All the while, Greymore haunted him. He had made deals with his connections at Braxton to make sure no mail got in or out. Greymore had no family so it wasn’t difficult. The only one he couldn’t keep out was that priest, but it hardly mattered. Everyone told the priest they were innocent.
Now Greymore was back and kids were getting killed again. Innocent or guilty? Crawford tipped the bottle to his glass but there was no more salvation there. He looked at the picture of Susan and felt a rare pang of guilt and remorse. How had he gotten here? What could have been? It was all spinning in his head, Greymore, the little girl he couldn’t save, Susan, the baby that was never born…
He picked up the revolver, turning it in his hands. How could he ever make any of this right? Never mind right, he thought, he would settle for tolerable. He turned the gun again and stared down the muzzle. It was a black hole that held his stare. He believed that somehow it held the answers. He looked closer, not realizing his thumb was tightening on the trigger. Was there a light down there? Was that where the answer has been hiding all this time?
The room exploded with a crash and a flash of light. Cody’s eyes were closed and he felt the gun being taken out of his hand. Now I’ll never find the answer, he thought.
“Dad, what are you doing?” Dale’s voice was frantic. He had walked up to the back door, sneaking in late after his business at the Witch’s Hat, to see his father sitting there with the gun. He flung the door open and threw the lights on, the door slamming against the counter hard enough to smash the panes of glass, but his father had not moved, just closed his eyes. He pried the gun away and his father mumbled something about an answer, then put his head down and passed out. Dale would soon begin to wonder if it would have been better if he had just stayed outside and watched.
(57)
Ten-year-old Sean Jenkins loved fishing. But, man, did he hate getting up in the middle of the night to do it. As far as Sean was concerned, the fish weren’t going anywhere so what would the harm be in sleeping a few more hours before trying to hook them? But when your dad says you can skip school to fish, why argue? His dad called in sick to work, telling Sean you just couldn’t let days like this pass without fishing, and here they were. The sky was just starting to lighten in the east when Sean and his dad pulled the last of their gear out of the trunk. Sean’s dad Harry, known at the Witch’s Hat and numerous other bars in the greater-Haven area as Jenk, was adding what he lovingly called a “jump start” to his coffee thermos. In layman’s terms, Jenk’s jump start was a generous splash of whatever brand of Irish whiskey was on the sale table at Main Street Wine and Liquors. Sean watched his father with a combination of love and disgust that confused him. He already knew how the day would play out. Everything would be great through the morning as they talked and fished, but as the day wore on and the thermos emptied, Jenk’s mood would shift to anger—at the heat, at the lack of fish, at the Yankees, pretty much at anything. If Sean played his cards right, he would nod at all the right times and answer any slurred questions thrown his way correctly and escape with a backhander or two. If he really screwed up, he might get a closed fist to his gut. Or worse.
By the time Jenk had finished his drink, he would be a sloppy pile of tears lamenting the loss of Sean’s mom, Myra, who was “taken too soon to Heaven.” What further confused Sean was the fact that his only memories of his mom and dad together involved yelling, screaming and the occasional thrown beer cans or wine glasses. Sean knew what to expect, this wasn’t their first fishing trip since his mom passed from liver failure. What he didn’t know is that it would be their last.
When they made their way through the woods to Jenk’s latest “can’t miss” spot—his cronies at the Hat were famous for giving him such tips—the sun was peeking over the horizon and Sean knew it would be another steamer. Some mornings at this time of the year the first job at hand would be to start a campfire to keep the chill off until the sun got high enough to warm things up a bit. But since the temperature hadn’t dropped below seventy degrees at night in over a week, Sean got busy finding a couple of forked branches to stick in the ground and hold their rods up. Jenk began opening the tackle boxes and selecting hooks, weights and bobbers for them to use. Sean had his own ten-year-old wisdom on that process: hungry fish will bite no matter what’s on the end of your line as long as there’s a big, juicy worm involved. Sean had spent the early evening hours yesterday on his hands and knees catching “night crawlers,” which he considered the top-of-the-line menu item for any self-respecting fish.
A few minutes later, already breaking a sweat, Sean and Jenk put their first cast of the day into the water and propped their rods onto the sticks that Sean had hammered into the soft ground at the shore. As was their tradition, they held their drinks high—Sean’s a canteen filled with Cherry Kool-Aid, Jenk’s with the not-quite-full thermos of high-octane coffee—and Jenk recited his official fishing toast. “The fish may bite, God may smite, we’ve got bait and drink, everything’s alright!” Sean took a swig of his Kool-Aid and watched his dad take a greedy gulp from his own thermos. Jenk’s Adam’s apple moved up and down as he gulped, like a bobber getting some strong nibbles. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and with an exaggerated breath, took a look across the lake. “Sure is a beautiful spot, huh Sean?”
Sean squinted out at the lake as well; it really was a beautiful spot. The sun was almost fully over the tree-line to the east and its rays danced across the calm lake. The only sounds were birds, frogs, a few lazy heat bugs, and the gentle lapping of the lake against the shore. His gaze finally settled on the motionless tips of their fishing rods. “Sure is. Hope it’s as lucky as it is pretty.”
Jenk laughed, a sharp bark-like sound that held no humor. “Well, Sully swore he pulled in a fifteen-inch trout at this very spot. Old Sully, mind you, is the same person that swears his wife is the spitting image of Sally Field. Now my eyes ain’t what they used to be, but Becca Sullivan looks more like an acre of unplowed field than she does Sally Field.” And so it began. Jenk would take so many different forks from the original conversation that he’d never find his way back. Sean tuned him out, thinking about Sally Field in Smokey and the Bandit. When Jenk found the road in his thoughts that led him to baseball, Sean began listening again.
“And the Yanks have a fucking shortstop—forgive me, Myra—who couldn’t break two-fifty last year.”
The constant apologizing to Sean’s dead mother every time he swore was one of Jenk’s most annoying habits as far as Sean was concerned. Either stop swearing or stop being sorry about it every time for fuck’s sake. Sorry, Mom, he added with a sly grin.
“We have The Rooster at short. He almost hit .300 last year and made the all-star game. Position by position, Sean, we’ve got those pinstripe-wearing fuckers beat. ’pologize Myra.”
Sean was already forming the opinion that his dad was as useless as a screen door on a submarine and didn’t know squat about simple things like fishing, but he loved his Red Sox. Watched or listened to every game, studied the box scores every day. This year, thought Sean, this year might be different. He watched his dad take another lengthy sip from his thermos, and then let his eyes drift over to the fishing rods. It was already hotter than balls even in the shade and the tips of the rods hadn’t so much as wiggled.
“Gotta go drain the vein,” Jenk muttered. His dad had a healthy supply of phrases for just about all of his bodily functions. And Sean had heard them all a million times. Sean watched him get unsteadily to his feet and wander off into the trees. Next would be the slurred speech and it would go downhill quickly from there. Sean looked at the sky, hoping to see a thunderhead moving in, but the sky was a brilliant blue and rain was as out of the question as Jenk staying sober. The sun was still low in the east and it was already time for a swim. Suddenly both rods jerked at the same time. Sean stared at the rods, sure that he had imagined it. Then the line slowly tightened on each rod, and both tips began to bend toward the lake.