Moondust Lake

by Davis Bunn

  “Good girl. Shall I drive you back?”

  “I’d rather walk.”

  “There’s food in the fridge. And you’ll pass a supermarket on your way—”

  “I’m a big girl, Preston. I won’t starve.”

  As they proceeded up the central aisle, she found herself only a few people removed from Buddy Helms. Kimberly repressed a shudder. The very idea of becoming involved with anyone repulsed her. The last thing she needed was another reason to run away.

  CHAPTER 2

  As usual, Buddy’s exercise routine blanketed him in an endorphin-induced peace so strong he could ignore his father’s cold dismissal. For the past nine years this had been Jack Helms’s standard Sunday face. Buddy’s father stood on the upper stair and showed the arriving parishioners his Mount Rushmore expression. Stony and unbending. The face of the conservative Evangelical, the guardian of the doors. No hint of wrongness would ever be permitted to enter. Nowadays Jack Helms served as the church’s righteous judge. The man who lived to find fault and condemn.

  Okay. So it did hurt.

  Eight months of work and worry, and the deal was done. Even here at church the old man might at least have welcomed him with a “job well done.” Buddy had hoped for the call that had never woken him the day before. He should not have expected anything different now.

  Buddy emerged into the pale wash of a March noon, stood beside his mother and shook hands, then trooped back to the car with his sister. He had a lot of experience at ignoring slights. He should have been prepared.

  When they pulled up in front of the house, Carey demanded, “What’s the matter?”

  “Same old.”

  “You know he wouldn’t say anything at church.”

  “He didn’t call yesterday.”

  “Buddy . . .”

  He opened his door. “It’s fine.”

  Only it wasn’t, and it didn’t get better. For once, the dawn workout failed him. Buddy helped his mother set the table and felt the ache stab him every time his father came into view. Jack Helms sat in the front parlor with the head of the new counseling service that several local churches were jointly sponsoring. Buddy wondered how Preston Sturgiss had gotten hooked into joining them. Jack often dragged somebody home from church. It gave him a fresh audience. Over lunch his sister mouthed the same words that had made Buddy smile ever since Jack had undergone his grim transformation.

  Carey was mild and caring like their mother, but somehow a secret trace of mayhem had crept into her genes. She would never confront her father openly. But behind his back, safe from his wrath, she lived a peculiar and secret rebellion. Her latest Caribbean lover was one example. Or the way she silently framed the words around her spoon, or down at her plate, never actually looking at Buddy, knowing he saw her whisper, the Washington rant, the Democrat rant, the liberal-media rant, the gay rant.

  The last was cut short by the phone. Buddy was out of his chair before the first ring ended. His father snapped, “Let it ring. That’s what the answering machine is for.”

  But he wasn’t going to answer the phone. Buddy rose because he needed to draw a decent breath. He walked into the kitchen, and realized his hands were shaking as he lifted the receiver. “Helms residence.”

  His sister asked, “Has Pop finished with the liberal televised conspiracy to turn our daughters into Democrats?”

  Buddy turned his back to the dining room. “Not yet.”

  “Then he must have an outside cheering section. Who is it today, his banker? The company lawyer?”

  “The church is helping to set up a therapy center.”

  “I bet Pop had some choice bits to say about that. Something that started with ‘over my dead body.’ ”

  Buddy’s older sister lived in Vancouver. Sylvie had tried Maui first, but her restlessness had turned the island into a semitropical prison. She hated Vancouver’s weather, but loved the distance between her and San Lu. Sylvie ran a successful wine-importing business. With her female lover. Another pair of items he and Carey and their mother saw no need to mention to their father.

  Buddy asked, “Why are you calling this early?”

  “Haven’t been to bed yet. We hosted a big do last night.” He heard the flick of a lighter, and his sister’s already deep voice thickened with smoke. “Put Mom on the phone.”

