Piper

by John E. Keegan

  “Pride, shame, anger? I don’t know.”

  “Why can’t we just accept it? There’s nothing more you can do about it anyway.”

  We were sitting side by side, staring at the floor. With the edge of his loafer, he was probing the seam where the linoleum buckled up. “I don’t know what your mom did with him, but whatever happened I had it coming. I’d confused my job with my life.”

  “You’re being too Catholic, Dad.” Somewhere between the day Mom had drowned and me finishing the letter, he and I had traded places. I used to lament the fact he was able to get on with the rest of his life after her death, but once again I’d underestimated the ability of the human heart to harbor pain. “Why can’t you just let the newspaper editor in you put a good spin on it?”

  “Is that what you’re going to do?”

  I’d walked into another Tom Scanlon logic trap. He’d told me once that a fair deal was one in which you were willing to sit on either side. You have to be willing to sell to your partner for the same price you’d buy him out. If Dad had to accept John Carlisle’s word, so did I. “I’m working on it,” I said. “Give me a few days. You were his partner for umpteen years. Reading this letter I feel like I’ve just met him.”

  “He was dead right about one thing,” Dad said.

  “What?” I expected him to explain what the letter meant about Carlisle’s watch ending.

  “You’re untamed.”

  “I hoped you’d say precocious.”

  He rested his hand on my leg. “I didn’t want to give you a big head.”

  “You’re going to destroy the letter, aren’t you?”

  “What would you do?”

  “It seems like he owes you something.”

  “Nobody owes anybody. We each got what we bargained for.”

  I’d have to think about that one. In any event, I knew I was determined not to be saddled with the same compulsions of guilt Dad was. He’d dwelled too long on the scriptural side of the culture, while I’d already converted to the skepticism of Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus, the fabulous artificer Dad had introduced me to. Dedalus would help me adjust and revise this thing in my own mind until I could live with it.

  “Are you ready to get out of jail?”

  “Not if it means Willard has to stay in my place.”

  “Who’s being stubborn now? I think you should talk to him yourself.” He was still going to let me work the Rubik’s Cube on my own. “I gotta go.”

  “Can you do one thing?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Make sure the dogs are okay.”

  “I’ve taken care of the dogs.” The way he said it, so abruptly, made me think he’d called the pound.

  “They take a cup of dry each with some wet mixed in.”

  He waved me off. “I used to have a dog.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “There’s lots you don’t know.”

  I wondered if I should apologize for what I’d said last night. I’d obviously been guilty of the same thing I’d accused him of, making Mom Carlisle’s lover. The only difference was he was willing to be honest about it and I was going to deny it to my grave. Maybe it was my peculiar vantage point, but I believed what Carlisle had said about him and Mom. Carlisle had proven Dad and me both infidels. There was something, however, I had to say. I made sure our eyes met. “I’m sorry about what happened to John Carlisle.”

  He didn’t say anything, and I realized it wasn’t clear whether I was talking about Carlisle’s life or his death, but it didn’t matter because I knew Dad was suffering for both.

  They gave Willard a lie detector test, which he passed, and released him, but I was still skeptical. I’d seen him walk through land mines of exploding truths and emerge unscathed.

  He came by in the early afternoon, at Dad’s request, wearing his fluorescent orange construction bib with yellow Velcro straps, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he’d just been here a few hours ago. “Say, these are nice rooms,” he said. “Plenty of privacy.”

  He admitted he was at the paper that night, in the breezeway where the gas pump for the delivery truck was located. “I always go in there if I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “You go in there to pee?”

  “It’s family property.”

  “No, it’s not. Dad just works there.”

  “I thought he owned it.” He stuck his thumbs inside his vest. “Paddy was with me. He’ll back me up.”

  “What did the police say to your story?”

  “They said I’m gonna have to find a new place to pee.” He laughed his wheezy laugh. “Course they never asked me about my cigar.”

  “What cigar?”

  “Set it down, took a leak, then I couldn’t find it.”

  “You set your cigar down by the gas pump?”

  “Couldn’t stick it in my pocket. Then someone came out of the paper and Paddy and I high-tailed it outta there.”

  That someone had to have been Carlisle coming outside to fill his can with gasoline. Maybe Willard thought he had set the fire. Of course, if he had it would have been an accident, a careless old man’s accident instead of the gruesome, premeditated finale that John Carlisle had insisted on.

