“Are you going to be long?”
“Can you last fifteen minutes or so?”
“Just try to be quick.”
I ran down half a block to Lana’s, caught her eye as I walked in, and took a table in the back corner. There was no sign yet of May Wickens.
Lana strolled over. “Where’s your father?”
“I ditched him,” I said, giving her my just-kidding smile. “Listen, could I trouble you for a couple of coffees? I’m supposed to be meeting someone.”
“Comin’ up.”
The door opened and May Wickens came in, head down, jacket collar up, acting like she thought she could make herself invisible. I raised my hand and she slid into the booth opposite me. The seat backs were high, and she slid over to the far side, slunk down so she was barely visible from the window.
“Where’s Jeffrey?” I said.
“My father would kill me, but I gave Jeffrey a bunch of quarters to go to the video arcade at the corner. He’s always begging to go and I’m always saying no. He thinks I’m at the drugstore.”
Lana Gantry showed up with two mugs of coffee. She smiled at the two of us, but no small talk. Her eyes did a little dance as she wondered what I was up to, having a coffee with a young woman. She’d know, of course, that I was married.
“Thanks,” said May. She wrapped her hands around the mug, as though taking strength from its warmth.
“You seem,” I said, trying to find my way, “frightened.”
May tried to take a sip of coffee, but it was still too hot for her. “You don’t have any idea,” she said. “He’s, he’s poisoning my son.”
“What?”
She shook her head. “Not, I mean, I don’t mean that he’s actually poisoning him. It’s with his ideas. He tells me what to teach him.”
“We’re talking about Timmy, your father,” I said, just to be sure.
May nodded. “He decides what Jeffrey will be taught. Not just math and spelling and geography, but history, and, like, social studies, he calls it. Like how homosexuals are trying to lure our children to their side, how the Jews are running everything, how all this talk about the Holocaust is greatly exaggerated, how the Negro is an inferior race, how he has a greater sex drive”—at this she blushed a bit—“and how Negroes, black people, are not as advanced as the white race. I mean, I’ve met Negroes, and I don’t know about their sex drives, but, Mr. Walker, do you believe that sort of stuff?”
She asked it innocently, like she was asking whether I thought it might rain tomorrow.
“No,” I said. “I don’t.”
“Well, I don’t either. I listened to my father say these things for years, and then I was gone away for a while, I was out on my own, and I learned that so many of the things my father had taught me, they just didn’t seem true. I hate to say this, but I think my father may be something of a, well, a racist.”
“I guess that’s something you’d have to consider,” I said.
“Anyway, I’ve kind of had a lot of sadness in my life, going way back. I got pregnant eleven years ago, with Jeffrey, of course.”
“He seems like a wonderful boy.”
“Thank you. I was on my own then, I’d met this man, it was just a short-term thing, he wasn’t the right man, you know? But I had the baby, on my own, and Daddy was very upset, he wanted me to come home and live with him. This was a few years after my mom died, and a few before he met Charlene. But I didn’t want to go back and live with him, listen to all that hate that’s bottled up in him.”
“I can understand that.”
“But he can be very forceful, you know? But I tried to make a go of it for a very long time, and it was hard, raising a small boy, getting jobs. And I’d no sooner get a job, it seemed, and then I’d lose it. About three years ago, I met this man named Gary. Gary Wolverton. A really wonderful man, and, we, you know, we became close. The thing is, he wanted to be a writer, a newspaper reporter? Like you? He cared about the way the world was, and wanted to write about things that were wrong and what could be done about it. Well, like I said, we were close, and he seemed to really like Jeffrey, which was terrific, because I so wanted a father for him. But Daddy, it was like he thought he should be Jeffrey’s father figure. I mean, he’s his grandfather, and that’s great, but he wanted to be the main influence. Am I making any sense?”
“Sure,” I said.
“So, Daddy made it very difficult when Gary and I decided to get married. Daddy figured I’d never come back home then.”
