lasted that long there.
Barely a year. I visited him as much as I could, but the lights were on less and less.
” Hoarsely, staring down at the gravel, he whispers, “I should have called you.”
“ He should have called me,” Will says, abruptly stubborn, crossing his arms over his chest. Then he recognizes the posture and the emotion and cringes entirely away from it, saying, more softly and not at all sure he means it, “Or I should have called him, I guess, although I can’t say he ever gave me any reason to want to.
It’s my personal belief that when you pull the ‘dead to me’ card, you have to be the one to extend the olive branch, but…
” He lets a smile, wry and a little bitter, twist up the corners of his mouth.
“Maybe I’m being stubborn, you know? Heritable trait.
Maybe when my mother died, I should have—ah, but.
” He cuts the train of thought off, suddenly and entirely sure: “It doesn’t really matter, does it? ”
Casey cocks his head. “How do you mean?”
“Me and my dad—we weren’t built to communicate with one another.
” The words tumble out of his mouth like a confession, or a eulogy, too raw to be anything but honest. “Too different in some ways, I think, and in others, I guess…” He grimaces, hating it, but forces it out anyway: “Ugh. I guess too alike? But whatever the reason, my whole childhood we were like—oh, I don’t know.
Two radio transmitters, maybe, each sending signals to the other in increasing frustration, neither of us realizing we hadn’t been equipped with receivers.
All these years I’ve thought I knew who he was, and what he thought of me, and what he wanted from me, and now…
” Will sighs, wanting almost to laugh even though it isn’t funny.
“Now I’m not sure I ever really knew him at all. I know he never really knew me. ”
“His loss,” Casey says, soft. “In my opinion.”
Will smiles at him, although he’s sure the expression is at odds with the tears he can feel glimmering, held barely at bay, in his own eyes.
He’s sad, all of a sudden, in a way he didn’t expect to be over his old man, in a way he’s surprised to find he’s grateful for.
“We all lost something, I think,” he says, quietly.
“All us Robertsons, handing down the same stupid, needless pain across a century. It used to make me so angry, thinking about it—what good did it do anyone? What was the point?” He meets Casey’s eyes, warmed by the steady, patient understanding in them, and shrugs.
“I thought the only way to win was to stop playing, but. I think… I think the truth is, it’s more about changing the rules. ”
Casey doesn’t say anything at first, just considers it for a moment, then nods, sighs.
“Maybe there aren’t winners and losers, at least not when it comes to this.
Just…people being people, and trying their best, and messing it up, same as always.
You and Bill—yeah, sure, it’s not a nice story, but it’s a family story, right?
If my childhood taught me anything, it’s that family doesn’t have to be nice to make you who you are.
” He smiles, and shrugs, and, a little awkwardly, adds, “And I’ve heard, if you don’t like the one you’re issued, the option is on the table to go ahead and make your own.
No personal experience there, of course, but. Rumor has it.”
A train whistle screams in the distance as if to underscore his point, low and mournful and impossible to miss, startling the birds from the trees.
Just for a second, as he watches them climb, Will thinks he feels a similar shift within his heart, a susurration rising as if from nowhere to seek new skies.