The Return of Jonah Gray

by Heather Cochran

  “I could have a death wish. You think of that?” he asked, pulling up to a stop sign. He turned around and looked at me. “This whole thing could be a trap.”

  “You said you didn’t hate me,” I said.

  He gave me a quick smile, then he turned back to the road and didn’t take his eyes off it until we arrived in Stockton.

  We met at a regional park across town from where Lori and Kurt and the boys now lived. Winding into the parking lot, I spotted their car, and then saw Kurt and Lori spreading a cloth over one of the picnic tables. Jackie and Eddie sat on the sidewalk, running model cars over sticks and leaves.

  Marcus pulled his motorcycle into an empty parking space in front of where the boys were playing. I watched as they looked up at the growling machine. Eddie poked Jackie and the two let go of their cars.

  I waved at the boys as Marcus parked the bike and cut the ignition.

  “Hi Eddie! Hi Jackie!”

  Eddie pulled Jackie closer.

  I jumped off the bike and stepped toward them. Now, Eddie pulled Jackie to his feet and the boys began backing away. I realized they didn’t recognize me with the motorcycle helmet and sunglasses.

  “It’s okay. It’s me. It’s Aunt Sasha!” I pulled off the gear and finally got a smile.

  By this point, Kurt and Lori had spotted us—or at least spotted two adults talking to their children—and were hurrying in our direction.

  “What were you wearing?” Jackie asked.

  “That was a motorcycle helmet,” I said.

  Eddie squinted up at Marcus. “Who’s he?”

  “This is your uncle Marcus,” I said.

  Marcus squatted down and held out his hand. “Which one of you is Eddie?” he asked.

  Eddie raised his hand.

  “I see,” Marcus said. “So which one of you is Jackie?”

  Jackie raised his hand and giggled.

  “Uh-huh,” Marcus said, scratching his chin. “So who is Marcus then?” he asked.

  “You are!” the boys yelled in unison.

  “Smart kids.”

  Kurt and Lori were watching us, waiting, so I tapped Marcus on the shoulder. “I should introduce you,” I said.

  Marcus got to his feet and held out his hand. “Kurt,” he said. “I’m Marcus. I don’t think we’ve ever met.”

  Kurt nodded and shook his hand.

  I wondered whether they were sizing each other up. I knew I was. Side by side, I could see that they shared my father’s jawline and the shape of his face. But I could pick out few other traits in common. Marcus was both taller and thinner than Kurt, and frankly, better looking.

  “This is my wife, Lori,” Kurt said to Marcus.

  “Hello, Marcus,” Lori said, extending her hand. “I understand you’ll be helping out with Jacob.”

  “Trying to,” Marcus said.

  “That’s all we can ask,” Kurt said.

  “Sometimes we can ask for more,” Lori said. The comment seemed directed at Kurt.

  “Can I lend a hand getting ready?” Marcus asked. “Got anything left in the car?”

  Lori smiled at him. “You really sound like Jacob. Your voice and everything.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” Marcus said.

  Kurt pulled me away. “Can I see you for a minute?”

  “Ouch. Gentle,” I said, following him.

  “Where do you get off introducing him to my kids as their uncle?” Kurt said, when we were far enough away. He looked genuinely confused. And angry.

  “He is their uncle.”

  “Oh no, he isn’t.”

  “What is your problem, Kurt?”

  “Well, for starters, maybe you forgot already but our dad is dying.”

  “You don’t get to be an ass to the rest of us because Dad is sick. It’s not as if you’re the only one who’s freaking out about it.”

  “Oh, I’m the one being an ass.”

  I looked around the park. “You see anyone else?”

  Kurt turned away and mumbled something I couldn’t hear. I said as much.

  “I said,” he spat, as he turned back toward me, “that it doesn’t feel right.”

  “What doesn’t feel right?”

  “Anything. This whole thing. Dad being sick. Marcus showing up out of the blue.”

  “It wasn’t out of the blue. Dad got this ball rolling a while ago. In every way.”

  “Well, it sure is convenient for Marcus. He moved in awfully quick.”

