The Road Home

by Michael Thomas Ford

  Burke laughed. “How did you get from there to Vermont?”

  “Mostly by accident,” Sam replied. “I went to college in Ohio and taught third grade for a couple of years. Then I realized that teaching eight-year-olds how to add and subtract wasn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, so I went back to college, got my degree in library science, and answered an ad for this position. I’ve been here for almost fifteen years.”

  “That’s a long time,” Burke remarked. “Don’t you find it a little boring?”

  “No more and no less than anywhere else,” said Sam. “Every place has its interesting aspects. Sometimes you just have to look harder to find them.”

  “True,” Burke agreed. “But what about culture? What about friends?”

  “You might be surprised at how much of both are available here,” said Sam.

  Burke shook his head. “I’d go nuts up here,” he said. “It was bad enough when I was a kid.”

  “You seem to have at least one friend here,” Sam remarked.

  Burke thought for a moment, trying to figure out to whom Sam was referring. “Will?” he said. “He’s not exactly a friend. Like I said, I know his father.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sam said. “The two of you seem to . . .” He stopped speaking. “Tanya’s place is right up here,” he continued. “Just past the church.”

  Burke wanted to ask him what he and Will seemed. Had Sam picked up on something? He wondered if Sam had seen the same thing in Will’s gesture that Burke had seen. Do we look like lovers? he wondered, not without some sense of satisfaction. Is that what Sam meant?

  Sam turned the car onto a rutted dirt road, ignoring a NO TRESPASSING sign written in faded red paint on a piece of rotting plywood nailed to a tree. He said nothing else, and despite very badly wanting to, Burke didn’t ask him to elaborate on his earlier statement.

  A minute later the trailer came into view, a rectangle of metal sitting on cinder blocks. As the Subaru approached, two large brown dogs of dubious ancestry scurried out from under the trailer and ran toward them, barking madly. They were followed by a skinny boy wearing nothing but a pair of cutoff shorts, who came running from around the side of the trailer and called after the dogs.

  “Smith! Wesson! Get back here!” he shouted in a high-pitched voice. “Mom! Smith and Wesson are raising hell!”

  The trailer door flew open, and a woman stepped out. She was skinnier than the boy, and her long hair was bleached an unnatural lemon color. She, too, wore shorts, although she also sported a toosmall T-shirt with a Mötley Crüe logo on it. She said nothing, standing with a cigarette held inches from her mouth as she watched the dogs gallop toward the car, which had come to a stop. Each dog took up position on one side of the car, peering into the window and barking loudly.

  “They seem friendly,” said Burke doubtfully, staring at either Smith or Wesson, he didn’t know which, joyfully covering the window with slobber.

  “‘Let dogs delight to bark and bite, for God hath made them so,’” Sam replied. “Isaac Watts,” he added as he unlocked the doors. “He wrote ‘Joy to the World.’ Interesting guy.”

  “Smith. Wesson. Get back here.” The woman’s voice was loud, but not frantic. The dogs, hearing it, turned and trotted back to her. They sat at the foot of the three makeshift stairs leading up to the trailer’s front door, as if they were guarding the entrance to Buckingham Palace.

  Sam got out and waved to the woman. “Afternoon, Tanya,” he said. “Freddie,” he added, waving to the boy. “I brought someone who wants to meet you.”

  CHAPTER 17

  “Here you go,” Tanya said as as she handed Burke a glass. The Burger King logo was on one side, and a picture of a Transformer on the other. Burke looked at the drink, which was bright red in color. He took a hesitant sip and discovered that it was fruit punch.

  He looked over at Sam, who had taken a drink and set his glass down on a coffee table covered in issues of Field & Stream and NASCAR Scene magazines. Sam didn’t seem at all bothered by being served Kool-Aid in a fast-food restaurant glass. Burke, recalling his earlier assumptions about Tanya’s life, felt a little guilty about judging her hostessing skills.

  The inside of Tanya’s trailer was not quite what he had expected. It was most definitely small, and the furniture was outdated and badly used, but it was also clean and homey in an odd kind of way. A crocheted afghan covered the back of the sofa, and a collection of ceramic chickens congregated beneath a table lamp made out of a much larger ceramic rooster.