“Well, of course not,” I said. “You’re entitled to make a life of your own.”
May Wickens paused, took another sip of coffee. “Anyway, something happened. There was this accident? Gary was crossing the street, this was a couple blocks from where I lived in the city, we weren’t actually living together yet, but he was coming to see me, and he’d stopped to get some wine, and that was when the car hit him.”
“Oh my God,” I said.
“It was one of the crazy things. A hit-and-run. He died instantly.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Did they arrest anyone?”
May shook her head. “No, they never did. They figured it was some drunk driver.” She paused at the memory. “I took it bad, but so did Jeffrey, he really loved Gary. I tried to make a go of it, alone, and my father was really pressuring me then to come back and live with them, by this time he’d hooked up with Charlene and her boys, Dougie and Wendell. My stepbrothers, I guess, sort of. Anyway, he wanted me to move in with this new family of his, this was before we moved to your dad’s farmhouse. And I really didn’t want to, but I kept losing jobs. Things would be going great, and then they’d call me in and tell me I was fired.”
“This happened a lot?”
“Like, three times in one year. I’d get accused of stealing, or they’d just fire me and wouldn’t give any reason. I have, like, the worst luck.”
“That’s really tough.”
“So I had no money, and I couldn’t make my rent, and Daddy kept telling me to come home, and finally, I really didn’t have any other choice. I don’t know, he finally wore me down. Jeffrey was nearly eight, I had to pull him out of school, and we moved in with Daddy, and he wouldn’t even let me send him to a new school. He said we could look after that ourselves, that the schools were run by these secret societies and everything that wanted to brainwash children. And I realized, having been away for so long, how much I’d forgotten about what my father was like, the things he believes, the things he thinks need to be done.”
She tried her coffee again. It had cooled down enough for her to take a sip.
“What sort of things does he think need to be done?” I asked. Even though it was warm enough in the café, I felt a brief chill at the memory of the McVeigh portrait hanging on Timmy Wickens’s wall.
“Daddy wants a revolution. All these forces of darkness, he calls them, have to be stopped. Ordinary people have to rise up and stop the corruption of our society.”
“What does that mean?”
“He doesn’t, he doesn’t talk to me as much about it. He talks to Dougie and Wendell, his little soldiers. They’re on this mission. They hang on his every word.” She looked down at the table. “And Jeffrey’s starting to, too. I see how he looks up to them.”
She linked her fingers together, entwining them so hard I thought they might snap.
“What about Morton?” I asked. “Was he on this mission, too?”
“I met Morton in the city about the time I decided to move back in with Daddy. He waited tables at this coffee place I would go to, and he’d been bouncing from job to job, he was kind of a lost puppy, you know what I mean?”
I nodded.
“There was something about him, I don’t know. He was looking for something in his life, anything, to care about, to believe in, to belong to, and I wanted to be that for him, but it was hard, when I hardly had any money, and a little boy to raise. But when I moved back, and Morton came to visit, I think he found some of those thing
s he’d been looking for. We were like a community for him, I think. He really got to know my father, listened to what he had to say, and I think he was kind of going along with it. About how all these special interest groups were hijacking the country, you know, about the fags and the niggers and the liberal elite and the Jews and the Muslims. But lately, it’s like Morton was getting uncomfortable with it. I tried to get him to talk to me, but he was all wrapped up with himself, like he was struggling with something, like he was ashamed, or had this awful secret.”
“What kind of secret?” I asked.
May shrugged. “I don’t know. But I think he wanted my father to like him, because he loved me, and he liked Jeffrey, too. Jeffrey was warming to him, too, I could tell. Morton used to just visit every few weeks, but the last couple of months, he stayed with us, said he was going to find work up here, but Daddy said to him, don’t worry, he could work around the place, do some things for him. And now…”
“What do you think happened to Morton?” I asked.
May blinked. “What do you mean?”
“The whole bear thing.”
She wrapped her hands around the mug again, leaned in. “What are you saying?”
