I had learned not to take it personally.
By not taking it personally, I mean that I had learned how, when a feeling or body part ached like it wanted to burst, to shove the sensation way down. And I don’t know if it was the day I’d just had or what I’d left in Kentucky or the cumulative injustices of the last seventeen years—but on that drive, I was feeling there was too much to push down.
In front of the apartment, Dad called for a pizza and handed me a twenty to pay for it. Then he said he had to get back to the plant.
I pointed to my swollen eye.
“There’s ice in the freezer,” he said.
“Does it bother you that I got hurt?”
“Very much. Walk away next time.”
“What if I have reckless self-disregard?”
“You can still walk away.”
“Parental neglect.”
“Self-reliance.”
“Abandonment.”
“Survival.” Dad popped the truck out of park. “Wallace, I really don’t have time for this. You remember Arizona, the chemical fire that took us twenty-one days to put out? That was small potatoes compared to the situation I’m dealing with here.”
I did remember Arizona. Of course I did. Ma’d been gone for a couple of years by that point, left in a hillside graveyard in California during a thunderstorm, and Dad and I had been bouncing around the country, plant to plant, five, six months a pop, not that much time at each stop but enough for me to develop a semblance of a social life at whatever school I landed at—hell, long as we’re on the topic, it was in Arizona that I lost my virginity. (A keg party on someone’s porch, Christian rock going at jet-engine volume, the girl saying she wanted me to hear this song in her Jeep, the most amazing song, the song being a Britney Spears tune that just spoke to her, and then in the Jeep our shirts were off before the first chorus, our shorts were around our knees, there was the sensation of trying to dock a sailboat on a windy lake, and I experienced the ultimate in human pleasure. In case you were wondering.)
Point is, in Arizona Dad arrived home each night with strange burns on his arms and blank, hollowed-out eyes. Rather than coming home from a job each night, he seemed to be coming home from a war. A war that was going poorly.
As I’ve said, the man took his job seriously.
He nodded me out of the truck. I stepped down to the pavement but held the door open. He had to turn.
“What now?” he said.
“I met a girl today.”
“Great.”
“Thanks for asking how my first day went.”
“Happy for you.”
“I like her,” I said.
“Great.”
“She’s pretty and smart. Is organizing the prom here, actually. Invited me to it. Maybe I’ll go.”
“Great, I—”
“I know. I know I won’t be here.”
“Wallace, I—”
“She said to understand what was happening in North Homer, I should watch the trees.”
Dad didn’t move a muscle for fifteen long seconds. Then he let out a deep exhale. He put the truck back in park, took his hands off the wheel, grabbed the pack of cigarettes off the dash, lit one. He took a drag so hard I thought he might just suck the thing right into his mouth and start chewing.
“What’s she mean?” I asked. “You know, don’t you?”
“Can’t you leave it alone?” he asked.
“Dad? That’s your answer?”
“We’ll be gone soon. This town—there’s nothing good here for us. Let me finish my job here, and then we’ll go. Anywhere you want.”
“Well, no,” I said, my voice rising. “I’m not leaving it alone. Fuck that. I’m already alone. I’m always alone. You go and do your job, like always. Fine. But I’m going to find out what she means, if it’s the only thing I do in this stupid town.”
Dad gripped his forehead. He appeared about to respond several times, each time deciding that it was better not to.
“This won’t end well,” he finally said.
FIVE
MY FATHER DROVE off. It was quiet. Dark. No other cars or people on the street. I looked around in that way you do when you’ve finished a long day and you let the exhaustion sink in.
And I looked up at the sky, as you do in such moments.
There were three oak trees in front of the apartment. Their trunks were about fifteen feet apart, their branches filling the gaps between them. They were enormous, old, and so expansive that I felt like I was on their turf, not the other way around. Which is not the worst sensation, as trees are generally better turf owners than people. (The sun is the best turf owner of all but too much of an absentee landowner.)
They all still had their leaves—fall hadn’t really hit yet, which was some kind of New York State record.
And then, as I watched them, the oaks, as I took in their distinct treeness, a single branch from the center tree, one of the lower ones, easy to see, rustled back and forth, back and forth.
In other words, it waved.
I’m telling you, the tree waved.
I ran inside.
SIX
I COULDN’T CATCH up to my brain that night. Eight hours straight, it raced, it zoomed, it zigged, it zagged, it Olympic-gold-medal slalomed. No wonder—it had a lot to cover: Megan Rose, Brad Stone’s cement-fisted sociological theories, the principal’s glare, Megan Rose, my father’s grim prediction, and Megan Rose. Also, yes, the fact that an oak tree had waved to me.
Okay, last things first.
No.
Just no.
It couldn’t have. I checked the tree out the window at dawn and again on leaving for school in the morning. It was, for sure, an impressive, I-am-old-and-behold-my-girthiness tree. It was definitely there. But it did not wave one time. So, no, come on now.
All right, then: Megan Rose.
What about her?
Well, there was the way she looked like the kind of person who could break hearts and bones. The way she wore a gray tank top. The way she’d dropped deep into herself in the middle of the cafeteria—what the hell was that?
The way her breath had felt against my ear.
Obviously, the thing to do next was to ask her to a private place where the two of us could talk. Just talk. But Megan Rose wasn’t in any of my classes, I discovered. And Brad Stone and his football teammates, who all shared a “Look at me wrong and I’ll break you in half” vibe, made it clear that I wasn’t welcome in the cafeteria. Brad took it further, making sure with some hard shoves that I understood I wasn’t welcome in the entire zip code.