Billie
A few hours before dawn, Billie got up to use the bathroom. As she passed through the living room on her way back, she saw that Buzzard was awake and sitting on the couch with a photo album open on his lap.
“I'm so sorry,” Billie said. “I hope I didn't wake you.”
“Nah, I'm usually up around this time anyways,” Buzzard answered. “This bladder've mine insists on wakin' me, an' then what? I stand over the pot fer damn near twenty minutes, with nothin' but drips an' dribbles.” He shook his head. “Never get old if'n you c'n help it, young lady.”
“What's that you're looking at?” she asked.
“Better times,” he replied. There was a touch of sadness in his voice. “Come on an' have a look, if'n you like.”
Billie sat down on the couch with him, looking down at the photo mounted on the page. In it, Buzzard looked about ten years younger. He was posing against a dusty old pickup truck with a handsome, rugged man in a cowboy hat who appeared to be in his fifties.
“My son Alden,” Buzzard said, nodding. “Looks just like me, don't he?”
But the more she stared at the picture, the more Billie realized that Alden looked a lot more familiar than that. His hair, the shape of his face...
And the eyes. The same squint, the same reckless twinkle.
“Is this...Carter's father?” she asked.
Buzzard chuckled. “It's like I said, ain't it? The eyes don't never lie.”
“So you're his grandfather.”
The old man smiled, but in the dim light from the gas lamp next to him, Billie could see tears shining in his eyes. “Don't know how much he told you 'bout his family. But the thing you need to understand is, Alden, he didn't wanna run out on Carter's momma. Hell, he didn't even know she was pregnant. He was a real wild type, an' he got on the wrong side of some moonshiners from Louisiana. I don't even remember what he did to piss 'em off, it was so long ago. He went on the run up to Canada, even spent some years workin' oil rigs in Alaska. He didn't find out he had a son 'til around the time he came back into my life, 'bout six or seven years ago.”
“What was it that kept you apart for so long?” Billie asked.
“I was a drunk when Alden was a boy,” Buzzard said. “I hurt him an' his momma a lot, an' one day I woke up sober an' felt so bad 'bout what I'd done that I knew I had to kill myself or run away. Still dunno why Alden decided to find me, or how he was able to forgive me when I still ain't never forgave myself. But when he learned about Carter, all he wanted to do was go to him an' apologize, give 'im some explanation for why he couldn't be around for 'im as a kid.” Buzzard sighed. “Maybe a day comes when a man just decides he's gotta have his family, no matter how fucked up they are.”
“So what happened?”
Buzzard wiped a tear from his cheek. “I was goin' with him to meet up with Carter, but 'bout halfway there, them moonshiners ambushed us. Those cocksuckers had memories like goddamn elephants, an' even after all them years, they was waitin' for Alden to come back down south so they could settle things with 'im. I'm good with a rifle an' I chased 'em off, but by then, they'd filled my boy with fuckin' holes, the bastards.” He sniffed. “I tracked 'em down an' finished 'em off, though. By God, I did that. Then I found Carter an' apologized to 'im on behalf of his daddy.”
Billie put her hand on Buzzard's arm. “I'm so sorry.”
He shook his head. “No need. Just take good care of my grandson. That's all I ask.”
Billie nodded as she stood and went back to the bedroom. Even after hearing about his early life when they were in the cabin, she hadn't been able to think of Carter as a child. But Buzzard's story made her heart hurt as she pictured Alden spending most of his life without his father, and Carter never even knowing his father at all.
They'd grown up to be hard as nails, but they'd both started off as lonely, abandoned boys. The sadness of this legacy still lingered in Carter's eyes.
Before she went back to sleep, she held Carter tight.