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Chapter Twenty-One - You Don’t Deserve Him


I didn’t know where he was. The only thing I knew was that he was in an RV park some place near the Opryland Hotel because that’s where Lauren had said she dropped him off when she’d driven him home. So I started north on I-65 while I repeatedly alternated between dialing Lauren’s cellphone number and the number Ethan had called me from. “Answer, answer, answer,” I muttered my mantra as I merged onto the I-40 loop that circled the city of Nashville, my hands gripping the wheel tight as I found myself in rush hour traffic. I chewed my lip, anxious, and craned my neck side to side, as though doing so might help me see past the box truck ahead of me, blocking my view of how far the traffic jam stretched on. “C’mon,” I said.

The desperation in Ethan’s voice was haunting me. The emphasis of the please echoing in my brain. I didn’t know what was happening, how bad it was. All I knew was that when I found them - and I would, if I had to knock on every fucking RV door in the city of Nashville - if even one hair was out of place on Ethan’s head then Otis would have me to answer to.

I pulled around the box truck, the thought of Ethan being hurt turning my stomach and making my mission even more inevitably important. I drove down the shoulder - past all the yellow caution signs directing me to never drive on the shoulder - and veered off the highway at the next exit, opting instead to take a couple backroads that normally would’ve taken longer, but in this traffic might be quicker. Certainly so, I told myself, if I didn’t exactly follow the speed limit…

How I didn’t get stopped, I’ll never know.

I was just putting my blinker on to merge from Lebanon Pike onto the I-155 Briley Parkway to get to Opryland Hotel when my phone vibed against the seat beside me. I picked it up, cradling it between my shoulder and my ear, driving a good twenty miles an hour over the speed limit. “Hello?” I asked.

Please, let it be Ethan, I thought.

“Nick, it’s me --” Lauren said, and I was so relieved that I cut her off mid-sentence.

“BABY! Baby. Quick. What campground did you bring Ethan to?” I asked.

“What? The one with the bear… what’s his name, the cartoon bear?”

“Yogi?”

“That’s it!” Lauren was proud of herself.

“So Jellystone? Got it. Babe, I don’t got time to explain’ right now, lemme call you back.” I hung up before she could protest and turned onto the exit for Music Valley Drive and the Opryland Hotel.

Jellystone was one of three different camping places on Music Valley Drive, past the nice hotels and even past the dingy rent-by-the-hour type places that cluttered the far end of Music Valley Drive. Next door to it was a Christmas tourist attraction, a place with thousands of crazy ass twinkle bulbs that the owners charged twenty bucks a car to drive through and watch the lights flicker on and off. Personally, I thought the flickering was more seizure inducing than season’s greetings, but that’s beyond the point.

I pulled into Jellystone’s winding drive, navigating around, glancing at the various RVs that cluttered the sites, my heart pounding. I tried to remember what the RV had looked like the day Otis had come to the house. I looked at the clock. It’d taken me almost an hour to get to this point. I was scared that it might be too late.

Finally, I spotted it -- a shitty pop-out trailer, which looked even shittier fully extended while nestled among a bunch of fancy Winnebago Tour RVs. I pulled up next to the old truck Otis had the shitty thing hitched to, and got out, jogging up to the door. There was the glow of the TV, but not much else. No sounds, nothing. I glanced around, but none of the other trailers were lit up, either. I took a deep breath and knocked on the door.

The door opened and there stood Otis, filthy and reeking of booze. He wore cut off khaki shorts and a food-and-sweat-stained undershirt, socks with a pair of crappy sandals, and was clutching a bottle of Jack in one hand, the TV remote in the other. He stared down at me through the screen door. “What the fuck do you want?” he demanded.

The sight of him made every blood cell in my body zing with anger. The disdain dripped from my voice, “I’m here for Ethan.”

“He ain’t here,” Otis gruffed.

“Where is he?” I demanded.

“Fuck if I know, the little prick took off.” Otis downed a good mouthful of Jack. “Now get the fuck off my property.” He slammed the door.

