Chapter 37
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Dixon
An old, beat-up trailer sat like some white-trash mirage in a desert, parked alone in the middle of a dirt valley in nowhere Wyoming, with only one horse catching shade in a rickety lean-to next to it.
AJ waited for me in the van. She had multiple pep talks locked and loaded. I doubted I’d need one, no matter how this conversation went, but her support was the strength in my steps as I approached my father’s front door.
The magic man, who didn’t look now like he had much magic left in him, opened his screen door ten seconds after I rapped my knuckles against it.
He was Willy Bronc for sure. He looked like the man in all the old photos I’d found online from his rodeo days, just older, but the light in his eyes had gone.
Silence had followed him to his door. I heard no noise at all.
Not his breathing. Not the wind. Not the whir of a fan or an air conditioner in this unseasonable heat and humidity.
For once, I found myself wishing for some kind of sound to kick on, to distract us both from the truth and intensity of what I’d come to say.
William Messer, Jr. seemed worn out and tired, and he stood there, looking at a man unknown to him, and waited for me to speak.
“I’m sorry to bother you, sir,” I said, trying to keep my voice even and true, “but are you Mr. William Messer, Jr.?”
With narrowed eyes, he answered, “I am. And you are?”
“I, I’m… Shit.” Fuck, this is harder than I thought it would be. “I’m your—”
“Dixon,” he breathed, “is that you? My eyes ain’t what they used to be, and you look mighty different than you did even five years ago.”
Faster than the speed of light, my heart tried to punch through my ribs. “Y-you know who I am?”
“C’mon in,” he said easily, like some long-lost boy showing up on his doorstep was no big thing. “I expect you’ve got questions and a mountain of a story to tell me, and I’ll listen.”
“Yes, sir.”
As I stepped over the threshold of his double-wide into the wan light of his place, the back of my neck pricked from the easing of the dry, baking noonday sun.
I cast my eyes around his living quarters, realizing that was exactly what his house amounted to: living quarters.
There were no warm, homely things to offer me welcome, save for—
“That’s my mother,” I said, pointing with a shaking hand to a piece of art on his wall, painted in the same style I’d learned about in high school, a renaissance rendering of Merv standing in a field, wearing a white summer dress, laughing with tall grass surrounding her and the sun at her back.
The painting was the only thing inside my father’s house that I could seem to focus on, framed in fake gold and hanging right in front of me like some priceless Degas ballerina.
“Sure is. I painted it a while back, but it’s the one that seems the realest so it’s the one I like to look at every day.”
“You painted this?”
I was no art expert, but the painting showed an innate gift and a deep understanding of shadow and color, and it was the last thing I had expected to find when I got it in my mind to track down my father.
“Sure did,” he said. “Did some of you too. Look behind you.”
Speechless, I turned, expecting to find a TV, but all I saw was a pile of Louis L’Amour paperbacks stacked up ten tall on a rickety end table next to a dingy, tan corduroy armchair.
The ridges and edges of the fabric had long been smoothed away by the weight of William’s life, but the matching chair five feet away looked like it had never been sat in.
The whole place reeked of a time long passed, when cowboys ruled this land, and ranches and rodeos were the only social media known in these parts.
A man living alone didn’t decorate or try to make his house feel inviting because he was never in it.
He was out on the range, working cows or tending to his horse.
And on the rare occasion he wasn’t doing those things, he could be found at the nearest watering hole, drinking and shit-talking his hard days with his buddies.
But between two windows offering an unguarded view of the Wind River Range, another painting had been hung.
Maybe three-by-two-foot, the image showed a boy with wavy brown hair and blue eyes like his mama’s.
He held a thick hardback book, and he looked off into a sunset, daydreaming of the characters he’d been reading about.
I knew he was daydreaming because the boy in the painting was me, probably thirteen years old. Still too young to ruin his life with alcohol, drugs, and lies, but not so young he hadn’t thought about it yet.
Stepping closer to see it better, I said, “But you— How did you— Why did you never say anything? Why didn’t you tell me who you were?”
“And here’s the hard part,” William said, and he walked to his chair and sat. I swore I heard his old bones creak, but then he motioned for me to take the other chair. “Take a load off. This story, like any proper one, might take a while to tell.
