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I didn't know when we got to sleep, but when I woke up I knew we hadn't finished the jug. I was wet all down my front and in my lap, and I could smell the alcohol. The clock said it was half past eleven.

'Aw jeez,' I said, waking Colton up as I stirred. My head was thick enough to know I'd certainly drunk enough of it.

'Man, what a waste,' Colton said. 'Can I suck your fur dry?'

'Gross,' I said. 'Why don't we get straight in the pool?'

We did half an hour until Chantelle stopped us. 'Your phone keeps ringing,' she said. 'Think it's your mum.'

I called her back. Dad was awake. The first thing he'd done was ask for me.

* * *

They'd bandaged my father's head so his ears were still open and pricked up. Good, he was going to have to do a whole lot of listening.

'Give him a chance to talk,' Colton had said. 'You gave me one. It kind of worked out.'

All those hours on the road probably thinking about what might happen if we saw each other again, and now my father looked like he didn't know where to begin. I wasn't going to stand in the doorway and wait though, like I might run all over again. I walked around his bed, my stare never letting up, until he looked away. I was standing by the window now, and decided being the one in control meant breaking the silence. Too bad though, Dad had found his voice first.

'I just heard about Glen and Forest,' he said.

'Yeah,' I said. 'I'm sorry.'

He stared into his lap, his eyes wet, and for a moment I thought he was going tell me that doing this now was a mistake. 'I'm sorry too, Todd.'

'What for?' I'd never known my own voice to be icy before, but suddenly I liked it. This was the kind of edge Alfie had, the kind he'd learned to use a long time ago, and out of nowhere I found copying it so easy and effortless. 'For Glen and Forest? It's sad. I know. But that's not what you brought me here to talk about. So can you do this or am I going?'

'Don't go,' he said, looking up at me now. 'I'm not smart like you are. I don't find words that easy. Not even on a day when I wake up and everything's normal. I never have. This is all going to come out wrong, I know it will. But I want to try.'

'So try.'

The clock on the wall kept ticking, and he didn't look like he was trying much. He looked like he was as blank as Colton on one of those mornings.

'Alright then,' I said. 'How about this. I saw you picture on the news last night. Orson Kofax was on there telling everybody what a hero you are. How you're the best trucker he ever knew. You were the best trucker I ever knew once. You were my_hero. You were the one who told me I could be anything, like you hoped I'd be president, and all I wanted to do was make you proud of me. Because that's how it should be, right? And then you get one phone call and you destroyed it all. Because you find out I'm gay and that means everything I ever did suddenly no longer mattered to you? Well why should you matter to me then? That's what I thought about you last night. You save two people's lives without even thinking about your own and you're a hero. And I felt nothing. Not the tiniest little thing. So yeah, maybe I get it. Maybe one thing _does change everything. But only if you let it. So I'm here. I want us to come to some kind of understanding. But if you want the same it's going to take one hell of a lot on your end.'

'My end? It's not just my end, Todd.' Now he was fully awake, and for the first time ever, I saw the face that had taught Alfie everything he knew. Maybe Alfie hadn't even seen it, but if things could run in a family then here was one I never bargained for. 'If we're gonna talk to each other, then you need to understand this: people don't just change when you snap a finger.'

'No, maybe not. Maybe they just throw their own son out after eighteen years of barely having an argument because their temper just snaps instead. Just because I'm gay? How did it ever affect you? I brought my boyfriend into your house, and what did we do? We ate breakfast. All of us. That's it. What was so wrong with that? Did I ever parade it in front of you, knowing you wouldn't like it? Did I ask if Colton could sleep with me under your roof? No. I probably never would have told you. Because I knew people don't change.'

'Oh for Christ's sake,' my father said, looking like he could get off the bed but knowing he couldn't. 'You just want to play smart with words? Here's some words for you then. I do think it's disgusting. I don't like imagining one of mine doing all that shit. Sticking your dick in another guys shithole? That's not natural. God didn't make us for that.'

'Oh here we go. God. You don't even believe in Him, Dad. You haven't for years. Rocco told me. You gonna go kick him out for doing that too? Or are you going to finally admit you've got problems? The ones you should have talked to him about that night. You wouldn't even have one drink with him when he offered. I thought Colton had this buried deep, but you? You're what happens when you don't do what Colton did and tell someone, and it just keeps going. For decades. So tell me. Why don't you believe in God anymore? What happened? What made you so angry that one day you just turned it all on me?'

I shouldn't have done it. Breaking what Rocco had told me in confidence was probably going to land me in all sorts of shit with him later, not to mention I'd feel guilty even if he never found out. But one thing kept me going: what I'd said had worked.

