Wild Cards XVI: Deuces Down

by Michael Cassutt

  “Stay with us,” Moira interrupted. “I like you. You’re the Burning Man. Do you know math?”

  “I used to be pretty good at it.”

  “Then you can help me. School starts next week.” Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial stage whisper. “Máthair’s just awful with math.”

  Gary’s eyes drifted upward from Moira to Caitlyn’s face. “I think your mother’s smarter than you think.”

  She didn’t know what she saw in his face then. MacEnnis’s words came back to her: “. . . your track record so far isn’t very good.” She hadn’t felt the impact of a person’s gaze since . . . How much of it is because he looks so normal, compared to the others on the island? Are you still that shallow, girl?

  She said it anyway.

  “You can stay with us. If you like.”

  She expected him to balk and refuse. At the very least, she expected him to question what that meant even though she wasn’t sure herself.

  He didn’t. He stared at Caitlyn for long seconds, then looked down again at Moira, smiling at her. “I’d like that,” he said to Moira rather than Caitlyn. “And we’ll work on that math.”

  “. . . right, I understand, Arnie, but I’ve given the accountant permission to liquidate my 401k—use that to get through the next few months, at least, even though taxes are gonna chew up a lot of it . . . No, the plane’s a total loss. I had to ditch in the ocean . . . You need to hire another plane and pilot . . . I know, man. I know. But I called the embassy in Belfast, and they told me that there are indictments out for me for attempted murder, assault, illegal flight and dozen other things down to littering, and that if I leave this island, not only will the UK have my ass but the good ole USA will be filing immediate extradition papers . . . All right, man. I’ll keep trying . . . Right. Hartmann’s office gave me the name of a lawyer, some guy named Dr. Praetorius; he’s supposed to start working on that end . . . Give my love to Mom and tell her not to worry. I’m fine at the moment, but I miss everyone. Tell Serena the two of you will make it through this, and kiss little Keisha for me too, and let her know that her uncle loves her . . . Make sure you take care of Mom. Call her every day and check on her; you know how she is about taking her pills . . . Yeah, goodbye.”

  Caitlyn heard the click of the receiver in its cradle, and when she glanced up, Gary was staring at her. “I’ll find a way to pay you back. I know all these calls have been expensive. Arnie doesn’t think the business is going to make it, and they found a blood clot in Mom’s leg . . .” Gary ran a hand over tight-curled black hair.

  “What did Mayor Carrick say when you spoke with him?”

  Gary nodded. “There’s nothing he can do either—he was the one who suggested calling the U.S. Embassy. I’ve tried to get hold of Senator Hartmann’s offices, too; no one will talk to me there; all they could suggest was some J-Town lawyer—Hartmann’s the one guy who might be able to get me out of this, and no one knows where the hell he is. No one else seems to be able to do anything. If I leave, I’ll be tossed in jail. That’s the bottom line.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Not as fucking sorry as I am,” he answered, then grimaced, looking in the direction of Moira’s room. “Sorry,” he apologized, pacing the length of the room and back.

  “She’s asleep. You must be tired, too.”

  He responded as if he hadn’t heard her. “I need to get back. Everything and everyone I know is back in New York.” He looked at her with stricken eyes. “I should never have done what I did, but I promised the man. I promised.”

  “Promises are important.” She managed to say it without bitterness.

  “Yeah. And this is one I wish I hadn’t kept.” He blinked. Walking over to the chair where she sat, he crouched down, touching her arm. His fingers radiated heat. “Sorry. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. You’ve taken huge chances with me, someone you don’t know at all—all of you here have. It’s just . . .”

  “I know,” she said. “You want to go home.”

  He laughed, bitterly. “You got that right.”

  NOVEMBER, 1995

  Gary sat with Moira at the desk near the front door. He huddled with her over her open textbook. Caitlyn watched the two of them, wondering.

  He’d already become more a part of her life than she’d ever expected. He and Moira . . . her daughter had bonded immediately and unquestioningly to her ‘Burning Man,’ and he responded to her with a teasing seriousness that made Caitlyn sometimes feel clumsy in her own relations with Moira.

