Hank was no longer conscious of being cold.  The fact is, he‘d turned numb.  His throat felt stuffed with cotton, and for several long moments he was afraid to speak, for fear that no sound would come out.

     “What are you sayin’?” he finally managed.

     “Nothing—never mind,” Zack said rapidly.  “Just—forget about it and go away.”

     A spark of indignation kindled and smoldered inside Hank, penetrating the shock that threatened to suffocate him.  “I told ya.  I ain’t goin’ nowhere—not till I get the truth.”

     “You don’t want to know,” Zack insisted.  His eyes were deep hollows in his bleached face.

     “Nope—I prob’ly don’t,” Hank agreed quietly.  “But wantin’ ain’t the same as needin’.  I need the truth from you.”

     “I’m asking you again—just leave it be,” Zack pleaded, his expression strained.  With an effort he went on, “Please . . . Pa . . .  If you care about me at all, then go away and leave me alone.”

     “If I l care about you?” Hank mimicked.  His heart felt like it was being crushed in an iron fist.  “You think I’d be standin’ here, tryin’ to talk to ya . . .  You think I woulda come here at all, if I didn’t care?”

     Zack bit his lip and looked down at his lap.  “I don’t want to hurt you—“

     “Too late.”

     “Then what’s the use of going on with this?” Zack burst out.  “You don’t want to be here—I don’t want you here—“

     “Ya made that plain,” his father said.  Anguish, like acid, consumed him inside.  “But I still got the right to know why.”

     “What gives you the right?” Zack demanded, his tone scornful.  “You didn’t want me when I was little and you’ve barely been around since.  It’s a little late to start acting like you give a damn!”

    Zack’s words were like a knife carving into him.  “I always wanted you,” Hank said, forcing the words out through the pain.  “I always cared.  I just . . .  I couldn’t give ya the kinda life you deserved.  Growin’ up in a saloon . . . it weren’t no way to raise a kid.  I wanted better than that for you.”

    “But you didn’t want it bad enough to give up the saloon, did you?!” Zack accused.  “Your liquor—“  He flushed brick red.  “and your—your women—were more important.  More important than your own son!”

     Hank was awash in the pain now.  Tears stabbed behind his eyes and he steeled himself to hold them back.  “I ain’t perfect,” he said, his voice unsteady.  “Never claimed ta be.  But I did the best I could by you.”

     Zack stared at him, astonished.  “The best?  You made my mother ‘entertain’—“ he stumbled over the word, “—men for money!  You wouldn’t even marry her!  You let me live in a saloon for the first five years of my life, and then when you drove Ma to her death, you sent me away to Miss Ruby so you could hide me from the world!  So you could forget I existed!  You call that the BEST?”

     The accusations were coming so fast and furiously that Hank’s mind could barely process them, but one devastating indictment found its target, piercing him to the marrow.

     “Your ma . . .“  His voice shook, and he cleared his throat with difficulty and tried again.  “Your ma . . . died of a fever.  I didn’t have nothin’ to do with that.  I went for Jake, but weren’t nothin’ he could do.”

     Zack’s eyes glittered with equal measures of anger and tears.  “And how did she catch that fever?  Maybe from—from being with all those men?”  He noted the stunned expression on his father’s face, and acknowledged it with a bitter smile.  “Yes, I know about all that.  I learned a lot during those years in the saloon, Pa.  I heard things.  Lots of things.  Everybody thought I was ‘slow’ . . . thought I was an—an idiot—“  He pronounced it the way he had as a child, elongating the syllables, and Hank’s gut twisted.  “—so they talked in front of me, like I wasn’t there.

     “I was too young to understand most of it at the time, but I figured it out later,” Zack continued stiffly, his cheeks still burning with the humiliation of discussing such intimate matters.  “And I know that if you hadn’t forced my mother to do what she did, she wouldn’t have had to die!”  He hurled this final condemnation at Hank in fury, then bolted up from his chair and tried to leave.  Without quite knowing how he got there, Hank was suddenly in front of Zack, blocking his way.

     He seized the boy by the shoulders, holding him immobile, yet somehow having the presence of mind not to sink his fingers in too deep.  His tortured eyes held Zack captive.  “You can’t lay that at my door,” he choked, barely above a whisper.  “From the time Clarice an’ me had—had feelin’s for each other—she wasn’t with nobody else.  She wanted to keep workin’—said she needed the money and wanted to earn her keep—but I couldn’t abide the thought of her with another man.  I promised I’d keep payin’ her the same—but from that time on, all I let her do was tend the bar and flirt with the customers a little.”

      “Why should I believe you?” Zack said, his body vibrating with tension under Hank’s hands.

     “’Cause I’m yer pa,” Hank intoned softly.  “And despite everythin’ I done wrong, I ain’t never lied to ya.

     “I loved yer ma,” he said huskily.  “Loved her more than any woman I ever knew.”

     “But not enough to marry her!”

     “I wasn’t . . . the marryin’ kind,” Hank stammered, loosening his grip and stepping back slightly.  “I ain’t defendin’ it, or sayin’ what I did—“

     “You mean what you didn’t do!” Zack cut in bitterly.

     “Have it yer way,” Hank allowed, his voice weary.  He took a deep breath, trying to force the air past the lump of anguish in his throat.  “I ain’t sayin’ it was right,” he tried again.  “And not a day goes by that I don’t regret it . . . or wonder what woulda happened if things’d been different . . .

     “But they weren’t,” he finished, releasing Zack completely and straightening.  “And I gotta live with it.  So do you.  That’s my shame.  But yer ma dyin’—that wasn’t my fault.  And I missed her.  More than you’ll ever know.  If you believe nothin’ else ‘bout what I’m sayin’, ya gotta believe that.”

