“What happened to the girl when they were done with her?”
Jesse raises his hand and makes a quick slicing motion across his throat. The deadness in his eyes makes me shiver. “I told you they done some bad shit.”
“How did my dad feel about that?”
Jesse shrugs. “He blamed the government. Shit, that’s who put him in the middle of it. He didn’t ask for that. And what could he do about it? Way out in the bush…the whole operation off the books…CO had the only radio. So Luke did what he had to do and got the hell out.”
“What about the war crimes investigation? Who started that?”
“Some rat in their unit, probably. Somebody looking to get his name in the papers.”
This doesn’t sound right to me. “Reporting that kind of thing seems like a good way to get dead. It must have been someone with a conscience who first went public.”
Jesse shakes his head. “All I know is, when the government questioned Luke, he didn’t tell ’em shit. The government dropped the investigation, end of story.”
Jesse takes a drag from his cigarette, inhaling so deeply that he seems to draw sustenance from the smoke. As I watch him, it strikes me that his lean frame is not the result of good health. It’s almost as if the fat that a normal human would accumulate is being consumed by a deep-banked anger.
“Well, do you think-”
“What you come down here for?” Jesse growls with sudden intensity. “You didn’t come here to talk about no Vietnam.”
“Yes, I did.”
He barks another laugh. “Maybe you
I look away, hoping to hide the guilt I feel over what my grandfather told me today. Because that’s what I feel, I realize. Guilt. That’s why I’m asking these questions. If my father really did those things to me, something must have pushed him to it. And if it wasn’t the war, then what else could it have been but me? I’ve always craved attention, and I’ve always been very sexual-
“Hey,” says Jesse. “You look like you about to cry on me.”
I tilt back my head and blink away tears. “You’re right. I don’t know what I came here for exactly. I was hoping for…something. I don’t know what.”
“You looking for some kind of explanation for the way Luke was? Hoping I’d tell you he was a saint or something, behind that closed-up face of his? He was just a dude, like me. We all got good and bad deep down inside.” He points a long-nailed finger at me. “But I ain’t telling you nothing you don’t already know. I can look in your eyes and see that. You Luke Ferry’s kid, I know you got both inside of you.”
Now the tears come, too many to blink away. “Why did my daddy spend so much time down here, Jesse? What was it that drew him?”
Jesse scowls and looks off into the trees.
“Was he growing dope down here?”
“He tried, but he wasn’t no good at it.”
“Did he ever deal? Drugs, I mean?”
The scarred head turns slowly left and right. “Shit, I had to get Luke’s weed for him.”
“What am I missing, then? How much time did he actually spend down here?”
“A lot. Specially in the winter. Summertime, your family was down here a lot. In deer season, Dr. Kirkland and his buddies would visit. But all the other times, Luke stayed down here.”
“What the hell did he do, if he didn’t hunt or fish?”
Jesse looks back at me, but the anger I sensed before seems to have leaked out of his pores. “He walked around a lot. Drew things in a notebook. Played a little music. Had him a guitar down here. I taught him some bottleneck stuff.”
I faintly remember a guitar in my father’s barn studio, but I don’t remember him playing it. “Was he any good?”
“He was all right, for a white boy. He could bend a note. Had some blues in him.”
“Well, did he-”
The ring of a cell phone stops me, but it’s not mine. Jesse takes a Nokia from his pocket and answers. He listens for a bit, then says he’ll get right on it and hangs up.
“I got to go,” he says.
“Right now?”
“Yep. Gotta get some supplies from the mainland in case the water covers the bridge. S’posed to rain a couple of days straight, all along the river. We better get moving.”
“But I have some more questions.”
“We can talk on the way.” He walks over to his horse, unties him, and leads him over to where I’m standing. Hardass flicks his tail at a buzzing horsefly. “I’m gonna get on, then pull you up behind me. You just stay clear of his hindquarters.”
“I will.”
Jesse puts a foot into the stirrup and expertly mounts the horse. Then he takes his foot out of the stirrup so I can get a foothold. When I do, he takes my left arm and pulls me effortlessly up behind his saddle. “You can talk, but hang on while you do.” He puts the horse into a canter on the grassy shoulder of the gravel road. His broad shoulders are wet with sweat, and pink scar tissue dots the back of his neck.
“You work for my grandfather, right?” I ask.
“That’s right.”
“What do you think about him?”
“He’s a tough old man.”
“Do you like him?”
“Dr. Kirkland pays my wages. ‘Like’ got nothing to do with it.”
I have a feeling the relationship between Jesse Billups and my grandfather isn’t simple at all. “What are you not telling me, Jesse?”
I can almost feel him smile. “Dr. Kirkland beat me once when I was a boy. Beat me bad. But I’d have done the same thing in his place, so we’re square enough on that, I guess.”
I want to ask more about this, but before I can, I see a woman riding toward us on a bicycle. The gravel road makes her work difficult. She looks as if she might skid and fall at any moment.
“Mother
“Who’s that?”
“Don’t pay her no mind. She half-crazy.”
The woman slows as she nears us, but Jesse spurs his horse as though he means to pass her without a word.
“Wait!” cries the woman.
“Stop,” I tell Jesse.
He doesn’t.
I reach around Jesse and grab for the reins. “Stop this horse!”
He curses, then stops the horse on a dime. “You gonna wish we hadn’t.”
As agitated as the woman below me looks, I expect her to start shouting accusations of battery or paternity at Jesse Billups. But now that the horse has stopped, she acts as if Jesse doesn’t exist. She has eyes only for me.
“Are you Catherine Ferry?” she asks.
“That’s right.”
“I’m Louise Butler. I want to talk to you.”
“What about?”
“Your daddy.”
“Did you know him?”
