Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Dixon
“Nice truck,” I said as my sister drove us toward the farm I’d grown up on.
Although, the fleece farm our old man had started before Bax was born had become nothing more than a memory. My brothers and their friend, Rye, had turned it into a cattle ranch, and my family ran a cabin rental business on the property now too.
“Comes with the job,” Abey said as she pulled to the shoulder of Old Fish Creek Road and flicked on her hazards, though there wasn’t a lot of traffic on these old ranch roads on a Tuesday in the middle of prime work hours, with the sun high in the sky.
“Why are you here?” she asked, turning in her seat to face me.
Fair question.
“I wanna see him.”
“Stuey?”
I nodded. Who else?
“Okay, I understand that, but Dixon, you left. Bax is Stu’s dad now. I don’t know how else to say this to you, but you can’t just waltz back into town and expect to…”
“To what?”
“To be a dad.”
“I know that. And I’m not here to interfere or to take Stu away from Bax, but I’ve spent a long time preparing for this, and I want to know my kid. Is that wrong?”
Abey shook her head. “It’s not wrong. And please don’t misunderstand. I’m glad you’re home. You look good. You look… healthy.”
“I’m sober. That’s what you really wanna know, ain’t it?”
“Yes. It is.”
“I’ve been sober more than four years,” I said.
Her jaw dropped. “Four years? So you’ve been sober since Brand found you in California? And you didn’t come home till now? Why?”
“Just ’cause I wasn’t high, it didn’t mean I had my shit figured out. I had a lot of demons to come to terms with, and I wasn’t about to dump that on my kid’s front door.”
“I wish you would’ve called us though. I’ve been so worried about you.”
“I’m sorry, but that didn’t feel safe for me. Y’know?”
“Okay, but I just wanna make sure you’re prepared for what’s about to happen. Merv is gonna lose her shit and cry, and you can’t just walk into Bax’s house and announce that you’re Stuey’s dad. He doesn’t know you.”
“I’m not stupid, Abey. I wouldn’t do that. I-I… I just want to be part of his life. However I can. In whatever small way I’m allowed to be. That’s all. Did they… H-have they adopted him? Legally?”
She shook her head. “No. They tried but it was denied. The judge wouldn’t do anything without talkin’ to you.”
“Oh.” I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
Elated in one sense, but when I left Stu with Bax, I assumed if I ever saw them again, they’d be father and son.
Officially. It was part of the reason I had to stay away.
I didn’t know if I could see that, see their bond with my own eyes, and not run to the first dealer I could find.
Touching the tips of her fingers to the back of my hand resting on my leg, Abey smiled. “Have I told you I missed you?”
“I missed you too, sis. Now, drive. Let’s get this homecomin’ over with.”
Before Abey and I left the station, I saw Roxi on her cell phone, whispering to someone. I assumed it was her husband, and now, when we pulled up to my brother’s house, listening to the slow pop and crackle of gravel beneath Abey’s tires, I knew I’d been right.
Brand opened his front door and stepped onto the porch.
He whistled loudly, and after a few seconds, bullets of white came running to me from the trees.
It took me a beat to realize the fluffy, flying fur balls were Tilly and Zephyr, the two Pyrs I’d trained back in Mad River, California after I first got sober.
As I stepped out of the truck, they rushed me, jumped on their hind legs, and tried to hug me and lick me to death, which, considering they were full grown Great Pyrenees and one of the largest breeds of guardian dogs, was like two non-violent polar bears converging on me.
“Mangy mutts,” I whispered, smiling, scratching behind their ears and pulling thistle out of their coats. These goofballs had been friends to me when no one else in the world was.
Brand had built himself and Roxi a log A-frame, nestled at the tip of an outstretched finger of the forest, surrounded on three sides by deep green pines and firs. The wood almost looked red against its mountain backdrop.
He descended his porch stairs slowly, taking me in.
I couldn’t decipher the look on his face.
He had to be angry with me. I’d promised him four years ago I’d come home, but all my promises back then had been hollow.
Not that I made many. I didn’t know my sober self well back then, but I knew enough not to trust anything I said.
Things were different now. I’d spent the last four years learning who I was, what I was capable of, and what I wasn’t.
But if I made a promise now, I knew I could keep it.
I gave the command for the dogs to sit, and surprisingly, even after all the time that had passed, they did.
“Brand,” I said, and my voice cracked as I addressed the brother who’d tried to help me when I barely had the strength to accept it.
When death, degradation, and despair had weighed me down like someone had dragged me to the edge of the ocean, wrapped me up in wool, and tied a brick around my shroud.
“Dixon. I thought we’d never see you again.”
Abey stepped from the truck and closed her door quietly, and the three of us stood there, just looking at each other silently.
Something clicked into place inside me. It was something I had dreamed of and imagined a million times but never dared hope.
I was home. The land had accepted me back. I felt it inside my bones, and a settling crept up on me slowly, like it was afraid to startle me for fear that I’d react.
I didn’t. I just breathed and let it coat my soul.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Brand and Abey both. “I’m sorry I promised things I didn’t know how to give.”