  Buddy’s mind slipped back to an earlier time. Back before his father had undergone the seismic shift, and theirs had been a happy home. Jack Helms had always possessed some jagged edges. The man loathed being questioned or contradicted, especially by his own family. But so long as everyone had lived by Jack’s unspoken rules, he had been a kind and giving man. The odd flashes of blind rage came and went like spring tornados, wreaking havoc and then disappearing into memory. Until the change.

  The year Sylvie had turned twenty-one, she went through some seismic shift. Why exactly, Buddy had no idea. Suddenly his older sister decided she was no longer going to live by Jack’s rules. Instead, Sylvie thrived on defying her father. She baited the bull day after day until Jack Helms lost his balance entirely. And became the man he was today.

  Buddy had grown up wanting nothing more than to work at his father’s side. He had spent years convinced he could not only measure up to Jack’s high standards, but restore the balance to their relationship and his family. Even now, as he gripped the receiver and listened to the monotonous drone from the dining room, he yearned for those earlier dreams.

  His sister interrupted, asking, “Did you hear what I said?”

  “Now isn’t a good time.”

  “My sweet diplomat of a brother. When is it a good time in that house?”

  “Dad won’t like it.”

  “I never did understand why you try to get along with the beast that man has become.” His sister slurred the words, explaining why she gave voice to the hidden. “Fat lot of good it did you . . .”

  Buddy cut the connection, then reconnected and hit the 1 button and set down the receiver.

  He walked back down the hallway, but did not reenter the dining room. He stood where his father couldn’t see him and surveyed the scene. Preston Sturgiss, the young therapist, wore the deer-in-headlights expression Buddy had seen all too often. His mother, the gentlest soul Buddy had ever known, sat beside her husband, smiling the same beatific smile she had used to soothe any number of “Jack-fits.” That was Carey’s word for it, the endless spewing of courtly ire, as though speaking softly excused him from remaining perpetually filled with bile. Nowadays Jack Helms would not have been satisfied even if he could reorder the world’s spin. Carey sat beside her mother, a distant, glazed look to her eyes. She had her mother’s beauty, the sculpted features and auburn hair, the same strong carriage and the full lips. Buddy doubted she heard a single word.

  He entered the room and announced, “I have to go.”

  Jack bridled. “I haven’t dismissed you yet.”

  Buddy looked down at his father and knew Jack Helms had brought this specific man home, this specific day, so that he would have an excuse not to speak about the specific issue that Buddy had spent the past six years waiting to hear. That he had done a good job. That he had lived up to expectations. That he was worthy of his father’s praise.

  His mother said, “Buddy?”

  He felt the snap deep inside his soul. He had heard of this from athletes, who described a parting tendon that way, the sound coming up through the body rather than through the ears. All Buddy could say for certain was that any reason to stay had just been eviscerated.

  He leaned over and kissed his mother’s cheek. “Thanks for lunch. I’ll call you tomorrow. Coming, sis?”

  His father’s ire followed them as together they walked out the massive front door. The oak portal was peaked at the top, like a medieval entryway, with cast-iron handle and twisted bars shaped over a small opening at face level. The door spoke volumes about the man who lived inside, the stalwart determination to defend his world against everything he judged to be i
mpure.

  Buddy crossed the porch and stopped by the top stair. He stared about, seeing it with new eyes. The front veranda had six rockers painted to match the railing. The front yard was framed by blooming trees, three crepe myrtles and five Yoshino cherries. He studied the rocker he had claimed as a child, remembering how he had loved sitting there, eagerly awaiting his father’s arrival, dreaming of a future when Buddy and Jack would return home from work together.

  His sister called from the car, “You coming?”

  He patted the railing and descended the stairs. He walked around and opened her door, something he had never done before. His sister’s only response was to squint at him. As he slipped behind the wheel, he spotted his mother standing in the window. Buddy was not surprised she had noticed the change. Beth Helms had always been a sensitive and observant woman. It was how she survived.

  Buddy started the car, pulled from the curb, then said to his sister, “I’m never going back.”

