Evan sighed once and then glanced up to find the old man’s eyes searching straight through him. Evan decided to make it easier. “I guess we’ve both traveled a pretty rough stretch of road, but to be honest Grampa John, I’ve felt nothing but guilt since I found her in New York. How could I be worried about my own troubles when Tara’s got it so much worse?”
The first puzzle piece had just been handed over. Grampa John answered the question with one of his own. “Evan, if a fella has a hundred pigeons and loses them and another fella has only ten pigeons and loses them, who do you figure loses more?”
Evan almost laughed at the childish riddle. It was so easy. “The man with the hundred pigeons, of course!” he answered.
Grampa John smiled. Placing the red cap onto his shiny head, he was almost at the storm door when he looked back. “I ain’t ever been big in the brains department, but if you ask me, I’d say they both lost everything they had.” With one push on the door, he was gone from the house. The real work had just begun.
Evan paused briefly in front of the mirror where Tara had received her first lesson. Taking a long look at his face, he chuckled. “Wow,” he whispered, “the old man’s right.” Pain was merely relative to one’s own experiences.
He checked his cell phone for anything from Carley. Still nothing, he thought, and followed Three Speed out to the barn.
Grampa John was already shoveling manure when Evan caught up to him. Grabbing the shovel that sat waiting for him, he worked to the rhythm of his mentor. The old man waited to listen and said nothing. It didn’t take long before Evan was filling him with two earfuls.
He explained his relationship with Carley and the love he’d recently lost. “As I told you so many times on the phone, loving Carley was as easy as taking a nap and I paid her all the attention a girl could dream for. I sent flowers to her house and left sappy cards on her car windshield at work. She was the most important thing in my life.” He took a deep breath. “Right from the start, she became my life … or at least the center of it. Everything else rotated around her and I made sure that she never forgot it.”
As Evan shook his head, his eyes began to fill. “And I was never shy about letting her know how I felt about her. We took long walks on the beach, drank cheap wine from paper cups and, some nights, I even read her poetry until she fell asleep.”
Grampa John nodded, impressed, but kept right on shoveling.
“It was an innocent love,” Evan continued, “filled with respect, trust and appreciation.” The tears were starting to break free now. “…or at least I thought it was.” He looked to his grandfather for feedback. The old man looked skeptical but remained silent, waiting to hear more. “I loved Carley more than my own soul, you know?”
This time, Grampa John nodded his understanding. “I do,” he whispered.
“I loved her completely,” Evan wept.
Leaning on the shovel’s hickory handle, Grampa John waited for the sobs to subside before he asked, “So why’d it end?”
Evan’s head snapped up like he’d just been punched in the gut.
“Might as well get it all out now,” the old man said. “Pain like this can eat a man from the inside out.” He smiled. “And you got too much good in you to get swallowed up like that.”
Evan took a few deep breaths. “The bridal shower was only two weeks away and Ma was planning on flying up.”
Grampa John nodded again.
“Anyway, I got home late from a newspaper assignment expecting to find Carley in bed. Instead, I found a note stuck to the refrigerator. It read, ‘I’m at Louise’s. I need a little time alone to sort things out. Please don’t worry. I love you.’ I remember reading that note over and over, thinking, Dear God, please just let it be the jitters.
“With little chance for sleep, I spent the night thinking about calling her friend Louise. A few times, I even punched in three or four numbers before I hung up. I shouldn’t do it, I kept thinking. Carley needs some time alone and I should be mature enough to give her that. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her. I just wanted to hear her voice and tell her that I loved her, you know?”
Grampa John nodded again, but the suspicion in his eyes returned. He went back to his work and listened.
“The next morning, I woke up in a chair with a stiff neck and searched the apartment,” Evan said. “There was no sign of her anywhere. She’d never come home. My stomach flopped sideways and my head filled with the most horrible thoughts. I thought I was going to be sick and actually ran for the toilet. Something was wrong. I just knew it was.
