by Thomas Scott
“Hey Bud, I was wondering if I could borrow your truck today. I’ve got to run over to the lumber store and buy a few pieces of board for the bar top. Don’t think I can fit them in my car.”
“Sure thing, Dad. Door’s open, just come on in.”
Twenty minutes later he heard the front door open, then close. “That you, Dad? I’m in the kitchen.”
Mason came around the corner just as Virgil was moving away from the sink. “Hi, Virg. Looks like you’re moving around pretty well.”
“Yeah, I’m starting to get the hang of these things,” Virgil said, as he wiggled a crutch in the air. “Still hurts pretty good, especially in the mornings.”
“I’ll bet. I put my car next to the garage, out of the way. Sure you don’t mind letting me use the truck?”
“Naw, it’s fine. But listen, how about I go with you? This just sitting around the house is driving me nuts. Sandy’s downtown and I could sure use a change of scenery. I’ll sit at the bar and keep you company while you work.”
Mason looked at his son, the skepticism clear upon his face. “You sure you’re up to it? I’d hate to get all the way over there then have to turn around and bring you back.”
Virgil let out a sigh. “I just need to get out, Dad, okay? Sandy will be done in a couple of hours or so. I’ll leave her a message and she can probably swing by and bring me back here.”
“Okay, if you’re sure.”
“I’m sure, Dad. Let’s go, huh?”
“You bet. Hey, I’ll pull the truck around to the front. Shorter walk, right? You want some help getting out there?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
They rode together in silence for a few miles, a familiar routine. After the stop at the lumber store—Virgil waited in the truck—they headed for the bar. “Which boards need to be replaced?”
“The ones on both ends that butt up against the cross-members, just above the sinks? They’re fine on top, but they’re getting soft underneath. All the water that splashes up there is taking a toll. I thought since I was going to sand and refinish the top, now would be the time to swap them out.”
“Yeah, probably right,” Virgil said. “So, uh, how’s things with you and Carol?”
Mason shifted his eyes from the road without turning his head. “Okay, I guess,” he said. “Why?”
Virgil shook his head. “What do you mean, why? I was just asking. Making conversation, you know?”
“You pissed at me or something?” Mason said.
“No…I’m sorry. It’s these damn pain pills they’ve got me on. They’re messing with my head. I’m snapping at everyone.”
Mason nodded. “You’ll be okay, Virg.” After that, neither of them spoke for the rest of the ride over to the bar.
Way to go, Virgil thought.
Mason brought the boards in from the back of the truck while Virgil hobbled over to the jukebox and put some music on, then hobbled back to the bar and sat on one of the stools and let his leg hang down below the brass railing underneath. It felt good to get the weight off of it. He looked at the clock above the back of the bar and checked the time, thought close enough, and took a couple more pills.
Mason placed the boards on top of the bar and set about prying the old ones from their mount while Virgil took a sanding block and began to work the area in front of where he was seated, father and son communicating the way men often do, not with words, but by working together.
Later, while they were taking a break, Virgil picked up the phone and called Sandy to let her know where he was and to see if she’d pick him up. “You boys having fun?” she asked.
“Oh yeah. Nothing better than bar upkeep. Think you could swing by and pick me up when you’re finished?”
“Sure,” Sandy said. “But I thought I’d stop and pick up something to eat. You think maybe the three of us could have dinner tonight?”
“Hold on. I’ll check.” He pulled the phone away from his ear and said, “Hey Dad, Sandy wants to cook for the three of us tonight. What do you say?”
Mason wiped the sweat from his brow. “Ah, geez Virg, I don’t know…”
Virgil put the phone back to his ear, his eyes still on his dad. “He says he’d love to.” He listened for another minute, then said goodbye and set the phone down.
“Don’t be such a stick in the mud. She wants to cook for you.”
Mason let out a sigh, then went back to work.
Virgil did too.
When Sandy got to the bar she walked in, smiled and kissed him hello. “Thought you were going to the store,” Virgil said.
