Free Deconstructing Dylan by Lesley Choyce

said.
    â€œCan I come in?”
    â€œSure.”
    The door opened. My father walked in and stood there. He wasn’t wearing his suit. No tie, no shiny shoes. Just a T-shirt and jeans. He was smiling.
    â€œYou get fired?” I asked.
    â€œI wish. No. I’m just taking a day off. Stress leave, as they used to call it. R and R.”
    â€œRock and Roll?”
    â€œRest and relaxation. I want you to join me.”
    â€œCut school?”
    â€œYeah. Cut school. I want to take you someplace. You have any good hiking shoes?”
    â€œSure.”
    My mother had an appointment with her doctor and I was happy for that. I truly was worried about her. She needed some kind of help and I was glad she was turning to a professional.
    â€œYour mother’s been under a lot of pressure,” my father said as he drove us out of town and east towards the nature reserve called Traverse Ravine, a place he’d taken me to several times when I was young. A deep gully, a rift really, that was said by geologists to be the fault line where two ancient super-continents had once collided: Gondwana and old North America. It was an extraordinary place where you could find exotic rocks like amethyst, magnetite, and even fossils of creatures long extinct — fish and underwater insects.
    â€œI’m worried about her,” I said. “There’s something wrong, isn’t there?”
    My father tightened his grip on the wheel and seemed ready to tell me something that he had been holding back. “I haven’t been doing a very good job as a father — or a husband, for that matter.”
    â€œYou’ve been busy.”
    â€œToo busy. There’s got to be more to life than work.”
    â€œSomebody’s gotta pay the bills,” I said, mouthing the cliché.
    â€œWell, when you get to my age, you realize that maybe all that effort you put into your career isn’t worth it, after all.”
    â€œSo what is this then that you’re going through? Midlife crisis, male menopause, or what do they call it now?”
    â€œThey call it taking your head out of your ass,” he said, rather surprising me with this choice of words.
    I suddenly felt a whole lot more relaxed. Up until then, I had been thinking there was some hidden agenda here, like he was about to tell me some deep dark secret. I don’t know what — that he was having an affair with another woman or that he was laundering illegal drug money. I had a bad habit of letting my imagination take over — like that daydream the day before in math class.
    â€œI’ve saved enough. I’ve invested. I could quit tomorrow if I wanted to. We could move, even. Where would you like to go?”
    â€œAustralia,” I said. “Or New Zealand.”
    â€œEntomological heaven,” he said. “I hear the people are friendly, too.”
    â€œOr maybe Tibet,” I said, thinking about the promise I made to Robyn.
    â€œTibet? Really?” “Just kidding,” I said. I didn’t want to have to explain.
    â€œBut I’m serious,” he said. “Maybe it’s time for a change. Do you remember much about when we lived in Scotland?”
    It was odd the way he phrased that. “I remember when we
visited
Scotland. You and Mom lived there before I was born. We were only there for two weeks, weren’t we?”
    He cleared his throat. “Something like that. That’s what I meant. Visited. Remember the standing stones and the deep lochs? And those castles?”
    This morning I had been thinking about that trip and about the drive through that valley &hellips; the one that had been part of my daydream. “What was the name of that town where we stayed at the farm?”
    â€œFort William.”
    â€œRight. Just north of Glencoe. It was eerie there, like that massacre had just happened last week.”
    I now remembered that I had picked it out on the map and wanted to go