by Lila Shaara
“I can live with myself just fine, thank you very much. You watch out for your own conscience.”
She walked away with another wave, her hand flapping down as if to say, “you’re nothing, you’re too low for me,” and went back into the salon. Darcy thought about what to do now. He could stay for a while, but he hadn’t hidden himself well enough, that was for sure.
“You’re not calling that man, are you?” Josie said. Maggie had asked to borrow Roy’s truck one more time and was taking a break before she went back on the road. She’d been looking at the phone with a strange, sad expression, and Josie could read her mind as sure as if her thoughts were printed on a piece of paper right in front of her. Maggie wanted to call the college boy, no longer bearded, no longer as chubby as he’d been when Josie had first seen him, which was some kind of a miracle, but Josie also knew that things were bad between them. Maggie had never told her exactly what had gone wrong, other than the incident with the stun gun. But she could guess some of the rest. And why would someone like Harry ultimately want Maggie, when college men like him could get all the sex they wanted anytime, all those coeds hanging around them like they were gods? There was nothing that a man liked more, Josie thought, than to be thought divine. She remembered Duncan again, how he’d treated her like she was the one who walked on water. She wished she didn’t miss him so much, wished she could recall more of the bad times or the static he’d given her when she’d drunk too much. Of course, she hadn’t been in the habit of drinking quite so much when he was alive, but still, she’d put it away a few times when he hadn’t liked her to.
By the time Maggie answered her question, Josie had already forgotten it, so she couldn’t figure out what she meant at first when she said, “No, I was thinking about it, but I won’t. There’s no point.” Oh, thought Josie, remembering now, oh, Harry. She’s not going to call him. Good. Then she made a bargain with herself that as soon as Maggie left again, she’d go to the package store and get a pint, or maybe a fifth, of vodka or rum. Something you could put into something cold.
The tiny cabin faced a brown lake flanked on all sides by trees in full leaf. Harry had grown used to long vistas of southern pines; he’d almost forgotten the old deciduous forests of his youth. The air smelled different, not cleaner, certainly, but cooler; he imagined that if he could put the air on a slide and look at it under a microscope he’d see a few microbes dancing and darting. The air of Gunhill Park, on the other hand, would be crammed with all manner of minuscule bugs buzzing through the damp, dense as an electron cloud.
The next two mornings they swam at a man-made beach of gray sand a half mile from the cabin, then spent the afternoons fishing and hiking through the wooded hills. They didn’t talk much at first, but at least the iPod stayed in the car. The first afternoon, they caught two largemouth bass and three crappies. They reminded each other how to clean, fillet, and lightly batter them, which resulted in a sparse but satisfying dinner in the dark on the buggy porch.
While fishing the second afternoon, Harry broke the silence by asking Dusty how his grandfather was doing.
“He’s okay now. They said it wasn’t a bad heart attack. Grandma says in a way it was a good thing. It’ll force him to eat better and exercise more. You’ve been working out or something. The last time we hiked anywhere, I thought I was going to have to carry you.” Harry grunted at this. Dusty put his rod and reel down on a rock and said, “When are we going to see your parents?”
“Why haven’t I ever met them before?” Dusty asked.
The car curved and swooped among the hills that complicated the drive along the big river, the Susquehanna, once beautiful, now ashen and filled with poison. Harry mentally corrected himself; the steel mills are mostly dead and the water’s supposed to be cleaner. I still wouldn’t eat any fish out of it, though. After a few minutes he said, “It’s kind of complicated. You know that my biological parents are dead.”
“Yeah. The camping accident.”
Harry debated for a moment whether or not to tell Dusty the whole truth. Not yet, he thought. Too many adult-size burdens already. He said, “Bernie and May were my foster parents. You know what that means?”
“They adopted you.”
“No, Uncle Lawrence and I were never actually adopted. We just lived with the Wileys and they took care of us. The state paid them to do it.”
“They did it for the money?”
“Partly. They also thought it was a good thing to do, to take care of kids who didn’t have anywhere else to live or parents that were able to do a good job.” Harry stopped, then added, “You can decide for yourself what you think of them.”
