Fireside

by Susan Wiggs

  Suddenly, Bo felt very close to that boy on fire. “You a baseball fan?” he asked AJ. Maybe the kid was ready to talk.

  “Not really.”

  Great. “Not even the Astros?”

  “I don’t really follow them. Or any team. Or any player, either.”

  “Well, hell.” Bo drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “What do you like to do?” He fiddled with the radio dial. “How about music? You like music? I play in a band in Avalon. We’re not that good but we have quite a time together. One of us is good—a guy named Eddie Haven.”

  Bo was no virtuoso, but ever since high school, he’d played in a variety of garage bands. In the movies, a band was like a second family, but in real life, that was never the case. Every band he’d played in was as dysfunctional as his own family, if not more. Except the group he was with now, which was more about drinking beer and male bonding than about making music. The group consisted of Bo on bass and his best friend, Noah, on drums, and a local cop named Rayburn Tolley on keyboards. The real talent of the group was Eddie, on lead guitar and vocals.

  A long silence stretched out. It was always a surprise to Bo when he met someone who wasn’t a baseball fan. More surprising when they didn’t have a favorite band—or song. He glanced over at AJ, then did a double take. The weak, cold light of winter flowed over his face. He held one curled fist tucked up under his chin, and he appeared to be fast asleep.

  “Oh, you are scintillating, Crutch, that’s what you are,” Bo murmured. “Purely scintillating.”

  Bo had to remind himself to watch the road. It was irresistible, sneaking glances at that sleeping face. Was there a resemblance? Some indelible stamp that branded this boy his? Bo couldn’t tell. He drove the rest of the way to Avalon listening to Stanley Clarke and Jaco Pastorius on the Z4’s state-of-the-art MP3 player.

  For Bo, music was never just background noise. It was a place he went in his head, like a sanctuary. Home base, where he was safe. This was something he’d invented when he was a kid, left alone in a noisy trailer park in Texas City. The air smelled of burning petroleum products from the refineries, and the sky was always a dull amber color, even at night, because the refinery never slept. Bo’s mother and brother were gone most of the time, and he’d found that music was a way to fill the dark corners of the house and drown out the sounds of the neighbors fighting, dogs barking, trucks and motorcycles coming and going.

  When he was about twelve years old, his brother, Stoney, gave him an electric bass and an amp. The instrument was hot, of course; everything of value Stoney brought home was hot. Bo hadn’t objected, though. Sure, stealing was wrong, but Stoney was good at it, and he only ripped off people who owed him money.

  Bo had taught himself to play by ear.

  Bo glanced over at AJ, wondering if the kid liked music. Hell, he wondered if AJ liked anything. This boy, who carried around half of Bo’s DNA, was a complete stranger to him. Bo harbored no romantic notion that just because they were blood relations, they were going to find some deep connection and form a meaningful, lifelong bond.

  Bo’s own father had disabused him of that notion. Wiley Crutcher had married Bo’s mother, Trudy, and stuck with her only long enough to give her a name that sounded like a prosthetic device, and two large, athletic boys. Wiley had left when Bo was a baby. Bo’s only memory of the man came from an encounter that occurred when Bo was in grade school. Wiley had shown up for a Little League game; Bo had no idea why. Bo’s mother had introduced them before the game.

  “This him?” Wiley had asked.

  “Yes. This is Bo. Bo, this here’s your daddy.”

  Bo remembered feeling those eyes, checking him out. Wiley Crutcher had taken a sip from a bottle in a bag; he’d wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said, “Dudn’t look like much.”

  “Oh, he’s a real good ballplayer. Wait till you see.”

  “Yeah?” Wiley had tossed him a coin. It had a triangle and some words on it. “Here you go, kid. For luck.”

  Some guys’ dads gave them bikes and baseball mitts for presents. Bo got a one-time visit and this coin. His father hadn’t stuck around, but the coin brought Bo luck. That was something, at least. Bo had pitched his first shutout that day. His team and his coach were overjoyed, but when the game ended, his father was already gone. He went to get some beer, Bo’s mother explained, and he never came back.

