Outwitting Trolls

by William G. Tapply

“Oh, you know,” she said. “With lawyers, it’s all about putting things into words, getting every nuance explained and itemized, making sure every semicolon is in place, leaving nothing unanalyzed, nothing overlooked, nothing unaccounted for. No tern unstoned.”

  I smiled. “You talking about seagulls?”

  She smiled back. “Sorry,” she said. “I’ve got this wordplay thing running around my brain. One of my characters says things like that. No tern unstoned. A doctor a day keeps the penny away. Inversions that seem like they should mean something.”

  “Fun,” I said. “Like ‘The fan hits the shit.’”

  “What happens to a baseball player who refuses to sign an autograph, huh?” She smiled. “Like a head with its chicken cut off. These things my character says, like ‘The early worm gets the bird.’ They come out of her mouth as mistakes, like things Yogi Berra might say, and they’re more than just nonsense. Like when Yogi says, ‘When you come to a fork in the road, take it.’ That’s silly, but it makes sense, too. I mean, there’s a kind of wisdom in that. You understand what I’m trying to say?”

  “I really don’t,” I said. “You’re the novelist. You’re the creative one. Me, I’m just a lawyer. All literal. Reducing everything to words and semicolons and analysis. Right?”

  She smiled. “Now I’ve hurt your feelings.”

  “Am I really like that?” I asked.

  She gave her head a little shake, which could have meant No, or I don’t know, or Well, sure you are, but I don’t want to upset you by saying so. “You are a lawyer,” she said.

  “That’s my job,” I said, “but, geez, I’d like to think I’m a person before I’m a lawyer.”

  Alex smiled. “Of course you are. A person. You’re a terrific person. I didn’t mean anything.”

  “But you’re still feeling shy, huh?”

  “I thought you didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe we should.”

  She leaned back in her chair and looked up at the sky. “I have trouble enough with intimacy,” she said, as if she were talking to the clouds. “This way, the way we are, you and me, I just…” She shook her head.

  I waited, but she didn’t continue.

  “We should spend more time together,” I said.

  “We’ve got this whole history,” she said.

  “A good history.”

  She smiled. “Mostly good. The thing about having a history is, you keep comparing the way things are with the way you remember they used to be.”

  “What you remember isn’t always how things actually were,” I said.

  “That’s true,” she said. “We’re not the same people we were, either.”

  “We hump our expectations around on our shoulders.”

  “Hump.” She smiled.

  “Burdens,” I said.

  “Expectations,” she said. “The burden of memories. Hopes. Disappointments.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Heavy shit.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Alex.

  “Hey,” I said. “It’s a beautiful day. Carpe diem. What do you say?”

  She turned her head and looked at me. “I think you’re right,” she said. “Let’s not talk about that stuff. It’s my fault. I’m just preoccupied with my novel right now. Makes me feel all moody and sensitive and introspective. I’m going to go up and have a shower. When I’m done, I’ll feel better.” She took a sip of coffee, put her mug down, stood up, came around to my side of the table, and kissed me on the side of my neck.

  “Need someone to wash your back?” I asked.

  She straightened up and smiled at me. “I don’t think so, thank you.”

  Twenty

  In the afternoon Alex and Henry and I crossed the pedestrian bridge at the foot of Charles Street and walked the entire length of the Esplanade, from the Museum of Science to the BU Bridge. The college kids from MIT and BU and Harvard swarmed the place, as they always did on a sunny Saturday afternoon in the spring. They were lying on blankets with their faces to the sun, the girls in their skirts and tiny bikini tops, the boys bare-chested. They were riding their bicycles and Rollerblades and skateboards over the paths that paralleled the river. They were feeding the ducks and throwing sticks in the water for their dogs to fetch. They were playing Frisbee and Hacky Sack; they were kicking soccer balls; they were tossing around baseballs and footballs. They were doing just about everything that college kids should be doing on a fine spring day except reading physics textbooks and medieval poetry anthologies and studying for final exams.

