His Father's Son

by Bentley Little

Steve paused to finish his sandwich and pop open a can of Coke before accessing an online phone directory for Copper City.

  Pay dirt.

  There were no Nyes listed, but he found four Hasters, and he printed out their names, numbers and addresses. The first number he dialed, for a J. Haster, turned out to be Jessica Haster, Ruth’s aunt. Steve flirted with the idea of lying, taking cover behind his job and pretending he needed information for a class reunion booklet, but at the last second he decided to come clean, and he identified himself as Joseph Nye’s son and said that he was looking for information about his father’s first marriage. He didn’t tell the woman why he was so interested, but let her think that it was part of an effort to reconnect with his roots.

  Jessica was eighty-two years old, as she told him proudly, but her memory was clear, and she described Ruth and Joseph as a typical young married couple. Her death, Jessica said, had been a complete shock to everyone, especially when it got around town that it might be suicide.

  Suicide.

  Steve felt cold, but he kept his voice even and detached as he asked if, after the fact, anyone had noticed any signs or clues . . . perhaps evidence of strain in the marriage?

  “No,” Jessica said firmly. “And don’t think we all didn’t go over everything she ever said to us with a fine-toothed comb. Besides, she had so much to look forward to. And she was so excited about it.”

  Steve felt his stomach drop. “Excited? About what?” he forced himself to ask.

  “She was pregnant, poor thing. With a girl.”

  The news hit him hard. He closed his eyes, gripping the phone tightly. He would have had a sister. Or a half sister. He wasn’t even sure that was something of which his mother was aware, and he wondered if that was the reason his father had done it. Such a crime was not unheard-of, and right now it was the only thing that seemed to make any sense. He’d been hoping to hear that Ruth was a shrew, a slut, a castrating bitch. He’d wanted to believe that his father was somehow justified in his actions, but any hope for such rationalization was slipping away.

  “Would you mind if I came over so we could talk more about this?” Steve asked.

  “That would be fine,” Jessica said. She sounded pleased at the thought of having a visitor.

  “I have the phone numbers and addresses of some other Hasters in town,” he said. “I assume those are relatives. Would any of them have known Ruth or my father?”

  “Greg would, yes. The rest are Trudy’s children, so no. But Ruth’s sister’s still here, only her name isn’t Haster anymore, so you wouldn’t find her in the phone book. I know several people who could tell you what you need to know, though—people who knew Ruth and Joe. Friends and family. When are you planning to drop by?”

  “This weekend,” he said impulsively.

  “I’ll call everyone up. We’ll have us a little get-together. It’ll be fun.”

  He confirmed her address, gave her his name and home phone number, thanked her profusely for her kindness and her help and said good-bye. He sat there for a moment, staring at the telephone. It was stupid of him to make a trip to Copper City, a waste of both time and money.

  But he wanted to go there.

  Needed to go there.

  The truth was that he could just as easily have questioned these people over the phone, but they were not missing alumni he was tracking down for a class reunion; these were people related to his father’s first wife—

  whom he’d killed

  —and he wanted to see where they lived, what they were like, wanted to see the expressions on their faces as they told their stories to him. Some of them might even have photographs. Or they might be able to direct him to other family members or friends who had stories to tell.

  He also wanted to see where it had happened.

  That was the primary impetus. It made no rational sense, but he wanted to see the spot where his father had murdered his pregnant wife. Steve didn’t know what he hoped to learn from the exposure or what he thought he’d exprience. All he knew was that there was an urge within him, an almost primal compulsion to stand where his father had stood and work out in his mind the details of what had occurred on that roof.

  Gina came back from lunch with a large Burger King cup that she put on top of her desk, and moments later everyone else started arriving, walking out of the elevator and down the hall to their offices in twos and threes. Steve crumpled up his lunch sack, threw it away, and closed the notebook in which he’d been writing. He terminated his Internet connection, accessing one of the three articles he was writing for a UC Brea twenty-year class reunion. He went back to work.

