Bee Cave, Texas

1965

That was the way of things, he supposed.

It was a saying that had gotten him through many a conflict that couldn't be resolved by fighting-hell, he now viewed those as the easy kind. It was simple enough to take a gun and duke out whatever squabble was taking up valuable testosterone. It was the kind with words, with deep, ore-laced conflicts that ran through the ground and transcended generations and found their way into new blood. It was the kind with somebody just being so stubborn. It was the kind with somebody above you, better than you, who could treat you like shit on his boot and you just had to take it. His ma was the one that told him, originally, rocking in her big chair and rolling yarn into balls the cat would go to town on later.

"Sometimes, Dell, that's just the way of things." she would say in her seen-it-all voice, patient and everlasting as the bedrock under their feet. "Ain't no use worrying yourself over things you can't change."

How he wished for his ma's wisdom, as everlasting as his immortal memory of her in his mind. Lord hope that one day he would attain it. He drew upon it when there wasn't anything he could fix about something wrong, because that was what he did(fixing) and it was about the most frustrating thing when he couldn't fix something. Eleven hard-science PhDs and the concept that was hardest for him to grasp was letting go.

Letting go. That was what he was here to do, after all.

The same floorboards that had creaked underfoot when he'd sat here, years ago, on that cushioned stool next to his ma's rocking chair. It had been long since he'd seen her, too long, really seen her. When her eyes were open and she could hold a conversation, even if it was a short and faint one. He came as soon as his father called. But by then they all knew it was too late. Preparing to grieve, the doctor had called it, encouraging the family to start packing her things, settling her affairs. So when she died they would be ready. Her presence would be gone from the house and they wouldn't come home to a cold bed and pristine sheets, the way Dell could tell his father made it. His ma always left the little frilly pillow in the front crooked, like someone had just gotten up. She had told him once it seemed more homely that way, and he wholeheartedly believed her. She was the embodiment of hospitality and making things look like they should, like her cornbread that looked straight off the cover of a southern living magazine.

His father couldn't bring himself to remove her rocking chair, then. It stood tilted in its same spot, frozen in time, an ageless thing preserved in amber light that filtered through the hand-hemmed curtains. There was no dust on it even though it hadn't been used for a very long time. The cat avoided it, even, curling up next to the yarn basket instead, halfheartedly batting some threads. Bee Cave was hard for him to come back to. What he would give to have it echo memories of his mother, of fireflies and lemonade, of summers on the porch swing. It was just the way of things, he supposed, that his father had turned this place into a hollow shell of itself. Dell's mother was the thing that brightened it and without her the life was sucked out of the land. Lord, wheat had never looked so not like sunshine.

There was a noise on the porch. Stamping boots, scraping against the bristly doormat that still said home sweet home, past all the crud that was caked on it. The clatter as the screen opened and shut.

"Son," said his father gruffly in greeting, hanging his bag on the row of hooks that waited for him. "You came."

"Of course I came, dad, I've been coming."

They stared at each other for a second, and the warm breeze carrying the smell of honeysuckle on it drifted through the screen and into the house.

"You're tracking mud." Dell pointed. "Didn't scrape hard enough, I guess."

"Never is hard enough for your ma."

"Was." Dell corrected him. He watched his father's eyes flick anywhere around the room but his own face. "We're supposed to be grieving."

"She ain't gone yet." came a firm correction of its own. "Let's set in the kitchen. I didn't call you down here just because she's in hospice."

The kitchen, the thing that most breathed life of his mother, was cold and smelled like cleaner. Artificial. Clinical. Too much like the hospital. The fridge hummed. It wasn't the same one that had been here when he had last visited, a month or two ago, stopping by the house to pick up his mother some warm socks. Well, it was the same fridge, but it had so many things stuck to it it was barely recognizable. Dell ached for the oven light to flick on like some sign she was still there with them. It remained dark, and his father obscured his view of it when he took a seat. Dell focused on the red plaid tea towel curtains above the sink instead, going stonelike in the chair as he remembered seeing his ma's glowing cheeks through that window as he played outside, tinkering around with metal scraps.

"Dell. Your ma. She wrote to you, and told me I was to read you the contents if something happened to her. I intended on waiting until...but those were her words and wishes, then, you know some of her last conscious words to me were about you? Figures. Anyway, let's see…"

Dell was not sure if he was supposed to hear this, and pretended he didn't, gazing at the ceiling fan that looked quite like a plucked and wilted daisy.

"My son...stuff like that…" There was a pregnant pause. "Listen. I'll give this to you to read yourself later. How about I just give you the gist so you can get going on with your life? It was her wish for you to inherit land. She knew you didn't want nothing to do with this family. So it's far, Dell, far away from here. House and barn already on it. Yours to do with what you wish. Happy eleventh PhD."

It was the way of things, he supposed, that he was just so damn tired of correcting his dad that he said nothing and let himself be badgered. The only person that would defend him-or rather, never even have to defend him because his dad would never start this crap when she was around-wasn't here. Wouldn't be here. "All right. I'll thank her later today."

And he would, placing fresh flowers in the vase next to her new bed, the bed that many people had died in before her, the bed she would die in. She looked so fragile, cheekbones jutting out like icebergs, beautiful wheat-sunshine hair turned lackluster grey and thin against the pillow. There were many flowers and many cards. Dell held his own hands and kissed her on the forehead and thanked her. Her eyes did not open and they never would again.

Dell did not stick around to wait for his father to begrudgingly offer him his childhood room to stay in for the night. He stood on the packed earth, next to the porch swing with its sunken pillows, and called his landlord to inform him he would need to find a new tenant. On the way out of Bee Cave, his truck kicking up so much dust it obscured the rear view that he did not want to look in, Dell thought for not the first time of the things he would say to his father if he had the energy. He'd said those things before, when he was younger and angrier. It was not the first time he'd wondered if his father remembered them. The feud that had lasted between them had aged over the years, badly, growing diseased and pockmarked. It was withering now, he sensed-while he was doing the very thing his father despised, moving away and not tending to the family land or following in his exact footsteps-he'd finally be far away, not making terse calls about when he was going to visit his mother. He'd be gone. Out of his father's life, and their battle could die.

The things he wished to tell his father, the relationship Dell yearned for them to have. It was just the way of things, he supposed, that it couldn't be. It was just the way of things that his favorite person in the world had to go on and get sick and lay in a bed with the veins in her pale, thin wrist jabbed at all day. It was just the way of things that in the end, she still understood him, and let it go that while she actually agreed with his father she tried to understand and gave him what he wanted. She was a saint. She was who he wanted around, not the person occupying her space who didn't know how to leave the pillows like someone had just gotten up.

It was just the way of things, he supposed.