  Somewhere in this there was logic, maybe justice, something I should understand.

  21

  On the first Saturday in May, Willard and I took the dogs on a hike out to Harvey Field to watch the Stampede Air Show. It was supposed to include Nick Oster doing stunts in his crop duster, and a landing by a replica of the Gossamer Albatross, the human-powered craft that crossed the English Channel.

  “Who’s peddling it?” Willard wanted to know.

  “Icarus,” I said, and he jerked his head around, throwing me a distrustful look. “You know, the guy who flew too close to the sun.”

  “Never heard of him,” he said, straight-faced.

  Willard wore his brakeman’s cap to keep the sun out of his eyes and a pair of mechanic’s coveralls. This time he looked like he really was stepping off to Bonnie Holliday’s to work on her Studebaker. His gait, short abbreviated steps not always going in the same direction, reminded me of Charlie Chaplin. I carried a day pack full of tuna sandwiches, carrot sticks, and enough plastic bottles of water for us as well as the dogs. It was a perfect day for flying upside down and doing the loop: blue sky padded with gauzy clouds.

  By the time we passed under the Carlisle Bridge, the sweat between my shoulder blades where the pack rested had made a washcloth out of my T-shirt and we stopped in the shade to give the dogs their first drink of water. I’d forgotten to bring a dish, so Willard cupped his hands and I poured water into them as the dogs fought like kindergartners at a fountain to get their turn. “The hand is still the best tool ever made,” he said. The only dog to act like a gentleman was Paddy and I petted him on the head to assure him we’d break open a fire hydrant if we ran out.

  It turned out Dad had known about Willard’s dogs all the time, which made me wonder what else he knew. “I got suspicious,” he said, “every time Willard came by the paper courting a different dog.” When I asked him why he didn’t say something, he said, “I thought the secrecy would give you a reason to keep an eye on him.”

  The heat rising in the distance off Highway Nine turned the asphalt into a shimmering stream. We walked on the shoulder and Willard tried to get the dogs to stay alongside us in the ditch. “This is where we need Freeway,” he said, one of the few times he’d mentioned Freeway since the day we buried him in the backyard. Maybe the fact he could mention him out loud meant he was getting over it.

  In the galaxy of town events, the Air Show was right up there with the Antique Car Festival. Cars whizzed by us on the highway. Spectators were also arriving by air because I could see single engine planes circling Harvey Field like buzzards, then swooping down and disappearing.

  “It ain’t a paddle wheeler,” Willard said, pausing to catch his breath, “but isn’t this going to be dandy?”

&
nbsp; Our hike reminded me of the times I used to traipse through meadows next to the river with Mom, when we took off our shoes and skipped across the flower fields, letting stalks of heather, dogwood, and Indian paintbrushes weary our legs until we toppled over and lay there on our backs giggling, sucking in the sugary scent of the petals. Today, instead of the buzz of grasshoppers, we had the drone of airplanes. Instead of watching Mom replicate the landscape of an Alpine lake, we were going to watch someone replicate the flight of a bird against the skyscape. And instead of Mom, I had her father, but they both had that same childlike sense of awe that made them Coopers. Willard and I had never talked about the fact I was adopted and I wondered if he might have actually forgotten it somewhere along the way. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything for fear it would break the bond between us.

  When Father Tombari, the pastor at St. Augustine’s, stopped to offer us a ride, I thought at least there would be someone to administer last rites if Nick Oster missed a loop. Willard came up to the car, pressed his face against the window glass, and stared into the backseat.

  “Is that you, Bonnie Holliday?”

  “Willard, come on.” I tugged at his sleeve. Maybe he’d dehydrated from the heat.

  There was a whir as the rear window lowered and a woman in an Easter bonnet with plump, rosy cheeks leaned across the lap of the other passenger in the back and stuck her head out. She clutched a charcoal kitten against the cleavage of her ample breasts. “I’m Edda, Bonnie’s little sister.”

  Willard just stood there limp, confounded, staring back at this apparent bubbling likeness of his old flame. The dogs gathered around the car, eyeing the kitten who’d spread her claws like crow’s feet against Edda’s flowery pink sundress. Edda filled the frame of the window as she leaned out, the upside-down kitten clinging frantically to avoid the pack of dogs below her. Then Edda wrapped one arm around Willard’s neck, drew him to her bosom and planted a wet kiss on him.

