Heartbeat of the Bitterroot

by Janice Mineer

  Maybe, maybe, maybe. But what if … what if I had a father who was still alive? Surely this was a mistake, a misunderstanding, a cruel joke. It was a dizzying thought. I grasped the doorframe to steady myself. But, I would never know until I asked them. And now was not the time. I took a deep breath, calming myself. Tomorrow. I could wait until tomorrow.

  Chapter 13

  dc

  I spent a restless night, tossed about by vivid dreams. I opened my eyes in the gray dawn, abandoned by sleep. In the kitchen, I sat sipping herb tea and watching the clock until it was late enough I dared call my uncle’s house.

  “Hello?” a drowsy voice answered the phone.

  “Zee?”

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s Jenna. Can I talk to Martin? Or Ann?”

  “Oh, I thought this was Josh.”

  Click. The phone went dead.

  I hastily redialed. “Zee, don’t hang up. I need to talk to Martin.”

  “What? Oh, sorry. Hey, Dad,” she hollered.

  I pulled the phone from my ear and winced. The receiver hammered against the table and shortly was picked up.

  “Yep?” It was my uncle.

  Suddenly, the phone shook in my hand. I opened my mouth but nothing came out.

  “Hello?”

  I cleared my throat. “Uncle Martin, I … I uh. Do you have some time this morning to talk with me?” My voice sounded stiff, formal, like I was addressing a stranger, not the man who had been there for me since I was eleven.

  “Sure. We aren’t doing anything much around here today but recovering from the festivities. Come on down.”

  An hour later, I was sitting at the kitchen table in my uncle’s house. Ann, still in her blue chenille robe, pushed a thick mug of hot chocolate in my hands. My uncle sat with his arms crossed on the table, leaning toward me.

  “What’s up,” he said, his brow furrowed, reading the distress on my face.

  Where should I begin? If I asked them outright, would they be guarded? It was like opening a hive of bees, wondering if you’d find honey or if a cloud of angry insects would just swarm about your head.

  “Aunt Evelyn,” I said, then stopped.

  Ann searched my face, lacing her fingers into a tight knot.

  “Aunt Evelyn mentioned something at the reception yesterday,” I said slowly. “Something about my father.” I watched them. No reaction. “How much do you know about my father?”

  “Not that much, honey,” Ann said. Her face twisted with growing concern at my tone. “Your mother married him in Oregon. We never really knew David. They were separated at the time he was killed, logging. We were living in Texas at the time. I’ve seen pictures of him. That’s about it. Why?”

  I took a deep breath. “Aunt Evelyn said David Clark was not my real father.”

  Uncle Martin raised an eyebrow. Ann’s mouth hung loose.

  “She said my father was a red-haired man. David Clark was blond.” I watched their faces, reading their response.

  “How on earth would she know that?” Ann asked in surprise. “Evelyn was living way up in Wisconsin before you were born. We weren’t even aware of anyone special your mother was with when she lived in this area.”

  “Evelyn said she met him once at my great Aunt May’s house. When my mother lived with Ada in Oregon—when I was born—my mother told Ada that David Clark was not really my father. Ada told Evelyn this.” My mouth had gone dry. The hot chocolate sat untouched in my mug, my hands wrapped tightly around it, cold despite the warmth. “Evelyn said Ada was supposed to tell me about it before she died.”

  Martin swore softly, his face tense. He stood suddenly and marched from the room, out the back door.

  “Well, honey,” Ann stammered, “I don’t know. I just don’t know. Your mother never said anything to us. It’s David Clark on the birth certificate. I don’t know how we’d know.”

  How would I know? A name, a secret taken to the grave. It sounded so melodramatic. And yet a voice inside me would not be denied. I had a right to know. Somehow, I would find out.

  A moment later, my uncle clomped up the porch stairs and into the kitchen. He paced for a moment, his hands on his hips.

  “I should have known,” he said. “She said something once. About the time you came here. She said there was no one else who would take you. At least no one else she dared ask. I had a feeling there was something she was not telling me. I should have figured.”

