He threw the rope over the oak
branch and tugged the lasso loop tight. He tied the other end
to a tire. He said he wanted to make a swing for his kids. They
said they didn't want to swing. Too old, 
they said.
He hadn't seen them in ten years, and that he always planned to make a tire-swing from the big oak tree at the back of the lot.
His ex-wife gave him dirty looks and just said what about all the child-support he never sent, and who gives a cow's ass about making believe you're going to play with the kids missing all that time—not hearing from him. Not even on the kids' birthdays.
Over there, he said and pointed to the suitcase. Go ahead, open it up. I don't want anything to do with your stuff just take that duct-taped suitcase and yourself back down the sidewalk.
Go ahead, he said. Open it.
The kid did, the older boy. Money, Mom, the boy said, lots of it.
What, the mother said, money.
It's all yours, the man said. It for you, Jen, the back support and some.
She went over, hands still on hips. How much is that she asked, then where did you get it?
It's yours he said. Told the boy to take it down to the basement, put it in the ceiling above the rafters near the furnace. Go ahead now; and the older boy did. Two hundred thousand he said to Jennifer, leaned over and said it low when he passed her, waved the other kids outside to make the rope swing.
It was spring. He liked the green grass coming back, the buds of oak leaves a lime yellow all along the branches. This tree's over a hundred years old he told the kids; them side-by side, watching their father. They saw his picture in the album holding them when they were younger. They heard the mom crying sometimes saying his name—telling them after it was nothing, just go brush their teeth or do their homework. Mom changed her name back to what it was before she got married, but their names were the same. This was him; he was good with the rope, they thought. He seemed friendly, had a nice smile. They wondered what the scar was near his thumb and another one underside of his chin. Took it all the way from Mexico, he told them. It was a spare, this tire. Saved me once, he said. But then he didn't say anymore, made the rope tight, a double clove-hitch.
That was over—the time among barren rocks, a place where spring was implied—almost wasn't. The sap beads on the cactus, the lighter brown at the weed stalks. A shed lizard skin. A bird with a twig in its beak here and gone, just as fast, disappearing into the kiln shimmering, the thin wavering of the heat snakes rising from the roll of the strip asphalt road up over the next, on and on.
Got it hid good, he asked the older boy, coming outside, standing off from the other two, him remembering the father more than them. Taught him to ride the bike, held it for him, stayed running beside until he got the balance of it. The bat, he still had, showed him how to keep it off the shoulder, the eye on the ball, the swivel forward from the hips and the crack of it against the wood. He held from saying anything about all the trophies he got since, the good chance for the scholarship for his playing, his hitting. Just nodded, the odd smelling suitcase with the money stowed. His mother was at the kitchen table when he came up from the basement; knew she'd been looking through the lace curtain to the back, near the tree, the tire and the rope.
Who wants to go first, he asked, after a good push to the tire and it swaying there, back and forth, a torque to it, wanting to twirl, a pendulum ticking out the silence under the thick branch, the green grass. Oh come on, he said, going for the little one, but him backing off, the middle one stepping away too, staying side-by side. Every kid loves a swing, he smiled and said it was okay with his eyes, not getting mad, just turning his head to look up the tree, the rope twisting.
She nodded to the blanket and sheets on the chair. For the kids' sake, just this once, the couch would be all right. The two middle ones in the bunk beds, he said standing in the lamp circle on the carpet in the living room. They're out, he said to her, when she asked. Told them a story he said about locust. They fell asleep.
They'll be having bad dreams she said, not letting him take this staying over as a sign of softening, a hardness enameled over her. Couldn't blame her he thought, but the story wasn't scary. Only about how the locust lay eggs and stay dormant for seventeen years as old as their older brother he told them, burying under a crevice of bark without dreams, without knowing time or caring what they missed. The older one wanted to get away all day, having excused himself from the pizzas delivered, ice cream, barely sipped the soda. Wanted to read the older boy had said: saw the band of light under the closed door and he thought twice and decided not to knock, give it some time, though he knew he didn't have much.
It's the same couch, she told him, it's still comfortable. Didn't want to think of when they bought it her and him, before he left, before she had any clue that he would; couldn't believe it for so long, thought he was dead, then knew he wasn't—kept the only note he sent, just saying he was all right and he was sorry, make it up to her one day. You know, Jen, he started but she shook her head, her hair strand like she always did, behind her ear. Didn't want making-up to, needed sleep, know what to do about him, the money near the furnace in the morning. The kids deserved this, at least a chance to know. How did he get here, just that old Volkswagen when she looked out the window, the nightlight, bare bulb on the porch the shadow of moths flapping, the dog bark off at the edge somewhere, a car going by tires wet the hiss to the wheels. One blanket should be enough was all she said, not turning walking past, him standing there a hand on the chair where the folded sheets stacked.
It was Tijuana again when he closed his eyes, not wanting to see the walls in this house he knew, born and raised, not then, not at night with the kids and Jennifer upstairs, him coffin-stiff on the couch, the blanket kicked down to his feet, his shirt off but his long pants and socks still on.He was here now, at least for one night. Couldn't stay. Who knew who might follow. Tijuana, indelible as a blue ink tattoo. Ten years because of one night. One step more, one step less at any moment before, a single hesitation, any of the variables of how it happened, and he would've missed it. The falling safe of things landing squarely—no margin of error.