  On one wall pictures of Freddie provided a kind of timeline of his growth from infancy to the present. There were also pictures of Tanya in a wedding dress, standing beside a man, who Burke assumed was her husband. The man was large in all directions and sported an impressive beard and sideburns. He smiled uneasily, as if unused to exercising those particular facial muscles, and wore the bemused expression of one who very much hoped his suffering would soon be over.

  “I hope we’re not interrupting anything,” Sam told Tanya.

  The woman shook her head. “I was just doing my homework,” she said. “I’m getting my degree in medical billing. You know, from that place they advertise on the TV. You do it all on the computer. Carl wasn’t crazy about the idea, but I told him he could play video games on the computer if we got one, and that did the trick. Problem is, I have to do all my schoolwork when he ain’t home.”

  “We won’t keep you long, then,” Sam said politely. “I appreciate you making time for us.”

  Tanya smiled. She’s not used to people treating her kindly, Burke thought.

  “You remember that box of papers and photographs you brought me a while back?” Sam continued.

  Tanya nodded. “Sure,” she said. “Carl wanted to throw all that out, but I told him it might be important.”

  “It very well could be,” said Sam.

  Tanya’s face lit up. “You think maybe we can make some money from it? I’ll tell you, Mama didn’t leave much, and what with her not payin’ taxes for a bunch of years, we had to sell the house to cover that. It sure would make Carl happy if I could tell him we might be seeing something from it all.”

  “I can’t promise anything,” Sam told her. “But I’ll see what I can do. Might be there’s a library or museum that will be interested.”

  Burke didn’t know if this was true or not, but he suspected that at some point not too far off Sam would be returning to the Redmond house with a check.

  “This is one of the pictures that was in that box,” Sam said, showing Tanya the photograph they had been discussing at the library. “The soldier’s name is William Holburne. Does that name mean anything to you?”

  Tanya shook her head. “Nope,” she said. Then she took the picture from Sam and stared at it for a minute. “You know, there is something kinda familiar about that face. Hold on a minute. Let me get something.”

  She got up from the sofa and disappeared into another room, where Burke heard her moving things around. She did this for several minutes, during which time she twice goddamned an unseen cat for getting in her way and once referred to “that dumb shit Carl” while apparently speaking to herself. Then she emerged from the room, carrying a battered photo album.

  “This is one of the only things I kept from Mom’s house,” she said as she set the album on the coffee table. “You know, besides the Precious Moments.” She opened the album to the first page. “When she got sick and couldn’t get around much, Mom got all into researching the family history. She tried to talk to me about it, but to me it’s just a bunch of old people I never met. But some of the pictures were interesting. I don’t even know where she got most of them. She wrote to relatives all over the place, asking for what they had. I guess that’s where they came from.”

  She removed a piece of lined notebook paper and handed it to Sam, who unfolded it and smoothed it out. “It’s a family tree,” he said, looking at the scrawled names with lines running between them.

 
“That’s right,” Tanya said. “Mom was trying to work back as far as she could.” She had reached the back of the album. “Here’s what I wanted to show you,” she said.

  The photograph was very old, and at some point it had been torn in two horizontally and taped back together. It depicted a beautiful woman standing beside a small, wiry man wearing a dark suit.

  “Look there,” said Tanya, pointing to the man. “His face. Don’t it look like the soldier in the other picture?” She took the photo of William Holburne and placed it beside the one in the album.

  “It does,” said Sam. “It looks very much like him.”

  Burke nodded. “It’s got to be the same guy.”

  “Who is this?” Sam asked Tanya.

  Tanya removed the picture from the album and turned it over. “Mom wrote on the back of some of these,” she said. She pointed to a note at the bottom of the page. “Peter Woode and Tess Hague,” she said. She frowned. “I guess it ain’t the same guy, after all. They sure do look alike, though.”

  “Tess Hague?” said Burke. “As in Amos Hague?”

  Sam nodded. “That’s what I was wondering myself,” he said.