  We got back to the house a little before five. Billy and Gwen would arrive in an hour or so. Henry sprawled on the floor and commenced to snore. Alex went upstairs to change her clothes.

  I checked the voice mail on my telephone. I had one message. It was from Sharon Nichols. “I’m sorry to bother you on the weekend,” she said, “but there’s something I need to talk to you about. Can you call me?”

  I took the phone out to the patio and dialed Sharon’s number.

  “Thanks for getting back to me,” she said when she answered. “This has been really bothering me.”

  “That’s what we lawyers are for,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  “Ellen came over for a visit this afternoon,” she said, “and she reminded me of something, and it made me think…” Her voice trailed off. “I’m sorry. I probably shouldn’t say anything.”

  “It’s up to you,” I said, “but if it pertains to what happened to Ken, you should tell me.”

  “I don’t know if it does,” she said. “No, that’s wrong. I think it might. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”

  I waited, and after a pause, Sharon said, “There was a time back when Ken and I had the kennels when some of our animals, the pets that were boarded with us, might’ve had something happen to them. People told us that when they brought their pets home, their personalities had changed. They were suddenly skittish around people, acting spooky or frightened.”

  “As if they’d been abused,” I said.

  “Yes, exactly. These people, they practically accused us of being abusive to their pets.”

  “Which you weren’t.”

  “Of course not,” she said.

  “But…?”

  “Well,” she said, “we never figured out what happened, or even if it was something that happened while the pets were with us. The people, of course, they didn’t board their animals with us anymore. We had no other complaints, though, and the issue went away, and I hadn’t thought about it for a long time.”

  “So what about it now?” I asked.

  “Ellen and I were talking about it today,” Sharon said. “I don’t know how it came up. We were just reminiscing, talking about her childhood, her mostly happy memories of growing up with animals, and how awful it was to think that something bad could happen to the animals that we loved and cared for. Ellen said she always suspected that Wayne did something to those animals, and when she said that, I realized that somewhere inside me I had the same suspicion, but I guess I’d repressed it or something.”

  I remembered Billy’s story about how Wayne Nichols had blown a frog’s head off with a firecracker. “Suppose it was Wayne,” I said. “That was a long time ago.”

  “If my son was capable of that…of some kind of cruelty to animals…do you see, Brady? Do you understand what I’m thinking?”

  I hesitated. “You’re thinking that Wayne killed Ken?”

  “I guess I am, yes.”

  “Sharon,” I said, “what do you want me to do with this idea? Why are you sharing it with me?”

  I heard her blow out a breath. “I don’t know,” she said. “Nothing, I guess. I’m sorry. I just needed to get it off my chest. It’s such a horrible thought. I couldn’t keep it inside. Maybe I just wanted you to tell me it’s stupid.”

  “If Wayne did it,” I said, “it means you didn’t. It would be good to know who did it. Even if it was your son.”

  �
��Well, I don’t know if it was Wayne,” she said, “but I know it wasn’t me. So it was somebody else. I’ve been trying to figure out who that could be. So what if it was Wayne?”

  “There’s no evidence that Wayne was anywhere near that hotel on Saturday night,” I said. “Nothing to connect him to what happened. Not to mention, no motive that we know of.”

  “I know. You’re right. Thanks for saying it. I need to think that way. About evidence. Facts, not feelings. I don’t like to think that my son could’ve killed his own father.”

  “You should talk to Tally about this,” I said.

  “I definitely will,” she said.

  At that moment, Henry came bounding down the back steps. I looked up. Alex was standing on the deck with her eyebrows arched at me.

  “Sharon,” I said, “I’ve got to go. We can talk more about this another time if you want.”

  “Sure,” she said. “Thanks for listening. I guess I just need to get better control of my thoughts.”

  “Call Tally.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I will. Thank you, Brady.”