  So now, when Bo regarded this boy, this stranger-son he’d picked up at the airport like a piece of lost luggage, he did not fool himself into believing that the tenderness that touched his heart as he watched the boy eat and sleep was anything but pity. This boy’s mother had been rounded up at the factory where she’d worked for ten years, put in detention to await deportation. No wonder the kid was freaked.

  Sophie would fix this, Bo reassured himself. Maybe even over the weekend; she was that good when it came to matters of law. So, really, there was no point in getting attached to the kid. AJ would be back with his mama in no time.

  * * *

  A few hours later, they rolled into Avalon, a town that, to Bo and most outsiders, looked too pretty to be real. Clustered around the southern end of Willow Lake, it was a town forgotten by time, where the seasons changed but the landscape didn’t. Currently the lake was frozen over, a vast white expanse of hell, as far as Bo was concerned. He preferred to stay inside where the real men were, shooting pool and drinking beer.

  When it came to winter sports, Bo figured he’d rather have a root canal. He was a summer guy, through and through. He’d grown up with the sticky-hot sun of the Texas Gulf Coast beating down on him. It wasn’t his choice to live in the tundra. Initially, he’d moved to Avalon because it was the only place that would have him, pitching for the Hornets. Now he was entrenched, awaiting a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that was not yet quite real.

  The main part of town had a railway station with a few daily trains south to Grand Central Station in New York City and to Albany and points north. The town square had a courthouse, shops and restaurants that catered to tourists year round. Radiating from the main square were quaint streets of homes, schools and churches. They passed the Apple Tree Inn, a high-end restaurant where you took your date if you wanted to impress her, thus increasing your chances of getting laid. The Avalon Meadows Country Club was the place where the local nobs sipped martinis and traded travelogues.

  And then there was the Hilltop Tavern. It had been Bo’s home away from home since he’d moved to town. It belonged to Maggie Lynn O’Toole, who had to buy out her ex in their divorce settlement. The bar, located in a historic brick building at the top of Oak Hill, had started life during Prohibition as a speakeasy. Through the years, it had gone through many transformations and was now the most popular watering hole in town.

  Bo lived in a studio apartment tucked into a corner of the building over the taproom. AJ didn’t wake up when Bo pulled into the nearly empty parking lot at the back of the old brick walk-up, and stopped the car. Damn, now what? He hated to wake the kid after the night he’d had. God knew, sleep was a better place for the boy than being awake and fretting about his mother. But they couldn’t stay in the car all day.

  “Yo, AJ, we’re here,” Bo said.

  The boy didn’t respond.

  Bo made plenty of noise getting out of the car and retrieving the bags from the trunk. He took the bags upstairs, hurried back down to check on AJ. He went around to the passenger side and opened the door. “Hey, we’re here,” he said again. “Come on upstairs and you can get some sleep.”

  AJ was already getting some sleep. A fresh gust of arctic air caused him to shudder, but he didn’t wake up. Bo considered giving the boy a nudge, then decided it would be cruel to wake him from a sound sleep into a strange, cold world of worry. He reached into the car and released the seat belt. Bending low in a supremely awkward stance, he snaked one arm behind AJ and the other under his knees
, and lifted him up.

  The kid stayed sound asleep. Amazing. Also amazing—for the first time in his life, Bo was holding his son. Twelve years too late, AJ was in his arms, a deadweight. He was small, but not that small. Bo staggered a little, getting his balance on the icy surface of the parking lot. Damn. He could blow out a knee like this. And that would blow everything for him.

  He moved slowly, carefully, waiting to feel some kind of connection to the bundle of humanity. Maybe now that he was touching the boy, it would happen.

  Music pulsed from the taproom, interspersed with laughter and conversation. The afternoon crowd wasn’t too rowdy, but now Bo heard it with new ears. He instinctively hunched his shoulders as if to protect the kid from the intrusive noise. “Let’s get you inside, my buddy,” he murmured, and headed for the door.