  He had promised to take his mother to the VA hospital this evening but didn’t want to, and he made up an excuse when he called her from his cell phone in the car, telling her that he didn’t feel well. He actually felt very well for the first few seconds after ending the call—an evening without seeing either parent felt like a well-earned reprieve at this point—but then he thought about his father’s first wife and everything he’d learned today at lunch, and the weight that had been temporarily lifted from his shoulders came crashing down on his head with extra force.

  When he arrived home, Sherry was there, only she wasn’t cooking dinner this time; she was sorting through his mail. In her hand was the usual assortment of bills, but one of the envelopes, he saw immediately, was addressed to him in his own handwriting. It was one that he’d sent along with a short story he’d submitted to a small-press magazine. Another rejection.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded.

  Sherry looked up. “What’s the matter?”

  “That’s my private stuff!” He grabbed the envelopes from her hand and practically threw them onto the dinner table.

  She was taken aback by the vehemence of his reaction and instinctively leaned away from him. “I’m sorry,” she said contritely. “They were on the floor when I came in, and I just picked them up to put them away.”

  They no doubt had been on the floor—Steve’s mail slot was in the door, and whatever was pushed through it fell on the ground—but she hadn’t merely been picking up his mail; she’d been sorting through it, and he felt an unwelcome surge of anger as he thought of her holding his rejection letter.

  He was embarrassed. That was all it was. Not at the rejection, specifically, but at the writing. His previous girlfriend, Nadine, knew all about his literary aspirations—they’d met in a creative writing class in college—but when things hadn’t panned out the way he’d hoped and he’d had to get a real job after graduation, writing fiction had become like masturbation: something furtive and private, something he both enjoyed and was ashamed of doing. He’d never shared it with Sherry because he didn’t know any way to discuss his ambitions that didn’t make them sound juvenile and pathetic.

  What would happen if he actually sold something, though? How would he explain that? Wouldn’t it seem like a betrayal to her that he’d kept such an important part of himself secret for so long? She might feel like she didn’t know him at all. Such a revelation at such a late date had the potential to seriously harm their relationship. It might be better to come clean now and just deal with the embarrassment.

  He looked at her wary expression.

  But he couldn’t.

  Besides, his batting average was zero for twenty. He doubted that it was a problem he would have to deal with anytime soon.

  Steve sat down next to her. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m . . . I’m sorry.”

  She put her hand on his, nodding her understanding.

  “It’s been a long day.”

  Sherry started to say something, then changed her mind, then changed her mind again. “Do you not want me to come over?” she asked carefully. He was about to protest, but she continued quickly, “It seems like every time I try to surprise you, you don’t like it.”

  “That’s not true!” he said.

  “I think it is. You gave me a key, so I assumed you wanted me to use it, but maybe I s
hould give it back to you. I don’t want to be here if you don’t want me here.”

  “Of course I do!”

  “I think you’d be more comfortable if we stepped back a little and things were the way they were before, with dates on Friday and Saturday, occasional sleepovers, a midweek meeting here and there.” She looked sad as she said this, resigned, and he hated that he had made her feel this way.

  Impulsively, he grabbed Sherry, hugged her, held her close. “It’s been a long day,” he repeated.

  He felt her nod against him, and when he pulled back to look at her, he saw that although there were tears in her eyes, she was smiling. “I love you,” he told her.

  She reached up to kiss him. “I love you too.”

  They went out for dinner. There was a Mexican restaurant near the Orange County Performing Arts Center that they both liked, and after they finished eating, they wandered through the nearby sculpture garden, along with a handful of other couples. Ground-level floodlights shone on the rock installations and geometric artwork, casting shadows on the surrounding concrete walls. A teenage boy was crouching in front of one of the lights, making comical hand shadows to the inappropriately raucous delight of his ill-behaved girlfriend.

  Steve stopped before a waterfall cascading over a series of cement steps. “I need to go on a business trip this weekend,” he said.

  Sherry frowned. “Business trip?”

  “I need to interview a few people in New Mexico.”

