boats.”
Chip chuckled. “That’s what I was going to do.”
“Well, it’s done. Everything’s secure, tight as a drum.” Then he frowned at Chip. “How come you were going to check? You don’t usually do that.”
“I was at the inn and I felt like taking a walk—”
“Something on your mind?” Riley interrupted.
“I’m not sure.”
“Of course you’re sure,” Riley snapped. “Give me a ride home and let’s talk about it. I’ve got some scotch that I’ve been saving just for a night like tonight.”
“What’s so special about tonight?” Chip asked.
“You. I don’t get to see you as much as I’d like. Well, that’s grandsons for you. Only come around when they have a problem. I can sit around jawing with Tad Corey and Clem Ledbetter all day and it doesn’t do me any good at all. They think I’m a senile old man.”
“You?” Chip laughed out loud. “The day you get senile will be the day you die.”
“Thanks a lot,” the old man said dryly. “You wanting to stand here in the rain all night, or do we get going?”
They returned to the inn, where Chip’s car was parked, and drove the few blocks to Mac Riley’s house in silence. “You ought to sell the house or buy a car,” Chip remarked as they went into the large Victorian house that Riley had built for his bride more than sixty years earlier.
“I’m too old,” Riley complained. “Can’t get a driver’s license, and can’t learn to live anyplace else. Besides, I don’t feel lonely here. Your grandmother’s in this house.”
As Chip’s brows rose in skepticism, Riley snorted at him.
“I don’t mean a ghost, or anything like that,” he said impatiently. “It’s just memories. When you get to be my age you’ll know what I’m talking about. Every room in this house has memories for me. Your grandmother, your mother, even you. But mostly your grandmother.”
They were in the tiny sitting room just off the entry hall, and Chip looked at the portrait of his grandmother that hung over the fireplace.
“She looks a lot like Harney Whalen,” he commented.
“Why shouldn’t she?” Riley countered. “She was his aunt.”
“I know. But for some reason I never think of it that way. I always think of Harn as kissing kin, rather than blood kin.”
“Around here there ain’t much difference,” Riley said. He found the bottle of scotch, poured two tumblers full — no ice, no water — and handed one of them to Chip.
“That who’s on your mind? Harn Whalen?”
Chip nodded and sipped at the scotch, feeling it burn as it trickled down his throat. “I’m worried about him,” he said. He was thoughtful for several minutes. Then he explained, “It’s a lot of little things. But mostly it’s the way he feels about strangers.”
“We all feel that way,” Riley said. “It goes back a long time.”
“But there doesn’t seem to be any reason for it.”
“Maybe not now,” Riley replied. “But there are reasons all right. Tell me what’s going on with Harney.”
“He’s been going after Glen Palmer.”
“Palmer? I didn’t know you even knew the man.”
“I didn’t up until a few days ago,” Chip said. “The day after Miriam and Pete Shelling’s funeral.”
Riley nodded briefly. “I was there, with Corey and Ledbetter. Other than us and Harn Whalen, the Palmers were the only ones who came.”
“That’s what Harney said. He made me go out and talk to Palmer. He wanted to know why Glen was there.”
“That doesn’t seem unreasonable,” the old man said. “Did you find out?”
“Sure. It wasn’t any secret really, except Glen didn’t think it was any of our business.”
“In a town this size everything is everybody’s business,” Riley chuckled.
“Anyway,” Chip went on, “Glen told me why he and his family went to the funeral, and I told Harney. Then he did something I just can’t account for at all. He tried to wreck most of Glen’s work.”
“Wreck it? What do you mean?”
Chip told his grandfather what had happened. “I felt rotten about it,” he finished. “I stayed around and gave Glen a hand, and he’s really a nice guy. I’ve been spending quite a bit of time with him. It’s funny — he can draw anything, but put a saw in his hand and it’s all over.” He smiled at his grandfather. “Wait’ll you see that gallery. With him designing it and me building it, it’s really going to be something.”
“You getting paid for it?” Riley inquired.
Chip squirmed. “Not exactly,” he said. “Glen doesn’t have any money right now. But I’m still getting paid. I’m finding out a lot of things I never knew about before. Nothing terribly important, I guess, but it’s the first time in my life I’ve ever really gotten to know anyone who wasn’t born right here. And the more I get to know Glen, the less I understand Harney’s attitude. If he’d just take the time to get to know him too, I don’t think he’d be so down on him.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Riley said.
“Well, I can understand him being suspicious of strangers, but it’s getting out of hand. He won’t do anything to find out what happened to that guy Horton, except that he seemed to think Glen had something to do with it — God only knows why — and the whole thing’s getting to me. I keep telling myself it’s only my imagination, but it seems to be getting worse. I’m thinking of quitting my job.”
Riley frowned and studied his grandson. Finally he appeared to make up his mind about something.
“Maybe I’d better tell you a little about Harney,” he said. “Life hasn’t been too easy for him, and most of the rough times were caused by strangers. It was a long time ago, but things like what happened to Harney when he was a boy stay with a man. And sometimes the old memories are stronger than the new ones, if you know what I mean.” He leaned forward confidentially. “Don’t tell anybody, but sometimes I can remember things that happened sixty, seventy years ago better than I can recollect things that happened last month.”
He handed his glass to Chip and asked him to refill it. While the younger man did, Riley’s gaze drifted away, focused somewhere beyond the room and the rainy night. When Chip gave him the full glass, his eyes seemed to be almost closed. But as he took the glass, he began talking.
“When Harney was a boy he lived with his grandparents. His mother — your grandmother’s sister — died birthing Harn, and his father took off a little after that He came back, but he was never quite the same. So it wound up that Harn’s grandparents took care of them both. Anyway, Harn’s granddaddy owned a whole lot of land around here, most of it forest. He never did much with it, just sort of sat on it, but eventually some of the big lumbering boys from Seattle came out here and tried to buy it.
“Old Man Whalen wouldn’t sell, so then they tried to get him to lease the timber rights to them. That didn’t work either, and it looked for a while like that would be the end of it. But then something happened.”
The old man stopped talking and his eyes closed once more. For a few seconds Chip thought his grandfather had fallen asleep, but then Riley’s eyes blinked open and he stared at Chip.
“I’m not sure I ought to tell you the story — it happened a long time ago and it isn’t very pleasant. But it might help you to understand why Harn feels the way he does about strangers.”
“Go on,” Chip urged him.
“Well, it was a night very much like this one,” Riley began. There was a storm brewing, but when Harney — he was only seven or eight at the time — went to bed, it hadn’t really hit the coast yet. Then, late at night, it came in, blowing like crazy.
“Nobody ever found out exactly what happened that night, but during the storm there were terrible things done. It was the next morning that all hell broke loose. Harney woke up and the house was empty. He looked around for his grandparents but they weren’t there. So he started searching for them.” Riley closed his eyes, visualizing the scene as he talked. “He found them on the beach. Sod Beach, about halfway between where the houses are now. Neither of them was there back then — the beach was just a beach. Anyway, Ham went out there and at first he didn’t see them. But they were there: buried in the sand up to their necks, drowned. It was just like the old Klickashaw stories, but that time it wasn’t a story. It was Harn’s grandparents. I saw them myself a little