  “So this is really about Marcus. Not about Dad,” I said. “Go ahead. He can’t hear you.”

  Marcus and Lori were at the picnic table, uncovering various containers of potato salad, coleslaw and greens.

  “He’s a stranger, Sasha. Some stranger is going to be taking care of our father. Think of the influence he’ll have. Think of all the ways he can wheedle in.”

  “He’s not a stranger to Dad. And I didn’t hear you chiming in to offer. You want to take a leave of absence from your job to spend the next six months in a sickroom?”

  “I can’t,” he said.

  “I know. We all know you can’t.”

  Kurt leaned against the side of his car and looked at his shoes. I went and stood next to him, close enough that I could feel the warmth of his body down my left side.

  “Did you offer?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “He wouldn’t want my help.”

  “That’s not true,” Kurt said.

  “No?”

  Kurt shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. He does get snippy with you.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  My dad’s old Mercedes began winding through the parking lot. For the first time ever, we were all there, all four of my father’s kids in the same place at the same moment. As Blake and my parents began to climb out of the car, Kurt stalked off toward the picnic table. I amended my thought. Maybe we were all in the same physical location, but not the same place.

  While the rest of us took seats around the picnic table, Blake roughhoused with the boys. He gave them airplane rides, pony rides and allowed himself be tackled and dragged to the grass.

  “Eddie, Jackie! It’s time to eat. Leave your uncle alone,” Lori called, as the boys tried to keep Blake pinned to the grass. Blake was laughing so hard that his eyes were tearing. Eddie whirled around to answer his mother just as Blake looked up, and their bodies collided, Eddie’s elbow with Blake’s nose.

  “Dammit!” Blake yelled, as blood began to gush.

  “Mom!” Eddie screamed.

  But it was Marcus who sprang into action, rushing to Blake with one of Lori’s ice packs already in hand.

  “Just sit tight and let’s aim to keep the swelling down,” Marcus said, his voice calm and steady as he led Blake to the picnic table.

  “Oh, my baby boy,” my mother said.

  “I’m not a baby,” Blake managed to say, sounding cottony.

  “Is it broken?” Lori asked.

  “Hard to tell just yet. Could be.”

  Blake groaned. Marcus took a closer look.

  “It doesn’t look like it’s out of alignment. Sure is a spouter, though,” Marcus said.

  Blake groaned again.

  “Eddie, come here and apologize to your uncle Blake,” Lori said.

  Eddie dragged himself over to the picnic table. “Sorry Uncle Blake,” he said.

  “It’s okay,” Blake said. “It was an accident.”

  “Thanks for helping, Uncle Marcus,” Eddie said.

  “Any time,” Marcus said.

  Kurt got up from the table and moved away.

  “How about you eat something now,” Lori suggested to Eddie, who dutifully began to pick at his lunch plate. Jackie, on the other hand, insisted that he wasn’t hungry.

  “Here, Jack, let’s practice our throws,” Kurt said, tossing a football to his younger son.

  Jackie happily retrieved it, and Kurt kept tossing, a little farther every time. I watched as one of my brother’s throws flew high over
Jackie’s head.

  “He’s only three,” Lori called. “Give him a break.”

  Jackie ran to get the ball, but no sooner had he touched it than he started screaming. In an instant, Lori was on her feet, racing toward him.

  “What happened? What’s wrong?” she called out, but he kept wailing. It took a full ten minutes of shrieking to ascertain that a bee must have alit on the colorful foam ball and stung Jackie’s hand as he reached for it.

  “I’ve got to get out of this heat,” my father suddenly announced as Jackie’s whimpers continued in the background.

  “You want to rest in the car? I’ll put the air-conditioning on,” my mother suggested.

  “Maybe for a few minutes,” he said.

  “Can I help?” Marcus offered.

  “He’s fine,” Kurt said, waving him off as he and my mother helped Dad away.

  Marcus looked back at me. “So,” he said. “What’s your complaint?”

  “My complaint?”

