Free Round Rock by Michelle Huneven Page B

years old, had no idea what water gardens were; he envisioned a landscape where running water was piped and channeled to flow in the shapes of trees and flowers, a park whose foliage was transparent, boisterous, ever in motion. And yes, that sounded very good to him.
    Red waited for his dad in the front yard with two suitcases and Smoky, an adolescent barn cat he’d acquired from the ranch next door. From the way Jack Ray slammed on the brakes and spun his tires in the gravel drive, Red sensed that his father was in a terrible hurry and that he, Red, was to blame. Jack Ray had a craggy face and sandy hair. Aunt Maude called him “a tall drink of water” to Red and “a long list of troubles” to everyone else. Jack grabbed Red’s suitcases and loaded them into the trunk of his ’42 DeSoto coupe. “Put the cat down and get in, son,” he said.
    Red would not put Smoky down. Smoky was his cat. He rolled Smoky up inside his sweater, ran to the edge of the property, and refused to get into the car until Aunt Maude appeared on the porch and told Jack that it was okay, Iris was expecting Red to bring the cat.
    Jack reached an arm impatiently toward Red. “Give him here. I’ll put him in the car.”
    Reluctantly, Red handed Smoky to his father. Jack tossed the cat into the trunk and slammed it shut.
    At dazzling speed, they drove west on Foothill Boulevard, Route 66, through stretches of scrub desert alternating with vineyards and orchards. The front seat was black leather, warm and slippery. Red clung to the armrest and saw mostly sky over the dashboard. They’dgone only a few miles when Smoky started to yowl, a desperate, guttural noise of impossible length and resonance. Red’s father said nothing. The yowling persisted, in waves, each louder and more protracted than the last. Red glanced around and saw that, somehow, Smoky had crawled up between the roof and the sand-colored headliner, and was slowly coming their way. Red could make out four convex points—Smoky’s paws—as he advanced, step by step. Occasionally, a translucent claw broke through the headliner’s weave. With a series of ripping sounds, the liner pulled free from where it was glued to the roof. Soon Smoky’s yowling was directly overhead, chordal, extended, bloodcurdling. Between Jack and Red, the headliner sagged with the cat’s weight and shape. Jack gazed straight ahead, driving faster and faster toward smeary clouds and washed-out blue sky.
    When they arrived at Grandma Iris’s house, Jack drove up on the lawn. He leapt out, went to the trunk, and threw Red’s suitcases onto the grass.
    “Get out of the car,” he said to Red and took out his pocket knife, pried open the blade. Red scrambled away and watched as Jack plunged the knife into the headliner, cut a long gash, reached in, pulled Smoky out by the leg and hurled him, a black fright wig, out into the yard. The cat sprang to his toes, unhurt, and dashed into nearby orange groves. Without another word, Jack climbed in his car and drove off, his face curtained by the flap of torn headliner.
    Red never saw his father alone after that. Subsequent meetings were stiff, virtually silent half-hours in the presence of a grandmother or aunt. When his mother married Giles Southerly and brought Red to live with them, it was easier for everyone if Jack stayed away.
    Eight years ago, a private investigator sobered up at Round Rock and Red let the man work off his bill in trade. Red asked him to locate his father, an assignment both assumed would result in the address of a cemetery. Within a week, however, Jack was found traversing the country in a mid-size motor home with a Choctaw woman named Winnie. Red sent a telegram to a Kansas KOA campground, and ten days later Jack and Winnie rolled into Round Rock. Almost forty years had passed since Red had seen his father. Jack was now a fragile stick of a man, face wattled in loose skin, head crowned by a wavering white flame of hair. Jack and Winnie