  I put down the phone and smiled at Alex. She’d changed out of her walking clothes. Now she was wearing blue jeans and a long-sleeved striped jersey.

  I gave her a wolf whistle, and she looked cross-eyed at me and put one hand behind her head and the other one on her hip and did a little pirouette on the deck.

  I got up and went to her. She stood there watching me, and when I started to climb the three steps onto the deck, she lowered her head and let her arms hang by her sides.

  I put my hands on her hips and said, “Hey.”

  She looked up at me. “Hey,” she said.

  I kissed her forehead, and she smiled and pressed the entire length of her body against me, and then she put her arms around my neck and went up on her tiptoes and lifted her face, and our mouths met, and our tongues touched, and Alex murmured, “Mmm.”

  After what seemed like a long time, our mouths slid away from each other. She put her arms around my waist, and she hugged me hard against her and pushed her face into my chest.

  “Wanna go upstairs?” I asked.

  That, of course, was when the front doorbell rang.

  Billy and Gwen had brought three pounds of ground sirloin and two packages of bratwurst, a tub of potato salad, and another of cole slaw. There were buns, jars of relish and mustard and dill pickles, two big tomatoes, and a Bermuda onion.

  They banished me and Alex to the backyard with chilled bottles of beer. Billy hogged the grill, and Gwen usurped the kitchen, and Henry stuck close to Billy, where the food was.

  We ate on the picnic table out back, and by the time we finished, darkness was beginning to seep into the patio, and the evening air had grown damp and chilly.

  We carried the dirty dishes and leftover food into the kitchen, and Billy and I told Gwen and Alex to get out of our way so we could clean up. The women poured themselves glasses of wine and went into the living room without arguing.

  “You wanna wash or dry?” I asked Billy after they’d left.

  “You dry,” he said. “You know where things go.”

  “Supper was great,” I said. “I told you we could’ve just ordered pizza.”

  “I wanted to do a cookout,” he said. “Like the good old days.”

  “Nothing’s ever really as good as the good old days,” I said.

  “Yeah, no shit.” He was up to his elbows in the soapy sink water. “Mostly the good old days weren’t even that good.”

  “You got something on your mind?”

  Billy shrugged. “What you were saying the other night?” he asked. “What got me all pissed at you?”

  “I was hoping that was behind us,” I said.

  “It’s not about you,” he said. “I guess both me and Gwen had already been thinking things like what you were talking about. You know, what if this, what if that. We didn’t bring it up because we didn’t want to hurt each other’s feelings.” He turned and looked at me. “So now she says she’s decided to get in touch with a lawyer when she gets home, and she says I should, too.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “So,” he said, “now it’s a big frig with lawyers.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “My fault.”

  “So what do you say?” he said. “You wanna be my lawyer?”

  “Me?”

  “Sure. You. You’re a lawyer.”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “Huh? You don’t?”

  “I don’t want to be your lawyer, no. I want to be your father.”

  “Yeah, well…”

  “If I was a doctor,” I said, “I’d refuse to operate on your heart. Do you see?”

  “Not really.”

  “It’s a moot question anyway,” I said. “You need a lawyer from Idaho, where you live.”

  “That how it works?”

  “That’s how it works,” I said. “If you want, I can ask around, get some recommendations for good attorneys out there.”

  Billy was shaking his head. “I really thought…”

  “Remember the year I coached your Little League team?”

  He smiled. “That was fun.”

  “For you, maybe,” I said. “For me it was gut-wrenching. I worried about showing favoritism, and I also worried about erring in the other direction, being too hard on you in order to avoid showing you favoritism. I worried that the other kids on the team would resent you. I worried that they’d think I wasn’t being fair to them. Their parents, too. I worried about what they were thinking. You were by far that team’s best pitcher, you know.”

  “Me?” he asked. “I never pitched. Not once. I played center field.”

  “You were our best hitter, too.”

  “So why was I sixth or seventh in the batting order all the time?”

  I spread my hands. “You see?”

