“This happened a lot?”
“Like, three times in one year. I’d get accused of stealing, or they’d just fire me and wouldn’t give any reason. I have, like, the worst luck.”
“That’s really tough.”
“So I had no money, and I couldn’t make my rent, and Daddy kept telling me to come home, and finally, I really didn’t have any other choice. I don’t know, he finally wore me down. Jeffrey was nearly eight, I had to pull him out of school, and we moved in with Daddy, and he wouldn’t even let me send him to a new school. He said we could look after that ourselves, that the schools were run by these secret societies and everything that wanted to brainwash children. And I realized, having been away for so long, how much I’d forgotten about what my father was like, the things he believes, the things he thinks need to be done.”
She tried her coffee again. It had cooled down enough for her to take a sip.
“What sort of things does he think need to be done?” I asked. Even though it was warm enough in the café, I felt a brief chill at the memory of the McVeigh portrait hanging on Timmy Wickens’s wall.
“Daddy wants a revolution. All these forces of darkness, he calls them, have to be stopped. Ordinary people have to rise up and stop the corruption of our society.”
“What does that mean?”
“He doesn’t, he doesn’t talk to me as much about it. He talks to Dougie and Wendell, his little soldiers. They’re on this mission. They hang on his every word.” She looked down at the table. “And Jeffrey’s starting to, too. I see how he looks up to them.”
She linked her fingers together, entwining them so hard I thought they might snap.
“What about Morton?” I asked. “Was he on this mission, too?”
“I met Morton in the city about the time I decided to move back in with Daddy. He waited tables at this coffee place I would go to, and he’d been bouncing from job to job, he was kind of a lost puppy, you know what I mean?”
I nodded.
“There was something about him, I don’t know. He was looking for something in his life, anything, to care about, to believe in, to belong to, and I wanted to be that for him, but it was hard, when I hardly had any money, and a little boy to raise. But when I moved back, and Morton came to visit, I think he found some of those things he’d been looking for. We were like a community for him, I think. He really got to know my father, listened to what he had to say, and I think he was kind of going along with it. About how all these special interest groups were hijacking the country, you know, about the fags and the niggers and the liberal elite and the Jews and the Muslims. But lately, it’s like Morton was getting uncomfortable with it. I tried to get him to talk to me, but he was all wrapped up with himself, like he was struggling with something, like he was ashamed, or had this awful secret.”
“What kind of secret?” I asked.
May shrugged. “I don’t know. But I think he wanted my father to like him, because he loved me, and he liked Jeffrey, too. Jeffrey was warming to him, too, I could tell. Morton used to just visit every few weeks, but the last couple of months, he stayed with us, said he was going to find work up here, but Daddy said to him, don’t worry, he could work around the place, do some things for him. And now…”
“What do you think happened to Morton?” I asked.
May blinked. “What do you mean?”
“The whole bear thing.”
She wrapped her hands around the mug again, leaned in. “What are you saying?”
“I don’t know,” I said, backtracking, wondering whether to go there. “I mean, are you satisfied with the coroner’s finding, that he was killed by a bear?”
She swallowed. “I’m not sure.”
“Why?”
“Because, I don’t know, because everyone’s trying so hard to make me believe it was a bear. Dad and Charlene’s boys, after this all happened, and they found Morton, they say Morton was talking about getting this bear, that he didn’t want it going after Jeffrey, that he was going to kill it.”
“Did that seem odd to you?”
She looked down into her cup. “Morton never once mentioned any bear to me. I’ve never seen one, I don’t think anyone has ever seen one. If they have, they never talked about it until that day that they found Morton. I mean, I know there must be bears up here, but there are wolves and deer and everything else, too, but how often do you actually see them?”
“Anything else?” Lana said, appearing out of nowhere. “There’s still a piece of that coconut cream pie left if you want it. I wouldn’t breathe a word about you having two pieces in one day.”
“No, thanks, that’s everything, Lana.”
She tore a check off a pad and slapped it on the table.
“Why are you telling me all this?” I asked.
May’s eyes moistened. “For my son,” she said. “Would you want to see a boy raised this way, on a daily diet of racism and hate?”
“Why don’t you leave?” I asked. “Just get in your car with Jeffrey and keep on driving.”
May swallowed. “Because he’d find us. He and Charlene, and those boys of hers. They’d find us. And they’d make us come back. Daddy said to me once, he said, ‘Don’t you go thinking about leaving, May,’ he said, ‘unless you’re happy to leave Jeffrey behind.’ ”
I realized that my heart was pounding. “He threatened to hold your son.”
May bit her lip. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I guess, I took a chance telling you because you might have some idea.”
I had no idea whatsoever. The best idea I could come up with was to run back to the city as quickly as I could. To leave all these problems behind. Dad got himself into this mess, renting that house to the Wickenses, and he could just find a way out of it.
But looking into May Wickens’s face, I knew I couldn’t succumb to my first instinct to cut and run.
“Let me think about this,” I said, tossing a couple of bills onto the table. “Right now, I have to get Dad back-”
“Oh my God,” May said. “What time is it?”
I glanced at my watch. I told her it was nearly noon.
“I have to go,” she said, her voice laced with panic. She shifted out to the edge of the seat, and as she did her sleeve caught on a chip in the tabletop. There was a red welt on her arm, a couple of inches above her wrist.
“Did you hurt yourself?” I asked.
She quickly pulled down her sleeve. “It’s nothing,” she said. She got out of the booth and headed for the door, with me right behind. “He’ll start looking for us if we’re gone too long,” she said. “I’ve got to get Jeffrey and-”
Timmy Wickens was standing outside the café door, looking inside at us, and he was clutching the hand of young Jeffrey, who stood obediently at his side.
15
“HEY, MR. WICKENS,” I said. “Timmy.” I extended a hand. “Good to see you. Thanks again for dinner last night.”
Timmy Wickens wasn’t buying it. His face seemed made of stone. He wasn’t even interested in talking to me, at least not yet. He had his eyes on May.
“You know where I found this boy of yours?” he said.
“I ran into Mr. Walker,” she said.
“Do you know where he was?”
“I had to go to the drugstore,” May said. “I had,” and she lowered her voice to a whisper, “some personal, feminine things to buy.”
“Where are they?” Timmy Wickens asked. “I don’t see a bag. Where’s the stuff you bought?”
“Do I have to empty my purse?” she said, trying to be indignant. “You want to haul out my box of tampons right here on the main street?”
He recoiled a bit at that, but he was ready to go in a different direction. He yanked on Jeffrey’s arm for dramatic effect. “I found him playing video games,” Timmy said, tightening his grip on the boy. I tried to catch the boy’s eye, but he was looking at the sidewalk.