After he caught his wife in bed with another man**, it took much discipline not to **** him. He gave his wife a look and then left the house. He got back into his truck and drove to the school and parked. He waited there, calmly, controlled, the anger channeled into a blank sadness that glazed over his eyes. He saw his daughter coming out of the school doors with a group of other girls her age. The bell was still ringing and children poured out of the doors and climbed into busses and were taken away by their parents. His daughter stopped and talked with her friends. Her hair was soft and golden and the sunshine played in their strands. She looked at the ground while listening to her friend and lifted her head to laugh. She held the straps of her back pack. It seemed the girls were drawn to her, the way they circled her and told their stories and laughed. She didn’t speak much except to respond and to offer them her smile but she looked happy. He noticed a boy walking away from her wave her direction and she waved back and blushed before he stepped onto a yellow bus. He turned the keys and started the engine and listened to it purr. The crowd of girls dispersed now, each to their respective busses or to their parents waiting impatiently, telling them to come. His daughter said goodbye to each and began to walk, a curl in her lips, the trace of a grin still there around her mouth. She looked at her shoes.
She was not expecting her father to pick her up from school; it would have been odd for him to do so, for normally he would be off at work and she wouldn’t see him until the morning and he would give her a ride to school then. Her mother at this time of the day would be preparing a meal because she couldn’t drive. Sometimes her mother would walk to meet her but not often. She would walk the three miles home with no complaint. She enjoyed the walks. She enjoyed the streets of the neighborhoods and the grass and the trees and waving at Mrs. Greta as she passed her place on Fremont and always talking for a while with Mr. Jobs, whom allowed her to call him by his first name, Jason. She liked walking the railroad tracks that lead to the country roads that let her know she only had a mile to go and would then be home.
So today, when she lifted her head and began to leave the school, as the busses peeled away and her friends shouted and laughed at her and waved from the half-drawn windows, she thought she had seen her father’s truck drive off but the truck slipped too quickly from sight for her to tell who had been driving. She ran up the sidewalk and stepped off onto the street and looked again. She saw the silhouette of her father’s straw cowboy hat before it fell from sight down a ***** and over the hill and that was all she saw. She still could hardly believe it and hadn’t had the time to verify the license plate. But it looked like the broad shoulders, the tough neck and the straw hat of her fathers.
That would be the last time he would see his daughter for twenty years. He wouldn’t cry. He narrowed his eyes and squinted at the road before him as if the sun was too bright but the visor was pulled down to shield his eyes and the light only touched from his nose down. He had none of his belongings save some ***** clothes on the floor of the passenger’s side and his guitar lay across the bench seat.  There was one hundred and thirty dollars in pesos coins in his wallet. He wasn’t sure where he’d go. He had an old friend in Denver. He stepped on the clutch and put her in gear and thought of Denver as good a place to start as any. Russell would be happy to see him.
The crops of corn stood strong and tall in their fields, cattle grazed on other farms and chickens roosted and horses swung their tails and looked around at the land. The hills of the open plains rolled like an ocean and the shadows of the tree’s branches played on the roads as he drove. The wind blew at his steady seventy mile an hour drive and hummed and brushed against his face. A cigarette hung from his mouth and he looked straight from under his straw hat and tried to rid the image of the man naked ploughing his wife who knelt on the edge of his bed, straddling for him and moaning. He was unsuccessful in all of his attempts. It haunted him. He made it through Illinois. He drove through Missouri. He had stopped at Topeka to eat at a small diner and five miles out of town pulled to the shoulder of the road and bent over and vomited the meal on the ground. His eyes watered from the coughing his stomach felt sore and empty again and his mouth was covered with spit and leftovers. He stood and drew the back of his hand across his lips and wiped it on his jeans. When he raised his head he saw the sun was setting on another day. A Hank Williams song was playing softly on the radio from his truck. He sang, I’ll sail my ship alone with all the dreams I own, and when it starts a sinkin’ I’ll blame you...