  He looked at me and nodded. “Shit. You mean if you hadn’t been the coach I could’ve been a pitcher and a cleanup hitter?”

  “You probably would’ve been if you hadn’t been my kid,” I said.

  “So you’re saying it’s the same thing with being my lawyer?”

  “No, not exactly. A lawyer’s supposed to show favoritism for his client. It’s just not a good idea for a lawyer to be emotionally involved with his client. Personal things can distract a lawyer from legal things, and I happen to love you. Anyway, as I said—”

  The phone on the kitchen wall rang. I made no move for it.

  “You wanna get that?” Billy asked.

  “Let it ring,” I said. “If it’s important, they’ll leave a message.”

  When the phone stopped ringing, Billy said, “Look. Don’t worry about the lawyer thing. I get it. There’s a million lawyers. You’re my only dad. And for the record, all the sports I played on all those different teams? That year you coached Little League was the best.”

  I smiled. “It was a nightmare.”

  After Billy and Gwen left, Alex and I let Henry out back, and we stood there on the deck looking up at the stars.

  “Thinking about Gus?” I asked her.

  She put her arm around my waist and leaned her head against my shoulder. “I think about him all the time. When I see the stars, his constellations, it makes me feel like he’s up there watching over me, my big brother, protecting me like he always did.”

  I hugged her against me and said nothing.

  “Who called?” she asked after a minute.

  “Huh?”

  “When you guys were doing the dishes, I thought I heard the phone ring.”

  “Oh, right. It did. I didn’t answer it. Billy and I were talking.”

  “What about?”

  “He wanted me to be his lawyer.”

  “You refused, I bet.”

  “I did.”

  “Was he mad?”

  “I think he understands.” I kissed the top of her head. “I better see if I’ve got a phone message.”

  “I’m goin
g to get ready for bed,” Alex said.

  We went inside. Henry got his bedtime Milk-Bone. Alex headed upstairs.

  I picked up the phone and heard the beep-beep indicating I had a message.

  I went to voice mail. “Mr. Coyne,” came a male voice, “it’s Wayne. Wayne Nichols.” He paused, and I heard voices and music in the background. It was Saturday night, and it sounded like Wayne was hosting another party. “Look,” he said. “I got something here I think you’ll be interested in. So, um, you want to see it, come on up. You know where I live. Make it tomorrow. Sunday, that is. Tomorrow night, say around seven o’clock. Not before that. I’m busy until then. Anytime after seven, okay? No need to call me back. I’ll be here either way.”

  Twenty-one

  When Sunday morning dawned sunny and sweet-smelling and rife with vernal promise, another in a string of delicious late-April days, Alex, Henry, and I piled into my car and drove out to Concord, where we rented a seventeen-foot double-ended aluminum canoe at the South Bridge Boathouse on the Sudbury River.

  Alex wore cutoff shorts, a tank top, and one of my faded old Red Sox caps with her ponytail sticking out the back. From my seat in the stern, I enjoyed watching the clench and flex of her shoulder muscles as she paddled. Henry sat straight upright at the middle thwart, his ears cocked and his nostrils flared as we passed pairs of mallards paddling in the lily pads and a couple of great blue herons high-stepping along the riverbank with their necks bent like bows ready to release their arrows.

  The river was wide and flat with no discernible current, and we glided along upstream, paddling easily, all the way to Fairhaven Bay. There we beached the canoe, spread my ancient army blanket on the grassy bank, and had a picnic of the freshly baked and still-warm Anadama bread and extra-sharp Vermont cheddar that we’d picked up at a farmstand at Nine Acre Corner, washed down with cold bottles of root beer. We fed each other green grapes for dessert.

  After we ate, Henry sprawled on his side in a patch of sunshine, and Alex and I lay back side by side on the blanket with our faces turned up to the sky and our eyes shut.

  She found my hand with hers, interlaced our fingers, and held it tight against her hip. “What’s going to become of us?” she asked.