Stranger Son

by Jim Nelson

  He dropped his pencil. Reaching down to the floor, his shirt sleeve hiked up. Ruby tugged it up.

  "What's this?"

  "A ball hit me in gym class." He rubbed the purple blotch. "We were playing baseball."

  She'd seen him that morning with no shirt on. The bruise was fresh.

  "Tell me what happened," she said. "Don't—" She glared a warning.

  Henry sat with a slouched back for an uncomfortable minute. He swallowed and started to speak a few times. Finally, he said, "There's a guy at school."

  Ruby stretched from her chair to hug him. "You have nothing to be ashamed of," she whispered in his ear.

  "Don't tell my father," he whispered.

  She retracted. "Why not?"

  His fallen expression was her answer. Something to do with masculinity.

  Ruby took the cordless phone from the charger. She found an old phone book in a kitchen floor cabinet with dusty blender manuals and the stove's one-year warranty. Internet service was spotty in the house. She found the number the old-fashioned way.

  "Dr. Forrester?" She carried the phone into the front room, far from Kyle's prying ears. "This is Cynthia. I care for Henry and Kyle? Uh-huh. I'm sorry for the hour. I want to talk to you about one of your students hitting my—Henry. Yes, I understand. Will you call me back? In twenty minutes? That would be fine."

  The front room was the closest to the highway. Unlike the reassuring highway noise in the Garden Acres Motel, she found the highway sounds here disquieting. Utter country silence would be interrupted by a burst of traffic that shook the windows of the creaky house. Eighteen-wheelers made a low moan as they passed on their way to Angels Camp. RVs made a distinct sound too, the shaky rattle of retirees heading for Yosemite or Gold Country. Motorcycle touring clubs had their own buzz, one that could be heard in the distance and shifted pitch as they receded away.

  The wolf packs were the most unnerving. Their trucks were stock vehicles, no different than the other passenger trucks on the highway—and everyone in Angels Camp seemed to own at least one truck—but Ruby grew so she could recognize the wolf packs when they screamed past the front of the house. Their purpose had its own noise.

  Henry had joined her in the room. He was pouting, ashamed.

  "Your principal is in the middle of dinner," she said. "Is it just this one boy that's hitting you? Or are there others?"

  "His friends gang up on me," Henry said. "They call me things. But they don't hit me."

  "Give me their names," she said.

  "This is just going to get me in more trouble," he said.

  "Not if I have any say." She thought for a moment. "Does this have anything to do with your father's accident?"

  He shook his head. She couldn't tell if it was a no or if he wanted to stop talking about it.

  The phone rang. After the perfunctory greetings, Ruby picked up the conversation where they had left off. The principal assured Ruby he would handle the matter personally. She was relieved of one thing in particular: Dr. Forrester didn't attempt to shift blame onto Henry.

  "I don't want to find another bruise on Henry again," she said into the phone. "If I do, I'll come down to that school and have a talk with these boys myself."

  "I would welcome that," Forrester said to her. "As long as everyone remains calm and civil—"

  "Oh, I'll be civil," she said. "I'll tell those boys that Henry's father was shot point-blank and lived. If they keep this up, the next person they meet will be Mr. Weymouth, and if you think I sound heated, wait until they meet goddamn Superman."

  He laughed and went serious again. "It won't come to that. I promise."

  She gave him her thanks and finished the call. "I think it's going to be okay," she told Henry. She massaged his shoulder. "I'm doing all that I can."

  The sound of a truck approached. Not any truck, though. She went to the window sill and drew aside the curtain. A silver Dodge four-by-four roared past. Men bearing rifles stood in the bed holding onto the cage while two grim-jawed men rode in the cab. The Jefferson state flag whipped from the rear of the bed like a ship's sail flapping madly into an oncoming storm. Ruby gave them plenty of time to pass before she retreated from the window.

  Forty-six

  Early one Sunday morning, Kyle suggested Ruby take Henry along to the supermarket. Ruby fabricated an excuse.

