Deception Creek (14 page)

I
t ain't much,” Jack said, keeping his eyes on Billy. “Please, sit down.”

Billy took a seat. “I didn't hear a TV. Thought you might be out,” Billy answered an unasked question.

Jack went over to the open window and sat in a folding chair that perched in front of it. He turned to look at Billy. “I was sitting here, looking out the window.” He demonstrated for a moment, then, as though in fast-forward, turned back around. “I listen to the sounds. The people talking. It reminds me. Well, you wouldn't understand.” He stopped talking and looked out the window again.

“Go on,” Billy said.

“Sure.” Jack got out of the folding chair. It squeaked and grunted as he stood. “It reminds me that I'm free. Free to walk outside whenever I want.”

“Do you?”

“What?”

“Walk outside. Do you leave very often?” Billy asked.

“Oh, yes.” Jack sat on an old flower-patterned couch, which sank way down, leaving his knees higher than his butt. He rubbed the arm of the couch. “Sometimes, I go out for a couple of hours.” He folded his hands in his lap, then unfolded them, then scratched his chin. “Don't have anywhere to go. But I go anyway. Twilight is best. The air has a certain quality to it. Like a tide change, day is leaving, night is rolling in. Only the sun's in control, not the moon.” He produced a quizzical look on his face, as though he questioned his own analogy. “Strange thought,” he said.

Billy wanted to respond, but few thoughts came. “I thought we could talk,” he said.

Jack nodded.

“How'd you learn about construction? In prison, I mean?”

Jack laughed. “Work details. But that's not why you stopped by.”

Billy waited until he remembered why he'd come there. “Do you have any questions?”

Jack looked toward the ceiling as if thinking.

“About Alice?”

Jack's face quickly got serious, his lips quivered. “Alice,” he repeated.

“Mom.”

“I know,” Jack said. “I was just thinking.”

“Well, you've got to stop thinking and start talking,” Billy said. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean anything.”

“I've been silent,” Jack said, “all these years.”

Billy realized that he had no idea what Jack had gone through. “Do you mean silent about Alice and William?”

“Silent, that's what I mean. Months would go by and I would say nothing. There are times now when I know what I want to say, but don't know which words to use.” He laughed, put his hands on his knees. “Those times are fewer though.”

“You're innocent, aren't you?” Billy said.

“No. I killed William.”

“Out of rage,” Billy said.

“I still did it. I couldn't stop. I lost control.”

Heat rose from the street outside and entered the room on a breeze. Jack's forehead beaded with seat. “The worst thing that happened that day was how I frightened Alice. Her eyes. She didn't even recognize me.”

“What happened then?”

“The police could have guessed what happened, anyone could have guessed, but Charlie Maynard owned half of them back then. If I didn't say anything, no one would. And Alice—” He sighed.

“What about her?”

“Well, if she didn't want me, then it wasn't worth living.”

“Are you kidding?” Billy said.

“At the time, Billy. At the time. You just don't know how in love we were. Like they say, love and hate are so close. By the time the trial came up, I had decided that the last thing I could do for her was to keep silent. No one had said anything to that point. It was easy to maintain.”

“It was your child?” Billy's voice broke. His heart pounded.

“The worst thing for me was that she was pregnant with William's child — although that would be better for her under the circumstances. I accepted the worst scenario, that it was William's child.”

“But what if it was yours?”

“Who would want a murderer for a father? That would have made growing up unbearable. As it was, it was probably hard, but not as bad as it could have been. The memory of a football hero is better than the reality of a murderer.” Jack turned his head back from his gaze out the window and let his eyes peer into Billy's face as if trying to find traces of himself.

“I don't know if you're right,” Billy told him. His voice quivered. “A rapist isn't very high on my list as the perfect father, either.”

“But you didn't know that. No one did. As for me, I was young. People change. Maybe I'd choose differently now. It doesn't matter.” Jack turned his head to look out the window again.