“I was going to, but I thought I’d stop by here first and see what sounded good to you guys. Any suggestions? Hi Mason.”
“Hi little darling,” Mason said. “You know how to make a meatloaf?”
“I sure do,” Sandy said. “As a matter of fact, I’ve got a meatloaf recipe that’ll make you love me forever.”
Mason laughed. “Won’t need a recipe for that. All you’ve got to do is take care of my baby boy, here.”
Virgil thought, huh…and felt the love in his words.
Sandy excused herself to the ladies room. “That’s one you don’t let get away, Virg.”
“I know, Dad. I know. This one’s going to work. Meant to be, you know?”
“That I do,” Mason said. He was marking a series of cut lines on the boards with a carpenter’s pencil. He didn’t look up when he spoke, but it didn’t stop the words. “You know, Virg, you and I, sometimes it sort of seems like neither one of us has the right thing to say to each other. You ever feel like that?”
“Yeah, I guess sometimes I do, Dad.”
Mason put the old board on top of the new one and traced the cut points out. “My dad, your grandfather, he wasn’t much of a talker. I used to get mad at him when I was a kid because he wouldn’t say anything except to correct me when I did something wrong. It wasn’t until you were born that I finally figured out how much he loved me. Wasn’t until he died that I figured out how much I loved him, faults and all.”
They sat with that for a minute and during the silence Sandy came back out and stood next to Virgil. Then, as if she could sense the conversation: “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”
Neither of the men had a chance to answer. The front door of the bar opened and someone stepped inside, just past the entryway. Mason looked up and said, “Bar’s closed for renovations. Be open again next week.”
Virgil heard his father say they were closed, but when he turned to look at whoever was at the door his foot slipped a little on the brass railing and got caught between the rail and the bar. He cursed, then gently tried to twist his leg back into position. Just as he did, he heard his father say the last word that would ever come out of his mouth.
“Gun!”
Virgil turned his head toward the sound of his father’s voice, saw Sandy reach for her weapon, then felt himself being pulled to the floor.
Sandy grabbed the back of Virgil’s shirt collar and pulled him to the ground. She yelled something, her words lost over the sounds of gunfire. Sandy fired twice, but Amanda Pate managed to get one shot off.
And one was enough.
Virgil couldn’t hear anything, the sound of the gunshots booming in his ears. The cordite from the spent shells assaulted his nostrils like someone had stuffed fire ants in his nose. He turned on the ground and the pain in his leg made the room swim out of focus for a moment, but he saw Sandy kick a gun from Amanda’s dead hand. She was yelling something—Virgil didn’t know what—but when their eyes locked and she saw he was okay, she ran right past him to the other side of the bar. Virgil tried to get up, but his leg was caught in the railing, the cast wedged in tight. He finally managed to pull it free and when he did, he felt something pull loose and a wave of pain turned everything gray, like an old black and white film.
Sandy was shouting from the other side of the bar. “No, no, no.” Her shouts were high-pitched. Almost screams.
“Sandy?�
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“Virgil, I need you back here. You better hurry.”
Virgil hopped and slid along the bar, trailing his bad leg behind him. When he turned the corner he saw Sandy covered in Mason’s blood, his head in her lap. The bullet had caught him squarely in the chest at the bottom of his rib cage. The color had drained from his face, and blood ran from both corners of his mouth. Sandy had one arm wrapped around his body, holding him in place, her other hand pressed tight over the gaping wound in his chest. His blood burst between her fingers with every beat of his heart, and from the time it took Virgil to move from the end of the bar to where they lay, Mason had lost more blood than Virgil thought the human body capable of containing.
He already had his cell phone out. He punched in 9-1-1, shouted their location into the phone then let it slip from his hand. He got down by his father’s side and put his hand on top of the wound as well. “Hang in there, Dad. You’re going to be all right. You’re going to make it. Help’s on the way, you hear me?”