'Todd, this isn't easy for me. I just need a chance. I did the wrong thing that Saturday morning. Even despite what I feel about all this, I know I got some things wrong. So...I just need another chance.'

Leash, I thought. Tight.

'I gave you another chance when I came into this room,' I said. 'And you're fucking it up already. Answer my question or I'm walking. Why don't you believe in God?'

'I stopped believing thirty years ago. After my brother died.'

He wasn't looking at me, and I was glad, because he wouldn't know that he'd dropped probably an even bigger bombshell on me than Howard Tarbuck had on him that Saturday morning.

'What are you talking about, Dad? You don't have a brother.'

'Yeah,' he said, looking up now. 'That's exactly what my parents and my whole family told me a year before he died. And after. Especially after. They didn't go to his funeral. They burned all the pictures of him, burned every trace he ever existed, and then they tried to burn it out of everyone's heads as well. The whole town talked about it. Never tell the Aldringtons they once had two boys and not one.'

He'd found it again, that face I knew Alfie had somehow learnt from him, and this time I knew it wasn't aimed at me. All the fury he'd unleashed on me that Saturday morning, this was the face that told me he knew it had been misplaced, because now it was like there were ghosts from his past in the room, invisible to all but him, and he was unleashing this on all of them.

And I knew what was coming. 'A year before he died,' I said, suddenly all too willing to accept that this uncle I had never known about, who hadn't lived to know he was my uncle, had had once existed. 'Is that when he told you all he w-'

'Don't.' my father said. 'I'm telling this. Can you just listen?'

I took a step back from the bed. 'Okay.'

'Look in that bedside cabinet for me,' he said. 'I had my wallet on me when the crash happened. Always drive with it in my pocket. They find it and put it in there for me?'

I had no idea how he'd rightly guessed that was hospital procedure, or how he might know about it from previous, but there was his wallet in the drawer.

'Open it. Behind my cash you'll find it. What I took a shipment to Alabama so I could go home and get. I buried it. Before my parents could find it and burn it.'

I nearly dropped it when I saw it. It was a faded old photograph, the kind that never got printed nowadays in the age of digital cameras. Anyone else who saw it could have thought it was a photoshopped picture of me, with brown and silver fur instead of my blue and white and silver tips, aged thirty years so I'd look like I was on some old film set, maybe playing an old travelling salesman with a bit of boyish charm to him.

'That's Deke,' my father said, then sighed. 'I haven't said his name for a very long time.'

So much for the tight leash. I'd lost it as soon as I saw this picture, and through the shock of hearing that my father had buried the existence of such a close relative, probably even from my mother, it all made sense to me. But no guessing. No telling him how I thought this story played out once upon a time. I had enough respect to give him his moment.

'You remember when I asked you what went through your head, doing all those laps?' My father said. 'It was one night when I was watching you, and I thought those laps were a bit like trucking. So much room for thinking, because nobody's in your space and you can't hear nothin' else apart from a pool, or a road, or a radio or something. It's like you had your radio in your head, all that music you're into. Deke played the guitar. Just church music when Mum and Dad were around, but when they were out...' he stopped for a moment, as if realising he'd gone off the point. 'A couple of hours of those laps of yours,' he said. 'Believe me, trucking is like that, hundreds of hours over and over. And I used it to try and escape thinking about Deke for years. And then he just came back. Because the older you got...you've already seen it, right? It's like you got to be him, his second chance. All of him.'

'Why don't you just say it, Dad?'

'What, that he was gay? I can say it. I couldn't say it to him. He never said it to me either. But he knew I knew. He knew the right thing was never telling me either. But that was always the wrong thing. If I'd just been different, just maybe a little bit, we might have talked about it. I might have had the chance to tell him to at least stay safe when I had it.' He took a deep breath now and slowly let it out.

'When I got mad as hell about you doing it unprotected with that fox, I wasn't looking at you. I was looking at Deke. He died of AIDS, about a year after that picture was taken. He was twenty when he went. I was seventeen. I kept that picture because I knew he was clean when that was taken. Because the same day he told me he hadn't tried it yet. I believed him. All it took was a year. A week later when he came out to Mum and Dad they disowned him. So he packed up and we didn't know where he went. I told him I didn't want to know, that I wasn't going to talk to him again either. But I did. I said that because Mum and Dad were there. He sent me a postcard. He mailed it to our school, a teacher he trusted to give it to me and not tear it up. It's in there too, folded over.'

I put his wallet down. 'Maybe I shouldn't look yet, Dad. When was the last time you unfolded it?'

