Page 53 of Nash Falls
“I’d like to ask you a question about arecentevent.”
“Okay, shoot.”
“Why the episode in the church?” Nash asked.
“Your old man told me to do it, so I did. No hard feelin’s?”
“No hard feelings?” Nash said incredulously. “What you did was public humiliation of the worst sort at myfather’s funeral.”
Shock rubbed his bald head and then shrugged. “You still standin’. Right? No permanent wounds that I can see.”
“That you cansee.”
“Maybe he made you stronger with his shit, only you didn’t realize it. Maybe what I said in that church was another test for you, too. What do you think?”
“What I think is I stopped having a father at age fourteen, right when having a father was actually really important.”
“I got me four kids. Half would say I sucked, the other two think I’m Jesus. And they both right.”
“So you just pick your battlesandyour kids?”
“Or they pick you.”
“Didn’t know it was a choice. Good thing I only have the one.”
Shock finished his beer. “So you a perfect daddy? Good for you, Walter, baby.”
“At least I made an effort. My father cut me off because I chose tennis over football. Who knew the choice of one’s high school sport was such an important thing in a father-son relationship?”
“Is that what you really believe?”
“He made it pretty clear.”
“Then you best read the letter. Mightenlightenyou more than I already have.”
“If you think whatever he could put in a letter will change anything, well, you are as wrong as wrong can be.”
“Read the letter, then we can talk.”
“So youhaveread the letter then?”
“I told you I haven’t, and I haven’t. But your father didn’t talk ’bout much else the last six months of his life, so I got a pretty good understandin’ of what he was tryin’ to say.”
“Wait, are you telling me he worked six months on the letter?”
“After the VA docs gave him that much time to live, yeah. It was important to him.”
Nash, who was clearly having none of this, shook his head. “Couldn’t have been. Otherwise, he would have picked up the goddamn phone and called me.”
“And you coulda done the same.”
“Don’t try and lay a guilt trip onme, Shock. I tried to talk to him. I tried to reconcile.”
“Okay. But you gonna read the letter tonight?”
“Probably.”
Shock pulled out a card and handed it to him. “Call me when you do. My private number’s on the back.”
