Soundtrack: 'Bandages' - Hey Rosetta

{Cary}

Cary and Jon waited silently on Tru's steps, out of smokes and out of things to say. Jon's knee jumped and he gripped his hands together so tightly that his knuckles were white. Cary leaned on the post, his arms crossed and his eyes on the lane curving through the bush. He could feel Tru in the house behind them, watching from the window. She'd given him such a glare when he'd told her Pete was coming that he'd thought her eyebrows might catch on fire.

When the van finally nosed around the corner and pulled into the yard with the crunch of gravel, Jon got to his feet, brushing his hand over the front of his shirt like there were still leaves from the garden stuck to him. Pete got out of the driver's seat, squinting in the sunlight. The thud of the door's slam made Cary's body flinch involuntarily and he set his jaw.

"Thanks for coming, Dad," Jon said. His back was straight, and he was using his Sunday morning voice, clear and polite.

Pete shifted his feet and moved his hands uncertainly, like he wasn't sure whether he should hug Jon or not. He opted to stay where he was, looking down at his son. "How are you, Jon?" he asked quietly.

"You need me to come home?" The question was light and Cary watched Pete from under his eyebrows. Had he noticed that Jon hadn't answered his question?

"Yes. We have buyers interested in our old house. We need to have a family conversation about whether we're moving back to Ontario or into a new home elsewhere. A safer neighborhood for you." Pete's voice was a little flat, listing the circumstances and the action needed. Robot-dad. Cary put his eyes on the sky over the barn, his stomach twisting.

"I'm sorry you lost your job." Jon's words only shook a little. "I feel like it's my fault."

Pete turned aside. "It is what it is," he said heavily. "Go on and get your things."

Jon turned and put his foot on the step, but Cary knew he didn't have any things—just the clothes on his back. He lifted his face to Cary, his lips trembling.

Cary's boots clattered down the steps. "Mr. White, can we talk?"

"I got your text," Pete said, without looking at him. "You're staying here for a bit?"

Cary led them away from the yard, walking quickly, leaning forward like there was a headwind. "Think so. Tru's family. I owe you more than thanks for keeping me like you did. I'm better for it."

Pete kept pace at his shoulder. "We were glad to help. Mel sends her love. She wants you to know you're welcome back—anytime."

They were far enough up the lane to be unheard. They were surrounded by trees standing straight and tall to the sky, holding up their dark evergreen branches. Cary didn't know how to ease into the subject, so he just chopped right to the point. "Jon's not good, Mr. White. You need to know that."

"He seems better," Pete said slowly. "He's much improved from when I visited him in treatment."

Cary stopped, planting his legs wide and digging his feet into the needle-covered dirt. "He puts that mask on for you." He was tall enough to look Pete straight in the eyes, and he crossed his arms tightly, holding Pete's serious gaze. "He says he's fine for you. He's not fine. He's not ready to go back."

Pete's eyes lifted over Cary's shoulder to check the step of Tru's house, some distance away now, and then returned to study Cary's face. "Say what you mean."

Cary picked his words carefully, the heat in his belly making it even harder than usual to come up with the right ones. "If he's going back to you, one of you has to be with him all the time. He's dark as hell. I been sleeping against the door in case he gets up to hurt himself again."

Pete seemed to struggle to find something to say to this. "Thank you—for doing that, Cary. I think it will help Jon to be home."

"I think it won't." Cary's scalp prickled, but he made himself say what he meant. "Home might be the worst place for him right now."

The other man's face flushed and he watched Cary, his mouth flattening in his beard. Cary fumbled on, praying desperately. There was only so much he could say without betraying Jon, but he needed to get Pete to look at his son more closely. "Your house is where he hides the hardest. He don't bring out his hurt—he packs it away small until it's too much, and then he'll be cutting or looking for a fix again." He took a short breath, the weight of Pete's expression making his chest tight. "I know you didn't mean for it to happen, but Jon's hurt real bad right now. He's been carrying everything you expect of him and more he piled on himself, and he's broke down. He's going to try and go on like that again because he loves you, but I'm scared he can't."

"It's not wrong for us to have expectations for our son," Pete said. "He's proven himself more than capable of kindness and responsibility. Of course we expect him to leave behind the behaviour of this summer and make the kinds of choices that fit our family. That doesn't seem like too much for a parent to ask."

