“I was just talking to him. It’s my fault. He was ready to leave.”
“You get inside.”
He and Roy Davenport were good at ordering females inside. Leave the real business to the menfolk. Sounded like an episode of Gunsmoke.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. McCain.”
She didn’t do either of us any favors with that remark. She’d hear about it when he found her later. I was hearing about it now.
“You ever heard of jailbait, McCain?”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “You really going to try some horseshit like that on me?”
“She’s fourteen years old. That’s jailbait age. That’s also prison age for anybody who goes near her. She’s not much to look at, but it’s my duty to protect her and that’s what I damned well plan to do. So how would you like it if I started telling people you’ve been sniffing around my innocent little stepdaughter?” The sun was turning his forehead into the texture of new leather.
“Wouldn’t work, DePaul. We were talking about science fiction. And she’d testify to that.”
“Science fiction.” His lips twisted into a particularly ugly frown. “That’s why she doesn’t have any friends. Sits in her room and reads that crap. No wonder other kids don’t want to hang around her.” He’d lost his place in the book. Now he went back to the right page. “But that doesn’t make her any less vulnerable to some creep like you trying to get to her.” He slammed a big hand flat on my hood. He was strong enough to dent it. I scanned the impression his hand had left in the light dust. No dent. “Now you get the hell out of here and don’t try to contact her in any way. I don’t ever want to see you again. Because if I do, I’m going to file a complaint against you. And how’ll that look for you and that fancy-ass judge you work for? Accused of statutory rape.” He was suddenly delighted with the idea. “I can see her face now when she’s trying to explain it.”
“It’d never stick. And she’d know better.”
“It might not stick, McCain. But it’d be in the paper. And people wouldn’t forget it even if the charges got dropped. Tryin’ to pick up an innocent fourteen-year-old girl. See how many clients you get then.”
I wanted to ask him who his late-night visitor had been. I wanted to ask him why he was so afraid of what I’d find out about the fire and his role in assessing it. I wanted to ask if he’d taken money for his trouble, or had somebody blackmailed him into calling it an accident.
But I couldn’t ask him any of these things. If I brought up his visitor, he’d know that his stepdaughter had told me. And if I asked him the other two things, he’d just sputter and stammer and threaten me.
I turned the engine on and dragged the gearshift into reverse. “I’m sure we’ll be talking again sometime, Chief. Whether you want to or not.”
“Try me, McCain. Try me and see what happens.”
But by then I was backing up and turning on the radio. “Wooly Bully” was the perfect exit music.
I thought about my conversation with Nina DePaul as I sat across the living room from my father an hour later. He’d fallen asleep in his easy chair, his chin touching his chest, his snoring soft and gentle. Telepathy had always been one of my favorite themes in the science fiction Nina and I had discussed. The dramatic use was to pluck earth-shattering secrets from the minds of enemy agents. But what I wanted to do was share my father’s life through his eyes. His early years on the farm, his father crushed in a tractor accident. His trek with his brother to Black River Falls looking for work. Their mother virtually deserting them by marrying a man who didn’t want them. The worst of the Depression and then the death of his brother from influenza. Settling in a shack along the river and meeting my mother one day when she was out picking vegetables from her family’s small garden. Their courtship that always sounded glamorous despite all the poverty. The years apart during the war. And the war itself that still sometimes troubled my father’s sleep. And then coming back to enough prosperity to escape the Hills, only to see my brother Robert die. And now his final years, this smaller man in the old chair where he’d watched his sacred football games every Saturday and Sunday; where he’d ranted against the GOP; and where he tried to make his peace with cultural changes as different as Elvis Presley, civil rights, and yet another war.
There were times I’d resented him, times I’d even hated him, I suppose; but these times were always forgotten in the respect I had for what he’d been through and the love I felt for all the patience and encouragement and love he’d given me. Hell, I’m sure there were times when he’d hated me.
So I sat there now in the flurry of the fans in the windows and the faint kitchen sounds of my mother making a cold meal for this hot day and his rerun of Maverick playing unseen on the TV set-I sat there once again thinking the unthinkable. That he was going to die and die soon. And then I thought of my mother and my sister in Chicago and how we’d never quite be the same again.
I eased off the couch and went into the kitchen.
The way she looked at me, I knew she knew. She wiped her hands on her apron and came over to me and with a single finger dabbed away the tears on my cheek. Then she slid her arms around me and hugged me.
I went over to the refrigerator and got a can of Hamm’s and sat down at the table.
“I put extra mayo in the potato salad the way you like it.”
“Thanks.”
She was using a wooden spoon to mix up the contents in a green glass bowl. She didn’t look up when she spoke. “We want to be happy for him when we eat.”
“I know.”
“I try to do my crying in the morning when he takes his first nap. Isn’t that crazy? It’s like making an appointment. But he needs me to be happy because he’s afraid.”
“I know he is. I see it in his face sometimes.”
“He believes, but he doesn’t believe.” This time she did look at me. “He’s like you in that respect.”
“Yeah, I guess he is.”
“I wish you two could believe the way I do. Then it wouldn’t be so bad. I really believe that God will take him to heaven. And I don’t mean angels and harps and all that stuff. That’s for children. But to a place where he’ll know real peace. You know he’s never gotten over his brother dying. Or your brother dying, either. All our lives I’d see him sitting alone sometimes, and he’d have the same kind of tears you just had in your eyes. And I always knew who he was remembering. In the days when it would get real bad with him, I’d hold him and rock him the way I used to hold you and your sister and brother. And rock you the same way. And I never felt closer to him than I did then. Because I’d never felt so needed or useful.” She wrenched away without warning and moments later was sobbing into the hands covering her face.
I went over and held her. Her entire body shook. I remembered doing this when I was twelve years old. My father had fallen on the ice and cracked his skull. For several hours, the docs wondered if he’d live. I’d never seen my mother cry like that. I hadn’t known what to do. I just stood still and let her cling to me. Finally I put my arms around her and patted her back the way I would pat a dog. It was stupid, the way I handled it, but I could tell it helped her.
“And here I’m the one telling you we need to be happy,” she said, pulling her apron up from her waist to pat the tears from her eyes. She took a deep breath. “Potato salad and cold cuts and slices of fresh melon and iced tea. How does that sound?”
“That sounds great.”
“There should be a vegetable, but he hates them as much as you do.”
“I learned from the master.”
“I’m going to run to the bathroom and freshen up. Would you mind setting the table, and then we’ll be ready to eat?”
“Fine.”
There were the everyday dishes and the special dishes. I used the former. Paper napkins, too, not the cloth ones. I used to get an extra quarter a week on my allowance if I set the table every night. I decided not to charge her this week.
When we were all set, when my mother was placing the food on the table, I went in and woke my father. Or tried to. This was one of those terrifying times when he didn’t respond right away. One of those terrifying times when I was almost certain that he was dead.
But then his head raised and his eyes opened and he gazed up at me with blue eyes that were both innocent and ancient. I couldn’t help myself. I leaned down and gave him an awkward hug and kissed him atop his freckled bald head.