“I called The Herald News and canceled the interviews I had scheduled. The next call I made was to Louise. It rang five times before she picked up. I asked if I could speak to Carley. But Louise was half asleep … groggy. She said, ‘Carley’s not here.’ Then there was a terrible pause when she realized it was me who was asking. ‘Oh, hi Evan,’ she said, ‘Carley left already.’ I felt even sicker now. Louise was obviously covering for Carley and she wasn’t doing a real good job at it.”
Between details, Evan had to stop to fight back the tears. Each time, Grampa John gestured that he talk through them. He did. Evan kept talking and shoveling—and he cried. There was no shame in it.
“I waited for hours with my heart in my throat,” Evan said. “The telephone finally rang. It was Carley. Before I could get more than two words out, she told me she would see me in a couple of days and then hung up.”
Evan shook his head. “I swear to you … the stranger who’d just hung up on me wasn’t the Carley I knew … and loved. I felt angry but it was nothing compared to the fear. All those horrible thoughts that had been running through my head all seemed so real now. I collapsed into a chair and cried. Something told me that the dream I’d been living was about to die.”
Grampa John looked up at his grandson’s peculiar choice of words but he didn’t interrupt. He just kept shoveling.
Evan said, “I eventually calmed myself down enough to call my friend Rob. He’s an investigator at one of the state prisons up there.”
“So you had her followed?” Grampa asked, grabbing his handkerchief to wipe his glistening brow.
Evan nodded. “Yes, sir. Rob played Carley’s secret shadow for a few days before reporting back everything he found.” Evan stopped and cried for a full minute. When he finally composed himself enough to speak he whimpered, “I could feel my heart tear clean out of Carley’s hands when Rob showed me those pictures of her kissing another guy … Paul is his name. I couldn’t breathe. ‘Oh, God … no,’ I kept screaming. It felt like everything inside of me had just been stripped away.” He wiped his eyes. “Before Rob left my apartment, he said, ‘They’re all the same, buddy. The good thing is … there’s more where that one came from.’”
Grampa John shook his head in disagreement and took a break from shoveling.
Evan paused for a few long moments before being able to finish his horror story. “Carley came home late that afternoon. I stood before her, crying my eyes out. I took the photos out my pocket and threw them in her face.” He shook his head in disbelief. “She was so calm that it actually scared me. She picked up the pictures off the floor, looked at them and snickered, ‘Oh, that’s real nice, Evan! You were having me followed?’ Then she tossed them back at me.”
Grampa John inhaled deeply and returned to his shoveling.
“And believe it or not, that was it!” Evan said. “There were no excuses and no apologies … just a pathetic attempt to shift the blame from her betrayal to me not trusting her. As she headed for the bedroom she told me, ‘Why don’t you just pack your things and leave. It’s over.’
“I honestly felt like I was standing outside a window, watching some other poor fool get dumped. I hurried into the bedroom and screamed, ‘Please tell me you haven’t been making a fool out of me all this time?’ I can’t tell you how bad I needed her to say that she’d been true to me. I would have given everything.”
Grampa John nodded
again.
“But she didn’t,” Evan said, the sorrow in his voice changing to rage. “She didn’t even care enough to respond. Instead, she pulled the covers up under her chin and closed her eyes. In that one moment, I could have easily taken her life … and then my own.”
This time, it was Grampa John’s head that flew up. He immediately stopped working and stared hard into his grandson’s eyes.
“It’s just a figure of speech,” Evan quickly admitted, softening his tone. “But I’m telling you … if Carley had cared any less, she would have already been sleeping.”
The old man nodded and rested his chin on the shovel handle.
Evan concluded, “I stormed out of the house, realizing that my friend Rob didn’t have the slightest idea about what I’d just lost. There was no way he could know the love that Carley and I had once shared. No one could. The things she’d just thrown away were …” He couldn’t finish the sentence.
