I was thirteen years old the day my father threw my duffel bag into the dirt and told me to walk home.
It was August, and it was hot enough that the vinyl seat of his truck burned through my shorts. We’d been driving for about forty minutes without a word between us. That wasn’t unusual. My dad didn’t talk much. He used silence instead, and he expected you to work out what the silence meant. If you got it wrong, that was your problem.
He turned off the highway onto a dirt road I’d never seen before. Gravel popped under the tires. Fields on both sides. Fence posts. No houses.
He stopped the truck but didn’t put it in park. He just held his foot on the brake.
“Get out,” he said.
I looked at him. I honestly thought he was joking. He used to do that kind of thing. He’d pretend he was going to leave me at a gas station if I took too long picking out a candy bar, then laugh when I ran across the lot after him. That was my father’s idea of a joke.