  CHAPTER 3

  For the first time in over a year, Buddy skipped his Monday-morning workout entirely. Normally, the only thing that kept him from sweating through the dawn was a fever. Today, however, he dressed and drove straight to work.

  The Helms Group was housed in a series of brick structures with tall flagpoles fronting the admin center. The complex held a vaguely military air, which was no doubt his father’s intention. Some of their younger employees called it the Bunker.

  The wind whipped that morning, and the flags snapped nervously, as though fearing the outburst that was soon to come. Buddy went straight to the finance division, where the chief was already at his desk. The head accountant shaped his days by the FILO rule—first in, last out. Buddy had long since stopped trying to beat him in. He rapped on the open door, asked, “Got a minute?”

  “Did you get it?” Meaning the deal.

  “They signed over dinner on Friday.”

  “Then I can give you all day.” He was a portly guy, late fifties, not a hard angle to his body or his opinions. Which was one reason why he had survived this long.

  Buddy said, “I want to reward my team.”

  “Sounds reasonable. What does the old man say?”

  “I’ll tell him after it’s done.”

  “Buddy, no, wait.”

  “You can either help me or you can give me the checkbook in your top drawer and claim I took it before you got in. But this is happening. Now. Before Pop shows up.”

  The guy made a face like a man trying to swallow a peach pit. “But why?”

  “My team sweated fourteen weeks of blood over this. I’m not giving Pop a chance to belittle what they’ve achieved.” Buddy walked around, opened the drawer, pulled out the wide leather-bound check holder. “Got a pen?”

  The man handed it over. “How much are you . . .”

  “Ten thousand for the team members. Five for the assistants.”

  “That’s . . .”

  “A hundred thousand even.”

  “Jack will go through the roof.”

  “Probably.” Buddy signed his father’s name, something he had been doing for years, and tore off the first check. “Do something useful. Make out the envelopes.”

  * * *

  Buddy found an exquisite sadness in the process of going around his team’s section, leaving the envelopes at the center of each empty desk. Serena, his secretary, arrived just as he finished his rounds. Jack had tried to foist his own choice for secretary on Buddy, a dowdy beast with a penchant for sniffing at his every request. Buddy had eased her down into the accounts-receivable department, where she struck fear and trembling into every deadbeat payee. Buddy’s secretary was a matronly Latina with a saint’s voice, calm and warm and steadying. Serena mothered his team and showed a woman’s wisdom in every crisis. Buddy especially like handing her the envelope, watching her open it, seeing the shock.

  “Five thousand dollars? Really?”

  “I wish it was more.”

  “I can’t thank you enough.”

  “You took the words out of my mouth.” He started for his office. “No interruptions.”

  Rolodexes had gone the way of Day-Timers. But the next two hours were spent winging through the professional contacts in his computer. Buddy worked the phone preparing for what came next. While there was still time.

  He was still not ready when his father stormed in. Buddy felt his insides congeal with the familiar icy dread.

  His father was dressed in Monday grays—slate-dark suit, woven black tie, heavy lace-up shoes with toes like curved mirrors. Jack’s eyes were the color of an Arctic winter, gray and bone-hard. The only tint was the high pink to his cheekbones, a sure sign of fury. “What have you gone and done?”

  Buddy set down the phone. He didn’t bother with silent reminders to toughen up. Stand tall. Stay cool. He would not disgrace the day with fables. Buddy replied, “What you should have done yourself.”

  His father gave him the wide-eyed expression of the wronged man, the citizen innocent of all fault, the one who had been granted every reason to show a righteous rage. “You passed around a hundred thousand dollars of my money?”

  Buddy could hear the same tremors in his voice that had infected every such confrontation since he had started work here. “It should be twice that.”

  Jack Helms stalked the carpet in front of his desk. Getting ready to explode. Turning the space into his very own stage. The longer he fumed, the more powerful the outburst that followed.

