"Have I ever let you down?" Dad asked.
I'd heard that question at least two hundred times, and I'd always
answered it the way I knew he wanted me to, because I thought it was my
faith in Dad that had kept him going all those years. I was about to tell
him the truth for the first time, about to let him know that he'd let us all
down plenty, but then I stopped. I couldn't do it. Dad, meanwhile, was
saying he was not asking me for the money; he was telling me to give it
to him. He needed it. Did I think he was a liar when he said he'd get it
back to me?
I gave him the twenty dollars. That Saturday, Dad told me that to pay
me back, he had to earn the money first. He wanted me to accompany
him on a business trip. He said I needed to wear something nice. He went
through my dresses hanging from the pipe in the bedroom and picked out
one with blue flowers that buttoned up the front. He had borrowed a car,
an old pea-green Plymouth with a broken passenger-side window, and we
drove through the mountains to a nearby town, stopping at a roadside
bar.
The place was dark and as hazy as a battlefield from the cigarette smoke.
Neon signs for Pabst Blue Ribbon and Old Milwaukee glowed on the
walls. Gaunt men with creased cheeks and women with dark red lipstick
sat along the bar. A couple of guys wearing steel-toed boots played pool.
Dad and I took seats at the bar. Dad ordered Buds for himself and me,
even though I told him I wanted a Sprite. After a while, he got up to play
pool, and no sooner had he left his stool than a man came over and sat on
it. He had a black mustache that curved around the sides of his mouth
and coal grime under his fingernails. He poured salt in his beer, which
Dad said some guys did because they liked to make extra foam.
"Name's Robbie," he said. "That your man there?" He gestured toward
Dad.