His Father's Son

by Bentley Little

  Since he wasn’t familiar with the city and didn’t have a map, Steve withdrew Jessica Haster’s address from his shirt pocket and asked the librarian if she knew how to get there. As it turned out, Jessica lived only a few streets over, and the woman gave him absurdly simple directions that would lead him right to the front step.

  The house was an unexpectedly dreary dwelling badly in need of paint. From the sound of Jessica’s voice on the phone, he had imagined a cute cottage, one of those white-clapboard-with-green-shutters homes you saw in country decorating magazines and children’s storybooks, a place with rose trellises and a blooming side garden. But, in truth, he had seen nothing like that in this town. Copper City was a poor community long past its prime, and the residences here all seemed to be singularly drab structures with nonexistent yards.

  Most of the guests, it seemed, had already arrived. Although it was still early, the long driveway was full of old cars and dented pickup trucks. He was forced to park on the street, and he made his way along the narrow edge of the drive between the line of vehicles and the sunken patch of weedy ground beside it. Before he could gather his thoughts and plan out what he was going to say, the torn screen door flew open, smacking against the wall, and a host of women and men came hurrying out to greet him.

  In the space of three minutes, he was introduced to nearly a dozen people, not counting the children who were now running around the house, playing. He was not good with names under the best of circumstances, and though he tried very hard to remember everyone he met and place a name with every face, the only two people he knew he could recognize with certainty were Jessica and Ruth’s sister Hazel.

  Jessica Haster was as chatty and vivacious as she’d seemed on the phone. A short woman with oversize Coke-bottle glasses, she was dressed in purple stretch pants and a bright Hawaiian-print blouse. She took him around to everyone, explaining over and over again that he was Ruth’s husband’s son and was here to learn what he could about his daddy’s first wife.

  There was a potluck. All of the guests save himself had apparently brought some sort of food dish, and they each grabbed paper plates from one end of the long dining room table and helped themselves to fried chicken, potato salad, coleslaw and rolls while Jessica, Hazel and another older lady reminisced about Ruth in the doorway of the kitchen. From what Steve could tell, his father’s first wife had been a saint: smart, patient, kind, loving and all of the other positive attributes that could be applied to a young woman in the early 1960s. Even granting the exaggeration that inevitably accompanied an early death, Ruth seemed to have been extremely nice and universally well liked.

  Lyman Fischer arrrived soon after. He’d gone to school with both Ruth and his dad, and his memories were different from everyone else’s. For one thing, although Lyman and Steve’s father had been friends since childhood, they had both competed for Ruth Haster’s affections in high school, and Steve still sensed some residual bitterness there. Consequently, Lyman’s recollections were a little less rosy, a little harsher and, Steve assumed, a little more realistic. Sensing a rare opportunity to learn the unvarnished truth about his father’s early years, Steve cornered Lyman near the desserts and quizzed him in depth about what type of person his dad had been. The picture that emerged was of someone impetuous and outgoing, fun loving and friendly, not qualities that he would ever associate with Joseph Nye, but not ones that would lead him to believe that his father would be capable of killing someone either.

  Not for the first time, he thought of Vietnam, and he asked Lyman if he thought his father had changed after he’d come back from the war, if he seemed different after he’d seen combat.

  “Not really,” Lyman replied after giving the matter some serious thought. “A lotta people, yeah. They come back hard or angry or paranoid. But not Joe.”

  Jessica and the others had gathered around as they’d been talking, and as Steve looked at the assembled faces, he thought it was probably time to ask about Ruth’s death.

  Murder.

  He turned to Jessica. “When Ruth died,” he said, “they thought it was suicide?” He felt awkward bringing it up this way, but the discussion had to start somewhere.

  “Or an accident,” Jessica said.

  What about the note? he almost asked, but didn’t dare. He wasn’t sure how many of them knew about the note, and if he was somehow aware of it, questions would be generated, questions he was not prepared to answer. “Did anyone see it happen?”

  “There were a lot of people there that day, if that’s what you mean. But no, not really. It happened so fast. No one was looking right there, and in just one second, she was down.”

  “The only reason people thought it might be suicide is because she was up there in the first place, in her condition,” Hazel said. “But she could’ve slipped.” The line of her mouth grew straight and prim, and in that second she reminded Steve of his mother. “I always thought it was an accident.”

  “Did she say anything before she died?” someone wondered. He thought it was one of Ruth’s sister’s kids, but he wasn’t sure.

  “She hit her head on the cement when she fell,” Jessica said. “She died instantly. But they did think at first that they might be able to save the baby, so they took her to the hospital and performed an emergency C-section. Probably now they would’ve been able to save her, but the girl was born dead.”

  “We lost Joe after that,” Hazel said sadly.

  Lyman nodded. “He cut everybody off, even his old friends. A couple of us tried to get him back into the swing of things, but he was hanging out with a new group of people, and all of a sudden we weren’t part of his life.”

  “I remember he went to a prostitute,” one old woman said disgustedly. It was one of Ruth’s friends, but he couldn’t remember her name. The woman lowered her voice. “A Mexican.”