  "He has math homework due tomorrow." She said to Henry, "Why don't you finish it in here with your father. He'll appreciate the company."

  "Now?" he said. "Can't it wait until tonight?"

  "I should have her take you to church," Kyle said to him. "But I'd rather wait until I can go with you." He put a hand on his colostomy bag bulging through his undershirt. "Which hopefully will be soon." He touched his right leg. "Soon, I hope," he said softly.

  When she left them, Kyle was in bed reading a copy of Field & Stream while Henry sat in the side chair watching an action movie on an old-fashioned DVD player. Money was so tight, Kyle had cut the Internet service. Henry promised to start his homework in one hour. Ruby told Kyle she was holding him responsible to enforce it.

  Ruby drove the Jimmy into Angels Camp, sped past the supermarket, and went up the hills toward the eastern edge of town. She parked in the rear row of the church's parking lot. A trellised walkway covered in wisteria led to the church entrance. She reckoned she was fifteen minutes late. No one was outside. The sounds of a service in progress faintly emerged from the building.

  In the foyer, an older man in a banker's suit with a dark beard and oiled-back hair silently welcomed her. He handed her a piece of yellow paper folded in thirds with the words GOOD MORNING printed across the top. He mutely directed her through the double doors and into the worship area. She slid into a rear pew with a seat near the exit.

  A great backlit geometric wooden cross hung on the far rear wall. The cross looked two stories high. A choir stood on a ziggurat of steps below it. They wore milky-blue robes and bore open hymnals while singing. She expected musicians on the stage—a pianist, an organist—but was taken aback at the sight of a standing electric bass player, a section of brass horns, and a drummer seated behind a rock kit. They played reverently.

  Front and center on the raised stage—for that was how it appeared to Ruby, as a stage—stood a vacant podium with a microphone. Various people in dress clothes stood on the wings of the stage singing along with the choir. One of these men must be the pastor.

  After all, that was why she came here this morning, to see the pastor. She'd heard enough about Pastor Benton Hargrove to form her own opinions of him. She'd even drawn an image of him in her mind, thinking she knew what he must look like. This man had shot and permanently wounded Kyle Weymouth. She was no nurse, but she knew Kyle would be living with his wounds the rest of his life. He might forever live with a limp, like a soldier returned from war, and he might spend the rest of his life digging out his own feces from a plastic bag glued to the side of his belly. Ruby wanted to see the man who'd done this to him. She wanted to hear him speak, and as pastor of this church, he most certainly would be speaking today.

  While the choir and congregation sang, Ruby went through the program the greeter had given her. This was the second morning service. There had been a sunrise service at six in the morning and Sunday school from seven to nine. There would be an evening service as well. An adult Bible study group met in the afternoon. The church held weekly suppers on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and a Wednesday evening devotional was performed.

  Jesus, she thought. These people sure spend a lot of time at church.

  Once the hymn concluded, a fresh-faced young man with feathered frosted hair approached the podium to lead in prayer. "Please remain standing," he said into the microphone.

  This, Ruby surmised, was not the pastor either. The program indicated the young man was the youth pastor. Elsewhere on the paper, she saw there were two associate pastors and a minister of music. How many preachers does this place have? This corporation was top-heavy with man
agement.

  Bible verses were read, another hymn was sung, another prayer was issued, and business-like announcements were made. None of the speakers were Pastor Benton Hargrove. With the various ministers and pastors and deacons taking turns at the podium, Ruby concluded through a process of elimination Hargrove was the distinguished older gentleman seated on the left side of the stage. He did not look like a hunter. He did not look like the kind of man who would be adept with a gun, a crack shot as Kyle would say. Grandfatherly but not old, dignified without appearing stiff or detached, he would have been a Roman senator in a different age, or an Elizabethan actor in another.

  One of the associate pastors approached the podium to lead the congregation in a third prayer, as though this was a fringe benefit for all management, the gold key to the executive washroom. The congregation numbered nearly two hundred. She couldn't believe all these people lived in Angels Camp. Perhaps the church drew its flock from the surrounding townships as well.