While Evan rode a crashing wave of anguish and fury, Grampa John studied him. “So she never showed any signs of cheatin’ before this?” he asked, wisely digging deeper. “Now that you can look back and see things more clearly.”
Evan calmed himself and gave the question some thought. It didn’t take long for embarrassment to find its way into his face. “I … I … had my suspicions a few times,” he admitted, “but I was always afraid to lose her.” He looked up to accept the old man’s judgment. There wasn’t any. He thought for a while longer and shook his head. “I guess I couldn’t wait for the wedding to come quick enough … as if that was going to change her.”
Grampa John nodded.
Evan’s voice was suddenly reduced to that of a helpless child. “I feel like such a fool,” he confessed.
“Why?” Grampa John asked, his eyebrow on the rise. “Did you mess around on her?”
Evan thought the question was ludicrous, but swore, “I didn’t.”
“Well then, I guess that makes her the fool. If you was true to her and treated her right, then that’s all you could do. The rest was up to her and I ain’t ever seen any man able to make the choices for another … especially a female.” The afterthought came with a grin.
Evan remained serious. “But maybe it was just a mistake? Maybe …”
Grampa John leaned on the shovel’s handle again, his smile gone. “Boy, you put a quart of sour milk in the icebox today, I promise that tomorrow when you go and wet your whistle it’ll make you lose whatever’s in your belly.” He nodded. “It’ll always be sour.”
Evan already knew that to be true. Coming from Grampa John, that truth only became more evident. There really is no going back, he realized.
Grampa John finished the sore subject with one last prediction. Pointing to his bald head, he joked, “Grass don’t grow on a busy street and I’ve been around the block a time or two myself. As sure as that sun’s goin’ down tonight, she’ll get hers. Whether you want it or not, she’ll get what’s comin’ to her. That’s just the way things were designed. It might sadden you to know you won’t ever see it, but leave it to God to take care of this one.” He gave Evan a friendly squeeze at the nape of the neck, while his smile returned. “Let it go. Spite rusts the bucket it’s kept in. Besides, she’d get off way too easy with you anyway.”
Evan chuckled, rubbed his neck and thought, Grampa John doesn’t know his own strength. Looking at his grandfather’s shiny head, the chuckle grew. Grass doesn’t grow on cement either, he thought, but he would have never dared kid him about it. Grampa John would have chased him until morning.
For the rest of the afternoon, Evan bounced from topic to topic, catching his grandfather up on everything he’d experienced. He spoke about college, living in Fall River, Massachusetts and kicking off his writing career by hustling for the local newspapers. A few times, he reached for his cell phone but stopped himself. She’s never going to call, he realized. And it wouldn’t change anything if she did.
The sun was just going down when Grampa John spoke again. “How ’bout you camp out with me for a spell. You know … give you some time and space to sort things out.” He smiled. “Give me someone to work like a mule.”
Evan laughed. “It’s the best offer I’ve had in weeks,” he joked. Then thinking on Ma and Pa, he figured they’d understand. There usually isn’t enough room for two McCarthy men under the same roof anyway. But Grampa John’s different. Evan gladly accepted.
CHAPTER 8
Hank had been sitting on his porch for hours, watching—and seething. Given that it was dusk, Evan was clearly staying on with the old man at the farmhouse. He and Tara both are, Hank realized. His blood pumped hard in his veins, making his temples pound like dueling bass drums. He yanked another beer from the six-pack and started chugging. “So he’s gonna take the kids from me now too, huh?” he hissed. “Oh, I don’t think so!”
The recent time he’d spent with the old man—and any progress they’d made during it—was instantly erased. Ain’t no way in hell I’m gonna sit for it! he told himself.
An hour later, Hank was nearly passed out in his worn recliner. Elle had tolerated the same scene a thousand times. But this time something’s different, she thought. On her way to check on Lila, she’d recognized a deep pain in her husband’s sapphire eyes. “What’s wrong, Hank?” she asked.
