Free Lions by Bonnie Nadzam Page B

distance.
    â€œIt doesn’t bode well,” Boyd finally said. “Boy leaving as his father’s dying.”
    â€œIt does seem a little irresponsible,” Chuck said. “Not like Gordon.”
    â€œAw, give him a break,” May said. “How many of you sat still to watch your own fathers die?”
    At the end of the bar, Jorgensen cleared his throat. The old man had dressed up to come into town, as he always did, in a stiff white-collared shirt and a wool vest and ironed Wranglers. His thick, white hair was as bright as a flare in the dim bar. “Never saw that boy without his dad,” he said, his hands trembling around his beer. “Followed John around like a shadow.”
    That wasn’t natural either, they said.
    No young man felt that way about his own father.
    Makes you wonder what’s wrong with the boy.
    â€œIt’d be work,” Dock said. “I’m sure that’s where Gordon’s gone. They have customers all over the county.”
    Boyd made a sound in his nose. “Customers? Around here? No disrespect,” he said, “but I don’t understand what all of John’s work was for. I mean no offense.” He shook his head.
    No one said anything. Dock stared at the black window, dark as film. Jorgensen gripped the bar.
    Boyd went on. “Guy from some big fabrication plant in Chicago passed through couple three years ago driving his kid out to college. Said he’d never seen work like John’s, and he didn’t even have the most up-to-date gear. Said John could have started at a hundred thousand a year in Denver, easy. Aerospace. Military. Hell. Lots of natural gas pipeline getting started up in Wyoming.”
    â€œHeck, Boyd,” Dock said gently. No one really had to explain. John Walker never invested a goal—like finishing a harrowing frame or hog kennel—with the power to give purpose to his day, let alone meaning to his life. Rather, everything he encountered, each drill, each small project, was itself his life for the duration of the project. His was not the work of a man who believed in or even thought about the future. He looked ahead only as each project required planning, even as he worked on the task at hand with a kind of myopic ceremony.
    â€œFive hours he’d have me at rust removal on a piece of steel no larger than my hand,” Dock said, and lifted and opened his huge white hand.
    â€œMaybe he was autistic,” Boyd said.
    â€œThat’s an ignorant remark,” Dock said.
    â€œSorry. Sorry, Dock.”
    â€œHow was Georgie when you left her, May?” Chuck asked.
    â€œSleeping in one of his shirts, in his old chair. I invited her to come stay with us, but often as not our house is empty too.”
    â€œWhat they should call this place,” Jorgensen said, staring straight ahead at the shelves of bottles. “Empty. Whole God-blessed place.” He broke blessed into two syllables. “I can’t remember ever seeing this town anything other than empty. The past was great, they said. The future will be great, they said.” He gave them a look of wonder. “None of it was true.”
    They all grew quiet. Everything was heavy. Their beer glasses. The boots at the ends of their feet. Their own hands.
    â€œYou know what I think it is with Gordon,” Boyd said, picking up Dock’s empty. Boyd grabbed a clean pint glass and pulled another and set it in front of Dock. “Come on,” he said. “You’re all thinking the same thing.”
    â€œOh, shit,” Chuck said. He drained his own beer and set the glass on the inside of the bar. “There’s no Boggs any more than there’s a Lucy Graves.”
    â€œListen,” Boyd said. “Everyone chose that first Walker to get the dead guy out of town and take care of it. And then his son, and his son’s son, and his son’s son’s son.”
    May handed Chuck a new beer. “Last