Read There Is No Year for Free Online

The father put the car in neutral and got out and put his head against the hood.
Q: DID THE CAR SOUND FUNNY?
A: The father could not tell. He was not good with his hands or with machines. To some this made the father not a man.
Q: WAS THERE SOMEONE IN THE CAR STILL?
A: The father didn’t think to look.
Q: WHO WAS WATCHING?
A: The house had several windows.
Q: WHAT SHOULD THE FATHER HAVE KEPT IN THE GLOVE BOX THAT HE DID NOT?
A: A gun, a length of wire, a set of rubber gloves, emergency money and some form of rations, Fear of Music by Talking Heads, fake flowers ( the kind that never die ), permanent marker ( the kind that never can be erased ), a photo of his wife from a time he’d like to remember ( uh-huh ), a photo of his mother.
Q: WHAT WAS IT ABOUT THE NEIGHBOR’S HOUSE ACROSS THE STREET THAT THE FATHER DID NOT SEE, DISTRACTED AS HE WAS BY HIS OWN CONDITION?
A: The father did not see the enormous object wrapped in black plastic that took up the majority of the yard.
Q: WITH THE GAS REMAINING IN THE CAR, AND ALL OTHER GAS PERHAPS FOR SALE OR UNDERGROUND ELSEWHERE NOTWITHSTANDING, HOW FAR AWAY COULD THE FATHER GET FROM THE HOUSE IF HE DROVE THE CAR AT EXACTLY THE SPEED LIMIT IN ONE DIRECTION AND DID NOT PAUSE?
A: The father could not get far away at all.

WHAT THE FATHER DID THEN
    With the car still on the driveway burning fumes, the father came into the house. He’d thought of something he needed to tell the mother. He’d thought of this thing earlier while staring into the work computer and had meant to write it down but didn’t and now he was thankful it had reappeared, veined in his mind. It was an important thing. It was about the house.
    The father could not quite say the thing aloud. The father slunk, eyeing for the mother.
    The mother was not in the entry foyer, where in the early years she’d always met him coming in, her face engraved with home expression. As well, there, the father was used to seeing the family’s shoes all taken off and stacked in order, as the mother was always a stickler for unsmushed carpet, but in recent weeks she’d stopped bothering to take hers off and so the son had too. The mother and the son both owned several pairs. The carpet was minced and feathered, brained already here and there with darker clot—some slush, some blood, some body oils, a few bits meant to have been eaten. There were so many kinds of stains it looked like more than just the four of them in there, living. Three. Three of them, not four, the father corrected in his head.
    The mother was not in the kitchen raising dinner. The lights were on and the fridge was open, full of light and frigid breathing. The oven had been preheated, though there was nothing in it and nothing sitting wanting to get in. A set of knives was spread out on the table. One of the four long bulbs in the overhead fluorescent lamp was dead.
    The mother was not in the hallway that connected the kitchen to the garage, though from the garage the father could see his car up near the glass, its headlamps stunted by the near door and treating the tiny windows with more light. The father moved into the garage cracking his fingers and opened the freezer door and shut it. No mother, but the father found a hammer on the ice. The hammer’s head was cold and solid, a thing that would always be. He touched the hammer to his face.
    The father carried the hammer with him back into the family hallway with a set of school-made photos of the son ordered in ascending age on either side, a progression that ended with the most recent photos, which somehow still did not look the same as the son did now.
    At a certain spot in the hallway on the carpet the father set the hammer down.
    The mother was not in the laundry room where the floor had babbled sick with suds. Underneath the suds, the machine shook. The bubbles blew larger than most soap bubbles. The father stamped the sudding with his boot and heard it crackle like glass pellets.
    The mother was not in