  I buried my face in my hands. Who was I? Even my last name was a fake, borrowed from a stranger, a ghost from my mother’s past. Sure, I was a Pearson. But what else? A whole family tree had been felled, leaving me splintered off, left behind.

  Martin sat at the table and rubbed a palm across his forehead. “I am wondering if you should talk to Kathy’s husband, Ricky. There’s a chance he may know something helpful about Kathy’s history. And I just remembered something else. You know your mom left very little behind her when she died. She did not hang onto things, memorabilia and such. Kind of like she didn’t want it to own her. You have a few pictures and things of hers.” I nodded. “However, a few weeks after her funeral I got a call from Ricky. He said he’d found a box that belonged to her hidden away. It didn’t sound like much. Funeral insurance policy and so forth. I told him to just hang onto it. I’m thinking now there may be some trace—some paper trail—that might possibly give you some clues about this man. You never know. And Ricky might remember something.” He eyed me and rubbed his chin as if measuring my strength. “You could fly down there. You fly free because of your work. Probably best to handle it in person.” He leaned forward in his chair and laid his hands on the table. “You wait though till I talk to Evelyn on the phone. Time we had a talk. I might be able to get you more information.”

  I shook my head, bewildered by the task of picking up a trail so long grown over by time.

  Martin put a warm hand on my shoulder. “Jenna, are you sure you want to dig into this?” His eyes were pained. “Your mom made some rough decisions. I don’t know what you’ll find.”

  For a moment, a cold doubt writhed inside me. I had worked for years to put distance between myself and the bleak days of my early childhood. If I opened this door I might teeter on the brink of an existence I wished I had never revisited. Then suddenly, a fire started in my gut and rose to my throat. Nothing could be worse than not knowing where I came from. It would be like living in a cold, dark hole. Questions would echo endlessly around me. I would never escape the feeling of being forcibly separated from my past.

  My jaw tightened. I raised my eyes to his. “Absolutely. I need to know.”

  Chapter 14

  dc

  The next day, a brief call from Martin let me know that my great-aunt Evelyn and her husband had left yesterday morning and headed home to Waupaca in their daughter’s Winnebago. When he called their cell phone, it went right to voice mail. He promised to call Evelyn later when they stopped somewhere for the night and gather more information if possible.

  I waited, faunching at the bit, anxious for the next logical step, which apparently was hopping on a plane to my mother’s former home in Las Vegas. It was the last place she lived before she died. She lived there with Ricky Braeburn, for five years; they married not long before she died. I wondered now how they could marry, when she might have divorced my father or if they had actually married. Had he found her and filed papers? So many questions.

  I met Ricky when I went to the funeral. He was a scrawny, kindhearted fellow. After the funeral, Ricky gave my uncle a few photos and personal effects of my mother’s, most of which filled the worn box stowed in my hall closet. The other box of papers was news to me. I was anxious to see it. I wanted to paw through those old records for any key to my past.

  “Pick Ricky’s brain,” my uncle had said. As I ran down the Kim Williams Trail in the shadow of Mount Sentinel, I mentally wrote a long list of questions to ask Ricky. I wondered if I would have to be careful of what I said so as not to
offend him. It could be like walking on eggshells. I didn’t want this door to slam shut in my face. Would he be guarded about my questions about an old love of my mother’s? Would he be jealous? I felt like an untrained surgeon dissecting the chambers of the heart.

  That night, Martin called me to report.

  “Well,” he said. “I did talk to Aunt Evelyn. Does seem like she knew a few things she has not shared with us. But what she told you is about all she told me. Looks like you are headed to the desert for some answers.”

  I heard Ann’s voice in the background, a muffled conversation with my uncle and then he was back on the line.

  “Ann says maybe my aunt May knows something about this. Ann can go over there today and talk to her about it. See if there is anything she can add.”

