Free Mr. Was by Pete Hautman Page A

setting out another bowl of soup.
    â€œHe’d rather be gallivanting ’round in that old jalopy a his, scaring hell out of the animals.” Mr. Murphy took a seat at the table. “You boys done eating my food? ’Cause if you are, I don’t mind you hit the road. Me’n Andrea here, we got a farm to run.”
    Scud and I made our way out the door. We’d just got into Scud’s Ford when Andie came out, tried to kick one of the pigs, missed, then ran up to the car. She looked quickly back at the house, then threw her arms around Scud’s neck, planted a loud kiss on his lips, then ran back into the house.
    That kiss echoed like a shattered gong in my chest. As we drove away, Scud said, “Me and her, we’re gonna get married once she turns eighteen.”
    I felt like throwing up.
    I made him drop me off at Boggs’s End.
    â€œWhat you want to go there for?” he wanted to know. “Ain’t nobody lived there since the Boggses. That was really something, them disappearing like that.”
    â€œWhat do you think happened?”
    â€œI dunno. Some people say they went to California. Me, I figure they maybe got murdered and buried in the woods someplace.”
    â€œHow come you figure that?”
    â€œWhat else? They wouldn’t a just left their house and all their stuff behind. The bank, they sold off allthe furniture, but nobody wanted to buy the house so they just let it go for taxes. Look, why don’t you stay with me? My ma won’t mind.”
    â€œThat’s okay. I want to stay here.”
    â€œWell, don’t disappear like the Boggses.” He grinned, and for a moment his face seemed familiar.
    I opened the car door and stepped out, then turned and took a closer look at him. “How come you get called Scud?”
    He seemed surprised at the question. “That’s my name, why d’ya think?”
    â€œCause Mr. Murphy called you Franklin.”
    â€œMy last name’s Scudder, okay? Only thing I ever got from my old man.”
    I shut the door. “Thanks for the ride.”
    Franklin Scudder waved and drove off.
    And I came back through the door.

My Father Returns
    M om found a job in Lake City working for a pick-your-own-berries farmer. It was a temporary job and it didn’t pay much, but she was happy to get it, and we got lots of free berries. A few weeks later someone knocked on the front door. Mom was literally up to her elbows in raspberry preserves, so I answered it. It was a delivery guy with the biggest bouquet of flowers I’d seen since Skoro’s funeral. I looked at the note attached.
    These roses are red

But I’m feeling blue

I’m off the sauce now

And I really miss you.

—
Ronnie
    I was thinking about hauling the bouquet out to the compost bin when Mom came up behind me wiping her hands on a towel.
    â€œFor me?” she said.
    It made me sick to hear the hope in her voice.
    I didn’t say anything, just handed her the roses and went up to my room.
    â€¢ • •
    Dad showed up at Boggs’s End three days later.
    â€œHow’s it going, champ?” he said, faking a punch at my shoulder. He’d shaved off his mustache and put on a few pounds.
    â€œOkay, I guess.” I didn’t look at his eyes. The thing was, I was glad to see him, but at the same time I was mad at myself. I’d tried to forget him, to write him out of my life, but he was my dad and it’s pretty amazing what a dad can do and still have you like him.
    He said he hadn’t had a drink since the day they let him out of jail. Since then, he’d been driving a delivery van and going to AA meetings seven nights a week. He said he hadn’t called us before because he was ashamed, and he wanted to be absolutely sure he had his drinking problem licked before he saw either of us again. He said it had been the hardest three months of his life. We were sitting at the kitchen table listening