“Walker!” he called when he got closer. Walker moved the last dozen feet to meet him.
“Hey, there’s an emergency back home. Your dad is in the hospital and your brother’s flying in this afternoon.”
Walker cursed and looked away for a moment before nodding. “All right. Thanks for the information.”
“You should get going.”
“Naw, it’s fine. It’s already three. If my brother said he’d be there this afternoon, he’ll be at the hospital sooner than I will.”
“Yeah, but...it sounded pretty bad. I didn’t want to scare you, but they said your dad’s on a ventilator. That’s serious stuff.”
Walker nodded and said thanks again, but he walked his horse back to his post. Micah could take this one. There was nothing Walker could do anyway. If the old man was dying, he’d go more peacefully if the son he hated wasn’t there. And if he wasn’t dying, then Walker would get there tonight and spell his brother for an hour or two.
Walker had enough to deal with. He shouldn’t have to deal with his dad, too. He hadn’t even seen the man for two years before Micah had decided he had to go into a home.
It wasn’t fair, goddamn it. None of it was fair.
But then he remembered that last moment at the hospital, when his dad had so sweetly asked for his wife. A woman he thought he’d only been married to a year.
Jesus.
Walker pushed the cattle down the hill, his jaw aching from the way he clenched his teeth. It wasn’t fair, but it was fucking life, wasn’t it?
He broke away and rode down to the trailer. “I guess I’ll head out, after all,” he said, and took off for the campground to head back down.
He couldn’t let Micah face that alone. He couldn’t let Micah watch by himself as their father died. Walker might be a failure and an idiot, but he wasn’t the man his father was. He was better. He had to be better.
* * *
DESPITE THE LONG hours of waiting next to the hospital bed, Walker didn’t cry when his dad died. He didn’t feel even a lump in his throat. But he held Micah while he broke down, and Walker was glad to be there for his little brother. It’d been a long night, but in the end, it had been over mercifully fast. Faster than James Pearce had deserved, maybe.
He and Micah spoke to someone in hospital administration to make the initial arrangements, and then Walker drove his brother to his favorite diner for some much-needed food. The morning sun seemed too bright after that endless night in the hospital room.
“Shit,” Micah sighed into his coffee. “I can’t believe he’s gone. I always thought he was too mean to die.”
“Ha. Isn’t that my line?”
“Hell no. You think it wasn’t hard for me to watch how he treated you? And I know you protected me, but I still got my share of whippings.”
Walker laughed. “Remember that time you snuck the truck out to go drinking? I think you were fourteen.”
“Oh, shit. I couldn’t sit right for a week.”
“Spare the rod, I guess.”
Micah snorted. “I suppose. It’s a miracle I didn’t develop a taste for leather daddies and canings.”
“Jesus, Micah. I don’t know what either of those things is, and I don’t want to. I’m a nice country boy.”
“Nice, my ass.”
“Also something I don’t want to know.”
They both broke into deep laughter, which surprised even Walker. But it felt good. Cathartic. Like having a wake and letting someone go. There wouldn’t be a service. Their dad didn’t have any friends around, as far as they knew, and no family. They’d have him cremated and then interred at the local cemetery, so this place was as good a location for a wake as any.
“Do you remember that dog?” Micah asked.
“Which dog?” They’d had a couple over the years.