Brand came closer, looking in my eyes, trying to decide if he could trust me. He probably thought he could trust me four years ago and look what that had gotten him.
“Before I see Merv and Stu, I wanna tell you both that I’m home. I’m not leavin’, even if it’s hard to stay. I’m not here to take Stu from Bax and his wife. I’m just here. I wanna know y’all again, this time sober, and I want to earn my place in the family again, if that’s even possible.”
Tilly whined at my feet, looking up at my brother like she was begging for me.
“Of course it’s possible,” Brand said. “We love you. We’ve missed you and worried about you.
I’m glad you’re here.” He took the last few steps separating us and wrapped his arms around my back.
I couldn’t help my reaction; I clung to him.
To his forgiveness and acceptance, and I clung to the hope that we could be brothers again.
Quietly, he said, “Give Bax time. Give him space and go slow with Stu. He’ll come around. ”
“I will.”
Abey joined our hug from the outside, but I pulled her between us so we could squish her in the middle like we had when we were kids. She laughed and squirmed to get free, but that just made us hug harder, until she reached up on her toes, maneuvered her arms around my shoulders, and held on tight.
No matter the division in our family, the way our father held me separate from my brothers and sister, the way he spent his life dismissing me— With my siblings, I never felt different. When it was just us, Bax, Brand, Abey, and me, I had always felt accepted.
As Brand backed up to allow us the moment, Abey whispered in my ear, “I’m so happy you came home. It hasn’t been right here without you.”
And that was when my tears began to fall.
Tilly and Zephyr chased Abey’s truck as she drove Brand and me to Merv’s house, and he explained that he’d driven back to California to adopt the dogs from the couple I’d worked for, the Coulters, after I disappeared and left them without a dog trainer.
They’d given me a place to live and a job when no one else showed me kindness because I was a four-time rehab flunky and I’d been in jail.
I’d known my brother had adopted the dogs.
Brenda Coulter told me when I went to ask her forgiveness for bailing on her and her husband when they had been depending on me.
The Coulters offered their forgiveness, but I still had a lot of amends left to make to a lot of people.
Merv’s house wasn’t much more than a mile away from Brand’s, and when we got there, the dogs flopped in the grass in front of the house next to a water bucket left there for them.
Tilly inched toward it on all fours, slopped up half the volume, and then rested her big head on the rim in case she decided she wanted more.
Another dog, a German Shepherd, came trotting from the opposite direction.
He sniffed Zephyr and Tilly and then lay between them with his head on his paws, as if settling in for a long babysitting session.
The new house Brand had built for Merv was beautiful.
Rich, deep blue and set against the stark mountain in the background, it was exactly the kind of place I’d always dreamed for my mother.
She lived in a run-down trailer for years after our joke of a father died, and I hated that place.
It looked on the outside like I had felt on the inside, busted up and pathetic, and I’d known Merv deserved better.
A better house and a better son.
For a long time, I was angry and bitter at Brand for being able to give our family what I knew I never could.
Now, I knew that what he’d given them was a blessing.
Just like whatever it was that I would give them.
I’d never be rich; anything I had to offer couldn’t compare monetarily, but that didn’t mean my worth was less than my brother’s.
It was just different. I was different, and I knew now that was okay.
Not that coming home again would be easy. I wasn’t under any false impressions about that. I’d left messes in my wake since I was fifteen years old, and it would take more than a little—
“Son?” Merv appeared on her porch, and the screen door clacked closed behind her. Abey had been right; our mama was already crying, her eyes red and puffy. “Dixon? Is that you?”
“Yeah, Mama,” I said as I got out of the truck, reaching back in to grab the flowers I’d brought for her from the dash, and I walked slowly toward my mother.
God, how she’d aged. Her hair was all silver now, and I could see the years passed on her face like a road map to her heartaches and joys. “It’s me.”
She nodded. “You look different.”
I climbed the stairs somberly, like a funeral procession to a grave, but I held the bouquet out toward her, even though I knew a handful of daisies couldn’t fix what I’d broken, or what she had.
“So do you.”
She patted her hair. “I’m old.”
“You’re beautiful, Mama. You always have been and you always will be. These are for you. They ain’t much but—”
The flowers fell to the porch as Merv flung herself into my arms. I wrapped them around her shoulders and held her close while she cried.
Between sobs, she mumbled, “I’m sorry. I prayed for this day, and I promised myself and God I wouldn’t blubber, but I can’t help it. I’m so thankful to have you home. You don’t know what it’s been like without you.”
But I did know. I knew all too well what it felt like to be alone, without my family. Without love. Without hope.
That was the kicker; having hope again was a catch twenty-two. It could take me higher than any drug and drag me down lower than any rock bottom I’d ever faced. The hope that had embedded itself under my skin, the hope that my kid could ever love me, had the power to eviscerate me.
It was the scariest feeling I’d ever known. I hated it, but somehow I loved it, too, because if my son could learn to love me, I would be the richest man to ever walk the earth.