  “Are you sick? Sunburned? Spider bite? Maybe some food poisoning?”

  “I’m sorry. This day was supposed to be relaxing.”

  “If everyone’s doped up by the end of it, it might still be.” He smiled a little and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket.

  “I didn’t know you smoked,” I said.

  “I’ve got to figure that you don’t know most things about me.”

  I’d grant him that. “But you’re a nurse,” I said.

  “So?”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be healthy?”

  “Jacob’s an accountant. Isn’t he supposed to keep better track of his money? Just because you know how to do something doesn’t mean you always do it.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  Marcus lit a cigarette and inhaled. I noticed that he smoked the same brand my mother used to.

  “What are your bad habits?” Marcus asked.

  “I didn’t mean to say it was a bad habit,” I said.

  Marcus waved me off. “Over-apologizing, maybe?”

  “Not usually, no.”

  “Because you’re never wrong, I’ll bet. Then what?”

  I looked around the picnic table. Amid all the turmoil, I’d stayed in the exact same place. “Sitting back and waiting maybe,” I said.

  “That’s your bad habit?” He flicked his ashes onto a half-eaten plate of potato salad. “Jesus, you could stand to develop a few more. Cigarette?”

  I shook my head. “What about riding on the backs of motorcycles?” I suggested.

  Marcus nodded. “Speaking of which, I’d better get on the road.”

  “When are you coming back to Piedmont? When do you think you’ll get started with, you know, Dad?”

  “Probably tomorrow or the next day. Why?”

  “So I’ll see you next week?”

  He stubbed out his cigarette. “I guess so.” A few moments later, Marcus had gathered up his things and left.

  I, too, had grown tired of Gardner family day. It felt as if we weren’t a family so much as a group of isolated individuals in orbits that barely intersected. I turned to Eddie, who’d been sitting at the edge of the picnic table, watching everything. He hadn’t yet bounced back from his role in Blake’s bloody nose, and after hearing Jackie’s bee-stung shrieks, had wound himself into a little ball and looked as if he were willing himself not to cry.

  “I see that your mom brought her bike,” I said to him. “You ready for an adventure? Just you and me?” It was a smile worth seeing. I got the kid bundled into the bike trailer and we were off.

  I was definitely more in a mood for fields than family. Whenever an intersection presented a clear choice, I veered in the direction that looked more rural. That led us past crops I didn’t recognize, past orchards, past fields already stripped of their harvest.

  “Are you okay back there?” I called.

  Eddie smiled, his little helmet knocking back and forth.

  It was a beautiful day, blue sky above and dark gray asphalt below. I sped up and the discrete greens in the fields blurred into one. I ascended a hill, pushing hard to maintain my speed with the trailer behind me, legs pumping, heart racing, lungs burning. It was good to feel something so searing. At the crest, out of breath, I saw a rickety country store and coasted to a stop in front of it. I got off the bike, heaving.

  An old man sat in a chair outside. “Can I help you?” he asked.

  I nodded, but couldn’t speak. I put my hands on my waist and bent down, trying to catch my breath.

  “You’re outta breath,” the man said. I nodded again and looked up. Behind him, a painted sign revealed the store’s name and address. I recognized the zip code as the same one Martina had researched for me. This was Jonah Gray’s neck of the woods.

  I glanced at the old man, trying to gauge if he looked more like an RV driver or a bow hunter. Mostly, he seemed like the kind of person who’d lend a hand if you ran out of gas or lost your wallet.

  “Am I anywhere near Horsehair Road?” I asked, at last able to speak.

  “Sure are. You’re not but a quarter mile off. What you’ll do is keep heading down this here road and you’ll see it. On the left.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You know someone on Horsehair, do you?”

  “Gray?” I said, reluctant to offer anything more.

  “Oh sure,” he said. “Helluva year. Hope he’s feeling better.”

  I headed back to the bike.

  “What’s horsehair?” Eddie asked.

  “The name of a street,” I said. “Wave at the nice man, okay?”