  Steve was still having a hard time reconciling the rigid, straitlaced father he’d known all his life with the picture painted by Lyman, and this newest revelation seemed impossible to connect with the uptight law-and-order Republican who railed against the influx of immigrants on an almost daily basis.

  But not with the type of man who could murder his wife.

  Jessica nodded. “It’s true,” she admitted. “I heard that he fell in love with her and was heartbroken when she was deported back to Mexico. I never knew what happened to him after that. I think he left town.”

  “He did,” Lyman said. “Moved to Las Cruces, I think.”

  “What about his family?” Steve asked. “His parents were still alive then, weren’t they? And what about his sister, Marion?”

  “There was a . . . falling-out . . . with his family,” Jessica said.

  Hazel nodded. “Over Ruth.”

  Steve was surprised. “But my mother was under the impression that Aunt Marion preferred Ruth to her. She acted like my mother couldn’t hold a candle to Ruth.”

  “Marion didn’t like anyone,” Lyman said, and most of the older guests laughed.

  Steve thought for a moment. “I know my dad went to Vietnam,” he said carefully, deciding to put the question to the room. “Did he seem . . . changed after that? Did he seem different when he came back?”

  All eyes turned to Hazel. “Not that I noticed. And Ruth never said anything like that to me, which she would’ve if it were true. Do you have a reason for asking?”

  “No,” he said quickly. “I was just wondering. I’m just trying to find out what he was like when he was young.”

  “It was Ruth’s death that changed him, not the war,” Hazel said, and Jessica, standing next to her, nodded in agreement.

  “All of our lives would have been different if Ruth had lived,” Jessica said sadly.

  They were good people, Ruth’s family, and from all indications, she had been a good person too. His father was not. He was a murderer, and as much as Steve would have liked to believe that there’d been a legitimate and justifiable reason for him to do away with his wife, there was absolu
tely no evidence to support it.

  The sun was low in the west when Steve finally took his leave, a chunk of angel food cake that Jessica had made him take wrapped in aluminum foil beside him, and the streetlights in Copper City were already on as he passed by the bank building on his way out of town. He had a long drive ahead of him, and he sped through the gathering darkness, back to his hotel in Albuquerque, troubled.

  He called Sherry when he arrived home the next day. And his mother. Although both reported that everything had gone smoothly in his absence, that there’d been no trouble, his mother asked him to check on his father. She was worried because no one had gone to see him since Thursday. He didn’t feel like driving all the way to Long Beach, though, and the truth was that he didn’t really want to see the old man. His brain had still not had enough time to process all of the new information it had absorbed, and he compromised by calling the VA hospital for a status report. Dr. Curtis was not on duty, but he spoke to a charge nurse who told him that everything was status quo, no change. His father had slept most of the time and, when awake, had been only briefly coherent.

  What had he said at that time? Steve wanted to ask, but didn’t dare.

  After sorting through the pile of bills and junk mail that lay on the floor by the front door, he checked his voice mail and his e-mail. Jason had left several messages on each, and Steve called his friend, who said that his mother and stepfather were visiting and he needed to get out of the house. “I’m going stir-crazy,” he confided. “They’re here for a week, and I’m expected to entertain them twenty-four hours a day. I was with Maria the last time they came over in April, and now my mom’s giving me grief for screwing up such a wonderful relationship. One more bit of kindly advice about how good she was for me and I’m going to tell them that she was fucking some other guy and that’s why she’s not here anymore.”

  “Is that what happened?” Steve asked incredulously.

  “Of course not. I told you, she didn’t even like sex that much. That was part of the problem. Anyway, I don’t want to get into it now. Just call me back in about a half hour and invite me out to play racquetball or something. It’ll give me an excuse to get away from them for a while.”

  “Okay.”

  Steve did just that and met Jason at the gym. They were both members, had both joined at approximately the same time, but Steve seldom went there—he hardly ever had the time—and it was only when something like this came up that he took advantage of his membership. He didn’t actually know how to play racquetball, so he and Jason just walked side by side on adjacent treadmills, talking. Jason asked about his dad, and Steve replied simply that he was doing as well as possible under the circumstances. He didn’t bring up anything about his trip.

  “Fathers and sons,” Jason said in stentorian tones. He shook his head slowly, his voice at once utterly serious and completely insincere. “Fathers and sons.”

  “Hank Kingsley,” Steve said, laughing, catching the reference.

  His friend grinned, nodded. “Tell me the truth,” he said, adjusting the speed of his treadmill. “Before all this happened with your dad, were you two close? Now you probably have to see him every day, but how often did you see him before the stroke?”

  “Not much,” Steve admitted. “Holidays mostly.”

  “I can’t remember the last time I saw my dad. My real dad. I talk to him on the phone sometimes, but I have no idea where to reach him. He moves around a lot. And he only calls when he’s in trouble, when he needs money or when there’s some sort of health crisis. Not that he really is in trouble or really does need money or really has a health problem. It’s just that he always calls about some catastrophe because he doesn’t know how to talk to me otherwise. We can’t just have an ordinary conversation, like normal people. He needs a reason to call me, an important reason, and he’ll concoct some outlandish scenario for us to talk about—and then I won’t hear from him for six months.”