Bernie Wiley was working on a car in his driveway, an old gold Buick that had so many patches of rust creeping from its underbelly that it looked two-toned. The hood was up, as were Bernie’s sleeves as he twisted a ratchet around and around, snick, snick, snick, as though the engine needed winding up. He looked up as Harry’s rental car pulled in behind the Buick, then stood up straight, the socket wrench in his hand like a weapon. Harry felt his stomach tighten at the thought of seeing the Wileys face-to-face again after so many long, complicated years.
Dusty had the sense to leave the iPod on the seat; Harry was embarrassed at how glad he was that Bernie and May wouldn’t have his son’s bad manners to criticize, at least in that respect. He said, “Hi, Bernie. How is everything?”
Bernie nodded, then said, “Not so bad. Can’t complain.” That’ll be the day, Harry thought. “She’s waiting for you inside.”
The house was bigger than he remembered, which was the opposite of what he’d expected. He thought, You always hear that, as you grow up, things shrink. But he’d always seen the little brick saltbox house as a circumscribed place, the walls so close, the rooms so cramped and dark. When he’d read the first Harry Potter book to Dusty, the boy magician’s closet under the stairs had reminded him of the little bedroom he’d shared with Lawrence: the narrow, hard cots; the tiny, high window; the bare, cracked walls; the stacked cardboard boxes whose contents he never saw but whose labels he read every night before he went to sleep: “B’s sum clothes,” “Mom’s cookbooks,” “Photos.” He had no idea if the labels meant anything or if the boxes had changed contents over the years without any attention paid to the words written on them. They were taped shut, and his curiosity about them never rose to the point where he’d cut them open and risk May’s anger at his intrusion. The only box that held any real interest for him was the one labeled “Photos”; he wondered whose pictures were in there, if the label was true. Bernie as a child? May? Pictures of other children they’d fostered? Other blood relatives? Harry had asked once, and May had said only “I don’t remember, Harry. Tend to today, not yesterday.” Harry never knew exactly what that meant. He always felt he was tending to yesterday, today, and tomorrow, although while living with his foster parents, he never felt like he was getting anywhere no matter how much tending he did.
Now he and his son entered the house, which still smelled of cabbage and air freshener. “May?” he called from the front hallway, not seeing her in the living room. He knew she was probably in the kitchen but was reluctant to walk any farther in without an invitation.
“Is that Harry?” he heard an old woman’s voice call from the rear of the house.
He put his hand on his son’s shoulder, guiding him beyond the living room into the little white kitchen, where a short, elderly woman was chopping potatoes. “Harry?” she repeated as he came in, Dusty at his side. Harry went to give her a kiss. She jerked back at first, just a tiny movement, then let him finish the gesture, his lips touching her cool, dry cheek for an instant before she pulled away for a second time. Had he expected a hug? He couldn’t remember what his expectations had been. He said, “You’re looking great, May,” which wasn’t particularly true; she looked shorter and thicker than he remembered, her hair whiter, which wasn’t surprising. But her cheeks were more sunken than they’d been before, at odds with her
stoutness, and her skin was sallow, an unhealthy white-yellow under a layer of powder that didn’t bode well for her health. “How are you doing?” he said, hoping that if she had a serious health issue, she’d tell him. Although, he thought, why should she? What would I do if I knew something like that? What would she think I could do, or would do? Then the real sadness hit him. Nothing, he thought. I’d do nothing. They’d expect nothing of me, and that’s what they’d get.
“So this is Dustin,” May said, chopping again.
“Yes,” Harry said, holding his hand out toward his son as though he were offering him up.
“Hi,” Dusty said, his voice as blank as his face.
“I haven’t seen your father in, how many years has it been, Harry?”
“Twenty, give or take.”
“You’re not married to the boy’s mother anymore.”
“No.”
“Well, it’s just as well we weren’t at the wedding. It wasn’t a proper one anyway. Not in a church.” Her eyes focused on Harry, the chopping ceasing for an instant. “She was pregnant, too.”