The muscles in my entire body tensed. It took everything in me to walk away, back to the Jeep, only succeeding by reminding myself why I was there: to get Ethan. I looked around in the dark surrounding the campers, at the trees and the nearby traffic zooming past on Briley Parkway. Ethan was a master at being outside, alone, I reminded myself. He could probably find a hundred places for shelter around here, but the temperature was dropping quickly, even colder than the night we’d first found him.

I got in the Jeep and as I started the engine a threadbare, moth-eaten curtain moved in the trailer window and I caught a glimpse of Otis drinking even more of the fucking Jack Daniels, right out of the bottle, his fist around the bottle’s neck, tight and shaking from drunkenness.

I gripped the wheel tighter.

“Ethan!” I called as I drove, my window unrolled. “Ethan!”

I was halfway through driving my fifth circle throughout Jellystone when my phone vibrated. It was another unknown number, but I quickly answered it. “Hello?”

“Nick?” Ethan’s voice trembled. Trembled is literally the only word for it. It was meek and broken and quiet. It was horrible because you could feel the hurt in the one little name.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“A Waffle House. The street sign says Pennington Bend.” He paused. “Please… Please come get me… Please.” He was crying.

“I’m on my way,” I said.

I drove to the Waffle House with an urgency that I’d never felt before swelling up inside of me. It was the strangest feeling, like nothing in the world else mattered other than seeing Ethan’s face and knowing he was okay. Like really, truly okay.

I pulled up into the lot and there he was, standing out front next to the phone booth, his hands buried in the pockets of his bomber jacket, hair all messy and greasy and his messenger bag. He came rushing forward to meet me at the driver’s side door as I got out. I gathered him up into a bone-crushing hug, and it wasn’t until that moment I realized I had been holding my breath. “Fucking hell,” I whispered, “Am I glad to see you.” I held him out at arm’s length, looking him right in the eye and said, “I’m sorry.”

He didn’t say anything.

Instead, he pulled me back into the hug, burying his face into my neck and I could feel hot tears on my skin. “It’s okay buddy,” I said thickly, “It’s okay.” But even after I’d said the words, he didn’t let go, his fingers wrapped tight into the back of my jacket, clutching the fabric. He gasped for breath, shoulders shaking. “I’m here, and I ain’t leavin’ you, okay? It’s gonna be okay. I’m here.” I rubbed his back. “Aw Ethan, it’s okay, buddy.” It was breaking my heart, him crying like this. “Tell me what happened.”

He pulled back to arm’s length and looked up at me and in the street lamp’s glow I could only just make out the dark shapes of bruises already forming on the side of his face, and he had dried up blood smears under his nose and a nasty gash on the edge of his eye socket on the left side, which he could barely open.

“Otis did this to you?” I demanded.

Ethan nodded.

“Get in the Jeep.”

“What?”

“Get in the Jeep,” I repeated. And I turned to the driver’s side. I grabbed my phone from the dashboard as Ethan climbed in and I hit Lauren’s speed dial as I backed out of the Waffle House onto McGavok Pike so fast that the Jeep’s wheels squealed. We shot across the overpass and I hung the right onto Music Valley Road, back toward Jellystone.

“Why are we going back?” Ethan asked, panic in his voice, “You aren’t making me go back, are you? I don’t wanna go back. Nick, please don’t make me go back. Please.”

“I’m not making you go back,” I replied.

On the phone, Lauren answered, “Hello?”

“Babe, it’s me.”

“Did you find Ethan?”

“Yes.”

“Is he okay?” she asked.

“Call the cops.”

“What? Why? Fuck. Nick, is he alright? What’s happening?”

“Just do it. Tell them to come out to Jellystone and to make it fast or I’m going to fucking kill Otis.”

Ethan was staring at me from the passenger seat, eyes wide, and I pulled into the campground. I slammed the Jeep into park behind the truck again outside the shitty old trailer.

“Nick, what’s going on?” Lauren’s voice was panicked even worse than Ethan’s had been moments before.

