another case.
It was a good morning’s work. I’d cut down my suspects from eight to two.
Either Glen Thorn or Tomas Hight was my man. Tourmaline wouldn’t have liked the first one: not enough syllables for her.
I went through my Southern California phone books and found addresses for both men. Life wasn’t good, but at least it kept moving forward.
17
I was sitting at the kitchenette table a few minutes shy of 6:30 when the baby cried. I was considering which problem I should tackle first. I had Christmas’s most recent address from the bill of sale that Tourmaline had provided and two soldiers I could look up. I knew that Pericles Tarr had a girlfriend somewhere. Each of these potential paths had equal weight in my mind.
If I had had a clue about the whereabouts of Mouse, that’s the direction I would have taken.
I was missing Ray, not because he could help me through this violent period but for his sense of humor. He liked to laugh and tell a good story. Added to that, Mouse didn’t understand guilt or broken hearts — that was just the kind of ignorance I craved.
“Hi, Dad.”
Jesus was standing in the kitchen with Essie in his arms. I reached out for her without thinking about it. She cried and then cooed. After getting used to my smell, she practiced kicking and turning her head from side to side.
Jesus went about making coffee.
I had had almost fifteen years of that boy brewing me coffee and bringing me the gifts of life. He’d been brutally abused when he was little older than his daughter, but somehow that had not twisted him. I would have liked to say that it was my firm hand and loving home that saved the boy, but he was the one who saved me more often than not. It was Jesus that emptied all my liquor bottles when my first wife left. It was Jesus made me coffee and dinner more times than I could count.
And now he had brought me a granddaughter. Here we couldn’t have a gene in common going back more than twenty thousand years, but that boy was my blood.
He brought two mugs to the table and took Essie from me. The way he cradled that baby made me think of the few years he spent with my friend Primo before coming to me. Maybe the Mexican and his Panamanian wife, Flower, had saved Jesus’s soul.
“Feather said that you’re mad at her,” my son said.
“I’m not.”
“She said that she gave you a hard time about the wedding and that, and that you got mad.”
Essie grabbed his lip and pulled, just a little.
“You remember when you were a boy?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“You remember when you didn’t talk those first years, never spoke a word?”
Jesus looked at me, mute as he was back in those days.
“Why?” I asked. “Why didn’t you talk for all that time?”
“I did,” he said in a voice reminiscent of his first whispering years of conversation. “I did with my mind. I was thinking answers and I thought you could hear me. And you did, Dad. You knew everything I wanted to say.”
“So why ever talk, then?” I asked.
“One day when Feather was little and you were at work, she was about to knock over a hot pot, and I wasn’t close enough so I told her no.”
The look on my son’s face was one of fascination. He was remembering that word.
“It surprised both of us,” he said. “Feather’s jaw dropped and her eyes got real big. It felt like I opened my mouth and a bird, a big bird flew out. I wondered if there were any more inside of me, and then Feather ran up and hugged me and told me to read her a story.”
I had never asked about Juice’s first word. I was afraid that to question his speech would have returned him to silence.
“Are you mad at Feather?” he asked.
“No. I just can’t understand when she stopped being a child and started bein’ a woman. That’s what’s got me.”
“I don’t think Bonnie wants to marry him,” Jesus said, as if it were the logical extension of our talk.
“No? She don’t love him?”
“No,” the boy-sage replied. “She loves him. He loves her and needs her, and so she can see them together. But if you had ever called her, she would have come back here to us.”
“So then let me ask you, Juice,” I said. “Are you mad at me?”
Essie made a sound akin to a laugh. Jesus stared at me like the man he’d always been.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m with Benita and off on my boat half the time. Feather talks to Bonnie every other day. Bonnie has Joguye, and even though she wants you, that’s something.”