Thank you for that, Harry thought sarcastically as he saw Dusty’s eyes widen a bit. He hadn’t known, Harry thought. He’d never done the math.
Harry said, “I thought you folks were all about forgiveness. Those without sin cast the first stone and all that.” Oh God, he thought, this was a terrible mistake.
“You always were one to misinterpret scripture, Harry.” She looked at Dusty. “Your uncle was the one we had hopes for. I’m sorry to say that Harry turned out as we feared.”
“What fears are you talking about?” Harry said, forcing her attention back to him. “I’m not a criminal, May.”
“Not in the eyes of the law, maybe. But you are walking a dangerous road, Harry, always have been. Nothing’s changed. I knew you weren’t going to stay married. Who’s raising your boy?” She turned back to Dusty. “You go to church?”
Dusty looked startled again. “Sometimes.”
“What does that mean? You find yourself a good church, boy, get yourself in right with Jesus.”
“I’m not a big sinner, ma’am,” Dusty said.
“We’re all sinners, boy. You remember that, you’ll be doing better.” To Harry, she said, “I was real sorry to hear about Lawrence.” Chop, chop. “The wages of sin, not even his.”
Harry wanted to say, It wasn’t my fault. But of course it was, in a way. Maybe I wanted him dead, Harry thought, but I would have stopped a bullet for him anyway.
Dusty said, “You think it’s my dad’s fault that Uncle Lawrence died?”
The knife stopped, completing the indoor silence. Outside, Bernie ratcheted something else in the big engine, snick, snick, snick.
“It was that story he wrote,” May said. “Got people all riled up. The judge was a good man.”
Harry was about to correct her when Dusty said, “He was a crook. And my dad got him locked up, which he deserved. His son was a psychopath, and murdered my uncle while trying to murder my dad. Are you saying”—Dusty moved a step closer to the old woman with the knife—“that he should have shot my dad instead?”
May held the knife in front of her like a shield, staring at the heated boy in front of her. “No, of course not. But you reap what you sow.” As she looked at Dusty’s face, something like fear or distaste colored her yellow cheeks.
“What do you sow?” Dusty said, now as angry as Harry had ever seen him, and he couldn’t figure out his own reaction, something big and swelling and hard. Love, fear, something else. Pride, or elation. That’s not good, he thought. I should be horrified. He realized that Dusty might blow altogether any minute, might say something that would make him feel bad later, might cause May to call Bernie in, the whole thing might become physical. Before May could answer Dusty’s question, Harry said, “We’d better go. Come on, Dusty. Take care of yourself, May. I’m grateful for the bed, and the food. You gave me Tylenol once when I had a fever. Thanks for that, too.” He took Dusty’s arm, pulled gently, saying, “We’ve got to go.”
To his relief, Dusty didn’t resist the tug on his arm and walked with Harry out the front door and down the porch steps. As they passed him, Bernie said, “Did May set you straight, Harry?”
“Oh, yeah,” Harry said. “Straight and narrow.”
39
FIVE OF CUPS
REVERSED
The one you love returns to you
They were both quiet as they drove back to the cabin in the woods. As the hills flew by, Harry compared the peaks and folds of the land with the flatness of Florida, mostly because he didn’t know what to say. Should he upbraid his son for speaking so to an old woman, or should he thank him for coming to his old man’s defense? Neither seemed to reflect the way he felt; mostly, he admired the way his son had exploded outward with his feelings, had been plainspoken without being rude. Although he supposed May Wiley had thought him rude. Harry wondered if Ann would have thought so. Maggie, he supposed, would have just nodded in agreement. Dusty spoke, startling him.
“Was she always like that?”
“May?” Harry said. “Yeah, pretty much.”
“Why doesn’t she like you?”
Harry tried to think of a way to frame his answer that wasn’t just a string of expletives about the Wileys, that wasn’t simply judgmental.
“They’re mean, in the literary sense. Stingy with their affections. With their money. With their entire selves, really.”
“No wonder you don’t deal with them. They suck.”