Billy swallowed and tightened his lips. He thought about the possibilities and which he would have chosen, but couldn't connect to the idea tightly enough to make a solid decision. “You came to the funeral.”

“I still loved her. I still do. At least the Alice I knew. She changed her love to hate that day, not me. I think mine turned into sadness, to self-pity, but never to hate. I could never hate. Sound funny coming from someone who did what I did? I never hated William, even as I hit him. I was angry, but I didn't hate him. I was as angry with myself as I was with him. I got there late. I was always late in those days, not now. Not now.”

Billy stirred, crossed his legs, leaned forward, but Jack didn't give him the chance to talk.

“You probably don't care about how I feel. Either way, you grew up without a father. Either way.”

“I got a note, you know? She wrote a note to me.”

“And—”

“The note said you were lovers. It said that William followed her and raped her. That you got angry, and—” He averted his eyes. “It said she was scared and didn't know what to do. That's all.”

“You went through her things?”

“Nothing,” Billy said. So, where to next? If you are not my father, then we are two men who work together. We have a connected past, that's all. And the connections are both dead.” Billy took a deep breath. “If, somehow, after all this, you are my father, what do we do?”

Jack didn't move a muscle. “I haven't even imagined.” He paused, took a deep breath, and blew it out slowly. “I never allowed myself to imagine that I could be your father. I don't know what we do.” Jack let his gaze drop to the carpet, then up and into Billy's eyes. “That's what you suspect, isn't it?”

Billy couldn't speak. His head bobbed. He wanted to run from his own question.

“What if I'm all that's left? Your last straw? There's nothing else to hold onto.” He stood and walked to the window. “I don't want to be that. Your last resort. I wouldn't make a very good one. My moorings aren't that secure.”

“Think about it,” Billy said.

“We don't know, Billy. Neither of us. I had hoped that Alice knew, but I don't think so now. Either way she chose to look there was sadness, a bad memory. I don't know if I could bear such pressure as long as she did.”

“I've got to go.”

“I didn't mean you,” Jack said. “You're what saved her all those years. You became her purpose.”

“So when I moved out, she was through?” He hated the thought that he may have caused her to go over the edge.

“I didn't say that.” Jack reached out for him.

Billy pulled away. “Leave me alone,” he said, even though that was not what he wanted. “You'll only see Alice in me, or the murder,
William's face.” His emotions moved him to action. He wished he could scream, fly away, disappear.

Jack's shoulders slumped and his arms hung loosely at his sides. “I wouldn't,” he said. Billy walked out and closed the door. He heard the door groan as if Jack had leaned against it.

Holding back tears, Billy ran from the hotel all the way to his truck. By the time he reached the outskirts of town, he had calmed somewhat. His shoulders tightened around his neck, his jaw clenched, but his tears no longer threatened to pour out and the ringing in his ears had stopped. Finally, he noticed that the back of his shirt was soaked and his neck wet. Sweat also made his pants stick to his legs. The blowing wind had stiffened, but dried his face. The smell of summer rose all around him. Humidity, which hung in the valley, closed in on him. As long as the truck was moving, and air flowed over him, the heat felt bearable. When he stopped, the humidity clasped its hands around him and he began to sweat again, began to breathe heavier.

When he arrived at Scott's, he waited in the truck for a moment, listening to the sawing and hammering inside the shop. After a short while, he went into the house and changed into work clothes. Determined not to think about his conversations with Jack or Grandpa Maynard, Billy dove into work with Scott. For the rest of the afternoon and evening, Billy helped Scott with finish work. They took a short break for dinner, then went back to work until late into the evening. By the time they finished, Billy felt tired, but much better. The physical labor had exhausted him in a new way. He showered and fell asleep quickly.

When Sunday morning arrived, Billy stayed in bed and listened to the birds outside his window. He lay face up, staring at the ceiling. He heard very little rustling down stairs and imagined Scott trying to be quiet.