  The man at the grocery was spot-on. Horsehair Road was barely a quarter of a mile farther. The area looked as if it had begun as a single farm, before being subdivided for a housing development. In the first block stood a number of newer homes, the landscaping still sparse around them. It was the sort of neighborhood that might be pretty, given fifty years and enough rainfall.

  I continued down the road. The newer houses sported addresses in the one hundreds, so 530 Horsehair had to be a few blocks more. I pedaled as if I knew where I was going. And I did, sort of. But what business did I have there? It was wildly inappropriate, my father would have been quick to point out, to visit the home of someone I was auditing. And with my nephew as a witness. Yet I kept going, and within a minute or so, the newer development had fallen away, and I found myself at the end of the road, at the edge of a long, gravel driveway that led to an older farmhouse—530 Horsehair.

  I glanced at Eddie and wheeled the bike around, retreating a few yards. Then I turned around again. I wasn’t sure what I was there to see, but whatever it was lay at the end of the driveway. I had ridden on the back of a motorcycle, for goodness sake. I could do this. Jeffrine could do this. I stopped at the edge of the road and dismounted.

  “What are we doing?” Eddie asked.

  “My thoughts exactly,” I said. He looked confused. “We’re exploring,” I told him. “Didn’t I promise you an adventure?”

  “Is it safe to get out?”

  There were no cars visible, either along Horsehair Road or in the driveway of the farmhouse. “I think it’s safe,” I told him.

  Eddie picked his way out of the trailer and stood beside me. I clicked down the kickstand and tucked the bike beside the mailbox.

  “Do you want to take your helmet off?” I asked, but Eddie shook his head. “Maybe that’s best,” I said.

  He gazed into the field of corn that lined the road. I pulled out my cell phone.

  “Who’re you calling?” Eddie asked.

  “Just…someone,” I said. I dialed the phone number for the Stockton Star and requested Jonah Gray’s extension. I knew from reading his Web site that he often worked Sundays, preparing for Monday’s paper.

  “Jonah Gray,” he answered.

  I hung up. He was at work. That was all I needed to know.

  “Your friend wasn’t home?” Eddie asked.

  “Nope, not home.” I offered Eddie my hand
and we stepped onto the driveway, toward the house. The corn, on either side at shoulder level, waved in the light breeze.

  “Where are we going?” Eddie asked.

  “Just down a ways,” I said. I squeezed his hand. The trust he had in me made me want to cry. Of course, I wouldn’t have brought him there had I thought that any harm would come of it. Whatever Jonah Gray’s issues were—with his stock sales or gardening—I felt certain he posed no danger to small children. Indeed, he had devoted a whole section of his site to poisonous plant identification.

  At the end of the drive, the corn petered out, and a scrappy, slightly uneven yard spread up to the farmhouse. Between the drive and the yard sat a thick stump, maybe two feet high. I wondered if that was all that remained of the sixty-five-year-old black oak that Jonah had declared lost a year earlier. Off the front of the house, a wide porch extended, with a bench swing and an American flag that fell limply from a wall-mounted pole. The place looked as if it had seen a lot of living, not all of it easy.

  “What are we looking for?” Eddie asked me.

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t know how to explain it to him, or what I would say were Mrs. Gray to spot us poking around her lawn. I concentrated on walking as though I belonged there.

  I noticed Eddie frowning.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “It’s boring. There’re no toys,” he said.

  He was right. I looked around the lawn and porch, and saw that nothing on it pointed to the life of a child. I knew that Jonah had claimed an Ethan Gray as his dependent. But given how recently Jonah had married, I realized that Ethan was likely an infant, not yet old enough to enjoy an outdoor jungle gym or soccer goal. I wondered why he never mentioned a son on his Web site.

  “What’s that?” Eddie asked, lurching toward the back of the house.

  I liked that he believed that I knew where I was going. He tugged me around the side of the farmhouse, past the huge stump and back toward an area out of sight from the driveway. Behind the house, the lawn grew more lush, with a flagstone walkway and bird feeders strung between a pair of tall trees. At the edge of the lawn stood a shiny glass-walled greenhouse.