  Through his rising tension, Buddy felt pierced by the same clarity as he had experienced the day before. He realized that since Jack had gone through the drastic shift of nine years back, his father had increasingly come to like such moments. It was his way of manipulating people to do what he wanted. Buddy felt vaguely ashamed of himself for having spent years living in a past that no longer existed.

  For the first time as his father’s employee, Buddy did not wait for the storm. He said, “You knew I was going to do this.”

  That stopped Jack in midstride. Or perhaps it was Buddy’s tone. Jack had most likely heard the change himself. There was none of the usual apology, one tiny fraction removed from begging.

  Jack hissed, “What did you say?”

  “My team saved the company. They needed to be rewarded. But you’d never do it yourself. So now you can yell at me and pretend—”

  “Are you insane? Have you gone completely out of your skinny little head?”

  Buddy did another new thing. Not even planning it. Just knowing he had to. For himself. For the time to come. He rose to his feet. Walked around his desk. Entered into his father’s space. “No. I’m not.”

  Such an act of defiance was utterly incomprehensible. Jack Helms stabbed the air between them. “You will sit down.”

  Buddy remained where he was. “If you don’t like it, fire me.”

  “If I don’t . . .” Jack halted because of the knock on the door and the appearance of Buddy’s secretary. “Get out.”

  “Sorry, sir, it’s the president of Morgan Mutual. He says it’s urgent.”

  Jack Helms blinked slowly. Doing a lizard thing. Swallowing the rage down deep. Turning back into the man in rigid control. He had no choice. A Monday-morning call from the company’s chief banker could not be put off. He did not look directly at Buddy, as though to look directly at his son risked his losing it totally. “My office. Five minutes.”

  Serena waited until the company president had stormed away to ask, “Do I have to give back the money?”

  “No. Of course not.” Buddy returned to his desk and forced his trembling hand to clench the phone. “But, Serena . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Tell everyone to deposit their checks immediately.”

  * * *

  Buddy rushed through his final three calls. Then he printed off his newly revised CV, a document that had gathered electronic dust for far too long. As he entered the central bull pen, he told his secretary, “I’m gone for the rest of the day.”r />
  “What about the Monday staff meeting?”

  “I won’t make it.” He started off, then backtracked to her desk. Buddy pulled a sheet of paper from her printer and the pen from his jacket pocket. He wrote out the three words in huge letters. Praise your team.

  Buddy folded it lengthwise and gave it to her, saying, “Give this to Pop. Tell him I left so the task will be easier for him.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Buddy’s first two meetings were with headhunters he knew from the gym. They had chided him for years to leave, and now found themselves challenged to do what they had long offered. He used their discussions as testing grounds, which was important. Vital.

  Buddy Helms had never before applied for a job.

  When he arrived at the third meeting, he was as ready as he would ever be.

  Buddy had known Bernard Featherstone his entire life. He was a jovial member of the community church’s leadership, a man whose smile carried a remarkable steely glint. His smooth voice was capable of pouring an unguent over the most heated of discussions. Even Jack Helms had been brought under control. Occasionally.

  But that was not why Buddy had saved him for last.

  Bernard Featherstone had trained as a lawyer. He had practiced as a corporate litigator for a dozen years, until his combative edge had almost cost him his wife and his family. He had left the law and entered headhunting, finding jobs for other lawyers. Eight years earlier, he had been hired by the nation’s largest executive-search firm and charged to set up an office in Santa Barbara. Nowadays Bernard only worked with the top-drawer clients, senior executives who needed serious stroking, and whose salary and packages had made Bernard very rich. Buddy was the only man in Bernard’s outer office who did not have gray hair.

  “Buddy? Come on in. How are you, son?”

  “Fine, sir.”

  “You look fit, as always. Everything right at home? How’s your father?”

  Buddy took his time answering. It was a trick he had learned early on, how sometimes silence was the only response that worked. He refused the secretary’s offer of coffee, waited for the door to close, then said, “I’m looking for a new job.”