The memory of Jon bowed and shivering on the back step just hours earlier jolted Cary's stomach. "He's eight days clean." It came out louder than he'd meant, snapping on the cool air. "You can't just roll up here and take him and expect he'll be fine to go to school and be good in your family. Jon is broken. He's lying to you that he's good, and you're gonna make him keep telling that lie 'til it kills him!"

There was a ringing silence that told Cary he'd been yelling.

"I think you're confusing your own stuff with Jon's," Pete said stiffly. "I know how to care for my son." He started back to the house, but Cary got in the way. He dug his feet in and set his shoulder against Pete's chest: Pete's shoes skidded back an inch in the soft ground and they were locked there, motionless, except for the pant of their breathing. "Please listen," Cary whispered against the soft flannel of the shoulder of Pete's shirt. "Please don't hurt him more."

Pete's arms came up, wrapping hard around Cary, one hand gripping the back of his neck. His beard scraped against Cary's ear. "You're out of line, son." Cary felt the growl through his arms pressed against Pete's chest and he shivered hard, his feet scrambling a little for their footing. "I would never hurt my child. You know that." Pete's hand tightened on his neck. "We are not talking about this anymore." He threw Cary off and shouldered past, up the lane.

{Pete}

Furious. He'd lived with himself too long not to recognize that he was vibrating with fury. Pete slowed his feet, smoothing his hand hard over his moustache. He took the moment to glance back: Cary was standing straight as the trees at his back, his hands clasped behind his neck, watching Pete go.

Pete took a breath, looking toward the house crouched in the bush and his van parked in front of it. He could just make out Jon's bowed figure, waiting on the steps. Out of all the things Pete couldn't control about this week, this was one thing he could do. He'd lost his job; he wasn't losing his son. They were fixing this—today.

At the sound of his feet on the gravel, Jon unfolded and got back to his feet, searching Pete's face. "Are we going now? Is Cary coming with us?"

"Cary's not coming with us." The words were flat. His ears were still ringing with Cary's words. Like a teenager with zero experience of healthy family could tell him what he was doing wrong with his own child. "We'll talk in the car."

Jon took a breath like he was going to speak, then swallowed the words. He bent his head and went around the van. Cary had trudged back into the yard, and Pete tried not to look at him directly. He was too angry to be civil. Cary gave him a wide berth and caught Jon in a hard hug. Pete heard him growl softly, "Be there when I get back, Jon."

Pete climbed into the driver's seat and slammed the door, feeling like the two boys had ganged up on him. Jon's tousled head appeared in the window beside him, and then his son climbed in. With a soft sigh of relief, Pete started the car. As the tires bumped into the ruts that led back to the road, he got a glimpse of Cary's face, hard and set, tears tracking down his cheeks, watching them go.

Jon's not good, Mr. White. He's not ready to go back.

Pete put his eyes on the road ahead, gripping the wheel with white knuckles as he turned onto the highway to home. Jon kept his face to his window, his fingers pressed against his mouth and his arm wrapped across his stomach. It reminded him of another time they'd been driving together. Jon had been lying to him then too, on the way to the shelter to pick up Cary. Somehow this had become a pattern in Jon's life, and Pete was sick and tired of not knowing what was going on with his own child.

Going over the summer in his mind, he tried to find a place to start that would pry Jon open. He was too upset to get his thoughts sorted into some kind of clarity. All the moments Jon had disappointed and hurt him rose up in his mind as if Cary's pointed words had stirred them up. Of course Jon was hurt: this whole painful situation was Jon's own fault. Jon had hurt himself and their whole family by lying to them and going behind their backs to use drugs all summer, and then he'd thrown away his chance at treatment like he didn't care that his family desperately wanted him to get well and come home.

Pete was so deep into making this argument to himself that he failed to notice an upcoming intersection, where the smaller highway he was on crossed a larger highway. He blew past the stop sign, turning his head last minute to check for oncoming traffic—only to see the grill of a semi-truck filling his window, bearing down, horn blaring.

"Dad!" Jon was rigid, arms braced on the dashboard.

