The Fury - Jason Pinter [17]
young man lying in New York with two bullets in his
head, a man who my father could, like me, call his
blood.
The front door opened with a creak. A man stood in
front of me, rubbing his eyes. He looked older than I
remembered, lines creasing his face like small ditches,
a thin coat of gray stubble covering the worn skin.
When his eyes came into focus and he saw me, the
man's mouth opened slightly, his reflexes working
faster than his mind was able to keep up with. He shook
his head slightly, unsure.
I took a step forward and said, "Hi, Dad. It's been a
while. It's Henry. Your son who's still alive."
7
We sat there in his living room. James in an easy
chair, me and Amanda on a faded, stained, uncomfort
able brown couch. It was probably uncomfortable
because nobody ever sat in it, nobody ever told James
the springs bit your legs. My father wasn't exactly
someone who entertained. James Parker was wearing a
tattered light blue bathrobe, the same one he used to
wear years ago. It was worn. Threads hung out, waiting
to be yanked free. The robe looked as if it was now worn
out of convenience rather than comfort. A skin that
couldn't be shed.
Though it had been eight years since I'd seen my
father, it felt like longer. He looked as though he'd aged
twenty. The brown hair--the same color hair I'd inher
ited--was streaked with gray. The skin around his neck
had begun to sag into full-on jowls, and whatever was left
of the muscle tone in his forearms had turned soft. His
eyes were lined, as though tired of keeping up the appear
ance of the rebel he'd long considered himself to be.
Maybe thirty years ago James Parker was a man to
be feared and possibly even desired. Now, though, he
The Fury
55
was just an angry old man with a distant wife and an es
tranged son. A man whose indifference to any life but
his own had driven away everyone who'd ever cared for
him, driven him to the point where his very voice
brought up anger inside of me.
When I was hidden in a dingy building and needed
to hear something, anything, to keep me going, I called
my father. I'd spent much of my adult life trying to
hard to distance myself from him and what he repre
sented. My anger had, in essence, become a fuel.
Recently, the fuel had begun to burn itself out. But
sitting there, watching this man in front of me, knowing
what he'd done in his past, knowing just how little of
the story I knew, it was all I could do not to leap up from
my chair and knock him head over heels, that ugly
bathrobe flailing like paper in a gust of wind.
Those striking green eyes kept flicking to me, then
to Amanda, then back to me. Anytime he had unex
pected visitors, James Parker figured it was either a
court summons or an IRS audit. Amanda sat leaning
forward, eyeing James, as though trying to understand
an entire family history through those eyes.
He held a beer in his hand. The bottle was halfempty, and the bottom half was covered by his hand,
which was sweating. The air was hot, blowing from
some unseen fan that appeared to simply recirculate
the warm air over the whole house. He eyed me with a
look of confusion and contempt.
"Where's Mom?" I asked.
"Bridge lesson," he said. "Plays with her girlfriends
once a week. Whatever keeps her busy and out of my
hair."
56
Jason Pinter
I bristled at the comment. "When will she be home?"
I hated being here, hated that he'd even put us in a situa
tion where we needed to be. But my hatred for this man
couldn't get in the way of finding out the truth about
Stephen Gaines. About myself.
"Listen, I don't know what you want from us," he
said, swigging from the bottle, grimacing because the
beer had likely grown warm. Not quite the "you never
call" line you'd expect from a parent you hadn't seen in
years.
"I just want to know the truth about you and Helen
Gaines. And how much you know about Stephen."
"What does it matter anyway?" James said, looking off
at the wall. "It was years ago. Before you were even
born."
"I know that," I said,