“I don’t know,” I said, backtracking, wondering whether to go there. “I mean, are you satisfied with the coroner’s finding, that he was killed by a bear?”
She swallowed. “I’m not sure.”
“Why?”
“Because, I don’t know, because everyone’s trying so hard to make me believe it was a bear. Dad and Charlene’s boys, after this all happened, and they found Morton, they say Morton was talking about getting this bear, that he didn’t want it going after Jeffrey, that he was going to kill it.”
“Did that seem odd to you?”
She looked down into her cup. “Morton never once mentioned any bear to me. I’ve never seen one, I don’t think anyone has ever seen one. If they have, they never talked about it until that day that they found Morton. I mean, I know there must be bears up here, but there are wolves and deer and everything else, too, but how often do you actually see them?”
“Anything else?” Lana said, appearing out of nowhere. “There’s still a piece of that coconut cream pie left if you want it. I wouldn’t breathe a word about you having two pieces in one day.”
“No, thanks, that’s everything, Lana.”
She tore a check off a pad and slapped it on the table.
“Why are you telling me all this?” I asked.
May’s eyes moistened. “For my son,” she said. “Would you want to see a boy raised this way, on a daily diet of racism and hate?”
“Why don’t you leave?” I asked. “Just get in your car with Jeffrey and keep on driving.”
May swallowed. “Because he’d find us. He and Charlene, and those boys of hers. They’d find us. And they’d make us come back. Daddy said to me once, he said, ‘Don’t you go thinking about leaving, May,’ he said, ‘unless you’re happy to leave Jeffrey behind.’ ”
I realized that my heart was pounding. “He threatened to hold your son.”
May bit her lip. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I guess, I took a chance telling you because you might have some idea.”
I had no idea whatsoever. The best idea I could come up with was to run back to the city as quickly as I could. To leave all these problems behind. Dad got himself into this mess, renting that house to the Wickenses, and he could just find a way out of it.
But looking into May Wickens’s face, I knew I couldn’t succumb to my first instinct to cut and run.
“Let me think about this,” I said, tossing a couple of bills onto the table. “Right now, I have to get Dad back—”
“Oh my God,” May said. “What time is it?”
I glanced at my watch. I told her it was nearly noon.
“I have to go,” she said, her voice laced with panic. She shifted out to the edge of the seat, and as she did her sleeve caught on a chip in the tabletop. There was a red welt on her arm, a couple of inches above her wrist.
“Did you hurt yourself?” I asked.
She quickly pulled down her sleeve. “It’s nothing,” she said. She got out of the booth and headed for the door, with me right behind. “He’ll start looking for us if we’re gone too long,” she said. “I’ve got to get Jeffrey and—”
Timmy Wickens was standing outside the café door, looking inside at us, and he was clutching the hand of young Jeffrey, who stood obediently at his side.
15
“HEY, MR. WICKENS,” I said. “Timmy.” I extended a hand. “Good to see you. Thanks again for dinner last night.”
Timmy Wickens wasn’t buying it. His face seemed made of stone. He wasn’t even interested in talking to me, at least not yet. He had his eyes on May.
“You know where I found this boy of yours?” he said.
“I ran into Mr. Walker,” she said.
“Do you know where he was?”
“I had to go to the drugstore,” May said. “I had,” and she lowered her voice to a whisper, “some personal, feminine things to buy.”
“Where are they?” Timmy Wickens asked. “I don’t see a bag. Where’s the stuff you bought?”
“Do I have to empty my purse?” she said, trying to be indignant. “You want to haul out my box of tampons right here on the main street?”
He recoiled a bit at that, but he was ready to go in a different direction. He yanked on Jeffrey’s arm for dramatic effect. “I found him playing video games,” Timmy said, tightening his grip on the boy. I tried to catch the boy’s eye, but he was looking at the sidewalk.
“I gave him a few quarters,” May explained. “So I could run my errand. I didn’t think it would do any harm.”