  I hesitated. I imagined all of my extended relatives talking about my mother and the circumstances of my birth, a cacophony of voices like wind rushing in the trees. I was afraid the truth would be so bandied about, mixed and confused that I would never be able to sort it out. I rubbed my forehead. And how could I sort out the subtle nuances of what someone meant if I didn’t hear it in person? Some meanings you glean only when you can see a feeling or memory wash over someone’s eyes. How could that be conveyed in third person? Once chewed on by several interviewers, it would be distorted, like in a game of Telephone.

  And I was afraid that opening up this Pandora’s box would reveal ugly gremlins in my history that I was reluctant to unleash on my innocent family. I would rather keep a lid on my story until I could sort through everything on my own.

  “No, please, Uncle Martin. Let me do it. I feel like I need to talk to some of these people in person. By myself.”

  “OK, girl. It’s your story. I’ll let you unravel it. But go see May. She still has a good memory. Sharp as a tack.”

  “I will, thanks,” I said, filing an interview with my great-aunt toward the top of my mental list. But first, Vegas.

  A

  Wednesday morning found me at the airport early, asking Mark for some time off. He cocked an eyebrow, curious about the urgency he heard in my voice, but he declined to pry. At ten, I boarded a flight, grateful for free tickets through my work.

  My mind spun as the plane flew through a bank of gray clouds, finally breaking through over a floor of cotton.

  In Vegas, the plane taxied toward the terminal. I turned on my cell and noticed a missed call from Jack. I punched the speed dial and rang his number.

  “Hey, are you doing OK?” he asked, concern evident in his tone. “Mom told me you had some pretty crazy news.”

  I felt a lump rise in my throat and swallowed it back. Jack had always been the one who understood me best and liked me despite it all. I could always trust him to ease me through a hard time.

  “I’m fine,” I said, pulling my carry-on from the overhead bin. “Just have a thing I have to do in Vegas.”

  “Well, good luck. When you get back, would you like to go up to Michael’s cabin with us? It’s up at Seeley Lake. He’s having a few people up. It might do you some good to have a brain break, you know?”

  I saw Michael’s face. His quiet smile, his strong jawline. “That would be great,” I said. “I’d like that.”

  “Elizabeth said she’s asking Bobbie too. Hey, hang in there, kid. See you when you get back.”

  “Thanks, Jack,” I said.

  A

  I had trouble reading the address on the paper written in my uncle’s scrawling hand. Two thirty-four—or was it nine?—West Adelay Drive. Finally, I found the small stucco home that stood disconsolately in a patch of sand fringed by dry weeds. I had met Braeburn briefly at my mother’s funeral, but I could not remember his face.

  “Here goes nothing,” I told myself.

  At my knock, the door opened, revealing Ricky, a well-weathered man in faded jeans and a white undershirt. His crooked smile broke beneath the hissing tube running from a wheeled oxygen tank.

  “Mr. Braeburn? I’m Jenna Clark. I called you.”

  “You’re Jenna. Sure you are. You do look like your mother. I remember you from the funeral service. You’ve grown. Come in,” he said and led the way down a narrow hall.

  He sat across from me in a threadbare, green Lazy Boy as I cleared a space among the magazines on the couch. A radio rasped in the kitchen. A man on a talk show exclaimed about impending doom to our economy.

  “Thanks for letting me come,” I said.

  “Sure.”

  A cough rattled in his throat. He pulled a red handkerchief out of his shirt pocket and dabbed at his mouth.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, but my mother, Kathy …” I paused. His oxygen machine clicked steadily. “My uncle said you might still have some documents of hers or some letters. And I was wondering if she talked much about the time she lived in Montana. I … I’m looking for some information about …” I was floundering. I felt like I was prying open a locked box, fearful of damaging its lid. “I was wondering if you knew anything about my father,” I finally blurted out.

  He stared at me, smiling faintly. “I’m sure you know she married a man named David Clark when she lived in Oregon. I am assuming he is the one on your birth certificate.”

  “Actually, I have reason to think he was not my real father. I think it was someone she had met just before, while she was still in Montana.” I rubbed my sweaty palms on my jeans. What were the odds he would know?

