“Not really. He was probably nicer to me than I would have been to him under the circumstances.” I hadn’t believed him, but I wasn’t going to tell her that.
“He’s not my real father. My real dad died in a plane crash. He flew cargo planes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I was little, but I remember him.” She nodded to the house. “We don’t get along very well. My mom always takes his side.” Then: “I thought you were maybe the guy coming back.”
“What guy?”
“The guy who came late last night. They were near the garage arguing. My bedroom window’s right next to the drive. They woke me up.” She ran her fingers along the chrome trim of the windshield.
“Did you see who it was?”
“Huh-uh. I got kind of scared, because he said that my stepdad was going to be in trouble if he screwed this up.”
“You’re sure that’s what he said?”
“It’s exactly what he said, because he said it a couple of times.” She buffed some dust off the hood with her fingers.
“So you didn’t get a look at the other man at all?”
“He was past the point where I could see from the window. My mom takes pills. I don’t think she woke up. I couldn’t sleep after that. So I finally got up and went downstairs to get some milk, and my stepdad was down there. In the kitchen. Alone. He had a drink. It was a pretty strong one. I can tell by the color. It was real dark, which means he’d poured a lot in.”
“He say anything to you?”
“Not much. We don’t talk that much. I’m not real popular at school. That bugs him a lot more than it bugs me. I read a lot of science fiction. That’s what I want to do someday. Write science fiction. You know, like Robert Heinlein.”
“Double Star’s my favorite.”
“Hey, really?” The smile made her pretty. “You really like him?”
He came around the corner armed with intent. In this case, the intent was to get me off his property and to get his stepdaughter to shut up. He was big and burly and red-faced from heat and liquor. The festive colors of the Hawaiian shirt seemed to fade.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, McCain?”
“I was just talking to him. It’s my fault. He was ready to leave.”
“You get inside.”
He and Roy Davenport were good at ordering females inside. Leave the real business to the menfolk. Sounded like an episode of Gunsmoke.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. McCain.”
She didn’t do either of us any favors with that remark. She’d hear about it when he found her later. I was hearing about it now.
“You ever heard of jailbait, McCain?”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “You really going to try some horseshit like that on me?”
“She’s fourteen years old. That’s jailbait age. That’s also prison age for anybody who goes near her. She’s not much to look at, but it’s my duty to protect her and that’s what I damned well plan to do. So how would you like it if I started telling people you’ve been sniffing around my innocent little stepdaughter?” The sun was turning his forehead into the texture of new leather.
“Wouldn’t work, DePaul. We were talking about science fiction. And she’d testify to that.”
“Science fiction.” His lips twisted into a particularly ugly frown. “That’s why she doesn’t have any friends. Sits in her room and reads that crap. No wonder other kids don’t want to hang around her.” He’d lost his place in the book. Now he went back to the right page. “But that doesn’t make her any less vulnerable to some creep like you trying to get to her.” He slammed a big hand flat on my hood. He was strong enough to dent it. I scanned the impression his hand had left in the light dust. No dent. “Now you get the hell out of here and don’t try to contact her in any way. I don’t ever want to see you again. Because if I do, I’m going to file a complaint against you. And how’ll that look for you and that fancy-ass judge you work for? Accused of statutory rape.” He was suddenly delighted with the idea. “I can see her face now when she’s trying to explain it.”
“It’d never stick. And she’d know better.”
“It might not stick, McCain. But it’d be in the paper. And people wouldn’t forget it even if the charges got dropped. Tryin’ to pick up an innocent fourteen-year-old girl. See how many clients you get then.”
I wanted to ask him who his late-night visitor had been. I wanted to ask him why he was so afraid of what I’d find out about the fire and his role in assessing it. I wanted to ask if he’d taken money for his trouble, or had somebody blackmailed him into calling it an accident.
But I couldn’t ask him any of these things. If I brought up his visitor, he’d know that his stepdaughter had told me. And if I asked him the other two things, he’d just sputter and stammer and threaten me.
I turned the engine on and dragged the gearshift into reverse. “I’m sure we’ll be talking again sometime, Chief. Whether you want to or not.”
“Try me, McCain. Try me and see what happens.”
But by then I was backing up and turning on the radio. “Wooly Bully” was the perfect exit music.
I thought about my conversation with Nina DePaul as I sat across the living room from my father an hour later. He’d fallen asleep in his easy chair, his chin touching his chest, his snoring soft and gentle. Telepathy had always been one of my favorite themes in the science fiction Nina and I had discussed. The dramatic use was to pluck earth-shattering secrets from the minds of enemy agents. But what I wanted to do was share my father’s life through his eyes. His early years on the farm, his father crushed in a tractor accident. His trek with his brother to Black River Falls looking for work. Their mother virtually deserting them by marrying a man who didn’t want them. The worst of the Depression and then the death of his brother from influenza. Settling in a shack along the river and meeting my mother one day when she was out picking vegetables from her family’s small garden. Their courtship that always sounded glamorous despite all the poverty. The years apart during the war. And the war itself that still sometimes troubled my father’s sleep. And then coming back to enough prosperity to escape the Hills, only to see my brother Robert die. And now his final years, this smaller man in the old chair where he’d watched his sacred football games every Saturday and Sunday; where he’d ranted against the GOP; and where he tried to make his peace with cultural changes as different as Elvis Presley, civil rights, and yet another war.
There were times I’d resented him, times I’d even hated him, I suppose; but these times were always forgotten in the respect I had for what he’d been through and the love I felt for all the patience and encouragement and love he’d given me. Hell, I’m sure there were times when he’d hated me.
So I sat there now in the flurry of the fans in the windows and the faint kitchen sounds of my mother making a cold meal for this hot day and his rerun of Maverick playing unseen on the TV set-I sat there once again thinking the unthinkable. That he was going to die and die soon. And then I thought of my mother and my sister in Chicago and how we’d never quite be the same again.
I eased off the couch and went into the kitchen.
The way she looked at me, I knew she knew. She wiped her hands on her apron and came over to me and with a single finger dabbed away the tears on my cheek. Then she slid her arms around me and hugged me.
I went over to the refrigerator and got a can of Hamm’s and sat down at the table.
“I put extra mayo in the potato salad the way you like it.”
“Thanks.”
She was using a wooden spoon to mix up the contents in a green glass bowl. She didn’t look up when she spoke. “We want to be happy for him when we eat.”
“I know.”
“I try to do my crying in the morning when he takes his first nap. Isn’t that crazy? It’s like making an appointment. But he needs me to be happy because he’s afraid.”
“I know he is. I see it in his face sometimes.”
“He believes, but he doesn’t believe.” This time she did look at me. “He’s like you in that respect.”