  And yet. . . . He kept his distance with Caitlyn, careful not to say or do anything that might be construed as an advance. At first, she’d found that comforting . . .

  “Look,” he said to Moira, his baritone voice warm in the cool air of the room. “Remember when you introduced me to Codman Cody at the West Lighthouse? How many fingers does he have?”

  Caitlyn could see Moira squeeze her eyes shut in concentration. “Six,” she said at last. “Four on his right hand, two on his left.”

  “OK. And if he held his left hand over his right, that’d be two over four—like a fraction. What if he took away half the fingers on each hand? What would that look like? Think about Codman Cody’s hands . . .”

  Again, the eyes closed, then opened. “That would be one on one hand and two on the other,” she said.

  “Would he look silly then, with only three fingers?”

  Moira giggled. “Aye, he would.” They both laughed, then Gary drew a two-fingered hand and a four-fingered hand on the paper in front of them. “So you can divide the number of fingers on both hands by two, right? Which means two over four can be reduced to what fraction? Look at the hands.”

  “One over two!” Moira roared. “One half.”

  Gary applauded softly. “Hey, you got it! What if he had six fingers on his right? Could you reduce two over six?”

  A pause. Then: “One over three.” Moira giggled. “I understand. Thanks, Gary.”

  “You’re welcome. Now . . . why don’t you get to bed? Your mom and I gotta talk . . .” He kissed her forehead and Moira flung her arms around his neck. She ran over to Caitlyn and did the same, then scurried off to her room. Caitlyn watched Gary straighten the desk and put Moira’s notebooks in her backpack.

  “You’re good with her,” she said into the silence, and his deep brown eyes glanced back at her . .

  “She’s a great kid. I like her a lot.” His gaze turned away as he tucked Moira’s math book in and closed the flap. His dark, long fingers tapped the blue cloth. He pushed back the chair. “I’m going for a walk. Wanna come?”

  She hesitated. “I don’t know . . . Moira . . .”

  “Just tell her we’re going. She’ll be fine.”

  “All right,” she said finally. “Let me get my shawl . . .”

  The night was cool but dry, a strong, high wind draping shreds of cloud over a half-moon and ripping them away again, though only a faint breeze stirred the dry leaves of the hawthorn in the yard. She envied the ease with which Gary moved in the darkness, contrasting with her own clumsy, stiff-legged gait. He slowed his own pace to hers, walking alongside her down the narrow asphalt road winding westward. He was careful not to touch her, always keeping a distance between them. They said nothing, listening to the night birds, the soughing of the wind, and the faint sound of the water. They passed Abigail Scanlon’s cottage, a quarter mile down the road—‘Wide Abby,’ they called her. The old woman was out on her porch: Caitlyn could see the outline of the misshapen body, like someone laying on their side, the legs at either end of the stretched frame, the head a bump in the middle of a log, the hand waving at either end, unable to reach each other across the huge girth between them. Caitlyn remembered how they’d had to alter her cottage, the door hinged sideways, all the furniture low and wide. Caitlyn waved to her. “A beautiful night, ’tis it not, Abby?” she called out. There was no answer, only a faint wave from one of the hands.

  They walked on. She could feel Gary glan
cing from her to Abigail. “Moira goes to ‘school’ every day, but she’s the only one there,” he said finally. “She seems to know everyone on the island, and half the time she’s over at someone’s house. But y’know, in two months I’ve never seen anyone at all ever come to your house. I notice that you don’t go to the grocery yourself, that the person who delivers them leaves the box on the stoop and never knocks or rings the bell to say hello. I notice that your neighbors don’t say much to you.” He stopped, and she knew he was waiting for an answer. When she remained silent, walking on, he continued. “Is it me? Is it because I’m there?”