  “Can’t you just talk to them over the phone? Or e-mail them?”

  He thought fast, glad he was standing in shadow and she couldn’t see his face. “They live on kind of a commune. No electricity, no phone, the whole thing. Completely off the grid.”

  She paused, and the hesitation in her voice when she spoke made him realize that he’d better be careful. “Why don’t I come with you?”

  “It’s not a vacation. It’s just a quick trip. One day there, one day back. It’s not going to be fun. Besides, I was kind of hoping you could look in on my mom for me. You know, make sure she’s okay?”

  That did it.

  “Sure,” Sherry said, putting a hand on his arm.

  “Thanks. I really appreciate it. All you have to do is pop in, take a quick peek, see if she needs anything. I’ll tell her you’ll stop by.”

  “What about your dad?”

  “He won’t even notice I’m gone.”

  “Do I need to . . . ?”

  Steve shook his head. “That place is rough. And it’s all the way in Long Beach. It’d be better not to go there. I’ll check in on him when I get back.”

  Sherry nodded. Her face looked strange in the angled lighting, her eyes shadowed, almost skull-like, but he drew her to him and kissed her passionately, grateful for the feeling of her body pressed against his. Over her shoulder, he saw the shadow of a rabbit on the wall as the teenage boy moved his fingers up and down in front of the light.

  Steve took a red-eye flight Friday evening and landed in Albuquerque shortly after midnight. He’d booked a rental car as well as a room at a hotel near the airport, and he drove the car to the hotel and crashed on the queen-sized bed without bothering to open his suitcase, leaving his clothes in a pile on the floor as he crawled under the covers in his underwear and promptly fell asleep.

  He awoke with the dawn. The curtains covering the east-facing windows had not been fully closed, a detail he had not noticed in the dark, and sunlight streamed into the room in a funnel-shaped beam that fell across the bed. He staggered into the bathroom, took a warm shower, then shaved and combed his hair. After eating a quick meal of orange juice and bagels from the self-serve breakfast bar in the lobby, he hit the road. Copper City was a good two hours away, and he wanted to be there in plenty of time to do some research at the library and see the bank building—

  where his father had murdered his wife

  —before meeting Jessica Haster and her relatives at noon.

  The sun was up, the sky blue and filled with billowing clichéd clouds as he drove east from Albuquerque. He felt invigorated despite the shortness of sleep time, and soon after leaving the city he was in open desert, with flat sandy ground sloping down to his right and rocky mountains rising upward to his left. There was something oddly cheering about being in another state, and the unaccustomed freshness of the New Mexico morning made him feel exhilarated and excited despite the grimness of his mission. The rental car had satellite radio, and he found a channel specializing in nineties grunge, cranking up the volume as he sped through the austere and unfamiliar landscape.

  He reached Copper City just after ten.

  It was a community that seemed stuck in time. Approaching from the west, Steve encountered no fast-food chains or nationally known gas stations, only local businesses with names that seemed dully provincial. The houses he passed were all from another era: individual styles on large lots rather than the cream-colored cookie-cutter homes found in modern developments. There was a park with a bandstand, a town square with benches and a fountain. Everything probably looked much as it had when his father had lived there.

  The tallest structure in Copper City was still the bank building.

  Overdressed people were walking along the downtown sidewalks like extras in an old movie, and as Steve parked in a two-hour spot in front of a closed pharmacy, he saw a couple of them go into the bank. He got out of the car, locked it and dashed between moving cars across the street. Inside, the building lobby offered entrance to three different offices: the Copper City National Bank, Wilson-Adams Realtors and H & R Block. In the fourth wall, the back wall, was an elevator, and it was to this that Steve gravitated. He read the listings for each floor ’s businesses in the glassed directory to the right of the closed metal door, noting that the number of tenants decreased until, at the top floor, there were no listings whatsoever.

