minutes.” His voice has a terrible wheeze in it, and it occurs to me that I might be breathing whatever has made him this way. But I stand my ground.
“I understand you’ve been looking for me,” I say at last.
“Yes.” He seems childishly eager now, and he almost smiles, but thinks better of it. “Yes, that is so, I have been looking for you.”
“You knew where to find me.” I was raised to be polite, but seeing Uncle Jack like this, after all these years, brings out in me an irresistible urge to be rude. “You could have called me at home.”
“That would not be-it was not possible. They know, you see, they would consider that, and I thought-I thought perhaps…” He trails off, the dark eyes all at once confused, and I realize that Uncle Jack is frightened of something. I hope it is the specter of prison or of his obviously approaching death that is scaring him, because anything else bad enough to scare Jack Ziegler is… well, something I do not want to meet.
“Okay, okay. You found me.” Perhaps this is forward, but I am not so frightened of him now; on the other hand, I am not very happy about spending time in his company either. I want to flee this sickly scarecrow and retreat to the warmth, such as it is, of my family.
“Your father was a very fine man,” says Uncle Jack, “and a very good friend. We did much together. Not much business, mostly pleasure.”
“I see.”
“The newspapers, you know, they wrote of our business dealings. There were no business dealings. It was nonsense. Trumped-up nonsense.”
“I know,” I lie, for Uncle Jack’s benefit, but he is not interested in my opinions.
“That law clerk of his, perjuring himself that way.” He makes a spitting noise but does not actually spit. “Scum.” He shakes his head in feigned disbelief. “The papers, of course, they loved it. Left-wing bastards. Because they hated your father.”
Not having exchanged a word with Jack Ziegler since well before my father’s hearings, I have never heard his opinions about what happened. Given the tenor of his comments, I doubt he would be interested in mine. I remain silent.
“I hear the fool has never been able to get a job,” says Uncle Jack, without a trace of humor, and I know who has been pulling at least a few of the strings. “I am not surprised.”
“He was doing what he thought was right.”
“He was lying in an effort to destroy a great man, and he is deserving of his fate.”
I cannot take much more of this. As Jack Ziegler continues to rant, Mariah’s nutty speculations of Friday seem… not so nutty. “Uncle Jack…”
“He was a great man, your father,” Jack Ziegler interrupts. “A very great man, a very good friend. But now that he is dead, well.. .” He trails off and raises his hand, palm upmost, and tilts it one way, then the other. “Now I would very much like to be of assistance to you.”
“To me?”
“Correct, Talcott. And to your family, naturally,” he adds softly, rubbing his temples. The skin is so loose it seems to move under his fingers. I imagine it tearing away to leave only an unhappy skull.
I glance over at the cars. Kimmer is impatient. So is Uncle Mal. I look down at my baby sister’s godfather once more. His help is the very last thing I want.
“Well, thank you, but I think we have everything under control.”
“But you will call? If you need anything, you will call? Especially if… an emergency should arise?”
I shrug. “Okay.”
“With your wife, for instance,” he continues. “I understand that she is going to become a judge. I think that is wonderful. I understand that she has always wanted this.”
“It isn’t certain yet,” I answer automatically, surprised that the secret has spread up into the Rocky Mountains, and also not wanting Jack Ziegler anywhere near her nomination. He has already spoiled one judicial career too many. “She isn’t the only candidate.”
“I know this.” The burning eyes are gleeful again. “I understand that a colleague of yours believes the job to be his for the taking. Some would call him the front-runner.”
I am thrown, once more, by the breadth of his knowledge; I choose not to wonder how he knows what he knows. I am glad that Kimmer is not within earshot.
“I suppose so. But, look, I have to-”
“Listen, Talcott. Are you listening?” He has drawn close to me again. “I do not think he has the staying power, this colleague of yours. It is my understanding that a fairly large skeleton is rattling around in his closet. And we all know what that means, eh?” He coughs violently. “Sooner or later, it is bound to tumble out.”
“What kind of skeleton?” I ask, sudden eagerness overwhelming my caution.
“I would not concern myself with such things if I were you. I would not share them with your lovely wife. I would wait patiently for the wheel to turn.”
I am mystified, but not precisely unhappy. If there is information that would kill off Marc Hadley’s chances, I can hardly wait for it to-what did he say?-tumble out. Even though Marc and I were once friends, I cannot resist a rising excitement. Perhaps America’s obsession with the use of scandal to disqualify nominees for the bench is absurd, but this is my wife we are talking about.
Still, what can Jack Ziegler possibly know about Marc Hadley that nobody else does?
“Thank you, Uncle Jack,” I say uncertainly.
“I am always happy to be of assistance to any of Oliver’s children.” His voice has assumed a curiously formal tone. I am chilled once more. Is the skeleton something that he has somehow created? Is a criminal maneuvering to help my wife attain her longed-for seat on the bench? I have to say something, and it is not easy to decide what.
“Uh, Uncle Jack, I… I’m grateful that you would think to help, but…”
His disintegrating eyebrows slowly rise. Otherwise his expression does not change. He knows what I am trying to say but has no intention of making it easy.
“Well, it’s just that I think Kimmer… Kimberly… wants to have the selection go forward so that, um, the better candidate wins. On the merits. She wouldn’t want anybody to… interfere.” And I am suddenly sure, as I say the difficult words, that what I am telling him is true. My smart, ambitious wife never wants to be beholden to anybody, for anything. When we were students, she made a name for herself around the building with her outspoken opposition to affirmative action, which she saw as just another way for white liberals to place black people in their debt.
Maybe she was right.
Uncle Jack, meanwhile, has his answer ready: “Oh, Talcott, Talcott, please have no fear on that account. I am not proposing to. .. interfere.” He chuckles lightly, then coughs. “I am only predicting what is to occur. I have information. I am not going to use it. Nor do you need to do so. Your colleague, your wife’s rival, has many, many enemies. One of them is certain to unlock the door and allow the skeleton to tumble out. The service I am doing for you is simply to let you know. Nothing more.”
I nod. Standing up to Jack Ziegler has drained me.
“And now it is your turn,” he continues. “I think perhaps you, Talcott, might be of assistance to me.”
I close my eyes briefly. What did I expect? He did not travel all this way to tell me that Marc Hadley’s candidacy is going to collapse, or to pay his last respects to my father. He came because he wants something.
“Talcott, you must listen to me. Listen with care. I must ask you one question.”
“Go ahead.” I want suddenly to be free of him. I want to share his odd news with Kimmer, even though he told me not to. I want her to kiss me happily, overjoyed that she seems to be on the verge of getting what she wants.
“Others will ask this of you, some with good motives, some with ill,” he explains unhelpfully in his mysterious accent. “Not all of them will be who they say they are, and not all of them will mean you well.”
I forgot Uncle Jack’s eerie, unfathomable certainty that all the world is conspiring, but he evidently has changed little from the days when he used to drop by the Vineyard house with gifts from foreign ports and complaints about the machinations of the Kennedys, whose irresolution, he used to say, cost us Cuba. None of the children knew what he was talking about, but we loved the passion of his stories.
“Okay,” I say.