  Tanya was looking at the sheet of paper on which her mother had written her genealogical notes. “Here,” she said. “Peter Woode and Tess Hague. They were married in 1884. That means they’re my . . .” She began counting silently, moving her lips and touching her thumb to each of her fingers in turn.

  “Great-great-great-great-grandparents,” Sam said, helping her out. “At least if this chart is right.”

  He followed the lines that Tanya’s mother had drawn, reading the names. “Tess and Peter had a daughter, Grace. She married John Blackburne, and they had a son, Peter. Peter married Sarah Harper and produced Stephen, who married Francis Williams and had Agnes.”

  “Agnes Blackburne was my grandmother,” Tanya said. “My grandfather was Finnegan McCready. My mother was Caroline McCready, and my father was Robert Ayres. That was my name before I married Carl. Tanya Ayres. I never liked it, because of the two a’s. Everyone said it like it was Tanyairs. I like Redmond a lot better.”

  “Let’s assume Tess and Amos Hague did get married,” said Sam. “He could have died, and she could have remarried.”

  “Those two sure do look alike,” Tanya remarked. She was once again looking at the pictures of William Holburne and Peter Woode. “I’d swear they were brothers.”

  Sam looked at Burke. “They certainly do,” he said.

  He thinks Peter Woode is William Holburne, Burke thought. Who was really Elizabeth Frances Walsh. It was getting more and more complicated with every new discovery. If, for instance, Elizabeth was William, who was Peter? How could he have married Tess Hague and have had at least one child? It didn’t make any sense.

  “I wonder if Amos and Tess had any children,” he said.

  “The tree lists only Tess and Peter Woode,” Sam said. “Tanya, did your mother or grandmother ever mention someone named Amos Hague?”

  “There’s the Hague farm,” Tanya said. She picked up a pack of Camels, tapped one out, and lit it. She inhaled and blew out a cloud of smoke before continuing. “There was bad blood about it way back, but I don’t know anything about that. Gran just used to say the Wrathmores took what ought to have been ours.”

  “Wrathmores?” said Sam. “You mean the old Wrathmore place?”

  Tanya shrugged as she took another drag on her cigarette. “All I know is there’s some old farm that was supposed to get passed on to my great-great-great or whatever grandfather. But some Wrathmore guy stole it out from under him.” She took a swig of Kool-Aid.

  “Wrathmore,” Burke said to Sam. “That’s what you called the farm Will took me to.”

  Sam nodded. “I assume it’s the same one,” he said. “I’ve never heard anyone call it the Hague farm before, though.”

  “Gran seemed to think our lives would be different if we hadn’t of lost the farm,” said Tanya. “Me, I think she was just an angry old bitch.” She puffed on her cigarette. “Don’t get me wrong. I loved her and all, but she was a major pain in the ass.”

  “That’s all you remember her saying, that the Wrathmores somehow stole the Hague farm from your family?” asked Sam.

  Tanya gestured with her cigarette. “She said all kinds of weird shit at the end,” she said. “Who knows what was true? But yeah, that’s all I remember her saying.”

  “And your mother never said anything about it?” asked Burke.

  “Never talked to her about it,” said Tanya. “Truth be told, we didn’t speak much the last four or five years. She didn’t like Carl. Loved Freddie, though. She never took it out on him. Always remembered him on birthdays and Christmas and such. Sometimes he stayed over with her.”

  “Would you mind if I asked Freddie if she ever said anything to him?” said Sam.

  Tanya shrugged. “If you want,” she said. “He’s kinda slow, though. Don’t expect much.”

  She got up, went to the door, and called out for her son. A minute later he ran in, his face red from exertion. “What you want?” he asked.

  “Mr. Guffrey wants to ask you something,” said Tanya.

  Freddie looked over at Burke and Sam and grinned, revealing a mouth missing a tooth or two where the baby ones had recently. fallen out. “Sure,” he said.

  “Your mom says you spent a lot of time with your grandmother,” Sam began. “I’m just wondering if you remember her ever telling you stories about a place called the Hague farm.”