He felt totally alone and kept still to savor the feeling. So much had gone on in the past few weeks that he had few feelings at all. Whether people who were actually, physically present, or people so intensely occupying his mind that they had might as well been present, Billy had not been alone. At that moment, listening to
hundreds of birds chirping and fluttering around the trees just outside the bedroom window, Billy felt amazingly at peace.

What had the birds in an uproar was an approaching storm from the northwest. The negative ions in the air contributed to Billy's feelings of comfort. He heard horses in the field that attached to Scott's side woods gallop about happily. He imagined early morning risers all over town walking outside just to smell the clean air and feel the wind that announced the coming storm. Tree leaves, oak, maple, butternut, birch, turned up their shiny undersides in early announcement of the rain.

*     *     *

Jack got out of bed, dressed, and took a long walk from the Wyoming Hotel down to Todd's bakery for coffee and a plain doughnut. Then he walked to the Lamont River, crossed the Center City Bridge, and headed towards the South-Side Ball Field to watch the wind-witches twirl the loose dirt into tiny hurricane-like whirlwinds — something he hadn't seen in years. He hoped to get caught in the rain while returning to the apartment. To feel it soak through his clothes to his skin.

*     *     *

Grandpa Maynard stepped outside. In the fresh morning air, he retraced the steps he and Billy had taken the day before, nothing specific in his thoughts, merely glimpses of a small boy growing up, innocent, wide-eyed and…individual. After a while, his heart opened to the small child, to the young man who, for many years, was his grandson. Even though he had wished for Billy to be his son, the best that had happened was that he did not fit that mold.

*     *     *

Grandma Maynard lay in bed awake, like Billy, only she lay on her side staring out the window at the shiny leaves of a maple tree.
Tears dripped down her cheek. She was tired of holding onto the heavy resentment, hate, and judgment that pressed against her heart. She breathed deeply over and over, and with every exhale, relaxed her heart a little more, letting those unwanted feelings empty out of her.

*     *     *

Billy rose from bed and rubbed his eyes. He went to the bathroom mirror and saw only himself. Cocking his head, he searched for Jack, for William, even for traces of Alice. The angles of his own features had grown stronger than hers, his hair curlier, his body tighter. He felt strong. Through facing each of them — first Grandpa Maynard, then Jack — the day before, he realized that he had diluted their effect on him. He saw them through different eyes now. And like a difficult math problem, all he needed was to sleep on it for it to solve itself.

Billy stared at the mirror until his face took on its own light. He showered and dressed. Downstairs he ate breakfast alone, while Scott worked in the shop. Billy didn't want to obstruct his feelings; he wanted to hold onto them, reacquaint himself with who he really was. After breakfast, he took a long drive, smiling and singing inside the truck cab. When the rainstorm arrived, he drove to London's and parked along the side of their store and out of the way of the strong wind and battering raindrops. He ran inside. Vicki stood behind the counter. Her friend unpacked boxes of cereal onto a shelf. Billy motioned for Vicki to join him outside, so she announced that she'd be gone for a little while and ran with him to the truck. Inside the cab, the rain beat softly around them, the sound muffled, the sensation cozy and warm.

He wanted to tell her how much better he felt, but couldn't, so they sat quietly together, listening to the rain. When she sighed, he asked if she was all right.

She shook her head, yes. Then shrugged her shoulders. “I thought you wanted to talk. But you haven't said anything. You just sit there and smile at me.”

“I've been smiling?”

“Yes. You don't know?”

“I guess I've been thinking, well, not really thinking, but feeling. I'm feeling better. And, well, I wanted to share it with you.” He turned toward her and put out his hand for her to take.

She placed her hand in his and shook it once. They were not sitting close together and she had to reach for his hand.

“Vicki, I woke up different this morning. It might not last, I don't know, but this whole thing doesn't feel so heavy. It doesn't seem to have the same strangle hold on my throat it once had.” A loud crack of thunder shook the cab. Billy saw Vicki jump and automatically pulled her close to protect her.