'Well...I don't remember. I got a lot of postcards from him. I sent a few back but I don't know if he ever got any. He never told me he was sick until it was too late. I only just got there in time, I don't think he knew I was there. I held his hand when he died and it was like he was trying to talk to someone, but it wasn't to me, and he couldn't breathe enough to talk anyway. When his heart stopped I thought at least God had enough mercy not to drag it out any longer. Even if Deke was probably going to...

'Hell? Yeah, us fags all go there, right?'

'Stop it. Don't ever talk about Deke like that, not even for a joke. I told you, I stopped believing. It happened right then. Because why did Deke deserve to go to hell? Anyone else? Yeah I might have said it about them. But not my own brother. He deserved Heaven and God could kiss my ass. I got to go to his funeral. It was all the way out in San Francisco, where he died. Loads of people went, and looking at all of them made me feel sick. And when I got home and told Mum and Dad where I'd been....I'm lucky I still had a home. If you can call that lucky.'

'Why...' it seemed like such a stupid question, but I knew it was too late to back out after just one word. 'Dad, why did you never tell us? Any of us?'

'Because I was so angry. With him, for wasting his life. For doing all that stuff that I felt sick thinking about, but I might not even have cared because he was my brother, if he'd just thought about everything a little bit more and just kept it safe. Or I'd talked to him and convinced him not to go that way at all, tried to get him to be a good Christian, to actually believe, but I didn't. So he got God's punishment. And that's when I knew that even if God existed, he could go to hell. And leave me alone for the rest of my life until maybe I got up there to see him and show him what hell really_was. Because why _my brother? Why not somebody else's? So Deke was a faggot. Nothing else he did ever hurt anyone.'

'Neither did that.'

'How the fuck would you know? How many other people did he infect? How many people died because of him not caring about safety? Or thinking about what he was doing? And this was someone I still wanted to love?'

'You still do. Don't you?'

My father looked like he wanted to hit me, was would have been too sad to do it even without a broken leg or cracked hip. 'He wanted to be a doctor. He was smart enough. So he lost the plot for a year and went off to San Fran to go to fuck parties and smoke dope and listen to the Grateful Dead all the time. He might have gotten over it. If he'd had the chance. Or he might have still been who he was and never changed anything just because I prayed for it.'

I put Deke's photo back in Dad's wallet. 'I'm sorry Dad. I'm sorry your brother died. And that it's eaten away at you for so long and you didn't know how to tell anyone. But look. I'm not your brother. Even if I look like him. Almost exactly like him. Maybe if I really am somehow some sort of second chance for him to exist, or someone like him....then why did you do to me what your parents did to him? Didn't you think about any of this after that phone call from Howard? Any of it at all?'

'Of course I did,' my father said, tears flowing for the first time I'd ever seen. 'Don't you get it? I thought about all of it. And then all the parts that made me so furious won. Because...I felt like I wasn't looking at you anymore. I was looking at him. I'd tried not to look at him for years already, pretend he never existed, that all I saw was you. Because you were never going to repeat his mistakes. And then it was like they were playing out. And it wasn't you in that room with me. I know I should never have said what I said. But really, Todd, you've no idea what everything I just described feels like. Put yourself where I was, right then.

I almost could. Then the angry parts of me won out to. 'Where you were? Where you were? What about where I was? That's your idea of an apology?' My fists were already bunched, the same feeling I'd had with Drew Tarbuck threatening to burst out of them. 'What a pile of shit.'

My fathers eyes flashed. 'Now just you listen to me -'

'No. I've done the listening. Your turn. You saw Deke written all over me for years and you never saw this coming? You did see it. All the time. You knew the no-girlfriend thing wasn't me being shy. You knew it all. You knew you'd get it all wrong one day. And what did you do? Pretend it away. Hope it would never happen even though you knew it would.'

'Alright!' my father shouted. 'So I fucked up! So I know sorry's not enough! But if you want me to at least try making up for this then maybe you ought to learn when to stop sticking a knife in someone. You did that for your fox, right? All I'm asking for's a chance. You want to keep making me feel like shit forever then fine, do your worst. But you'll only end up like me. You want that? You don't. Believe me, you don't.'

It sobered me up, just for a moment. Oran Aldrington, the 'greatest trucker I ever knew' who might soon be a decorated hero, wouldn't have wished his life on anyone. And I knew that the story about Deke was probably only the beginning of it. So did he, because if it was possible to look any more tired than a crash survivor with a broken leg and hip and a bandage around his head, then he was doing it now.

