“I have to go.”
“Where?”
“Away. Look—”
“Does Mom know?”
He laughed, but it didn’t sound like he found anything funny. “Sure. Maybe. She knew what was going to happen. Probably has for a while.”
I stepped toward him. “When are you coming back?”
“Ox. People are going to be mean. You just ignore them. Keep your head down.”
“People aren’t mean. Not always.” I didn’t know that many people. Didn’t really have any friends. But the people I did know weren’t mean. Not always. They just didn’t know what to do with me. Most of them. But that was okay. I didn’t know what to do with me either.
And then he said, “You’re not going to see me for a while. Maybe a long while.”
“What about the shop?” I asked him. He worked down at Gordo’s. He smelled like grease and oil and metal when he came home. Fingers blackened. He had shirts with his name embroidered on them. Curtis stitched in reds and whites and blues. I always thought that was the most amazing thing. A mark of a great man, to have your name etched onto your shirt. He let me go with him sometimes. He showed me how to change the oil when I was three. How to change a tire when I was four. How to rebuild an engine for a 1957 Chevy Bel Air Coupe when I was nine. Those days I would come home smelling of grease and oil and metal and I would dream late at night of having a shirt with my name embroidered on it. Oxnard, it would say. Or maybe just Ox.
“Gordo doesn’t care” is what my dad said.
Which felt like a lie. Gordo cared a lot. He was gruff, but he told me once that when I was old enough, I could come talk to him about a job. “Guys like us have to stick together,” he said. I didn’t know what he meant by that, but the fact that he thought of me as anything was good enough for me.
“Oh” is all I could say to my dad.
“I don’t regret you,” he said. “But I regret everything else.”
I didn’t understand. “Is this about…?” I didn’t know what this was about.
“I regret being here,” he said. “I can’t take it.”
“Well that’s okay,” I said. “We can fix that.” We could just go somewhere else.
“There’s no fixing, Ox.”
“Did you charge your phone?” I asked him because he never remembered. “Don’t forget to charge your phone so I can call you. I got new math that I don’t understand. Mr. Howse said I could ask you for help.” Even though I knew my dad wouldn’t get the math problems any more than I would. Pre-algebra it was called. That scared me, because it was already hard when it was a pre. What would happen when it was just algebra without the pre involved?
I knew that face he made then. It was his angry face. He was pissed off. “Don’t you fucking get it?” he snapped.
I tried not to flinch. “No,” I said. Because I didn’t.
“Ox,” my daddy said. “There’s going to be no math. No phone calls. Don’t make me regret you too.”
“Oh,” I said.
“You have to be a man now. That’s why I’m trying to teach you this stuff. Shit’s gonna get slung on you. You brush it off and keep going.” His fists were clenched at his sides. I didn’t know why.
“I can be a man,” I assured him, because maybe that would make him feel better.
“I know,” he said.
I smiled at him, but he looked away.
“I have to go,” he eventually said.
“When are you coming back?” I asked him.
He staggered a step toward the door. Took a breath that rattled around his chest. Picked up his suitcase. Walked out. I heard his old truck start up outside. It stuttered a bit when it picked up. Sounded like he needed a new timing belt. I’d have to remind him later.