Harry felt compelled to defend them, though he wasn’t sure why. “I think they’re scared,” he said, realizing that it was something he believed to be true. “I didn’t use to understand that, but they keep their world as contained as possible so that it’s not too scary. I always wanted to know everything, always wanted to know the why of everything, too. That irritated the shit out of them.”
“She liked Uncle Lawrence.”
Harry thought before he spoke. “Lawrence was a pleaser. He told them everything they wanted to hear. He was pretty wild when he was a teenager, you know, but they never knew it. He got caught with a joint once, behind the high school. May and Bernie swore that I must have given it to him, but I didn’t. He’d given me one, though, the month before. I coughed for two days and it made me so paranoid that I couldn’t look anyone in the eye for about the same length of time. I never saw the fun in it.” He looked sideways at Dusty. That last bit is a lie, the judge said. Just make sure that when you’re lying to him, you know you’re doing it.
Dusty looked away from his father, watched the gleaming trees speed by. Harry asked, “Have you ever tried it?”
Dusty shook his head, and Harry thought it was probably the truth. He was getting his father mojo back; he was beginning to be able to read his son’s face and body language again. “That’s good. You’ll probably do all sorts of terrible and stupid things once you’re in college; most kids do, but in high school you’re just not equipped. I know that’s a cliché, but it’s true. All teenagers get stupid. No offense. It comes with the crazy hormones and the growth spurts. You’re not immune, you know. You’ll be stupid sometimes, too. The important thing is—”
Dusty said, “To not get caught.”
Dusty’s face broke into a small but welcome smile when Harry laughed. “Well, yes, but it’s more important that you know what you’re putting in your body, which means you have to pick your friends pretty carefully, because an awful lot of people will think it’s funny to watch you eat poison and then squirm or hallucinate headless clowns or die or something.”
“They tell us all that stuff in school, Dad. I know not to get addicted to anything.”
“You better not or I’ll kick your ass.”
Dusty shifted in his seat, looking out the window. After a few minutes he said, “Soon I’ll be big enough to kick yours.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
Dusty looked back at him, his face hard. After
a long time, he said, “When’s the last time you got drunk, Dad?”
Darcy Murphy pulled the van into a vacant lot a half mile down the highway. He hated getting out of the cool interior, into the weight of the air, the heat making him dizzy. He murmured a few choice obscenities, made sure his cell phone was in his pocket, and locked the van door. He trudged along the edge of the asphalt, not easy in heavy work boots on the tilt of the sandy grass, sloping on his left down to the drainage ditch. There was no chance of rain today, no help from the clouds. The sun lay on his shoulders like a woolen shawl. He thought of his grandmother. She would have said it was a beautiful day, loving every degree above ninety. The sweat ran down him thick, like oil, into all the crevices of his body, making everything burn and itch.
A couple of big rigs passed him, along with a low-ride Camaro, but the good ole boy inside didn’t give Darcy a glance, not a look, not a holler. That was good, Darcy thought, although it was no comfort when he considered that he might well pass out if he didn’t hit shade soon.
He got to a pair of palmettos that grew at an angle across the road from the Babyface Salon. One trunk lay on the ground almost perpendicular to the other, and their pointed leaves spread wide apart, making the shade intermittent but better than nothing. He hadn’t thought to bring a bottle of water or even beer, which was stupid. Although it would already be hot enough to steep a tea bag in by this time, he thought, but he knew if he kept the image of a glass of iced tea in his head long enough, he’d be insane by nightfall.
He hunkered down in the crotch of the palmettos, binoculars around his neck. He scooted his rear end around several times until he found a spot where he could sit upright in reasonable comfort without putting too much weight on the wrong part of his body. He couldn’t lean back, the bark being rough and sharp; he remembered an old high school classmate describing punji sticks to him, a favorite wounding device of the Vietcong. Bamboo rods sharpened to fine points and then laid in a grid in a camouflaged hole in the ground; unlucky soldiers would fall in and be skewered in forty places. Darcy imagined some passerby finding him in a day or two, stuck to the tree and barbecued by the heat. Then he thought of iced tea again, and almost got up to leave.