At first, he just shook his head but she could tell he wanted to talk. She took a seat beside him and asked again. “Well, I can see that something’s eating at you. What is it? Tell me.”
“How long those kids gonna stay on with the old man?” he barked, a primitive rage evident in his voice.
“Don’t know,” she said, preparing to erect her own wall to defend against the anger. “Pa asked they stay on with him for a few days … said he wanted to clear up a few things. I think …”
Hank pounded the arm of his chair, kicking up a small cloud of dust and making Elle jump. “Damn him!” he hissed.
Elle sat there for a moment, deciding to leave her wall down for a bit longer, deciding she would give it another shot. “You know, Hank, I really don’t understand why you men don’t just talk it out. I mean it’s been years, for God’s sake! It seems so silly to let any more time pass.”
He shook his head violently. “You have no idea,” he hissed.
She ignored his comment. “The clock’s ticking, Hank,” she added, frustrated. “Your mother should have at least taught you that.”
He looked up at her, his eyes betraying an equal mix of a man’s rage and a little boy’s fear. He shook his head again.
“My God, did you always hate him this much?” Elle asked.
His eyes filled. “You have no idea,” he repeated, this time with more hurt than anger.
“Then explain it to me,” she pleaded, never realizing that this simple statement was enough to finally get some answers.
Hank sighed heavily, closed his eyes and off he went—to reveal his skeletons of the past and reunite with the demons that had haunted his soul since childhood.
Hank was knee high to a beetle when he realized that he worshipped his father like no other. The old man was never around when the eye of heaven shined down, but Hank remembered how he’d be busting with anticipation for that eye to shut for the night. Throughout the day, he’d drive his ma from her own chores by climbing every windowsill in the house to catch a glimpse of Pa. He’d spot him on the tractor or tending to the animals and squeal with joy. There was no better feeling. Then, the big man would come in with the dark—smelling of mud and manure—take off his shirt and get cleaned up. He looked like a giant back then. His massive upper body was lily white, his skin burned red from the biceps down, giving him the look of a walking barbershop pole. He’d clean up in the washroom, walk over to the stove where Ma was cooking and kiss her on the nape of the neck. They’d sit together, Pa would say grace and there would be silence until every plate was clean. And my plate had better be clean before I left the table.
While Ma washed the dishes, Hank would clin
g to Pa’s big shoulders. Unless the weather was too bitter, they’d go straight to the rocking chair where Hank played copilot. When the spirit moved him, the old man spun tales of far-off lands and heroes dressed in white. He was the greatest storyteller when he chose to spare his breath. It wasn’t often. Some nights, he’d play his harmonica, putting it into Hank’s mouth to teach. Most nights though, under the shelter of the porch, Hank just sat in his lap, listened to the world and rocked. A twig snapping, an owl’s hoot or the occasional howl of a coyote sometimes broke the silence, but normally it was Pa’s heart that kept beat to the song of the crickets. Hank never remembered falling asleep. It just seemed to happen so easily back then in the safety and comfort of his father’s lap. For the life of him, he couldn’t recall when those lullabies ended—or the last time I even sat in the rockin’ chair.
Right from the beginning, Ma was different from Pa. She really listened when Hank had something to say. He made mention of it once and Ma explained, “Your pa has a lot on his mind these days. There’s a lot of changes on the farm.” Giving him a loving spank as she often did she finished, “Your pa is doin’ all of this for you. You’re the most important thing in his life.”
Hank was young and had no good reason to question his mother’s words. Ma would never lie to me, he decided, but he still recalled feeling some serious doubt. It certainly didn’t appear like he was the most important thing to Pa. Even the cows seem to come first.
One night, the old man shook him from a sound sleep. “It’s time to earn your keep, boy!” He was holding Hank’s boots in his big paws.
Hank jumped out of bed like he’d just wet himself. He’d been waiting for this opportunity all seven years of his life. At his pa’s side, he ran to keep up and recalled questioning, “Why do the chores get started in the middle of the night?”
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