     “Fine,” Zack said curtly.  “You weren’t responsible for her death.  And maybe you were even sorry she was gone.
But why were you sorry, Pa?  Because she died?  Because you missed her?  Or because her dying so inconveniently left you stuck with a kid you didn’t want?”

     Hank flinched at the accusation.  “I already tried to explain,” he reiterated.  “I cared about you.  I wanted you.  But I didn’t have no experience in raisin’ a kid . . . in bein’ a pa.  But the one thing I did know was that the saloon weren’t no place for you to grow up.  Ya said yourself that ya—“  He swallowed painfully.  “—that ya heard things.  Saw things.  Things no five-year-old kid should see and hear.  I knew yer ma wouldn’t want you growin’ up like that.  So I found the only answer I could.”

     “Yes—you sent me away so you wouldn’t have to be reminded of your shame!  Out of sight, out of mind—isn’t that right, Pa?”

     “That ain’t true,” Hank denied, pain oozing out of every pore.  “But it seems like no matter what I say to defend myself, you ain’t gonna believe it.  You’ve tried me, found me guilty, and passed sentence.”

      Zack looked away and said nothing.

     Hank didn’t know if his heart could endure any more rejection on top of what he’d already faced, but he had to ask.  “Have you always felt like this?” he said into the thick silence.

     There was a long hesitation, then Zack muttered, “Yes.”

     But to Hank’s ears, the reply rang false.

     “No,” he contradicted, staring hard at his son.  “I don’t believe you.  I don’t believe you could write me all them letters over the years, if ya hated me as much as ya claim.  I don’t believe you were pretendin’ to be glad to see me when I came here to visit, or you came home for holidays.”  He scrutinized Zack even more closely.  The boy wouldn’t meet his eyes.

    “No,” Hank repeated.  “This is somethin’ new.  Somethin’ . . .“  He searched for the word.  “Somethin’ recent.  Maybe you missed yer ma, and maybe you had questions ‘bout why she died . . . but ya never said ya blamed me for it.  And ya never held what I do for a livin’ against me.”

    “How do you know what I thought or felt?” Zack said petulantly.  “When were you ever around to even ask—or care?”

    But Hank wouldn’t be swayed from his opinion.  Zack might fancy that he was putting on a convincing act, but Hank’s instincts weren’t fooled.  He admitted to himself that it might only be a matter of wishful thinking, but his gut was telling him that something specific had happened in the past months to prejudice Zack against him.

    “Things have changed,” he maintained, as if Zack hadn’t spoken.  “I don’t know what happened to turn you against me, but I know there’s somethin’.”

    “Believing that would be convenient for you, wouldn’t it?  Then you wouldn’t have to feel guilty at all.”

    It was Hank’s turn to be silent.  He watched Zack thoughtfully.  The seconds passed, as Zack grew steadily more uncomfortable under his father’s scrutiny.  Finally he stepped away from Hank, moving to the large casement windows of Miss Wellman’s office.  Blindly he stared down at the busy Denver street below, seeing but not registering the scene.

    “If you’re expecting me to say that you’re right, you’ve got a long wait.”  He tried not to notice his father’s reflection in the window pane.

     “Now who’s lyin’?” Hank said quietly to his son’s back.

     Zack wheeled on him.  Hectic spots of crimson stained his cheeks, and his eyes glittered with malice.  “You think you’re so smug?  You think you’re such an expert about what I feel? Well, you’re not!  You don’t know me—you don’t know anything about me!  Because you never cared enough to find out.  And now it’s too late.”  Zack’s fury rained down upon Hank, the final words like a crippling blow to his gut.  Hank realized he actually felt breathless, as if all the oxygen had been siphoned out of the room in a single moment.  But his son wasn’t through.

     “You ruined my mother’s life, and you’re threatening to ruin mine.  But I won’t let you.  Do you hear? I WON’T LET YOU!”

* * * * * * * * * *

    “I’m sorry, Hank,” Sully said into the sudden silence as Hank stopped speaking.  The words were only a feeble expression of his feelings at best, but they were all he could find.

    “Save yer pity.”

    “It ain’t pity,” Sully insisted.  “I mean it.  I can’t begin to think how it musta hurt to hear Zack say those things to you—and I wouldn’t try to guess.”

    “Ya prob’ly agree with him,” Hank mumbled.

    “No,” Sully said, causing Hank to look at him sharply.  “As a matter of fact, I don’t.”

    Hank’s eyes were suspicious.  Clearly, he assumed Sully was toying with him.

    “It’s the truth,” Sully told him.  “I know you didn’t have a lotta choices when Zack’s ma died—“  He saw a muscle twitch in Hank’s jaw as he mentioned Clarice, but the saloon owner didn’t speak.  “And I’m sure it couldn’t have been easy for you to send him so far away to school, hardly gettin’ to see him and all.  But you did the right thing, Hank.  You took him out of the saloon as soon as you could—“

    “Not soon enough.”

    “But you did it,” Sully reiterated.  “And later you gave him a wonderful opportunity, sendin’ him to a place where he could get a good education and learn how to be an artist.

    “Zack’s young and high-strung, and he’s angry right now—so maybe he ain’t capable of understandin’.  But he will someday.  He won’t always feel like this, Hank.”

    “There won’t be a someday, if he’s got anythin’ to say about it,” Hank contradicted, his eyes shadowed with grief.

    Sully felt another stab of alarm.  “What do you mean?”

    “I mean . . . that as far as Zack’s concerned . . . I’m dead.”