Page 10 of Resilience

All of that was an infusion of peace directly into his veins, but the very best part was the house: the squares and rectangles of light in the darkness, the tiny pictures of the people he loved best doing their things. Tonight, there was a bigger rectangle of light across the drive as well; Dad was in the garage and had one of the doors up.

Sam had groceries in his backpack, including a chilled bottle of orange juice, but he decided he could take a few minutes and detour to the garage on his way into the house. He parked his bike in its usual spot, beside his 1970 Dodge D100 pickup.

Mom had bought him that truck for his sixteenth birthday. Sam had wanted to restore an old car, so she’d presented him with a junkyard wreck, and he’d been thrilled. But the job had been lonely and really hard for a kid on his own. Uncle Gun had helped him out, which was why anything at all had gotten done on the thing at first, but Gun’s mind was kind of chaotic. It definitely didn’t work like Sam’s did.

Uncle Gun wasn’t very good at explaining things so Sam could learn, they’d both gotten frustrated with each other, and Sam had finally lost heart for the work. The rusty husk had sat on blocks for almost a year, until Dad had been released from prison. Dad was the kind of teacher Sam could learn from. They’d finished the truck together and reformed their bond in the process.

He would never fucking sell that truck, no matter what.

Now he strode to the garage with his grocery-crammed pack on his back. Mom’s SUV was parked in the bay with the open door, and the hood was up. A fender cover was draped over the side. Dad’s phone sat on the corner of the workbench, softly playing ‘Smoke on the Water.’

Scenes like this were high on Sam’s list of favorite things, too.

“Hey, Dad,” he said as he came through the open bay door.

Dad leaned over and smiled when he saw him. “Hey, son. You cut your hair off.”

He rubbed his head self-consciously. “Yeah. Lark wanted to do it for practice. I figured why not. It’s only hair, right?”

“That’s right. And it’s good to make your woman happy. Speaking of which, did Mom catch you? She needed something from the market.”

Sam patted a strap of his pack. “Got it all here. Something wrong with the Jelly Belly?”

Mom was most definitely not a car person and drove whatever she had until it fell completely apart, which took a long time in a household with one mechanic and two other very handy people in the house. This Explorer was ten years old, meaning Mason and Sam had been kids when she’d bought it new. They’d decided the blue beast looked like a Jelly Belly, thus its name was born.

It didn’t look like a Jelly Belly, at least no more than most SUVs did.

She’d brought the Jelly Belly home new about two weeks before Dad had been arrested for arson, working a Bulls job for the Perro Blanco cartel.

Not until Sam was grown did he really understand the situation, but now he knew the Feds had pressed Dad hard for intel on the Perros. He’d kept his mouth shut, of course, and pleaded guilty. He’d been sentenced to ten years at Beaumont, a high-security federal penitentiary in Texas. He’d served five and been paroled on good behavior.

During those five years, Sam and Mason had seen their father a total of ten times. If he’d done his full sentence, he’d only be getting released about now. Sometimes Sam thought of how close he and Mason had come to losing their dad for a decade, all the most important years of their childhood, and his whole body would clench. Five years was bad. Twice that would have been so much worse.

“Nah,” Dad said, standing up straight, then bending backward, groaning as he stretched. “Just some regular maintenance. I heard about the scene at the station this afternoon. You wanna grab us some beers and talk it out?”

“Yeah, sure.”

He headed to the far corner of the six-bay garage, where they had a ‘relaxation station’ set up, with some ratty cast-off armchairs, a fridge and a cabinet of snack foods, and a TV on the wall. Dad, Sam, and Mason also parked their bikes in that bay when the weather was bad.

Setting his pack on the floor between the fridge and the snack cabinet, Sam pulled out the orange juice and put it in the fridge before he grabbed two cans of Budweiser. Then he smiled as heard the familiar sound of a hundred-forty-pound mastiff mix running hellbent for leather from the house into the garage.

He set the beers on top of the fridge and got ready to catch his dog.

“Hey buddy!” he cheered as Tank launched himself off the garage floor and crashed into Sam’s chest.

This was a thing he’d taught Tank to do when he was a puppy. Back then, it had been a cute trick, a puppy who gave hugs. Sam would hold his arms out, and Tank would leap up and put his forepaws on Sam’s shoulders and then bathe his face in kisses. But they hadn’t realized that Tank wasn’t the usual pit bull mix but was instead fully half American Mastiff until they’d done one of those DNA things. By then it was too late; Tank was well trained in giving hugs and absolutely loved doing it.

Now Tank was three years old, practically the size of a pony, and getting a hug from him often resulted in crashing backward to the ground to be pinned by him while he tried to lick Sam’s face off.

Sam still thought it was seriously cool. And Tank only hugged him, so they weren’t responsible for any head injuries to unsuspecting parties.

This time, Sam was ready, and he grabbed his dog and held him while he gave his kisses. Thinking of the poor dogs from this afternoon, he hugged Tank all the harder and tucked his face against his muscular shoulder.

His own shoulders started to complain before either Sam or Tank was ready to let go. When he did, Tank snuffled around the garage floor until he got to the backpack, then devoted all of his olfactory attention to the smells therein.

“No, T. Don’t slobber all over my pack. Sorry.” He picked it up and set it on top of the fridge. From the snack cabinet, he grabbed the canister of dog treats and offered a few of those instead. And then he wiped his now-slimy hand on his jeans and picked up the beers.

When he headed back to the other side of the garage, with Tank at his heels, he noticed his father watching quietly and got the sense he’d stood there taking in the whole scene.

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