But it didn't matter. 'You're not going to soften me up, Dad. I'm major league pissed, and it's all at you. This isn't sticking a knife in. It's telling you that making up for this isn't as easy as telling me one life affirming story, not matter how genuine it is. It's not as simple as telling me you're just a product of your environment. You could have changed the way you thought about gay people if you wanted to. You never did. Not even after losing your own brother made you feel different.'

My father started wiping his eyes. 'What do you want me to do, Todd? Change just like that? I'm a dumb old cotton pickin' southpaw 'coon. Always have been. But I tried. I wanted to build a decent life, and I tried. Go on, tell me I didn't try hard enough. You haven't spent thirty years after losing someone wondering what you were supposed to do with the life you never felt like you deserved, because it should have been you. Deke would've been a better person than me. It didn't matter that I didn't like one part of him. If one of us had to go it should have been me.'

'So now you're sorry for yourself. Yourself. Again.'

'Just listen to me, will you? I told you I'm not smart enough to get this right. Why do you think it was so hard coming back here and asking to see you? Because I knew it would end in this, with you acting like you know it all, because you probably do. But I've got things to say. And I need you to hear them no matter how pissed off you are. Alfie left our home because he couldn't do that anymore. So can you? Or shall I just give up?'

'I'm here and I'm listening,' I said.

'I always played the pride card real hard, because it was what I had. I'll be a trucker all my life because that's what I know, that's what I've got to be proud of. Being something a little more exciting than a cotton farmer. And a family with nine kids, because I might not have much but I got the best woman in the world to marry me, and I gave her that big family she wanted even though I had no idea how I was supposed to take care of it on just a trucker's money. And I didn't even really get her, because she was the one who asked me. And I said yes, after I told her that she made me want to be a better person. So I tried. No more species prejudices. I actually came to believe in her whole diversity thing. I still had good Christian values, voted republican, raised a good family, provided, did all that, and...maybe it was just all those road hours, Todd. I don't know. But I always wondered, what good did any of that ever do the world? What difference did it make that I was any of that, that anybody had ever known me? I wasn't even there to take care of the kids I kept makin', and what could they ever learn from someone like me anyway?'

'Come on, Dad. There are good answers to that question. That's another thing I knew last night. So we're not on good terms right now. That doesn't take away good things you've done. Just like being gay shouldn't have changed anything you felt about me.'

His eyes looked even heavier now. 'I know. But sometimes those answers are staring right at you but you still can't see them. Sometimes, even having you and your eight brothers and sisters and your mother didn't take away those feelings I couldn't shake. And behind it all was Deke. How I couldn't take back that I wasn't a better brother. That I never told our parents that what they did was wrong. That I couldn't even tell them I didn't know if I really believed God was up there, listening to any of the stupid prayers I made inside a truck every day, hoping that I might get shown why I didn't feel like I was supposed to. About anything. Sometimes, Todd, I've sat there driving and wondered what the hell it would matter if I just crossed over the highway into the other traffic and just ended all those thoughts right there.'

I thought of Colton, sitting in that truck with the gun in his lap. 'So what stopped you? Thinking of all of us, right? Your family?'

'You really wanna know?'

I nodded.

'It wasn't all of you. I wish it had been, but it wasn't. The only thing that ever stopped me was thinking that it wouldn't be fair to the other people I took out with me. Apart from that...I wondered if maybe that life insurance I never forgot to renew would provide what I couldn't. I got to thinking maybe that's why I renewed it, so I could just leave the world when I had to and everything would get taken care of. Then I'd come home, and I'd realise how stupid that all was, when I sat round that table with the people I loved. Realise that thinking of y'all should have stopped me instead. And I'd think all that shit in my head wouldn't start again. But it always did. It still does. Orson said I was the greatest trucker ever? Sometimes I actually think about crazy shit I've done to get my job done and I just think I might be. And then I remember that I've spent years inside that cab barely clinging on. Todd, I don't know how I'm still alive even before that accident. I woke up this morning not remembering I pulled a woman and her kid out of a car. I thought I'd been the one who crossed over and caused it all. Because I nearly made it home again. But then I finally just gave up.'

I sat on the bed with him, feeling like his tiredness was contagious.

'And then I woke up,' he said. 'Maybe that's my sign. Or maybe it's just nothing. But I still don't know how to stop this.'

'You started talking,' I said. 'That's a start.'

'And I know I'll never keep it going. People like me, we don't talk about this. Especially not to each other. We just stay strong, because that's what you do. Until you don't. And then people ask why we never said anything, like they would have done anything different. People like me don't change, Todd.'

'Yes they do,' I said. 'And it's already started, right here. Depression isn't something to be ashamed of, Dad. You hear me? We can sort this out. You're going to get better right here and then you're going to come with me and see Dr Comfrey and tell her all this.'

