Dejourner sighed deeply. His face looked flushed. “It is why I struggled so long and hard before coming to you, Blaine. Lauren was … my niece.”
“Then you …”
Dejourner rose to face him, having to look up to meet his eyes. “You needed someone. So did she. Yes, I arranged it. And what it did for you at the time proved I was right. You were like a son to me, and I saw what that awful war had done to you. It stole from you your youth and set you on a path that denied honest sharing, compassion, love if you wish. I knew that path because I walked it myself.” The Frenchman’s expression grew somber. “I was almost fifty, single and alone, having known only love for my country, which as you often have told me can be a cold and callous partner. You had to see the other side. I had to show it to you.”
“When did you learn of the child?”
Dejourner looked away. “I didn’t know it was yours.”
“You suspected.”
“But I didn’t know!” Then, more softly, he added, “I supposed I did not want to know. I did not learn the truth until a covenant in her will reached me with the entire story. Lauren had grown up an orphan. She did not want the same for her son.”
“Then she expected me to—”
“She expected you to be true to your own heart. She knew the kind of man you were, that you would do what was right and fair. I’m not sure, no, I am sure she had no desire for you to approach the boy. She merely wanted to insure his future would be watched over by someone she trusted.” Henri’s eyes reached out toward him. “You must do what is right and fair for the boy, but you must also do the same for yourself.”
“A rather difficult combination to achieve under the circumstances.”
“Your heart will guide you, mon ami.”
“You don’t really expect me to walk into the boy’s life now, do you?”
“I expect you to do what is right. And whatever you choose, it will be right. I have done my part. I have stayed true to my conscience as well as Lauren’s covenant.”
“And by so doing, you may be exposing the boy to the very things she wanted to avoid when she — and you — chose not to tell me he existed.”
Dejourner nodded. “Now you can understand the predicament I have faced these past months. Sleep has not come easy, believe me. I thought of you, I thought of Lauren, but in the end I thought of the child, and that is what swayed me.” The Frenchman reached out and grasped Blaine’s forearm tenderly. “He deserves to know you, mon ami, perhaps not as a father but at least as a man.” Dejourner pulled away. “I leave it to you.”
“How old are you, Johnny?” McCracken asked the huge Indian. They sat facing each other in the log cabin Wareagle had built in the woods near Stickney Corner, Maine. The town was three hours from Portland, and Blaine had driven there the minute Dejourner had departed.
“Blainey?” Wareagle responded, turning so Blaine could see his tanned, leathery face that had remained unchanged for the nearly twenty years they’d known each other. They had served together in the same covert division in Vietnam, Johnny a lieutenant to Blaine’s captain. If McCracken’s exploits were legendary, then Wareagle’s were the source of myth. He could charge into a minefield or weave through a firefight without fear, because death, he claimed, was something that stared you down before it took you. And your best chance to avoid it was to stare right back.
“I just got to thinking that with all the shit we’ve been through together, I don’t even know how old you are.”
Wareagle moved sideways to lift a boiling kettle from an open flame and poured the water into a pair of mugs that held his homemade tea. “As old as the last season and as young as the next.”
“I mean in years, Indian.”
“Blainey, a man’s years vary like his thoughts. We are here from birth to the end of our chartered time, and what passes between is measured in whatever terms we choose.”
“You’re talking to a man who recently turned forty.”
“A man who did not drive all the way up here to celebrate.”
Wareagle finished stirring the cups and brought Blaine’s over to him where he sat in the high wooden chair. McCracken felt himself swallowed by the size of the furnishings. Everything in the cabin, from the height of the ceilings to the furniture, had been built with Johnny’s seven-foot proportions in mind. Blaine took the cup and sipped its steaming contents. He could taste the sweetness of the molasses and honey and felt somehow soothed.
“I got a belated birthday gift a few hours ago. Thirteen years belated.”
Wareagle sat down opposite him and leaned back so his ponytail of coal black hair flopped over the chair’s top. He said nothing.
“I’ve got a son, Johnny. He’s twelve years old, his mother’s dead, he’s at a school over in England, and he doesn’t even know I exist.” Blaine’s words came in a rush, as if hurrying the tale might make it easier to tell.
Wareagle just sat there across from him. Beyond the windows, dawn had come and gone, but the promise of the day was gray and overcast.
“I don’t know what to do. I can’t even think about it ’cause it scares me.” Blaine forced a laugh. “Listen to this. Look at what we’ve been through, all we’ve done. After that, is this what it takes to scare me?”
“The unknown holds the most terrifying prospects for us all, Blainey.”
“You know what I mean, Indian.”
“As well as the problem facing you: either you go to England or you don’t.”
“Reduced to bare terms, that says it all.”
“All life can be reduced to such terms, Blainey. We complicate our existences by creating additional choices that merely confuse our decisions. You speak of all we have accomplished and so often together. In those situations life stripped us of all choices and left us only with actions. We thrived because the thinking was spared us. We could heed the words of the spirits because nothing was in our heads to get in their way.” Wareagle eased his chair a bit closer to McCracken’s. “We faced physical complications with immediacy and relentlessness in the hellfire. That is what kept us alive. Moral complications must be treated the same.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“You didn’t ask one.”
“Then let me make it as uncomplicated as I can: do I walk into the boy’s life or stay out of it?”
The Indian leaned back and sipped his tea. “What was I doing when you arrived?”
“Chopping wood outside.”
“For when?”
“Winter.”
“And now May is barely upon us. Preparing for what lies ahead is the essence of all life. Preparation holds the greatest opportunity for avoiding complications. But what if the seasons reversed themselves? What if winter began tomorrow? Then my pile of wood would be woefully inadequate. Would I freeze?”
“You’d find a way not to. You’d survive.”
“Even with the vital preparation unfinished?”
“The first cold wind would be your warning. Snow in May would give you a pretty good notion things were fucked up big time.”
“And what would I do?”
“Bring the wood inside, make sure it stayed dry, chop as much as you could, and stack it right here in the living room. Conserve whatever you had until you were sure you had enough.”
“And are emotions any different, Blainey? Must we not conserve and adapt them as well to the change of emotional seasons the spirits bring upon us without warning? We survived the hell-fire because we expected whatever might come. Preparation helped, but keeping our minds open is what saved us. We responded to the moment, not the hour, and we never closed our eyes to what was before us in the hope it would go away. Ignoring the cold, Blainey, would not have made us warm. Yes, the wood must be chopped. We must never forgo preparation for any events, even those that frighten us with their suddenness. If we do not accept that suddenness, as we did in the hellfire, we die. There are many ways to die, Blainey.”