Mason reached out and grabbed his son’s wrist. He tried to say something, but when he did, he choked on the blood that ran from his mouth and no words ever came. He took Virgil’s hand and held it to his heart, then placed Sandy’s hand there as well. Virgil watched him stare at Sandy, then saw his eyes go out of focus and felt the silence in his chest.
Virgil looked at Sandy and knew she grieved in ways he could not know. For her, it was summer again from a time long ago and this was yet another goodbye of a father figure she would never have the chance to know or love.
After a while, Virgil slid sideways and sat down next to her and ran his fingers through his father’s hair. They stayed there like that until the police and the medics arrived, neither of them saying a word.
Epilogue
The sun was out, suspended high in the miracle of another day where everything felt fresh and destined to live forever. Virgil walked with a cane, a handmade hickory stick Sandy bought for him after the doctor had removed his cast and said he could go without the crutches. As they walked across the still-wet grass of an overnight rain, the tip of the cane sank into the ground in various spots and Sandy had to hold Virgil’s arm to help steady him along.
It had been eight weeks since Mason died.
In the end, Virgil had decided that his father’s death could only be attributed to a certain sense of bad luck and a failure of imagination on his part. Amanda Pate had pulled the strings on her husband for years as she lived with and hid from his desires, all while she served an agenda of her own. The police were able to piece together certain facts, Amanda Pate and Sidney Wells, Jr. being lovers, chief among them. When that fell into place, eventually the rest did too.
The fire that killed Amy Frechette, Murton’s girlfriend, was traced back to Collins and Hicks by forensics and the hard work of the Arson squad. It was ultimately decided that it was nothing more than a way to draw Murton out into the open and it probably worked better than either Collins or Hicks would have liked. It took a number of weeks, but Virgil was finally able to put the final piece of the puzzle in place, and when he did, he almost wished he’d left it alone.
He called the governor on a Sunday morning at home and asked to meet him at his office.
The governor resisted the idea of a meeting.
Virgil insisted.
When he walked into his office the governor was seated at his desk, a glass of scotch in his hand. It was only ten-thirty in the morning. Virgil limped in and sat down in one of the chairs in front of his desk without speaking.
The governor watched him for a few minutes, then unlocked the center drawer of his desk and pulled out a brown expandable file folder. He removed the elastic string from the flap and pulled out a number of different photographs and arranged them on his desk. Virgil couldn’t see the person in the photos, but then again, he didn’t need to. “I should have known you would figure it out,” the governor said. “Who else knows?”
“Sandy, and probably Murton Wheeler, though he hasn’t come right out and said so. But no one else that I’m aware of. My gut tells me you’ve probably confided in Bradley Pearson though.”
“Your gut tells you true. That makes five people in the entire world who know, Jonesy. You, Sandy, Murton, me, and my aid, Bradley Pearson.”
“Your wife doesn’t even know?”
The governor took a sip of scotch then shook his head. “No, she does not. We were never able to conceive and I thought the cruelty of it all, the fact that I had a child by another woman, would break us apart. So no, I never told her. How did you put it together?”
“Murton had a lot to do with it.” Virgil reached into his pocket and pulled out a copy of the birth certificate that had been in the safe deposit box and handed it to the governor. “He gave me this. Amanda Pate had the original before Murton got hold of it. How she got it, I don’t know. I guess we’ll never know.”
The governor passed a stack of pictures over and Virgil leafed through them. They were all pictures of Sidney Wells, Jr. at various ages in her life. And then he told his story.
“Her name was Sara Wells. One night I stayed at the hotel where she worked. It was as simple as that. She was stuck in a bad marriage, I was stuck in a bad hotel, and when we met in the bar, I’m telling you, Jonesy, it was magic. She stayed with me that night and we met every chance we got for the next year and a half.”
“And when you found out she was pregnant?”
“I’m not sure I understand your question. Is it my honor you’re asking about?”
“I’m asking you what happened next.”
The governor looked at nothing. “She told me she knew the baby was mine. She said she knew it to be true because Sid had been to the doctor. He had a low count or something. I asked her to divorce Sid so she could marry me, and she told me she would. My God, Jonesy, we were happy. That’s where we were when everything changed.