He heard Jen upstairs, knew without seeing the creak of the bathroom panel door, the hexagon black and white tiles on the floor, the four leg tub, the fern she kept near the small window. He could see her face to the mirror, pushing her hair back—older, but pretty still, the lines he caused, he imagined. He had thought about her many nights, seven of those ten years on the top slab, eyes tight turned to the stone wall trying to close-off the gushing valve of noise, a broken hydrant of perpetual cursing and echoed laughs and the snoring, the lights never going off. Had seen her then, undressing in that same bath upstairs, never nude, just wiggling from the jeans as she did when she was young , one button at a time of her blouse. Putting her hair with a swirl around her fingers into a loose twist held by a clip, strands of silk—her hair, the smell of it he remembered, coming from behind and her easing back and then away hushing her own laugh; had to be quiet those first days when he kissed and she touched her finger to his lips, always silent love then, a hush to their play living upstairs, first married in his parents' house, when they were alive.
They died without knowing, his parents, thought he had ran-off, too, some tangent streak, they saw coming or should've in hindsight: both going one year after the other, the flutter of ones' passing knocking the other down, no hope—they died that way thinking their only son lacked the stomach, should've made it harder for him; gave him too much the father had said. Couldn't take responsibility. Keep the house for you and the kids, the father told Jennifer. The old ma, eyes caught in the headlights of her own disbelief; not even now, her son didn't come back to be with her after his father died, not even now she whispered but no one heard when her last night, the one final wheeze for breath in the same bedroom he and Jennifer had hushed their love teases from carrying.
He moved the blanket from his feet and swung around. No way to sleep in this room, other kinds of voices in the silence. Elbows to his knees. Both hands a slow spread grip of his fingers through his hair. Could tell what happened, and she might understand, he thought. Jen, so close and the kids upstairs, the children nothing like—yet in every way as he imagined them to age. The older boy scarred the most, him he should tell, for no other reason than to exonerate the self-sentence the boy imposed; could tell by his eyes, a dark moist glaze—blaming himself, searching too many times for something he had said, or done or caused a father not to come back, just gone one day.
The older boy in his bed, sitting upright against the headboard, the school textbook turned spine up on his lap, the reading lamp a tight round ring of light, dark shadows on the shelf of trophies, gold figurines leaping up with glove or in swing: batter with bat at side of leg, bland gold capped head looking up to where ball went, frozen in the outward gaze. He listened to the creak of the door, his mother in the bath, the running water, her down the hall to her room, another door closed. Waiting to hear the stairs, his father coming up or her going down, wouldn't sleep, his ears like dobermans on short chains. There was a photograph in the first page of a bible on the shelf, a picture of the father and him, him on his shoulders, him mussing his hair, both with smiles and laughs, not posed, caught natural in play in the backyard. Must've been autumn, fuzzy pile of leaves and just the slight curve of a pumpkin on the back stoop, the house clapboarded then, before it was vinyl-sided with the money his grandpa left. He once tore the picture in half, then fished it from the trash, taped it, put it back in the book. Dad was going on a business trip, wasn't he? To Mexico, to get someone to want his designs. Worked for himself; still had some of his drafting rulers. Remembered at the kitchen table the first weeks his mother calling trying to find out where he was, if he arrived, if customs could be checked, if passports were logged, if a beginning of a trace could be established. Said he'd bring back a sombrero, maracas. Said he would be back for his game. Heard his mother turn on the TV, a low hum, late night talk. Jennifer had put the hook-eye clasp on the door. Didn't know what liberties he would think, allowing him to stay. Fought hard the part that wanted to hug and embrace, like one last chance to feel the ghost he had become. Had more sympathy when she thought he was dead, maybe mugged, left, decaying somewhere on some unknown roadside. The first month before the first and only note, no more than twenty words, she had read and re-read a thousand times. That's all-the gist of it—he wasn't coming back, make it up to her someday. The money, in the old suitcase, was this the making-up? Divorced him in absentia.
When she was stronger, gotten into the screw-this mind-set, took courses at the community college, ran from sitter, to day-care, to baseball practices, three baths, three lunch boxes, iron, wash, the quick hand of the feathered dust broom in passing. Even dated, but wouldn't take them home, no time for games, the coyness necessary for them to become more than strangers, more than verifiers of her worth. He didn't leave because she was no good in bed, and when she was sure of that, could cross that reason from the list always there in the column of things; she couldn't be bothered, learned to focus on her children, herself, working, sitting by the window in the sun, reading, soft music on cassette, the late night TV's blue cool glow to fill the emptiness before sleep. And now he's downstairs in the house they started in. A suitcase of old looking money? So much easier all that cash would make things.
He stood and turned to look down at the blanket on the couch, the sheet corners falling loose, an unsightly intruder to the decor, out of place as he was. Should've sent it, he thought, the money, left the spare tire in the trunk where it had swung for the kids so perfectly in his dreams. He'd have to go back there, Tijuana, couldn't stay thinking someone might come. It would be no good for the kids to hear of prison, mark them with that; on their wedding day they'd look at their bride and think about their father and what he had done. When their babies were born they'd see that brand like a blemish discoloring any moment, a secret to be hid. Naw, he said, and tied his shoes, put on his shirt, tucked the tails into his pants. The things he'd done, down there, the ones he got mixed up with to bring back some cash so long ago had changed him. He folded the blanket and sheets, put them back on the chair, looked up the staircase, heard the hum from Jen's TV, the bar of light under the older boy's door. He opened the backdoor in the kitchen, reset the lock and then closed it.
It was a cool spring night. At
the back of the dark lot there was a tire
hanging from a rope under the oak tree.
