Page 23 of Nash Falls

“I… I know. But—”

“But what?”

“You just seem like Mr. Nash to me. I know you’re quite important.”

“Who told you that?”

“I’ve got to go. I have to catch the bus.”

“Do you need a ride? I can call you an Uber.”

“No, I… no, the bus. I prefer it. Goodbye.”

Her long legs and powerful strides ate up the pavement in huge chunks. No doubt her physical labor at the VA kept the woman strong and vigorous. And thin.

Nash walked off wondering who in his father’s world would ever have considered him important.

CHAPTER

11

NASH TOOK AN UNPLANNED YETsignificant detour on the way home that night.

He passed old houses that had been on his morning paper route when he was thirteen. His mother had fretted over him disappearing alone on his bike into the predawn hours. His father, unsurprisingly, had said it would put much-needed hair on his chest. He’d actually made a weapon for Nash out of a short, thick rubber hose with a half-pound slug wedged inside one end. His father had then capped and secured that end with black electrician’s tape.

“Anything weird, you hit first and ask questions later,” his father had instructed him.

Their next-door neighbor had owned a dog named Rusty. He was a messy-looking mutt with short legs and a bark that would freeze you in your tracks. But he was actually a lovable, friendly canine whom Nash had wanted to adopt because he didn’t think the neighbors took good enough care of him. The animal was always chained in the backyard, and its home was a small wooden hovel that was covered with snow in the winter and like an oven during the summer. Nash would bring Rusty water every day when it was hot and he would haul over old blankets in the winter so the dog would be warm enough. Nash would lie face down, partially inside Rusty’s doghouse, lay his head against Rusty’s mangy fur and… dream.

Then one day Rusty was gone. The neighbors said he had run off. But Nash had seen the chain with Rusty’s collar still attached. A distraught Nash had gotten his mother involved with Rusty’s owners, an unfriendly couple named Donohue. After his mothercould make no headway his father had taken up the cause. Nash had watched anxiously while his father trudged over and knocked on the Donohues’ door. He stood there talking to them. When he came back, his father would not meet his son’s eye.

“They gave Rusty away, to a farmer with a lot of land where he can run and have fun.”

Nash did not believe a word of this. Why would Rusty’s collar have been left behind? When he asked his father this very question, his dad had gotten upset and told Nash to man up.

Nash had waited until dark, then slipped over the fence with a flashlight and investigated further. When he’d found blood in Rusty’s doghouse and bits of fur that looked like it had been torn away from the dog, he had gone back to his room and sobbed the night away. Something had clearly attacked and killed Rusty. And the Donohues, who had never loved or properly taken care of the animal, had probably chucked his carcass in the trash.

And worse still, his father had lied to him.

As Nash turned the corner onto his old street he wondered if the falling-out between him and his father had actually started then, and not with the tennis-over-football decision.

I guess he didn’t think I could handle the hard truths, wimp that I was.

He slowed as he approached his old home and was startled to see that it was in far better shape than he would have thought. When his mother had been alive she had done her best to keep the property in decent condition. And Nash had provided funds for her to hire people who could help her do so. To keep his father from the truth, they had worked out a cover story of his mom’s having inherited from an elderly relative.

The old siding had been replaced, the porch redone, and the roof looked to have recently been reshingled. The house had no garage, but there was a carport on the side. However, there was no vehicle there. The last time Nash had checked, his father had still possessed his battered Ford Bronco, a relic from the 1990s.

His dad also had his Harley, but he didn’t see it anywhere on the property. It was possible that when his days were growing short Ty Nash had sold it or given it away.

Nash pulled to the curb. The houses on either side of his father’s place were not in good shape. Old cars with missing tires and doors were up on cinderblocks at both residences; the screen front door was hanging off one, and the other one’s front door was absent its glass, the hole covered over with gray duct tape. The general air of neglect and poverty permeated the entire street.

Even the widowed Harriet Segura’s home, nicely kept up when he’d been young, was now showing its age. A few flowers had been put in cracked plastic tubs on the front porch but now drooped in the heat. The chain-link fence encircling her backyard was leaning over in places, the poles’ cement footers having given up the fight to weather, gravity, and time. Her siding was dented and stained with dirt and algae. The years left their mark on all things, he knew.

Nash watched as two young men completed a drug deal involving small packets of white powder exchanged for cash; a young woman dressed in next to nothing vaped away and checked her phone as two ogling teenage boys followed her like lovesick puppies.

The other homes appeared to have young families living in them, no doubt the only residences they could afford in a country where decent homes in safe neighborhoods for hardworking people apparently couldn’t be had for reasonable prices. Banged-up bikes, tattered Big Wheels, plastic toys, and rusty play sets were scattered all over the browning grass. A bicycle jump—improvised from a long, curved plank, a couple of sawhorses, and a dented fifty-gallon drum lying on its side—took up much of the front yard of one home, which was also flying aDON’T TREAD ON MEflag.

Two bare-chested men glistening with sweat labored over a jacked-up Dodge Charger parked at the curb, their heads and torsos leaning into the engine compartment and only surfacing for a beer or a tool. When they threw unfriendly glances Nash’s way, as he satthere in his suit and tie and fancy foreign ride, Nash quickly put the Rover in gear and pulled away.