With a shout, Pete stomped on the gas and his old van jumped across the asphalt, tires almost lifting off the pavement. He felt the truck scream by so close behind them that the van shook with the wind of its passing.

Heart pounding, hands shaking, Pete pulled onto the gravel shoulder and rolled to a stop.

"Jesus. Shit." Jon's voice was thin. He stumbled out of the van into the ditch like his legs wouldn't hold him.

Blankly, Pete turned and looked back, noting the stop signs and highway numbers he had missed. The semi-truck was already receding in the distance. A brief, shattering picture of his van crumpled against the grill of that truck as it hurtled forward, metal squealing, glass crunching, crossed his mind. They could have been killed. He had nearly killed them.

He got out of the van, steadying himself against its side as a hot prairie wind whipped dust against his face. He fumbled his way around the back of the vehicle until Jon came into view, splayed on his back in the sparse grass, his arms clenched over his face.

In the ringing silence, a thought crossed Pete's mind, entirely different in tone from the fuming he'd been doing earlier: What else did I miss?

He staggered to the grass and sank down beside Jon. His son's shirt was rumpled up, exposing the pale skin of his waist. Something not right caught Pete's eye, and he looked directly at Jon's heaving stomach. There were two cuts above Jon's hip, so straight and evenly spaced Pete had to accept that they were intentional. His throat tightened and he reached out to nudge the shirt up higher, exposing a third cut.

Jon scrambled up in a blink, yanking his shirt down. "Don't touch me." His mouth was a flat, white line as he held his dad's eyes.

Pete laid his offending hand against his chest, his breath catching and his face stinging. All his anger had vanished—he felt like he'd been hit by that semi and spun around. Nothing looked the way that it had this morning when he left. "Son—"

Jon shook his head, hard. "I'm fine, Dad."

The word stung him, and tears spilled out of Pete's eyes. "I can see you're not," he said hoarsely.

Jon steadied himself with a hand flat against the van.

"I missed something with you, Jon. What did I miss?"

It was like Jon's face collapsed, and he turned it aside to try to hide the wreck. "Everything," he whispered. "God, Dad. You haven't seen me for years." He tugged open the door to the van and got in, sliding so low that Pete couldn't see him anymore.

Pete rubbed his trembling hands over his face. He bowed his head and tried to pray.

Lord have mercy.

Instead of sensing God's presence, he found himself in front of the shut door again. He leaned his face against it, groaning. Was God not answering because he'd been messing this up all along?

He scooped the tears out of his eyes with the heel of his hand and got back to his feet. It felt like he'd been in the ring taking punches for days; he was aching and exhausted. Anger had given him the energy he'd needed to keep going, to salvage something out of all this garbage for his family. Now he was questioning every decision he'd made this summer, every word he'd said to Jon, desperately looking for what he'd missed. What if those cuts were his fault?

He hauled himself back into the driver's seat and put his hand on the key. "I'm sorry I wasn't paying attention, Jon," he said in a low voice. "I was angry and preoccupied, and I almost got you killed." He risked a look across the seat. Jon had his arms crossed tightly against his body as he watched Pete apologize. He nodded shortly and turned his face forward.

Pete started the car and cautiously pulled back onto the highway. "I'm paying attention now. When you're ready—I'm listening."

But Jon was silent as the fields and trees rolled by. Pete couldn't remember the last time they'd really talked. Maybe when Cary had first moved into their house—they'd had concern for him in common. He'd felt closer to Jon in those weeks than he had in a long time.

Then stress at his new church had escalated, and Pete had come home late almost every night, his head buzzing with all the difficult conversations and relational dynamics he needed to sort through. He'd been too tired for Jon—and too angry with the shift in Jon's attitude toward Cary to sit down and listen to him. He needed Jon to get his act together and behave helpfully for his mom and sisters, and for the first time in their relationship, Jon had not complied. With his temper already strained to its breaking point by his workplace, Pete had had no tolerance for Jon's bursts of talking back. Pete had gone with his first instinct, powering up to shut Jon down or send him to his room.

Now they had five hours in a car alone together and Pete desperately wanted to hear Jon's side of the story—but Jon was still shut down. Whatever desire he might have had in the past to talk to his dad was pounded as flat and dry as the pavement humming under their tires.