Probably Davey and Bethica, the adopted son and the niece. If Rita Marie Hoffman was raising two kids, one retarded, as a single woman in the middle 1970s, it said a lot for her courage and determination. He might ask Al just how common that used to be.
Or maybe not. Some genius had made up a rule that he wasn’t supposed to know too much about things in the past, for fear that he might change them. He supposed it made sense from one point of view—Heisenberg’s—but evidently it had never occurred to the genius in question that the situation might have changed, that the whole point of the exercise was to make a change in the past. And it
had also never dawned on him that the process of Leaping might make the most inconvenient and erratic holes in the Leaper’s memory, so much so that he couldn’t always remember from Leap to Leap very much about his own history.
But no, there was a rule, and the overseers of the Project refused to allow Al to provide too much background. He wished he didn’t have the unsettling feeling that the genius rulemaker in question was himself. Al had said something to that effect, once or twice.
If he could get to a university with a halfway decent medical library, he could always do a search and try to find out. He’d check and see if Davey’s physical characteristics were consistent with something besides simple retardation, too. He was certain they were; they nagged at him the way something blindingly obvious would. It didn’t seem likely he’d have the chance to go look it up, though.
In fact, there was some question about whether he was going to get out of this room, judging from the expression on Rimae’s face. There was no sign that the attempted seduction of the night before had ever happened.
“Just what was that all about?” she demanded. “And what are you doing over here at this hour, doing Davey’s work for him? I’ve told you a hundred times I don’t want you covering up for him. How’s he going to learn to do work for himself if you keep covering up for him?”
Sam glanced again at the boy. The kid didn’t look the least bit interested in the work or in anything else. It sounded like Wickie covered up for Davey quite a bit. That told him something about Wickie, anyway. He was glad to know the person he’d Leaped into had wider interests than he’d seemed to the night before.
Davey showed a mild flicker of attention at the sound of his name. Bethica soothed him automatically, with the skill of long practice.
“I thought, well, we could get a head start on things,” he mumbled. “You know, get everything ready.”
“And what’s Kevin doing here? I didn’t think he’d even be conscious at this hour, much less beating my door down.”
Uh-oh. Time to face the music. Sam filed away yet another new name and drew a deep breath. “He’s mad because I took the keg back last night,” he said. “I gave him his money back.”
“You did what?” Rimae’s arms dropped. “Say that again?”
“I took the keg up there last night and found out they were all underage kids. So I took it back. I gave him his money back, but he’s . . . upset.” Sam could have used other words to describe Kevin’s state of mind, but the memory of his mother standing over him with a bar of pine tar soap, and the taste of that soap, remained sharp and clear in his memory. One did not use language like that in front of ladies or children.
Absent evidence to the contrary, every female was a lady. Thelma Beckett was quite clear on this point. Young Sam had learned fast. As he’d gotten older, he’d absorbed the lesson into his bones.
“He’d paid for it. He was of age. It’s none of our business what happens to it after we sell it. What’s wrong with you?”
Sam took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He could always argue about it, but it wouldn’t do any good.
“I didn’t think it was right,” he said.
Rimae stared at him as if she thought her bartender had been suddenly possessed by some benign demon. Her anger was lost in pure bafflement.
“Well, next time do a little less thinking and a little more business, okay?” She shook her head. “I swear I don’t know what’s gotten into you the last couple of months.
“Where’s the keg? Still out in the truck? Go get it and bring it in here. No point in leaving it out there.”
Sam heaved a sigh of relief and nodded, headed for the back entrance to the bar. He passed Davey and looked him in the eyes, still searching for some sign of life, of intelligence.
The brown eyes looking back at him were blank, and Sam shivered inside.
He didn’t realize he’d been followed until he was outside, trying to pull the door closed. The knob was pulled from his hand as Bethica stepped out.
“Wickie, I wanted to warn you . . .” she began.
But by that time he had seen the new bright red pickup parked next to the Polar Bar’s beaten-up old truck, and the two boys struggling with the quarter-keg, trying to get it over the tailgate.
“Hey!” he yelled.
One of the boys looked up, cursed, and ran like a rabbit, leaving Kevin standing in the back end of Wickie’s truck looking furious again. Or, perhaps, still.
“What the hell do you want?” Kevin challenged.
Sam stared in disbelief. “Well, for starters, you can put that thing down and get out of that truck.”
“This is my property!”
“He’s really mad,”