  Before starting the prayer, the associate pastor announced the names of church members in need. Names and afflictions were read off from a sheet he produced from his suit jacket pocket. Infirm elderly, housebound obese, a father suffering from throat cancer, a daughter diagnosed with lupus. "Please keep all of these people in your prayers over the coming weeks," he said into the microphone.

  The associate pastor solicited from the congregation others who could benefit from prayer. Ruby watched as members of the flock stood one-by-one to announce some relative or friend suffering from earthly disease or spiritual emptiness. Prayers were requested for a teenage niece who'd strayed from the path—unwanted pregnancy, drugs, heavy metal music…the modern afflictions of bored adolescents. Bridge daughters had run off with the family's child. Bridge daughters had medically become Hagars living on the streets of Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and other cities with suspiciously foreign names.

  With each congregant who stood, Ruby expected to hear Kyle's name announced. She was disappointed each time. The names and afflictions from the sheet of paper were announced as though everyone in the room had heard this before. Your prayers have been heard and have been of great help to her. Ruby wondered if they'd prayed for Kyle once since the accident. Did they overlook him because he wasn't around town during hunting season? Was there more to the accident than Kyle was letting on?

  With the congregation's attention now directed inward at itself, with individuals standing to speak from the floor, Ruby felt the weight of the staring once again. Suspicious eyes from the left, disapproving frowns from the right. Still, she kept warm within her a hummingbird's egg of optimism one person would request prayer for Kyle and Henry Weymouth. The egg cracked and was revealed empty when the last name was announced and the associate pastor bowed his head for prayer. She stared up at the podium, mouth gently agape, as the man in the suit with eyes clenched shut prayed gravely for twelve names without once uttering Kyle's or Henry's.

  Prayer completed, the associate pastor retreated from the podium with some haste. The distinguished gentleman in a charcoal Brooks Brother suit and brilliant orange tie approached the microphone with Bible in hand. The program indicated the sermon was next. This, at last, was Pastor Benton Hargrove.

  She came to see this man up close. She had to try and understand why Kyle would hold the man in such esteem, even after his ineptness had nearly killed him. His death would have left Henry an orphan for a second time. She could not share Kyle's regard for him, not after what she'd just witnessed. Her legs forced her up from the pew and down the aisle for the exit. The bearded man who'd greeted her came forward with a questioning expression and an outreached hand. She thrust the crumpled yellow sheet of paper into it. She marched for the truck muttering to herself.

  Forty-seven

  Room by room, day by day, Ruby made the house her own. She stocked and reorganized the kitchen to her liking. She scrubbed and rinsed the bathrooms and, in a fit of mad energy, threw out all the old near-empty shampoo bottles and spent slivers of bar soap. The hallway linen closet had been rearranged by Alice, she suspected, so the short woman could reach the bed sheets and pillow cases without the aid of a step stool. Ruby stripped the linen closet bare, taking it down to the shelves, and arranged all the towels and sheets and pillow cases to her liking. Her mad energy was an adult expression of a bridge daughter raised to cook and clean and tend to the household chores. Ruby had not lived in a home she could call her own since she was thirteen years old.

  She cleaned but did not rearrange the front den. This was a domicile for Kyle's hunting photos and tooled-leather furniture and shooting match trophies. Once he was up and walking again, she wanted him to have a familiar place to relax. What did he use the room for, though? There was no television set. He did not seem the reading type, or the type of man to sip Scotch and smoke cigars while nursing his private thoughts. A place to polish his guns? A chair to crack open a beer and watch the setting sun out the window?

  The master bedroom she did not see as off-limits to her touch, however. She slept and rose there, and while she lived under his roof, she had every right to keep the room as she saw fit. As she'd noticed her first night in the bed, Kyle was a tidy man, but that only meant the room was cold and comprised of hard surfaces. She found stuffed in the back of the linen closet an old bathroom set of hot pinks and butter-yellow flowers, undoubtedly Lea's touch. Perhaps she'd grown tired of the color clash. Perhaps Kyle saw no need for the soft warmth after his wife's death. She was not resurrecting Lea. She was borrowing her tastes.