  He swallowed and his faded green eyes searched the ceiling. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down in his throat. “Well,” he rasped. “I did know something about that.” Here he nodded and gave me a wink. “There was a lot about your mother—came out when she was sick. She seemed to want to talk a little more about what had happened in her life. I suppose it had something to do with the painkillers.”

  Hope bubbled to the surface of my thoughts.

  Abruptly he rose and shuffled from the room. I sat with my hands clasped, white knuckled, listening to the talk show host ranting on about the latest political scandal until Ricky returned, a shoe box under one arm.

  “Seems there was a land deal up there in Montana. A fellow she knew named Skip. They actually coulda been married, I think. His father had some land and a while before she left that area, the land was lost.” He frowned then added, “That seemed to bother her.”

  He sat down and balanced the box on his knee. He opened it to reveal several stacks of neatly rubber-banded, yellowed papers.

  “This man,” he said, “she talked about him quite a bit at the end.” He stopped to catch his breath. It whistled between his teeth. “Anyways, sounded to me like she was pregnant with you,” he poked a finger in my direction, “before she ever left Montana. From what she said, she was having the morning sickness and that’s why she had to stay at Anna’s—no Ada or somebody. Relative in Oregon.”

  He leaned toward me. “She met this David fellow sometime later in the scheme of things.”

  He pulled a stack of documents out of the box, removed the rubber band, and held the papers up to the light from the nearby window. I craned my neck to see what was written on the wrinkled pages.

  I held my breath, and then forced myself to go on. “Do you have any idea what Skip’s last name was?”

  He didn’t answer but slowly thumbed through the papers, squinted, then felt around by a pile of newspapers on the table at his side. He slid gold-rimmed glasses on his nose.

  “There is a name here: Morrison,” he said, holding one of the letters up to the light. “Had to do with that property, you know. Don’t see a first name, but it was surely that Skip fella.”

  Morrison! I turned the name over and over in my mind, memorizing it.

  He handed me a dog-eared note. It was a letter from a lawyer in Missoula. It mentioned a Bart Cromwell referred to as a buyer on a piece of land associated with the name Morrison. Sorting through the legalese, it sounded like a mandate not to contact certain parties. The words were laced with a menacing tone. It was a thinly v
eiled threat.

  At the bottom of the letter, there was an address, a house number on a road west of Missoula. Apparently, the location of a home at the edge of a large property. One hundred and ninety-seven acres, it said in a brief description.

  There were three letters with postage that had not been cancelled, letters never sent. I opened them one by one. They were covered with my mother’s scrawling handwriting, addressed to Skip. Again, the nickname only.

  From the shadows of my mind, I could hear my mother’s voice speaking from the pages. Angry, defensive, accusatory at times, pleading at others. She wrote of the land, which was Skip’s father’s. It was vague, something about the taxes, about her debts, debts she seemed to blame on him. I felt she was hiding something. I couldn’t tell what it was, but it was clear that it pained her. The guilt she felt seethed through her words.

  I paused. She spoke of land that had belonged to Skip’s father. My grandfather. Grandfather—so strange to think that I had a grandfather I had never known.

  I scanned over the letters again, looking for a first name for Morrison, hoping I had missed it. Nowhere. Just the nickname. No address on the envelope.

  “And then there’s this. It’s him.” Ricky took a photo out of the box, looked at it for a moment, then handed it to me. It was impossible to read his expression. Was it sorrow? Was it jealousy?

  I took the picture, my fingers trembling, and stared at the face of a young man. The image was fuzzy, the paper yellowed, but I could see he was broad-shouldered with auburn hair. He leaned against a blue Subaru, a black lab at his feet. It was difficult to pick out the man’s features, but he seemed to be smiling into the camera as the wind ruffled his hair. His arms were folded, his head cocked to one side as if for that moment in time life was handing him the best it had to offer on a silver platter.

  Could this be him? Could I be looking at my real, biological father? Dozens of questions surged from my heart into my head. What was he like? Did he love my mother? Did he know she was pregnant with me when they parted? And most importantly, did he know that I was alive somewhere wanting to meet him? Would I ever hear the sound of his voice? His laughter?