“Just call the cops,” I answered, and I tossed the phone back to the dash, having hung up. I looked at Ethan. “You stay right here,” I said.

He nodded.

I got out of the car and marched to the door of the RV. If I’d been zinging with anger before, it was nothing compared to what I was feeling now. My fist slammed against the door so hard it could’ve literally bent and I wouldn’t have been too surprised.

“What the fuck do you want, now?” Otis demanded, opening the door and staring out at me through the screen.

I grabbed the screen door and yanked it opened and stepped up into the trailer in two swift steps, forcing him to drunkenly back away. I got up into the trailer and took a couple fast paces to be right in Otis’s big, stupid, filthy face. I could feel the rage flowing through me, could feel the hatred burning the sensory nerves in my palms. Every time I’d ever been mad at my parents for something they’d done to me that I didn’t deserve flowed through my mind’s eye, the bruises on Ethan’s face punctuating the feelings… This was it. This was my chance to avenge every time that a kid had ever been hurt and cheated by a family who didn’t love them, by parents who didn’t know how to be parents.

“You fucking hit him?” I shouted, our noses so close they were nearly touching.

His eyes were having trouble focusing, but his voice came out sharp and spiteful, “Fucking beat the kid around a bit, but he ain’t hurt much. The little shit was disrespectin’ me.”

“What the hell is there to respect?” I shot back. I waved my arm at him, “Look at you. You smell like piss and alcohol. When was the last time you took a fuckin’ shower? Fresh out of rehab and already off the wagon… Pathetic. Who the hell would respect you?”

“Watch your damn mouth,” Otis growled.

“Or what? You’ll beat me, too?” I demanded.

His fingers had moved to his belt buckle.

I laughed, “Go ahead. Give it a try. I dare you.”

“Fuck you,” he grumbled.

I pointed my finger into his face, my hand shaking, “You know what you are, old man? You’re a coward. And you know how I know you’re a coward? ‘Cos I got a father just like you all my own and he’s a fuckin’ coward, too. You know, there ain’t much difference between the two of you, actually. You’re both assholes whose lives ain’t got no place to go but down the toilet because you’re too addicted to let go of the drugs that keep you from seeing straight. If you had any idea what kind of fuckin’ amazing person your kid is, you wouldn’t waste yourself away with that damn Jack Daniels and whatever the fuck drugs you’re on. You’d be spending time getting to know him before he grows up big enough to know better than to give a shit about you.” I stared at him. “The bad thing for you is I think you might just have crossed that line tonight.” His hand had shrunk away from his belt buckle and he’d backed into the couch and sat down.

He looked pathetic. He didn’t look scary at all sitting there like that. But I knew out in the Jeep there was a very, very scared kid whose heart had been shattered for probably the hundredth time. I knew that feeling way too well. I’d been that kid. A million times I’d been that kid.

“People like you and my own parents - you break people down. Ruin lives. Kids don’t understand it isn’t their fault that you hurt them. We think it’s our fault, we think we’re the ones to blame. But it ain’t us that’s to blame, it’s you. You and your insecurities. We’re just the victims. But we go our whole lives trying to make up for the shit you do to us, constantly apologizing to the universe, always afraid to become the person that you told us we were. It took me thirty-something years to realize that there was no place for that kind of fuckery in my life.” I shook my head. “You can’t hurt Ethan like that anymore. I won’t allow it. He doesn’t deserve that, he doesn’t deserve you in his life.”

I heard the wail of cruisers outside.

I took a deep breath. “And, most of all, you don’t deserve him.”

And with that, I turned around to leave and found Ethan standing in the screen doorway. I didn’t know how much he’d heard of what had been said. I walked out the door just as the cops were pulling up, their blue lights even brighter than the dancing lights of Christmas next door. Several owners of the surrounding RVs were peeking out their windows, and I put my arm around Ethan’s shoulders. “I told you to stay in the Jeep,” I said.

“I didn’t want him to hurt you,” Ethan answered.

I squeezed his shoulder gently.