Good Fatherly Advice
They chose to have their family BBQ on the Monday following fathers Day so that Bill could attend without having to abandon his clinic for any part of the day on Sunday.
It was also nice their only guests were Danny—back for his third weekend running so he didn’t really count anymore—and Kreed and Lucky, who’d gone off to Science North for the day.
Despite the number of times he had celebrated his own father with his family in the years between, Huxley could not get the last Father’s Day he’d spent with Bill out of his head.
Bill’s father had not been happy to have an interloper. It had always seemed to Huxley the man hadn’t been terribly happy with much of anything. He had to wonder what Bill’s relationship with the man was like now. When he asked, Bill just smiled sadly.
“I’m celebrating the day with your father. Doesn’t that tell you?”
“I suppose it says something.” They were strolling along the path from the trailer to the back deck of the main house, but Huxley stopped. “I do appreciate you coming. But if you want to go see your dad?—”
“Hux.”
“I’ll go with you.”
Bill’s smile deepened, but so did the sadness in it. “After what you told me he said to you the last time? We were kids, and he said that to you. How do you think he’d behave now?”
“I don’t care what he says to me.”
“I do.” Bill took his hand. “It’s William Wellcastle the Third trying to control everything he touches. Including me. Trying to do that through you is not on, you get it? Not back then, and definitely not now.”
“You don’t know he’d do that. Maybe he’s mellowed.”
Bill’s snort startled a nearby goat into bleating at them, then running away to lean on Wembley’s legs.
“You scaring my kids, you two?” Wembley called.
Bill waved at him. “Sorry!” He turned back to Huxley. “I appreciate that you want to believe the best of people. But when I agreed to supper at Uncle Johnathan’s yesterday, Johnny—my cousin—said dad had told him to tell Uncle Johnathan to tell me he was going golfing yesterday. Since I wasn’t a lawyer, and so not a member of his club, he supposed he would be too busy to see me.”
“He does know vets can be members of golf clubs, too, right?”
“If a vet wanted to. Or liked to golf.”
“I’m just saying?—”
“He doesn’t care, Hux. Let it go.”
“So you spent time with your uncle?”
“I did. I went over after work, and it was nice. Johnny cleaned me out playing pool. They have a snooker table. It’s gigantic. Auntie Beth ordered an insane amount of food from three different restaurants. All of Uncle Johnathan’s favourites. We stuffed ourselves, then we played some weird kind of four-person cribbage with Johnny’s fiancé, Allyson, who stopped by after her shift at the hospital. Auntie Beth doesn’t play anything where there’s a winner or loser. She says she’s a terrible sport, so she watches and kibitzes. We all got stinking drunk, which is when Uncle Johnathan took me outside for a cigar neither of us smoked and let me know his brother was an ass, and that he, Uncle Johnathan, was proud of how I’d pulled myself out of his bullshit and what I’d accomplished without him. A good time was had by all.”
“Good.”
He lifted Huxley’s hand to kiss his knuckles. “Today, I get to eat Janet’s BBQ’d burgers and her pie while I watch Wembley pretend Danny isn’t outrageously flirting with him. Your dad will undoubtably take me aside for some important fatherly advice. I have all the decent father figures I need in my life, Hux. Mine can take a flying leap.”
Instead of responding, Huxley bent to kiss him.
The kiss lasted about six seconds before Wembley started cat-calling, and Funk and a few goats joined in.
“Asshole,” Huxley muttered.
Bill laughed. “Come on.”
Bill had not been wrong about Huxley’s father pulling him aside, after the burgers and pie and not a few beers, to chat.
“So.” He rocked up onto his toes, a habit Bill remembered from when they were kids, and Armand was working out how to say something—usually something Huxley and Bill didn’t want to hear, because they had done something they shouldn’t have done.
“So?” He stuffed a hand into his jeans pocket and leaned on the rail, facing the house, while Armand stared out over the lawn shared by the main house, Huxley’s trailer, and the geese.
“You and my son.”
Bill could see Armand wanting to have this discussion back in the day, when he and Huxley had been teenagers. But now? “Yes?” he said, cautious.
“You say that like you’re not sure.” Suddenly Armand’s sharp gaze was for him, and not the militant geese.
“Oh. No. I’m sure. One hundred per cent.”
Armand nodded thoughtfully.
“I have no intention of hurting him, sir.”