  The carpet on the stairs and in the hallway was grungy from winter boots; Bo had never noticed that before. He resolved to talk to Maggie Lynn about replacing it. Inside the apartment, he lowered AJ to the sagging sofa that occupied one wall, under a Rolling Rock Beer clock. The boy still didn’t awaken, just sighed lightly, drew his knees up and turned his back.

  Bo grabbed a pillow from his bed and pulled off the comforter, tucking it around the boy. Then Bo pulled the blinds and stood still for a few minutes, totally at a loss. Now what?

  He’d never noticed before how small the apartment was, how cluttered. He listened to the noise of the tavern below. Was it always that loud? That obnoxious? Suddenly it bugged the shit out of him. He went to the fridge, grabbed a beer. The bottle gave a hiss of relief when he opened it.

  He sat for a long time, sipping the beer and reflecting on his own childhood. He’d had a single mother, too. They’d lived in all kinds of places, none of them anything special. Where he hung his hat had never mattered much to him until now. Having the boy here made Bo flinchingly aware of the small, shabby digs. He knew for a fact he didn’t ever want to embarrass this boy, didn’t ever want AJ to feel ashamed of who he was or where he lived. Bo had been through that, and the vivid memories haunted him still.

  Bo could afford a new place now. He just hadn’t gotten around to it.

  Studying the kid, he wondered what the hell he was going to do. He thought about Coach Landry Holmes, the man who had taken him under his wing when he was about AJ’s age. Coach Holmes was, in many respects, more of a parent to Bo than Trudy Crutcher had ever been. Holmes had first spotted Bo playing sandlot baseball, pitching to kids on a field polluted with refuse that blew like tumbleweeds across the dying grass. They used old Circle K bags for bases and kept score with a stick in the clay-heavy earth.

  Holmes had seen the strength and promise in that twelve-year-old’s pitching arm, and he’d made Bo his project. When Trudy got behind on her bills and the boys had to go into foster care, it was Coach Holmes and his wife, Emmaline, who took the youngsters home and fed them, made them do their homework and get their hair cut and go to church. The Holmeses attended their sports practices and games with more reliable frequency than Trudy ever did. That had been just fine with Bo, because whenever his mom showed up somewhere, she always created a stir. She wore her hair teased up high, and her shirt cut low. Looks like hers were impossible to ignore.

  Yet despite the kindness of Landry and Emmaline Holmes, Bo felt completely unprepared to be a father. It was probably also why he felt so strangely disassociated. He vacillated between the urge to flee and take no part in this, and the opposing urge to protect this boy at all costs. He’d coasted for years, sending child support even when he couldn’t afford to, because it made him feel like he was doing his part without requiring an emotional investment from him. Yet now, out of the blue, here was a kid in desperate need. And Bo could no longer turn his back on his responsibility, could no longer write a check to make it go away. Well, actually he could, but even he wasn’t that big a jerk.

  AJ was young, and undersized for his age. But his presence here was huge. He was the proverbial elephant in the room. What a mess, Bo thought.

  “I’ll do the best I can, kid,” he muttered to the boy.

  Chapter Five

  Kim thought she’d sleep for a week once her head touched the pillow, but little demons of worry prodded her awake at the crack of dawn. She lay motionless in a room that was both familiar and strange to her. The last time she’d slept in this bed had been years ago, yet the memories that haunted the shadowy corners and the folds of the drapes were as fresh as last night’s dream. This had been her heart’s home as a child, a place of clarity and peace. Her grandparents’ house, where she was the adored only grandchild, had always been filled with magic for her.

  When she was small, she hadn’t understood why she loved visiting Avalon so much. As she got older, she realized it was because here, she was accepted for herself, unweighted by expectations and unbound by restrictions. According to her father, her Fairfield grandparents spoiled her.

  Kim hated that word, spoiled. She hated the fact that her father had described her as spoiled and, years later, so did most of the men she’d dated, including Lloyd Johnson. Spoiled implied something irredeemable, past saving. Something smelly that should be sealed up tight and kicked to the curb.

  She exhaled slowly, sitting up in bed and holding the quilt under her chin. Maybe she was spoiled. Maybe someone should kick her to the curb.