  She smiled, because she must. “No,” she answered. “It’s not you. It’s . . . complicated.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I don’t know if I can explain it to you. This isn’t your home; you weren’t sent here. You didn’t have to make the choice we made.” He said nothing; after a moment, she continued. “I came here with a mother who looked as deformed and disfigured as anyone here, who was in the same kind of pain. She lived for two decades that way, in daily pain and torment, and I took care of her. I took care of some of the others, too. That was nothing special. That was something we all did, those of us who could. And then . . . she died. And I left—because I could; because as far as I knew then, all the wild card had done to me was keep me forever young; because—unlike the rest of them here on Rathlin—I could get by in the normal society out there. I wasn’t ugly or horribly changed. I didn’t ooze slime or have spines or drag myself around like a slug. I was pretty and normal. Back then, when you looked at me or saw, you wouldn’t notice anything unless you watched me very carefully. I left. I left them behind. At the time, I didn’t think I’d ever come back.”

  They’d reached the point where the road curved away north to Church Bay. The west side of the island around Church Bay slid gently into the water, unlike the steep cliffs that lined most of the island’s perimeter. They stood on a rise, the bay glittering below, while away over the channel, the lights of Ballycastle in Northern Ireland gleamed six miles away, tantalizingly close and impossibly far away.

  “They’re jealous of you,” Gary said, “because you look like a nat, because you could blend in.”

  “That’s part of it, aye. Then there’s Moira. They love her, Gary, they do. She’s Rathlin’s only child, and they all feel like they’re her aunt or uncle. But at the same time, she . . . She’s a slap in their faces. All of them made the decision to stay here. They made the decision that they wouldn’t bring any more children into the world to be like them, to suffer the way they’ve suffered. I left them, and I came back with Moira . . .”

  “So they hate you.”

  Caitlyn tried to shake her head. It would turn only slowly. “Hate’s an awfully strong word, and too simple. It’s . . . it’s more that they’re terribly disappointed in me. I’ve shamed them, and along with that they can’t quite ever forget that I selfishly abandoned them, and they can’t forget that I’ve almost certainly condemned Moira to die young and in horrible pain because of the virus she carries. What I did was selfish and it was abandonment, and it was cruel. I did it purely for me.”

  “Sometimes you have to think about yourself first.”

  “Maybe,” she answered. “But then you have to live with everybody else afterward.”

  He gave her a contemplative hmm, leaning on the stone fence that bordered the roadway. She saw his gaze catch on the Ballycastle lights and remain there. “You really want to go home, don’t you?” she asked him.

  A nod. “Yeah. I do. Arnie called earlier today, while you were bringing back the sheep. Mom’s getting worse, and their finances . . . My savings are gone; I can’t afford that lawyer any more. I done everything I can think of to do. I even talked to Codman Cody about trying to sneak off the island at night in his boat, have him land me somewhere on the coast and see what happens . . .” She saw his hand form a fist and slowly loosen again. “I left without saying goodbye to anyone. I miss my family, I miss my friends, I miss walking around the city, all the people and the sights and the food . . . But I ain’t going back as a prisoner.” He looked at her over his shoulder with a wry smile. “I guess there are all kinds of prisons, aren’t there?”

  There was such gentle sympathy in his face, such compassion in his eyes . . . She wanted more than anything to lean toward that mouth, to kiss him and to feel him respond. She stared back at him, the eternal smile on her face, holding her breath. She could not move.

  But he did. His head turned, he bent toward her so close that she could feel his warmth. He stopped. Pulled back, his expression stricken and guilty. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have . . . I’m really sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize,” she told him.

  He shook his head. “It ain’t right, not when I’d leave here tomorrow if I could. Not after you took me in, let me stay with you. I’m really sorry, Caitlyn. I don’t want to make you feel threatened or bothered or-”

  “Stop it,” she told him. “It’s fine. It’s . . .” . . . what I want too. I’m just so afraid of it and I don’t know if I can anymore, and. . . . There were a dozen other things to say, but she couldn’t say any of them. “. . . forgotten,” she finished.

  But she didn’t forget it. She remembered. It haunted her dreams for a long time.

  “I hope you find your way home,” she told him.