  He pressed the call button and the elevator door slid open instantly, as though it had been waiting for him. Entering the small car, he pressed the number six on the control panel. The button lit up, the doors closed and the elevator began its slow, creaky trip to the building’s top floor, where it opened onto an empty hallway. There was an exit sign above a closed door at the far end, behind which Steve assumed was a stairwell. He walked down the corridor, pushed the bar that opened the door. There were indeed stairs that led both down and up, and Steve climbed the steps that led upward, pushed open another door at the top and found himself on the building’s roof.

  It was clear that this location was not merely restricted to maintenance personnel. There was a picnic table in the center of the flat area, half-full ashtrays sitting atop both ends, and around the raised edge of the roof someone had placed potted geraniums. Spaced out here and there were individual deck chairs. It appeared to be a spot where employees took their breaks, and Steve walked slowly past the picnic table to the north edge of the roof. From here, he could see past the town to a series of small chaparral-covered hills that arose on the other side of a dry, winding riverbed. He looked down at the street below. Where had she fallen? Which sidewalk had she hit? He walked carefully around the perimeter. In the rear of the building was an alley. Had she landed there?

  He’d expected to be more affected by this than he was. He knew, intellectually, the gruesomeness of such a death, could see in his mind’s eye a shattered, twisted body, a cracked head with blood and brains spilling out, but that’s all the knowledge was—intellectual. Emotionally, he was distanced from the event, and he wondered if that was a protective measure on his part, if his mind just didn’t want him to feel the horror of what his father had done.

  Steve stopped, leaning over, both hands on the side wall, and stared straight down, trying to imagine what it had been like for Ruth Nye as she’d plummeted screaming to her death, still feeling on her body the pressure of her husband’s push.

  What could have led him to do such a thing? He had never done it again. He had remarried, had a son, and lived a quiet, respectable life f
or the past thirty years. Maybe she’d done something. Maybe the killing had been done in self-defense or had been somehow justified. All killings weren’t created equal. That was why the legal system recognized various categories and gradations of the crime. That was why juries were given such sentencing latitude. Sometimes there were extenuating circumstances.

  His father had told him what he had done but not why, and Steve was hoping on this trip to sort out the truth behind the facts.

  His next stop was the library, and it took him a couple of passes through town before he found out where it was. Located on a side street near the elementary school, the single-story building barely looked big enough to have a children’s section, much less a collection designed to serve the entire community. His heart sank when he walked inside and saw no computers on any of the desks or tables. Nevertheless, he approached the lone librarian on duty and asked if the library had any back issues of the Copper City Sentinel.

  “What month?” she asked.

  “The early nineteen sixties,” he said.

  She was surprised by that. “We don’t get much call for anything past the last few weeks usually,” she said. “But we do have all previous years on microfiche. Although I have to say, you’re the only person in my recollection who’s ever asked to see it.” She stood heavily and made her way between the stacks to a small alcove at the rear of the room. Here a single microfiche reader stood on a table next to a metal filing cabinet. The librarian slid open the top drawer of the cabinet and withdrew two packets, which she handed to Steve. “Here’s 1960 through 1963, and 1964 through 1967.”

  “That’s perfect,” he said.

  “Do you know how to use the reader?”

  “Not exactly,” he admitted, and watched as she showed him how to turn on the machine, place the flat sheet of microfilm into a tray in the center of the apparatus and scroll through individual issues of the newspaper.

  “Thank you,” he said, and started scanning obituaries.

  He found what he was looking for in the April 10, 1966, edition of the paper. Even before he reached the obituaries, he saw a headline on the front page announcing, “Mom-to-be Dies in Fall,” and he quickly read the accompanying story. But whether it was out of deference to survivors, respect for the dead or merely shoddy journalism, the article revealed very little. Disappointed, he scanned the next few months’ worth of newspapers, hoping for a follow-up story, but could find no mention of either Ruth or his father. Glancing at his watch, he saw that it was almost eleven thirty. He was supposed to be at Jessica Haster’s house by noon, and he wanted to get there a little bit early so he could have a chance to talk to her before everyone else arrived. Switching off the machine, he returned the microfiche sheets to their packets and handed them back to the librarian. “Thank you,” he told her.