  Come to think of it, that was exactly what Lloyd had done. She tugged her mind away from him. The truth was, she was sick of thinking about him. She was sick of herself. Sick of her problems, her dilemma, her life. Stewing about it was simply depressing and got her nowhere.

  She darted a suspicious look at her cell phone. Its battery was dead and would not be revived until she bought a replacement charger and plugged it in. She was in no hurry to do so, knowing she’d discover a world of unpleasant voice mails. Maybe she’d simply get rid of the phone for good, start fresh with a new one. Did people do that? Did they dump their dead phones, never bothering to retrieve the messages? She found the notion deeply appealing. Maybe there was an invisible cloud of unheard messages hovering out there in the digital ether somewhere, never to reach their intended recipients.

  The sound of antique plumbing groaned in the walls of the old house, reminding Kim that she was far from alone. In addition to Mr. Dino Carminucci, there were two other houseguests, and the house had room for two more on the top floor. She could barely get her mind around her mother’s surprise “project.” Unbelievable. Her mother ran a boardinghouse. Kim hadn’t even known people still did such a thing.

  She wondered what her grandparents would think of Penelope’s enterprise. She turned in bed, resting her cheek on her elbow as she studied an old photograph of Grandpa and Grandma Fairfield. It was a studio portrait from the mid-’70s, the colors fading but the smiles as bright as the day it was taken.

  “I wish you were here,” she whispered to them. Both had died too young; her grandmother had succumbed to cancer a year and a half ago. Since it was in the summer, Lloyd had come along for the funeral. Foolishly, she’d thought he would be a comfort to her. Instead, he’d insisted on staying at the Inn at Willow Lake instead of with Kim’s mother, claiming he didn’t want to impose. What Kim should have realized back then was how selfish Lloyd was, and how foolish she’d been to let him create distance between her and her mother.

  “I’m back now,” she said to the memory of her grandparents. “I just hope I’m not too late.”

  Closing her eyes, she sank into memories of the past. She always thought her love of sports had come from her grandfather. He’d been a huge fan and he didn’t discriminate; he loved all kinds of sports. As his sole grandchild, Kim became his favorite companion at games, both professional and amateur. She loved the excitement of the crowd and the elemental struggle of the contest, whether it was on a baseball diamond, basketball court or hockey rink. Mostly, she’d loved the feeling of sharing the experience with h
er grandfather, who adored her.

  When she was twelve, he visited her in the city and gave her season tickets to the Mets, promising her a winning season. The next day, he had kissed her goodbye and gone home. There was no way she could have known she’d never see him again.

  The chances of a golfer being killed by lightning were one in a million. The thing no one thought about was that one fatality. For him, the odds were overwhelming.

  People said it was a blessing that her grandfather had died doing something he loved, and that it was a blessing to go instantly, feeling no pain, no fear. Just a quick cosmic wink, and no more Grandpa. Kim understood that they were only trying to make her feel better. She even tried to accept the blessing explanation. But for the life of her, she couldn’t buy into the concept.

  After that, she used to beg her father to take her to games, but he was always too busy. She went on her own, taking the bus or subway to Shea Stadium or Madison Square Garden. Going to a game made her feel closer to her grandfather, even when she was on her own. Caught up in the high excitement of the contest, she missed him just a tiny bit less. Sometimes it even made the terrible ache of loss ease up, if only for a few minutes.

  Lying there, remembering, she made a vow. Her love of sports was a gift from her grandfather, and there was no way she’d let Lloyd Johnson or anyone take it away.

  It was tempting to turn her back on the light trickling in through the bedroom window, to pull the covers over her head and fall asleep. For days or months. Forever.

  Unfortunately, every time she shut her eyes, she caught herself thinking about the night in L.A. Intellectually, she knew the problem was Lloyd, not her. Yet when she replayed the scene over and over in her head, she kept wondering if she might have done something differently, if she could have said the right thing, maybe the disaster would have been averted. As soon as she felt her thoughts heading in that direction, she gave herself a mental shake. She was not to blame for Lloyd’s ego and his nasty temper.