“You know I won’t have him hanging around places like that. And this don’t exactly look like the drugstore to me,” he said, casting his eye across the front of Lana’s.
“I just ran in to get a coffee,” she said. “To go. To drink on the way home. And I saw Mr. Walker here.”
“That’s right, Timmy,” I said. “May was just—”
Timmy turned on me. “Am I talking to you right now?”
I took half a step back. “Hey, listen, back off—”
“Because I’m pretty sure I’m talking to her. When I’m talking to you, you’ll know it.”
Up the street, a horn honked. I could see Dad leaning over in the front of his truck, hitting the steering wheel.
“Daddy, stop being so rude to Mr. Walker. He just offered to buy me a coffee as a way of saying thank you for our having him and his father to dinner last night.”
“You been in there a long time being thanked,” Timmy said. “I been up and down this street twice looking for you. When you weren’t back soon, I went looking, and can you imagine what I thought when I saw my grandson standing in the doorway of a video game parlor? Can you?”
“I was just play—”
“Shut up, Jeffrey,” his grandfather said. “Don’t interrupt me when I’m talking to your mother.”
“Honest to God, Dad,” May whispered. “We’re in public. Let’s just forget about this and go home.”
She grabbed Jeffrey’s hand out of her father’s and started down the sidewalk. She’d gone about five steps when she stopped and turned to say, “Thank you, Mr. Walker, for your kindness.”
I started to go, too, but Timmy Wickens suddenly had hold of my upper arm. His hand felt like a vise.
“Let go of me,” I said. I was full of rage, but a good part of me was rapidly turning to jelly.
With his free hand, Timmy made a fist with his index finger sticking out. “You want to talk to my daughter, you go through me.”
“Why should I do that?” I asked. I don’t know what part of my brain, exactly, made me say such a thing, when I was just as inclined to say “Okey dokey.”
“Excuse me?” Timmy said.
“She’s a grown woman. She’s got a son. Why should it be up to you who she talks t
o and who she doesn’t? If she doesn’t want to talk to me, she doesn’t have to.”
Timmy’s hand squeezed harder on my bicep. It hurt. He leaned in close to me, and his breath was hot and foul. His teeth were brown at the gum line, and for a moment, he reminded me of Gristle. Or maybe Bone. Or some creature that hides in the forest at night, waiting for you to walk past.
“I look out for her,” he said. “I take care of her, and I take care of her boy. And that gives me the right, way I see it.”
“Sure,” I said, deciding it might be wise to back down not for my own protection, but to mitigate whatever punishment Timmy might decide to mete out to his daughter once they all got back home. “Whatever you say.”
Timmy’s grip on my arm relaxed and he nodded slowly. “Good. Now, in the future, I think it would be best if you didn’t talk to my daughter or my grandson. That way, I think we can continue to remain good neighbors with your pa. Because I figure you’ll be going back home pretty soon, wouldn’t you say?”
“Soon as Dad’s ankle gets better, I guess I will.”
Timmy nodded agreeably. “That’s great. I bet they miss you back home. You got a wife, right, and kids?”
My mouth was getting very dry. “Yes,” I said.
“I’ll bet they want to see you just as much as you want to see them. Hey, you know what might be fun? Maybe sometime, I’ll drop by and have a coffee with them when you’re not around. Works both ways, you know.”
He let go of my arm, but not without tossing me up against the window of the café at the same time. “Oh, sorry,” he said. “Sometimes I don’t know my own strength.” And with that he walked off in the same direction that his daughter had gone.
Lana stepped outside. “What the hell was that all about?”
“Nothing,” I said, and headed back to Dad’s truck.
I was shaken. My legs felt wobbly, my heart was pounding, things seemed to be spinning around me. I paused by the phone booth, put my hand up against the glass, but it felt papery under my hand. It was another flyer for the fall fair, taped to the glass. And below it, another one of those flyers, plastered on with duct tape, that said “Keep Our Parade Straight.”