“My call sign that day was Voodoo. You know what’s funny? I remember almost every single detail of that day except the one that matters. The one where I picked up the phone and filed my flight plan. I had the option of going to Indy or Ft. Wayne first. For some reason I picked Indy. If I’d have picked Ft. Wayne…” He let it hang there.
“She might still be alive today?”
The governor pointed his finger at me. “Wrong. She would still be alive. I’d probably be flying for the airlines and we’d have a ton of kids. Instead, the woman I loved and my only child are dead because of me.”
“Governor…”
He held up his hand. What he said next didn’t surprise him, but it made Virgil’s stomach turn just the same. “I’m sorry about your father, Jonesy. I really am. But what’s done is done. I see no criminal involvement on my part in this matter. The Pates and the Wells are gone. I’ll consider the matter closed as soon as I have my daughter Sidney’s original birth certificate. You do have that, don’t you?”
Virgil did indeed have it. It was in his pocket.
He had two choices.
One, give the birth certificate to the governor and be complicit in hiding his secret, one that would all but destroy his political career if it ever came out, or two, include the birth certificate in the official file, and let the governor fend for himself.
Virgil stared at him for a long time.
The governor stared right back.
“You put me on Pate right out of the gate,” Virgil said. “Why?”
“That was Bradley’s doing, though I agreed to it. We knew he was being looked at by the FBI, but they were dragging their feet.”
“I don’t think that’s entirely accurate. In fact, with all due respect, it’s flat out wrong.”
“It’s neither right nor wrong, Jonesy. It’s politics. How long do you think I would have lasted in my campaign against Sermon Sam once everyone found out that the woman I was sleeping with, the woman who just happened to be married to that idiot Wells was at work and in the hotel the morning I punched out of that plane? Not very lo
ng, I can tell you that.”
“And what about the shootings?”
The governor took another drink of his scotch. “What about them? Sidney Wells was a psychopath. He was trying to destroy me by murdering family members of anyone and everyone he thought was even remotely responsible for the crash that day. He knew all along I was Sidney, Jr.’s father. If Pate’s wife and my daughter were having some sort of illicit affair as you allege, then they must have put the plan together. Who knows?”
Virgil picked up a few more of the pictures and looked through them, but he didn’t try too hard to hide the contempt in his voice. “And who cares, right?” After a few minutes he reached into his pocket and gave the governor the document.
When the governor addressed him by his formal title, Virgil knew he’d made the wrong choice.
“Thank you, Detective Jones. That will be all.”
Virgil gave the governor a chance to correct himself. “Are you sure about that, Sir?”
When he looked away and didn’t answer, Virgil pulled himself from the chair and limped out of his office.
Sandy touched his arm and pulled Virgil out of his thoughts. “Hey, you with me, big guy?” she said. They were next to the edge of the pond behind the house and when Virgil looked out across the water he saw it wrinkle in spots, the Bluegill hungry, nicking at the surface.
“Why did you want to come out here?”
Just then, a landscape truck pulling a backhoe on a lowboy trailer turned off the road and came up the drive. They lost sight of it for a moment when it went around the side of the house, then reappeared and stopped next to the out building where Virgil kept his lawn equipment.
“You’re about to find out,” Sandy said. “We wanted to do something for you…Murton, Delroy, and me. ”
Murton hopped out of the truck, backed the tractor from the trailer and drove over to where they stood, about ten yards from the edge of the pond. He lowered the bucket on the backhoe and scooped out a pile of soil then placed it carefully in a mound a few feet away from the hole. He repeated the process two more times, then turned the tractor around, winked at Virgil like he may have just noticed his presence and drove back to the truck. When he returned the next time Delroy rode along with him. There was a Weeping Willow tree in the bucket of the tractor, its root ball enclosed with burlap and twine. Murton lowered the bucket next to the hole opposite the pile of dirt, shut down the engine and climbed from the operator’s seat, a small package in his hands.
