“Nope,” her father declared. “You’d have been proud of me, girlie. I didn’t lay a finger on him. ’Course, it helped that he was a lot younger and faster than me.” He cackled with maniacal glee. “But Dog, now, he gave that feller a run for his money before he reached his car. Yes, sir, ol’ Dog surely did.”
Jenny walked to the edge of the patio and sat cross-legged on the stones. The greasy smell of the gas grill tickled her nose. Even miles away from her father, she felt helpless and trapped.
“Where are you at, girlie?” he asked in a soft and hoarse voice. “You had me scared plumb out of my wits. Truly you did. Thought you was up and gone like all them other folks. Somebody told me only the good folks disappeared. Figured surely you’d be one of ’em.”
Jenny closed her eyes and wished that she’d been taken with all the others. From everything she was seeing, the good people, the ones who had truly believed in God, were the ones who had vanished.
Was it that I didn’t believe in You enough, God? Or was it that I’m just not good enough? According to a lot of people, Jackson McGrath wasn’t worth the gunpowder it would take to blow him up. Many of those people had assigned the same kind of worth to his daughter. She’d heard stuff like that from the time she was just a girl.
“So, girlie,” her father said, “when are you coming home?”
Home. The thought summoned up images of the battered and paint-faded apartment she and her father were currently renting. They didn’t have enough money or credit between them to actually own a house, and that was a sad piece of business. But her father had ruined his credit even before Jenny was born, and he’d ruined hers last year within months of her turning eighteen. Collection departments still sometimes called her at home and at work if they could find out where she was working. Kettle O’ Fish, the restaurant where she’d worked with Joey was new, so the collectors hadn’t caught up with her yet.
“As soon as I can,” Jenny said.
“Yeah?” His tone became doubtful and aggressive. “And when would that be?”
“I don’t know. I’m at Fort Benning. The military police have the post locked down.”
Her father was quiet for a moment. She heard his lighter flick and knew that he’d lit another cigarette. “Do you need me to come get you out of there, girlie?”
“No. I’ll—”
“They can’t just keep you locked up there. Ain’t const-constitutional.” He slurred his words slightly.
Her father always managed to speak properly until he became falling-down drunk. She figured he’d been drinking while she was gone, but hoped that he hadn’t. Pressing her ear closer to the phone, she heard country-and-western music in the background. She knew the sound; she’d heard the music plenty of times before because her father liked to frequent those places where it played at all hours on a worn-out jukebox. “Where are you?”
“Home. I’m to home is all.”
“No you’re not.” Some of the frustration and anger that swept over Jenny washed away the guilt that had weighed on her since she’d recognized her father’s voice.
“Girlie, are you calling me a liar?”
“If the shoe fits.” She expected him to blow up at her and hang up. But since she’d grown up and started paying part of the bills at fifteen, she’d stood up to him. Her behavior had made him angry, but her independence had also made him fearful. That was why he’d started his latest pattern of manipulations.
Instead of getting angry or threatening her, he waited a bit, just long enough, then he laughed like they’d just shared a good joke. “Never could fool you, could I?”
Not often, Jenny silently agreed. Only those few times I made the mistake of thinking I could trust you. Memories of those times still hurt.
“I’m at this little place around the corner from the house,” her father said. “Can you believe it? All these people up and disappeared and ain’t nobody quite knows why. Big businesses all over the city are closed down right now, but this little place just kicks the doors open and welcomes in the weary and the worried. It’s funny when the most dependable place in the world is a joint.”
The places her father frequented were always around the corner from the house. Even when they were halfway across Columbus.
“Which little place?” Jenny asked. She knew dozens of them: bars, saloons, taverns, and pubs. Over the years, she’d pulled her father out of too many of them. Even if he couldn’t drive, even if he couldn’t walk, he always remembered how to get hold of her at home or work or school.
“Butch’s or something like that. A hole-in-the-wall is what it is. Got no class at all. Change the roll of toilet paper in the john and you’ve upped the décor. Wouldn’t bring a dog here. But they got a pool table, a jukebox, and a lady bartender that’s full of sass. My kind of gal, only she don’t know it yet.”
And if the lady bartender was looking her father’s way, Jenny knew he’d give her a big wink. Just to keep her on her toes, according to him.
“You shouldn’t be there,” Jenny said, but she knew her protest was already a lost cause. Her father always found a reason for patronizing those kinds of places.
“The end of the world is upon us, girlie. Where else am I gonna be?”
“You might try church.” Jenny didn’t know where that suggestion had come from. She’d tried to get her father to church before but he wouldn’t go. He’d never accepted Christ’s mercy or been baptized.
“If I was to walk into a church,” her father said, “the building would more’n likely fall down around my ears.” That set