“Don’t sir me, son. And don’t think I don’t know he had as much to do with your falling out as you did. I love my son. But he is a stubborn so-and-so.”
“He definitely has his moments.”
“No. I’m not worried about you, son. But this sanctuary. I did my homework. How do you know he’ll get what he wants, even if he passed the test? I understand the MNR isn’t exactly keen to let these things exist.”
“Because I got my license.”
“How?”
“Uncle Johnathan.”
Armand nodded. “Not afraid to pull out the big guns, are you?”
“I am not. Not for this. Whatever happens between Hux and me, sir, he wants this, so I’ll make sure he gets it.”
They stood in silence for many minutes before Armand spoke again. “I see a lot of your father in you, William.”
Bill said nothing, not sure how to take that statement, or being called by his father’s name, which normally, he would comment on. He decided to give Armand the moment, and kept his mouth shut.
“Do you think it has escaped anyone’s notice that while people call Johnathan Junior, Johnny, and Robert Junior, Robby, no one calls you Billy anymore?”
“Because I’m not six?”
“Neither are your cousins.”
“Maybe it’s a lawyer thing?”
Armand fixed him with that laser glare again. “Maybe it’s a you thing.”
“Could be.”
“You’ve broken away from your father. Become your own man.”
“So have Johnny and Robby. In their own ways.” He tipped his head to one side. “Of course, Uncle Johnathan and Uncle Robert are actually good fathers, so there’s that.”
Armand smiled, but it was a thin expression.
“What?”
“Your father is not a bad man, Bill.”
“If you say so.”
Armand turned to face him for real now, his expression softer than it had been. “He loved your mother very much.”
“I guess.” Bill didn’t really remember his mother. He’d been seven when she’d died, and a lot of life had happened since then. It hadn’t helped that the only picture of her he remembered ever seeing in the house was a painted portrait of her that he distinctly remembered arriving, after her funeral, and him saying—in that loud and obnoxious way of seven-year-old boys—that it looked nothing like the mother he remembered.
At the time, no one had been cruel enough to point out that he remembered a dying mother ravaged by cancer, and not the vibrant, healthy young woman portrayed in the painting.
“I’m not the only one who married the girl next door, Bill.”
“No, I know. They went to high school together.”
“They weren’t as young as you and Bill were when you two became friends. I think they met in grade nine, but they were inseparable when they did meet. Until cancer took her, that is. He was never the same.”
“You knew him?”
“Oh sure. We were all friends. His brothers, him, me, my Martha, and his Gillian. Hard not to be in a town this size.”
Bill nodded. That wasn’t a lie. He and Huxley had become friends despite their vastly different backgrounds. A small town had one school, and all the kids got tossed in together to sort out the social order for themselves.
“One thing your father, his whole family, really, but especially your father—because he was the oldest of three brothers—always held to was how important roots are.”
“Trust me, I know how important he thinks family traditions and standing are,” Bill said, probably with more acid than was necessary.
Armand braced Bill, one hand on each bicep so Bill couldn’t not look at him. “I’m talking about something deeper. Where a person comes from. Connections.”
“He’s the one who cut me off.”
“I know, son.” Armand’s fingers tightened. “Losing Gillian broke his heart. Closed him off in a way that his brothers never experienced. I’m not one to say if he should have made a better effort with you. And I can’t say if he has regrets about that. But I can say, after your mother’s death, he was not the man I knew. That man, the boy I grew up with, would have been proud of you. And you would see what I see, when I say I see him in you. The very best of him. Perhaps who he wishes he could have been—would have been—if he hadn’t lost his heart before he ever really got to know you.”
The tightening of his chest really shouldn’t have surprised Bill. Should it? “Can’t just let me hate him in peace, can you?” he muttered.
“A closed heart cannot love,” Armand said. “And my son deserves that love. He deserves the man you can be, not a man who closes his heart against getting hurt.”
“I haven’t done that.” Had he?
“Maybe not. But maybe you closed a connection with this town, with Huxley, because your father taught you how to not get hurt instead of teaching you how to feel the pain and keep living.”
“Ouch.”
Armand smiled, and it was easy to see where Huxley’s brilliant, crooked grin came from. “You ask Huxley how losing my Martha has made me a different person. There’s no way around grief, son. Only through it. Only when you let life grow up around it does it become a manageable part of you. You were very young when you lost your mother, so your life grew quickly.”
“Not so much for Dad.”