  “Wow.”

  “Unlike my mom and stepdad, who are too much in my life.” Jason sighed. “Deep down, I suppose my dad’s a good guy, but the two of us just don’t connect with each other. Never have.”

  Steve had no idea what sort of man his father was “deep down.”

  “The funny thing is,” Jason said, “we still crave our dads’ approval. No matter how big a jerk they are or how badly they’ve screwed us up, we still want them to be proud of us, don’t we?”

  Steve nodded slowly. “Yes,” he said, and it was true. His father was a murderer, and deep down Steve still longed for his approbation, though he knew that, due to his old man’s condition, that was never going to happen.

  “Will says the only way to become an adult is to break off all contact with parents as soon as you turn eighteen.”

  “Will,” Steve said, “is an asshole.”

  Jason laughed. “You’re right,” he agreed. “He is.”

  His legs were getting tired, so Steve stopped the treadmill and got off. He hadn’t realized until now how badly out of shape he was. He limped over to the bench and grabbed a towel to wipe off his sweat. He really should work out more often, he decided.

  “Want to swim a few laps?” Jason asked.

  Steve shook his head. He told Jason he was tired, was going to take a quick shower and bail, and his friend clapped him on the back and said that he’d done his good deed for the day. “I guess I’ll hang out here for a few hours, maybe get something to eat afterward, then go home after those two are asleep. Hopefully.” He grinned. “Don’t worry. Tomorrow it’s Will’s turn to bail me out. You’ve gone above and beyond, bud. Don’t think I don’t appreciate it.”

  Steve grabbed dinner for himself at McDonald’s and took it home to eat in front of the television. He turned the channel to CNN, and winced when a commercial came on for senior health care. The screen showed a smiling, happy Alzheimer’s patient. He looked away. Last night at this time, he had been getting back to Albuquerque after his sojourn to Copper City. The death of his father’s first wife had been on his mind then just as it was on his mind now.

  Jessica and Hazel had both shown him pictures from the wedding, photos of his father and Ruth looking young and happy and in love, and he kept trying to imagine what Ruth had looked like after his father had pushed her off the building. Where had she hit the ground? The top of the head? The back of the head? The face?

  Everything he imagined was horrific.

  Steve’s thoughts went back to his father. What was he going to do about what he knew? This was an ethical question, one of those Sophie’s Choice things, the kind so ably exploited by board game makers and reality-TV producers. Should he go to the police? There was no proof. He had nothing really, only a theory based on the ramblings of a stroke victim with dementia. And what purpose could it serve at this late date? His father wasn’t competent to stand trial, and probably wouldn’t understand whatever punishment was meted out.

  Did he even want his father punished?

  No.

  If his old man had not had a stroke, did not suffer from dementia and was not in the hospital, Steve still didn’t think he could turn him in.

  Why, though?

  He didn’t know.

  Steve dreamed that night of his father, looking not as he did now, not as he had in those wedding photos, but like some unholy merger of the two, half young, half old, with a deranged smile on his face, standing at the top of the Copper City bank building, gleefully pushing off women who were lining up next to him: Ruth, Jessica, Hazel, his mother, Sherry. . . .

  His mother called him at work the next day—this was getting to be a habit—and asked if he could take her over to the hospital in the afternoon. She thought they should both see his father. Steve said okay, but on the way there, driving down the Garden Grove Freeway after picking her up, he had a change of heart. Well, not a change, really. He simply realized that he was still not ready to face his father.

  Fifteen minutes later, they reached the VA hospital. Withou
t saying anything, he pulled up in front of the entrance and left the car idling. His mother looked at him in surprise. “You’re not coming in?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t feel well,” he lied. “I think I caught something on the plane. All that recirculated air. I’m just going to wait in the parking lot for you. I don’t want to contaminate Dad. His immune system’s probably down. . . .”

  “I don’t want to go in there by myself,” she said.

  “My immune system’s down too. And who knows what kind of germs are floating around? They say hospitals are the easiest place to get sick, all those diseases and everything.”

  She looked at him, lips tight. “I’m not going in there by myself.”

  He thought about Copper City, then about his father lying helpless and strapped down in the bed—

  I killed her

  —and realized that he couldn’t do it. Not today. Not yet. He shook his head. “No, Mom.”

  “He tried to kill me. I can’t face him alone.”

  “I don’t feel well,” Steve repeated. “And I can’t afford to get sick.”

  “Take me home, then.”

  “Mom . . .”

  “Take me home.”

  He put the car into gear. “Fine, then. We’ll go home.”

  Six

  Like his friend Will, Steve’s parents had never thought much of his job. His father, in particular, had not been able to see any worth in writing for a living, and fiction was even farther removed from his dad’s approved list of vocations and avocations than nonfiction. Unlike Will, his parents did not think he was slumming in his occupation or wasting his time. This, they thought, was the only thing he was good for, the only thing he could do.