  Rathlin’s lone lawyer was also Rathlin’s Mayor, an elderly gentleman with long white hair that covered most of his body. His snouted face and prominent front teeth made him look like a large rodent; the delicate eyeglasses perched there, the wire rims tucked behind his ear flaps, magnified the tiny black eyes, and the suit he wore made him look like a cartoon character . . His hand were pink and wrinkled and folded on top of the newspaper that covered his desk.

  Joseph Carrick: ‘The Rat of Rathlin,’ as he’d been dubbed by the Sun and other tabloids.

  DISASTER AVERTED! the headline trumpeted. Then, in smaller type: BLACK TRUMP DESTROYED IN JERUSALEM. SENATOR GREGG HARTMANN AMONG DEAD.

  “I thought . . . I thought that since Senator Hartmann was dead that the charges against me might be dropped,” Gary told Carrick.

  Carrick’s whiskered nose twitched. “I’m afraid they haven’t. I’ve made the inquiries you requested: the charges against you stand, and I’ve been told by the authorities in Northern Ireland, Great Britain and your own country that nothing has changed—you will be arrested the moment you step foot off Rathlin.” Carrick traced the headlines with a slow forefinger. “I am sorry, Mr. Bushorn. There’s nothing I can do.”

  “Mayor,” Gary said, a tone of desperation in his voice, “Look, Hartmann was just about my last hope. I gotta get back—you don’t understand.”

  “Joseph, surely there’s something else you can do?” Caitlyn’s voice drew Carrick’s attention away from the paper. His tiny lips, in the shadow of the snout, pursed in a tight moue of annoyance. Joseph Carrick had once openly courted Caitlyn, in the months after her mother’s death and before her flight from Rathlin. Caitlyn knew he’d considered her departure a personal insult—she’d heard him say it to others: “She think she’s too perfect to be touched by the likes of a joker . . . ”

  “I’ve done all I can,” he answered tartly. “Surely you’re not totally disappointed in the news, Miss Farrell, since that means your ‘house guest’ will be staying.” Caitlyn’s cheeks went hot—she started to answer, but Gary had already risen from his chair. His forefinger stabbed the paper in front of Carrick.

  Around the finger, white smoke curled away. “You,” Gary said, “will apologize to Caitlyn. I don’t care if you’re the fucking Mayor, I don’t care if you call Constable McEnnis and have him drag me off the island as a result.” His hand went down flat on the newspaper. The smell of ash and burning paper rose. Tiny flames leapt around his hand. “You know nothing about her, or you would have kept your mouth shut just now.” Fire crackled around his wrist. “Do I make myself clear?”


  Carrick’s tiny eyes widened more than Caitlyn thought possible. He nearly squeaked as he pushed his chair back from his desk. “Aye, I understand,” he said hurriedly. “Caitlyn, I’m apologize. I certainly didn’t mean to imply . . .”

  Gary swept the paper onto the wooden floor and stamped out the fire. The photo of the crater in the midst of Jerusalem was now a smoking hole. “I believe Caitlyn asked you a question just now.”

  Carrick was staring at the ruins of the newspaper alongside his desk. His head jerked back to Gary, then Caitlyn. “I suppose I could contact a few people I know in your state department. Perhaps some sort of amnesty could be arranged now that the Senator is dead and the crisis over. Why don’t you come back in a few weeks or so . . .”

  He did come back. Every week. And every time the answer was the same.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Bushorn . . .”

  DECEMBER, 1995

  There was wrapping paper strewn over the front room of the cottage, and Moira was sitting happily near the fire playing with a rag doll and a chess set. Caitlyn had given Gary a short-sleeved shirt woven from the wool of their sheep. “You don’t exactly seem to need a sweater,” she told him. “So I thought . . .”

  “It’s lovely,” he told her, and the way he looked at her made the smile widen on her face. “Here,” he said, handing her a package. “This is for you.”

  He set the small box on her lap. Awkwardly, she opened it—her elbows had tightened severely since the onset of winter, and she could barely move them. She stripped away the bow and the paper, and opened the lid. She could feel him watching her.

  Inside, in a nest of tissue paper, was a pocket watch. She could hear it ticking. She stared at the watch, shimmering through sudden mist in her eyes. “Where did you get this?” she asked. It was all she dared to say.