  “I remember you,” she said. “You’re the little fixer.”

  Over Willard’s protest, I turned down the ride, but when Father Tombari maneuvered his car back into the driving lane Edda’s head was still sticking out the rear window, blowing kisses back at him.

  “Why’d you tell ’em no?”

  “We couldn’t put the dogs in there with the cat.”

  “She looks just like Bonnie.”

  “She’s with the pastor. That means she’s probably Catholic.”

  There was a pair of scarlet lips tattooed to his forehead. “I can be Catholic.”

  We resumed our trek, with the dogs working the ditches for jackrabbits. There was a controversy swirling in Cascade County over their burgeoning numbers. The farmers said they were destroying the seed crops, threatening their economic survival. On the other hand, groups like Doctors Without Borders, of whom Payton Miller and Willard Cooper were the only local members, opposed the slaughtering of the rabbits.

  “It’s too much like what we did to the Indians,” Willard said.

  I wasn’t really surprised when Dad turned John Carlisle’s letter over to the insurance company. But there wasn’t going to be any newspaper story.

  “Where’s the news in what your mother and John Carlisle did with their afternoons? They were private citizens.” I had assumed his investigative records were consumed by the fire, but it turned out he had all of it on a disk at home. I should have known he’d have a backup. “There was no third-party corroboration anyway,” he said. This last statement I suspected was for his own benefit, to cast doubt on what might have happened, to make it easier for him to manipulate the whole thing around in his stomach to a more digestible state. Of course, Dad’s honesty in turning over Carlisle’s letter also robbed him of the money to rebuild the newspaper.

  “What about the promises you made to the employees?” I asked him.

  “I’m sick about it.”

  “You should have taken the money.”

  He just looked at me, disappointed at what little I’d learned.

  I was sitting out on the front lawn with Willard and the dogs counting grass blades when a glossy white BMW with a personalized license plate that said “TRU$T$” pulled up in front of our house. A soft-bellied man in a pair of cords and scuffed Rockports stepped out, extended his arm toward the hood of his car, and zapped the alarm on. He looked at me and Willard like we were part of the Crips, waiting until he turned his back to hotwire his car.

  “Is this the Scanlon residence?” Dad was home, so we just pointed him toward the door and went on about our business.

  After a while, Dad called me inside and as soon as I walked into the living room I could smell the lemon in the hot tea he’d fixed for them. The man in Rockports was squatting on the green bean bag chair with papers spread out on the coffee table in front of him. This man who’d pretty much ignored me on the lawn struggled to extricate himself from the bean bag, stood, and shook my hand, all the time studying me up and down. Go ahead and say it, I thought, you sure are a long drink of water.

  “Piper, this is Richard Millstone from Seattle.” Stampede people always mentioned the fact that someone was from Seattle, as if it was an institution of higher learning. “He’s the attorney for the Carlisle estate.” Based upon his dress, I wouldn’t have guessed he was an attorney, but as I noticed how the skin under his eyes had greyed and crabbed it was obvious he’d read a lot of fine print. I must have been introduced in my absence because I noticed that Dad didn’t bother to say who I was.

  We sat down and I could feel the dampness from the grass on the butt of my pants. Dad asked him if he wanted more hot water, which he politely refused. “What about you, Piper?” Mainly because I didn’t want Dad to go out of the room and leave me alone with him, I also declined. “Richard, why don’t you go ahead and explain the terms of the bequest?”

  He cleared his throat and scooted forward on the chair, the beans rustling under him. “Ahem, yes. Mr. Carlisle bequeathed his house to your mother.” I couldn’t help but gulp. Frankly, despite whatever good intentions John Carlisle might have had, I was getting a little tired of all these niceties between him and Mom. Every one of them made it harder to accept the truth of what he’d said in his letter. I would have been just as happy if I didn’t have to deal with another Carlisle legacy. “In the event your mother predeceases him, the Will provides that the house goes to you.” He held out his hand to congratulate me.

  “Me? I don’t want his house.” I wasn’t even sure I wanted to live in Stampede.

  “Well, the law says it’s yours.” He looked over at Dad. “I think she’ll change her mind when she thinks about it.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” he said.

  “Why doesn’t it go to Willard?” I said. “He’s her father.”