  After washing and drying the set, she placed a plush pink floor mat before each sink in the vanity. Out went the old assorted hand- and bath-towels to be replaced by matching flowery towels in all the holders and hooks. The sheets on the bed could stay, but she replaced the comforter with an old baby-blue one simply because she desired the change of pace. From one supermarket trip, she brought home two of the cheapest bouquets she could find in the PVC buckets beside the parking lot. One bouquet she placed beside Kyle's bed—ignoring his objections—and the other where she slept in the master bedroom. She let in light, lots of light, and every morning, she aired out the rooms.

  On hands and knees, she peered beneath the king-sized bed. Three locked cases waited there, each long enough to hold a rifle, perhaps two. A smaller gray square box, also locked, was with them. She held it to her ear and shook. Out came a metal rattling like tens of ball bearings. She blanched when she realized it might hold ammunition. As disconcerting and distasteful as she found the collection, she knew there was no removing the guns from the house. She certainly preferred them here than somewhere more accessible to Henry.

  One morning, after cleaning Kyle and seeing him drift off from his medicine, she went through the deep twin closets in the master bedroom. Her goal was to reorganize, to clean and remove clutter, and to make room for her own clothes. Her toiletries were arranged on the vanity, but she'd not found room for her clothes, and so she still lived half out of her old duffel bag and half out of the pile of folded clean clothes she stacked on the floor beside the bed.

  It wasn't until she discovered the photo albums that the extent of her transgression dawned on her. Unlike the other rooms, these closets were where Kyle stored his private life. Dollar-store photo albums and cowboy boot boxes held yellowing photographs of a much younger Kyle and a blond, green-eyed woman who could only be Lea. The later photos were of Kyle and Lea in the home with infant Henry. She could only imagine the hundreds of undeveloped photos she might find on Lea's old phones, which she also discovered stashed away in the closet: outdated technology, dead batteries.

  One photo in particular was heart-wrenching for Ruby. Every new mother takes this photo and shares it on the Internet, the photo of the father dead asleep on the couch with the infant curled up on his chest. The other photos she returned to the closet. This one she placed on the nightstand beside where she slept.

  In the closets, she also found legal papers, deeds, birth certificates, and Lea's
death notice. It was as she'd heard, a car crash causing massive internal bleeding. A brown lidded cardboard box held reams of paperwork and forms and notarized documents, all pertaining to Henry's adoption. Kyle had secured it from prying eyes simply by storing it at the bottom of a tower of other boxes and papers and old clothes. Had it been enough to deter a snooping Henry from learning about his true parentage? Perhaps. It took an hour to reach the cardboard box, and to reach it meant strewing the other boxes and old clothes across the bedroom floor. Henry would not be so bold.

  One closet was Kyle's and the other Lea's. In Kyle's, she found four pornographic magazines behind a pair of hunting boots. They were old, and their flimsy pages fell aside when she opened them. She shook her head in humored disapproval as she off-handedly thumbed through the color pages wondering which of these women Kyle was most attracted to.

  From the second magazine, four photographs spilled to the floor. They were recent photos of Kyle and a brunette embracing, each holding a bottle of beer. The light was bald white and unflattering. The woman had on too much make-up, Ruby thought. She was being too grabby with him. They were in an old-fashioned photo booth mugging for the camera. Some barstool girlfriend, she thought. A fling. The date burned into the corner of each photo indicated they were less than a year old. She hasn't come around here, she told herself. She probably doesn't mean anything to him anymore. She found herself repeating the same lines to herself as she put the material away. She was jealous, dammit.

  So far, she had inwardly reasoned her way through the closet reorganization. She was cleaning the house and making room for her things. This was her room now, and half-consciously, she was beginning to plan for an extended, perhaps permanent, stay.