“Sonny Racine,” the man said. “Your father, to one way of thinking.”
10
Wyatt had no idea what to say. He stood in the shelter of the tree, halfway down the block from Aunt Hildy’s house, the cell phone pressed to his ear.
“But that’s not my way of thinking,” came the voice from the other end, a fairly deep, pleasant-sounding voice. “Father’s got to mean a lot more than getting a girl pregnant.” Silence. “Agree or disagree?”
Wyatt stood there, phone pressed to his ear. The wind curled around the tree, rippled the hems of his pants.
“Hear me all right?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t mean to ask questions I’ve got no right to. Got no rights at all, where you’re concerned. No illusions on that score.” A long pause. “The right to ask questions is all yours.”
Wyatt didn’t speak.
“Or not, up to you. I can just hang up, that’s your preference.”
Wyatt cleared his throat, suddenly thick feeling. “Where are you?”
“Right now? The pay phone in B pod, why?”
“In prison?”
“That’s right. Sweetwater-thought you knew.”
“I wasn’t sure. How-” Wyatt stopped himself. How had his fa-this man, better stick to that-how had this man found him, gotten his number? Not hard to connect the dots. Dot one, Greer. Dot two, Bert Torrance, doing five years for arson behind the same walls. So obvious, and so infuriating, like he was being manipulated.
“You were about to say something?”
“No,” Wyatt said.
“It, uh, it’s good to hear your voice.”
Wyatt remained silent.
“And it’s, uh, good to know you’re in the neighborhood. No mystery there-Bert Torrance is what you might call a casual acquaintance of mine in here, as you probably figured out already, sounding like a smart young man the way you do.”
“Yeah,” Wyatt said. Did that give the idea he considered himself smart? “About the Bert Torrance part,” he added.
His-the man laughed. He had a soft little laugh that sounded like it came more from the front of his mouth than from the throat, chest, or belly. “Smarter than the old man, that’s for sure.”
Wyatt didn’t like that, not at all. “You’re not my old man,” he said.
“Sorry I-”
“And all that about getting a girl pregnant-were you talking about my mother?”
“My apologies. So sorry. So sorry twice. Meant the smart thing as a compliment, nothing more. I see my mistake now. As for your mother, long time out of touch with her, but I had the greatest respect, way back when. And thanks for standing up for her. Lesson learned. I can tell she raised a fine young man, not easy for a single mom. Or even if she’s not single-been no communication since…since the events.”
Wyatt was silent, sharing no details of his mom’s life. Then it hit him that this man might already know-he’d told Greer about Rusty, Cammy, lots of other details. Had Greer passed on all that, too, to her father? Prisons had high walls to keep bad people separate from good, but now Wyatt realized voices went back and forth, no problem, as though the walls were sieves.
“But you don’t have to accept apologies in this life. May even be the wrong thing to do sometimes.”
“Like when?” Wyatt said.
Then came that soft little laugh again. “I-” The man stopped himself. Wyatt heard voices in the background, maybe speaking Spanish. “Good question. I’ll have to get back to you on that. Unless you don’t want me to call, of course. Up to you.”
Wyatt said nothing.
“Got to go. Nice talking to you.”
More Spanish, louder now.
Click.
Wyatt stood behind the tree, wind blowing, the moon now hidden. He was wearing jeans, sweatshirt, sneakers, should have felt cold but was sweating instead. He tried to sort things out, tried to think, didn’t really know where to start. What he really wanted to do was call his mom, tell her what had happened. He overcame that impulse, a weak, unmanly one, kind of pitiful. His mom had her own problems. He tried Greer’s number again, again got put straight into voice mail. This time he left a message.
“Give me a call. No matter what time it is.” He thought about the impact that might have and toned it down some. “No emergency or anything. Just call.”
But she didn’t, not that night. Wyatt tossed and turned for hours, finally fell into a sleep full of unpleasant dreams, all forgotten in the morning.
Greer called at lunch period the next day. Wyatt and Dub had different lunch periods. Wyatt was sitting in the cafeteria with some kids from his last class, English, who were talking about Hamlet, which they’d just started and which he didn’t understand at all.
“Hamlet’s a wimp,” one kid said. “No guts.”
“What?” said another. “Just because some ghost appears and says this and that, he’s supposed to start killing people?”
“You’re missing the point,” said a girl named Anna who sat next to him in class, a blond, apple-cheeked girl whom up to very recently he would have considered beautiful. “It’s not even a real ghost.”
“Huh?” said the first kid.
“The ghost just represents thoughts in Hamlet’s head,” Anna said. “He’s actually very brave, because he’s the only one in the whole play who’s concerned with acting morally.”
“You’re not making sense,” said the second kid, and he tossed a Frito in the air and caught it in his mouth.
Anna shook her head. “It’s hopeless.” She turned to Wyatt. “What do you think?”
That was when his phone rang. He checked the number, excused himself, moved toward the window, clicked on.
“Yeah.”
“You’re pissed,” Greer said.
“Huh?”
“Pissed off at me, annoyed, angry, furious, fit to be tied. I could hear it in the message. Can hear it right now.”
“Why would I be pissed off?” He glanced around, saw Anna unwrapping a stick of gum, watching him at the same time. He moved farther away.
“We’re going to play that game?” Greer said. “All right-you’re pissed off, annoyed, angry, furious, fit to be tied, because on my weekly visit to the old man I mentioned you.”
“You did a little more than that.”
A long pause. Behind him, Wyatt heard Anna say something about ghosts and Hamlet’s father. Then Greer spoke. “Guilty,” she said. “Guilty as charged. But my father knows me-he could tell I was excited about something from the look on my face.”
“Excited about what?”
“You, you block-you. The rest just came out, an amazing coincidence, no? I couldn’t help myself. My mistake, I see that now-those goddamn inmates gossip all the time, worse than a sewing circle.” Another pause. “You’re so mad.”