  The beans rustled again as he smiled politely and ignored my question. “It will take several months before I can close the estate and make distribution. By that time, you’ll be eighteen and I can deed the place over to you directly rather than set up a guardianship.” As he blathered on about the responsibilities of ownership, I decided Millstone was an apt title for what this man did for a living.

  “Richard, can you excuse us for a minute?” Dad said, snapping me out of my stupor.

  I watched the attorney stand, hitch up his cords, and pad out to the kitchen. When I looked back at Dad, he was tugging on his hair the way he did at work when he had a difficult story. “What’s the matter?” I said.

  “There’s more.”

  I shrugged my shoulders, playing dumb, not wanting there to be anything more to anything. From upside down, I could read the title of the document in the blue folder Dad was picking up: “THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF JOHN J. CARLISLE.” What more could there be?

  “I wish Kathryn were here. I never imagined it would be me telling you this.”

  “What?”

  He turned to the first page of text and all I could make out was the word “PREAMBLE.” He spoke slowly. “The house wasn’t
meant as something to placate you. You’re entitled to it, if not more.” He wiped his eye with the back of one hand. “Let me read what it says.” He traced his finger down the page. “I declare that I am unmarried and have no children, living or deceased. I have one sister, Ashley Marie Carlisle, who is presumed deceased, and one niece, my sister’s daughter, Piper Scanlon, who was given over at birth for adoption.”

  It was like Mom had died all over again. “Why didn’t someone tell me?”

  I could feel the wrap of his arms, trying to rock me. “Kathryn and John thought it would mark you.”

  “What do you mean, mark me?”

  “Make you feel illegitimate. Bind you to Ashley’s fate. Look, Kathryn raised you from infancy. She did everything but nurse you. This doesn’t take any of that away.”

  I felt woozy. I reached over to the table and picked up the blue folder. Through the blur, I tried to read the words myself, to see if there wasn’t a footnote to cast doubt on what Dad had read. I’d spent my life disparaging the Carlisles and now this document told me I was one. It was as if I were a slave who’d been traded. My new keepers were the Carlisles, and the boozy recluse who’d raised John Carlisle and banished Ashley to the attic was my grandmother. But there was going to be no family reunion because, at the moment of being bound over, all known Carlisles in the world were either dead or presumed to be.

  The prospect of my own death began to haunt me, and I didn’t want to leave behind booby traps to maim the survivors. The first thing that had to go was the diary, which was chock full of rantings written in the heat of the moment, indictments of Dad, pathetic spewings about Rozene. I took the diaries with me early to school one day and snuck into the furnace room to burn them, but it was Spring and the furnace had been shut down, so I borrowed a pair of scissors from the office, took the diaries into the girl’s can, cut the pages into strips, and flushed them down the toilet, discarding the covers into the waste bin. I missed first period.

  I also had a dream one night where Willard and I were walking to the Air Show and a jackrabbit popped up on the opposite side of the road. Paddy made a reckless dash for it and a car sent him tumbling like a gunnysack of potatoes across the pavement. Then Willard ran after Paddy and a hollow thud sent Willard airborne until he landed facedown in the shoulder gravel at my feet. I bent over him but the only movement that registered was my own trembling and the dust particles floating around us in a cloud like we’d already passed into the next world. Dog muzzles pushed in around us, trying to see his eyes. The eyes would tell us what we had to know. One arm was caught under his belly and his stubby legs were askew. I could hear the exhaust of an idling car and voices gasping above me, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the little man in the dirty coveralls. I straightened his legs, and when I slid my hands under his head and rotated it, I almost retched. His face was a piece of raw steak that had mopped up the shoulder gravel. I stretched out on the ground, the length of my body touching his, whispering, begging him to live. I petted down the quills of gray hair standing out from his head, fingering the hole in the shoulder of his coveralls. As they were closing the door to the ambulance, a woman in short pants and thongs handed me a crumpled brakeman’s cap and a dusty set of dentures. They took us to the same emergency room where they’d taken Mom, with the same result. Willard Cooper, my would-be grandfather and sidekick, died on the operating table before the Gossamer Albatross ever landed. As if it offered comfort, the doctor said if he’d survived he wouldn’t have been capable of coherent speech and his cognitive capabilities would have been severely impaired anyway, which was really no consolation at all because Willard’s best parts were non-verbal, always had been. That’s why he got along so well with four-footed creatures.