“Before I start, though, can I get you somethin’ to drink? Ice water? It’s a scorcher today.”
“No, sir, I think it’s best if you just start talkin’.”
“Fair enough.”
A deep breath whistled down his lungs when he drew it in, but then he released it and began to tell me where I came from.
“I fell in love with your mama when she wasn’t mine to fall in love with. God, how I loved her. I’d had women. Plenty of ’em, but Mervella, she was… I’d never seen anything more beautiful in my life.
“I didn’t mean to fall in love with her. Noah was my friend then, before I learned the truth about how he treated her, and I never would’ve chosen to hurt him, but there was never really any choice to make.
“I saw her, and I knew.
“But I’ll have you know I didn’t go after her.
Not right away. I worked alongside Noah for weeks, helped him on the farm.
And I tried not to notice Mervella every minute of every day.
I really tried. But she wore me down. She was such a good mom to your brothers, firm but fun, and her laugh?
First time I heard it, I knew God made it just for me.
I thought to myself, I’ll never forget that sound. And I never did. I can hear it still.”
“If you loved her so much,” I said, “if you wanted to know me, why? Why am I just meetin’ you today? I don’t mean to interrupt your reminiscin’ and all that, but get to the shit that matters to me. You knew who I was when I knocked on your door, so I think you owe me that much.”
William nodded, but a little defensiveness sounded in his voice when he answered.
“My best childhood friend tried to kill me for fallin’ in love with his wife.
” He watched my eyes when he said it. “I can see you already knew that, so maybe your mama finally told you the truth of it all. And even though Noah didn’t love her, not the way she deserved to be loved, she still wasn’t mine. I didn’t have the right to love her.
“I did my damnedest to forget. Went back to chasin’ my eight seconds.
But after the rodeo and after I’d broken so many bones in my body I lost count, I struggled to know who I was and where my life was headed.
My head had grown so big with small-town fame, and I had all that money, which I blew first chance I got.
“And Mervella, she was never gonna leave Noah. I knew that. And she hurt me the day the ambulance took me away. She didn’t stand up to him, like I’d been dreamin’ she would.
“Mind you, I knew she was scared to go against him. She was scared of a lot back then, and he abused her. That was all muddied up and messed up in her head. I knew that, but still it hurt when she didn’t speak up for me and tell him she loved me.
“And she did love me,” he said, shifting in his chair, moving from one hip to the other, “like you read about in books, with the speed of an avalanche and the strength of one too. I knew that, but after it was all said and done, I just couldn’t reckon it. I couldn’t let the hurt part of it go.
“And the drinkin’ didn’t make it any easier to forgive her. It let the hurt inside me turn into anger and betrayal, and then it became rage, and I drank more to numb it.”
“You’re an alcoholic,” I said. It wasn’t a question, and it didn’t surprise me in the least.
“Yes, son, I am. Recovering, but still a drunk. Got sober for good, oh, ten years ago now.”
“So then why didn’t you come to find me?”
“Oh, I did. Found you alright. You were standin’ not ten feet away from me in the diner in downtown Wisper.
Your brother, he’d just gotten his driver’s license, so he took you for a milkshake.
I didn’t know you were mine, but the man at the diner, he struck up a conversation with you boys, and he asked you how old you were.
You said twelve. And then he got back to work behind the counter, but right before that, and I’ll never forget it, he said, ‘Tell your mama I said hello. How is Mervella?’
“I damn well knew that name and never met another with the same. I looked at you and your brother and counted back in my head. Math told me you were mine. And I saw the differences in your features.
“I wasn’t surprised Bax didn’t recognize me; he was so young when I knew him, but as soon as the man said your mama’s name, the little boy I’d known him as revealed himself to me.
He had Mervella’s eyes, too, like you do, but the shape was different.
His build was different, too, slimmer than yours, lankier, at least back then, but you were broader in the shoulders. And you’ve got my nose.”
He touched the bridge of his nose and smiled. “Yours is a little more crooked than mine, though, but still the same if you really look. And I wanted it to be true. I knew the way I’d loved your mama and the way she’d loved me—I knew it had to have some great purpose.”
I shook my head. Yeah, the grand love story was great and all, but he seemed to be forgetting the more important part. “My nose is crooked because Noah Lee broke it.”