'That otter you get your sports check-up from? What the hell's she gonna do for me?'

'She's a doctor, Dad. Start trusting them for a change. They saved your life last night, remember? You put up with getting your trucker's medical every year because it's for work. Well so's this. Because forget about your boss, and forget about Mum, I'm not letting you back on the road until you've dealt with this. That means counselling and medication. The kind you should have asked for thirty years ago. It might not be your fault you never did, but fault doesn't matter anymore. You're doing it now.'

'Oh I love this. I really love this whole show right here.' The sarcasm didn't hide his true feelings, and at that moment I'd have said they were telling him he was finished with the road for good anyway.

'You're the one who raised me to take no shit, Dad. Or at least you tried. Bad luck, I actually learned how to do it and now it includes you. And I'm smarter about it than Alfie was, and I don't care if you tell him I said that, because he knows it. He told me the world isn't as nice as I think. Truth is, it's not as shit as he thinks. Or you. So this isn't a show. This is happening.'

'I bet you spent hours with your boyfriend all this. Feel good? Enjoying your moment? Gonna enjoy telling him all about this later?'

'Forget Colton. And I don't care about my moment;_stop trying to deflect. We're going to Dr Comfrey and you're going to talk about counselling and medication. _Then we'll talk about how you're meant to make things right with me. If we even need to do it by then. I just am who I am, Dad. Think you can forget one more little southpaw 'coon prejudice and let me help you work this out?' I put a hand on his shoulder. 'I want to accept your apology and you want to learn how to handle having a gay son. And stop wondering if every road trip might be your last. So why don't we both do something better than say sorry? Or argue with each other.'

'Like what, dumbass? The hell is there to do in a hospital? And by the way, see that broken leg down there? What the fuck am I meant to do with that, leap out of bed and go do father-son bonding with you over some hospital cafeteria food? Yeah, good idea.'

'Yeah okay, you've got me there. That's one excuse I'll take. So how about I get some food brought in here?'

'I'm not hungry. Go get yourself a burger with your fox if you are.'

He wasn't getting rid of me that easily. We just sat there for a minute or two, saying nothing, until he broke the silence.

'You know, I did get one little thought I liked, out there on the road. I got some phone calls about Alfie, but I sure never had someone call me to say he left a pair of jizz-soaked pants for them to clean up. I've gotta hand it to you, that's a new one. Never even did that myself, and I'm from redneck central. Know what else? The Tarbucks were always too stupid to listen to my advice about how to turn a profit out of that place. And I'm from farming Alabama. You can run a farm out there on that shit-for-soil, you can do it anywhere. Dumb fuckin' deer and their stubborn pride's gonna put em all out of business. And all they can worry about's a pair of wet pants in a barn? And a pair of dumb naked pups like you and that fox.' He dusted my head with his knuckles, then grimaced at the pain of twisting around so he can do it, then sucked air through his clenched teeth. 'Jeeeez_us,_ now look what you made me do to myself. And you know what?'

'What?'

'Deke would have loved you.'

It almost sounded wrong, but I knew he'd only meant it in an innocent way, and I didn't laugh.

'Now look, this all gonna come as a bit of a surprise to all the others too,' he said. 'So can you just keep it quiet for a few hours? Till I can tell everyone I got a story I need them to hear. And don't tell your Mum about all the rest yet either. I do it. And I'll do what you said. But I want you coming with me. Not her. Between you and me, there are times when I really don't want her in a room with me and I know that's gonna top all_of them. And she's gonna be even more _major league pissed at me than she was when I left. I like that expression by the way. I think I'll use it from now on.'

'She's glad you're alive,' I said. 'That'll win out.'

A paranoid look came over him a moment later. 'I forgot the fuckin' insurance, didn't I? Aaaaaawwww shit!'

'Yeah but we've not exactly had to ask it to pay out,' I said. 'So who cares?'

I thought I was going to get a lecture, but instead Dad just lay back. 'Yeah,' he said. 'Who cares indeed?'

'You want to know how to start making things right, Dad?'

'Can I just go to sleep for a while?'

'Go to sleep on this. My own brother hates me. He's only ten years old and he doesn't get all this, but he won't even look at me. And I know it's because of things you said. You can't take back what kind of brother you were but maybe you can be a better father. Talk to him about this. Before he can grow up with all the chips on his shoulder you wish you could take off of yours.'

'Alright alright, I'll do what I can. But I keep telling you, I'm not that smart with talking. Why do you think I let your mum do all that?'

'Then I guess it's just as well an apology's about more than words' I said, and walked away.