“I wouldn’t expect so, no. Give him that.”
Bill pursed his lips. “I don’t have to love how he acts.”
“No.”
“But I’m not like him. At least, not in that way. I made mistakes with Hux, but we’re mending that.”
“Good.” He patted both of Bill’s arms and let him go. “Good.”
For a little while longer, they stayed there, watching the geese in the sunset, herding the ducks back towards the pond, and honking at the goat kids to no noticeable effect as the little beasts followed them anyway. Funk hopped along with the rest of the animal crowd, gleefully cackling every time a duck broke formation.
“That crow is going to get goose-whacked one of these times,” Armand observed.
“Probably serve him right.”
“Probably.”
“Can I ask you something?” Bill said after a moment.
“Sure.”
“The twin colts. Are they a bit of life growing up around your grief? Is that why you didn’t terminate?”
“It was a risk,” Armand admitted. “But I had faith. Grace has always been a tough girl, and she came through.” He sighed as the sun finally dipped below the hills. “Martha truly loved this place.”
“So does Hux. I am going to make this sanctuary happen for him.”
Armand nodded. “I have faith.” He glanced at Bill. “In you, to be clear. I have faith in you.”
“That means a lot, sir.”
Armand grunted.
Before he had to come up with a new topic of conversation, a loud whoop from the barn courtyard drew their attention.
“I passed!” Huxley shouted.
Armand smiled his quiet smile. “Knew he would,” he said quietly.
“Me too.”
“You go on. Give him my congratulations. I’ll be going inside now.”
“Yessir.” Grinning, Bill took the steps from the porch in one jump and jogged towards the loud celebrating by the barn.
He found Huxley had been playing corn hole with Wembley, Danny and Janet under the flood light over the barn door. He’d finally given in to Wembley’s nagging and checked his email, which he’d been putting off all day, given it was the tenth business day since he’d written his test.
Huxley swept him into a bear hug and smacked a loud kiss on his cheek. “We did it!” he crowed.
Bill held on tight. “You did,” he said into Huxley’s ear. “This was all you.” Much as he was enjoying the closeness, Bill eased Huxley away long enough to catch his breath.
“How’s Dad?” Janet asked him when he was free.
“Nostalgic, I think.” Bill took the bean bags she handed him.
“I’ll go check on him.” She patted Bill’s hand. “Thank you for being here today.”
“Thank you for having me. Your food was amazing, as always.”
She winked and hurried off towards the house.
They finished the game of corn hole quickly—Bill and Huxley made a pretty good team—and Wembley and Danny seemed eager to say good night.
“Are they—?” Bill watched them walk off, chatting animatedly.
“I have no idea.” Huxley tossed the last of the bags into one of the corn hole boards and picked it up. Bill carried the other one and they set them inside the barn.
“This was a good day,” Bill told him.
“What did Dad have to say?” He backed Bill against a stall wall and leaned on him. “Not too lecture-y, I hope.”
“No.” Bill settled his forearms and hands against Huxley’s chest, holding him off so he could think. “Did you know your father and mine were friends in school?”
“Academically.”
Bill furrowed his brows. “Meaning?”
“Meaning, I knew that, yes. But it doesn’t mean much. If that makes any sense.”
“I think it means something to him. He—I don’t know.” Bill sighed.
“He made you feel sorry for your father, didn’t he?”
“Not sorry for him. Maybe understand him better. Not sure if it makes any difference, but.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. It was a weird cross between fatherly advice about my dad and fatherly inquiry about my intentions towards his son.”
Huxley laughed, and the rich sound wended through Bill in a way that left bits of something behind he suspected he would never purge. Not that he wanted to. “Sounds like Armand,” Huxley chortled.
“Doesn’t it just.”
“Well, his son’s intentions towards you are more to the point at the moment, I think.”
“And they are?”
“Decidedly not family friendly.”
“I can work with that, since we have a lot to celebrate.”
Huxley grinned, wide and crooked, and looked more truly happy than he had since the day he’d carried that crow into Bill’s office. “We do.” Huxley took his hand and lead him from the barn to the trailer. “Come on.”
A crow began to caw from somewhere down near the pond. A goose honked, once, and the crow quieted.
“Sounds like Hubert has things buttoned up,” Bill observed.
“Oh, he will totally be my right-hand man around here,” Huxley agreed. “Gonna need that if any of my other rescues have half the attitude of that damn crow.”