  Freddie laughed. “Yeah,” he said. “I used to think she was sayin’ something about a hog farm. Didn’t know it was someone’s name.”

  Sam laughed gently. “It does sound like hog farm,” he agreed. “So she did tell you about it?”

  Freddie nodded and wiped his nose on the back of his hand. “Took me there once,” he said. “There’s a pond and everything. But Gran said never to go there again. Said it was haunted.”

  Tanya sighed. “She was always filling his head with crap like that,” she said to Burke and Sam. To Freddie, she said, “You know that’s all bullshit.”

  Freddie shook his head. “She said so,” he insisted. “Said it was haunted. Said never to go there, ever.”

  “Did she say why it was haunted?” asked Sam.

  Freddie shrugged. “Just said it was,” he answered, as if that was all the reason required. He looked at his mother. “Can I go? Andy’s waitin’ for me to go fishing.”

  Tanya glanced at Sam, who nodded. “Go on,” she told her son. “Be back for dinner. Ask Andy if he wants to stay over.”

  Freddie took off, banging through the trailer’s front door. Smith and Wesson barked happily, the sound fading as they apparently ran after him.

  “It’s just like Ma to tell him ghost stories,” Tanya said, stubbing out her cigarette.

  “She never said anything like that to you?” Sam asked.

  Tanya shook her head. “Probably knew I wouldn’t buy it. Freddie, though, he believes anything you tell him. Like I said, he’s a little slow. He’s repeating fourth this year cuz he can’t read good.”

  “Bring him into the library,” said Sam. “He probably just needs a little help. I can probably get him up to speed before school starts.”

  “Yeah?” said Tanya.

  “How about Wednesday at one?” Sam suggested. “I can see what level he’s at and go from there.”

  Tanya smiled. “Okay,” she said. “We’ll come by then.”

  Sam stood. Burke, following his cue, reached for his crutch. Sam took his arm and helped, making sure Burke was steady before letting go.

  “Thank you for talking to us, Tanya,” Sam said. “And thanks for the drinks. I’ll look for you and Freddie on Wednesday.” He held out his hand. Tanya looked at it for a moment, then shook it.

  “Yes, thank you,” Burke said, feeling awkward in the face of Sam’s politeness.

  “Anytime,” Tanya said.

  Sam opened the door and helped Burk
e down the stairs. When they were in the car and pulling away from the trailer, Burke said, “That was nice of you to offer to help her kid.”

  “I’m not doing anything else with my teaching degree,” Sam replied. “Might as well help him out, right?”

  Burke laughed. “It’s more than that. You want to help him. I can tell.”

  Sam shrugged. “There’s not much point to being alive if you don’t do what you can to make life better for someone else, is there?” he said. “‘A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.’ Jackie Robinson.”

  Burke thought about it. If he was honest, he had to admit that he’d never really done much for anyone else. Sure, he’d helped a few friends move, fed some cats and watered some plants while their owners were away on vacation. But he’d never really helped anyone. It had always been about him.

  “I guess I really wouldn’t know,” he said.

  CHAPTER 18

  “Damn it. These are messed up, too.”

  Burke set the photos on the dining room table. They had arrived from the printer twenty minutes earlier. Because he had shot in color and couldn’t easily develop the film himself, he had sent it to his favorite processing lab in Boston, the one that always did a stellar job. The prints had arrived with a note from the lab technician saying that they’d done the best that they could.

  Not that the images were bad. They were beautiful. But in each one there was not one but two areas of blur. Oblong in shape, they disrupted the landscape of the photos like twin pillars of cloud. In one of Burke’s favorite photos, a shirtless Will was standing in front of the low stone wall, his face turned toward the camera. But behind him and to the left, as if looking over his shoulder, were the two smudges of gray.

  The rest of the shots were equally marred. Unusable. Burke thumbed through them again, annoyed at the results. He had to remind himself that he was shooting with old cameras, and that if he wanted flawless pictures, he would have to either clean them or use more modern technology. Perhaps he would go back to the site and take some shots with one of his digital cameras. It was such a beautiful place that it was a shame to have wasted so much time and film on imperfect pictures.