Home Song (29 page)

“I would like sometime for you to see the pictures of me when I was your age.”

Kent said, “I'd like that too.”

Silence hovered again while they thought of possibilities, considered making up for lost time, and wondered if they could create some future as father and son.

Tom said, “My father would like to meet you.”

“I'd . . .” Kent swallowed hard. “I'd like to meet him too.”

“I'm living with him now, you know.”

“Yes, I know. I'm sorry I caused that.”

“You didn't, I did. But it's my problem and I'll handle it. Anyway, Dad and I were wondering if you could come out to the cabin this weekend, maybe on Saturday.”

Kent's face flushed. “Sure. I'd . . . well, heck, I mean that'd be great!”

“You could meet Uncle Clyde too, if you want.”

“Sure.” Kent was smiling outright.

“Uncle Clyde and Dad like to rib one another a lot, and you never know what it'll be about, so I warn you, you'll have to take it with a grain of salt.”

Kent looked awestruck, perhaps a little giddy. “I just can't believe it, that I'm really going to meet my grandfather.”

“He's a great old guy. You're going to love him. I surely do.”

Kent just smiled and smiled.

“Well, listen,” Tom said, “I shouldn't keep you away from
class anymore. Do you need a ride on Saturday? Because I could come and get you.”

“No, I think Mom will let me use the car.”

“All right then . . . two o'clock maybe?”

“Two would be fine.”

“Here, just a minute . . .” Tom returned to his desk. “I'll draw you a map.”

While he slashed lines with a pencil, he was conscious that Kent had come right around the desk to stand beside him. “Watch for a line of pine trees along here, and then when you turn in, bear right at the Y, and Dad's place is only about a hundred yards in. It's a little log cabin, and you'll see my red Taurus parked by the back door beside his pickup.”

Tom straightened and handed the paper to Kent.

“Thanks. Two o'clock . . . I'll be there.” He folded the paper and creased it with his thumbnail. Once. Twice. Thrice, unnecessarily. There was nothing more that needed saying at the moment. They stood near, held in thrall by the possibility of touching, realizing that if they did they would cross a threshold that would forever alter their relationship. Their eyes gave away what they felt, how they yearned . . . and feared. . . and faced the moment with fast-tripping hearts.

And then Tom took him, and he came, and they pressed together heart to heart. They stood motionless, holding fast to one another in a flood of emotion. To have found each other became a miracle, a gift they had not expected life to give. At that moment they felt rich with it, blessed.

When they parted and looked into each other's eyes, they saw wellsprings near flowing.

Tom touched his son's face, a mere resting of a palm on a cheek, while Kent's arms slid free of his father's sides. He
tried to speak but failed. No smile intruded on the moment, no word marred its perfection. They stepped back, Tom's hand fell, and Kent left the office in the kind of silence reserved most times for temples.

O
N
Saturday morning Tom said, “Dad, come on, let's clean up the place.”

“What for?” Wesley took in the exploding magazine rack, the tilting pile of newspapers, the skewed slipcovers, and the disastrous kitchen sink. Junk everywhere, and none of it clean.

“I don't know how you can live in this pigpen.”

“Doesn't bother me none.”

“I know, but Dad, please, could we just make it look presentable for once?”

“Oh, all right.” Wesley budged himself off his kitchen chair. “What do you want me to do?”

“Just one thing. Throw away every single thing that you haven't touched in six months, and after that, take a shower and put on clean clothes. I'll do all the rest.”

Wesley looked down at his baggy trousers and khaki shirt. He looked up at Tom.
What's the matter with these?
was written all over his face. He looked down again, flicked a scale of dried egg yolk off his shirtfront, and gave a sniff that
could have meant anything. Then he started sorting newspapers.

Clyde came over at quarter to two, looking spiffy. He, unlike his brother, took great pride in dressing the part of a dandy. He took one look at Wesley and said, “Great balls of fire, would you look at him! Tom, give me a jackknife so I can carve this date on the wall.”

“Just shut your trap, Clyde, before I shut it for you!”

Clyde chortled in his throat. “What'd you have to do, Tom, handcuff him to the shower wall? By God, you clean up real purty, Wesley. You play your cards right, I'll take you to the whorehouse later on.”

Kent arrived promptly at two. He pulled up in the Lexus and got out to be greeted by all three of the men waiting on the back stoop.

Tom went forward. Here was that awkward moment again, like back before the two of them had hugged, filled with uncertainty on both their parts.

“Hello, Kent.”

“Hello, sir.”

“Well . . . you're right on time.”

“Yes, sir.”

After a clumsy pause, Tom said, “Well, come on . . . meet Dad.” He ushered the boy forward to the base of the step, shot through by indecision about how to introduce them. In the end he decided to forgo any mention of their blood relationship and let time take care of that.

“Kent, this is my dad, Wesley Gardner, and my uncle, Clyde Gardner. Dad, Uncle Clyde, this is my son Kent Arens.”
My son Kent Arens
. The effect of that first declaration was far more powerful than Tom had expected. My son, my son, my son . . . Happiness flooded him as he watched the encounter between his dad and the boy.

Wesley reached out as if to shake Kent's hand, but held it at length, smiling at his face, looking from it to Tom's and back again.

“Yessir,” he proclaimed, “you're Tom's boy all right. And darned if you haven't got a little bit of your grandma in you too. I can see it in the mouth, can't you, Clyde? Hasn't he got Anne's mouth?”

Kent smiled self-consciously. Then he let himself chuckle, and by the time he shook hands with Clyde, the worst moments were over.

“Well, come on inside, I'll show you where I live.” Wesley led the way. “Your dad had me gussying the place up this morning, getting rid of the fish smell. I don't know about you, but I don't think there's anything wrong with a little fish smell. Makes the place feel homey. You like to fish, son?”

“I've never done it.”

“Never done it! Why, we'll fix that, won't we, Clyde? Too late this year, but next summer when the season opens, you just wait! I put a cane pole in your dad's hands when he wasn't even as high as my hemorrhoids, and I want to tell you, that boy knew how to fish! We're startin' a little late with you, but maybe you ain't spoiled yet. You ever seen a Fenwick rod, Kent?”

“No sir, I haven't.”

“Best rod in the—” Wesley stopped himself and spun, directing a fake scowl at the boy. “Sir? What's this ‘sir' business? I don't know about you, but I'm feeling pretty lucky today. Just found myself a new grandson, and if it's all the same to you, I'd like to be called Grandpa, like all the rest of my grandchildren do. You want to try it out one time?”

Kent couldn't help grinning. It was hard not to around a lovable old windbag like Wesley. “Grandpa,” he said.

“That's better. Now come on over here. I'll show you my Fenwick Goldwing. Just put a new Daiwa reel on it. It's a whisker series, you know.”

Clyde piped up. “You listen to him and your mind'll get tainted right off the bat. He thinks he's got the best rod and reel in the world, but mine's better. I got a G. Loomis with a Shimano Stradic two thousand, and you can ask him whose rod and reel caught the biggest walleye this summer. Go ahead, ask him!”

“Whose rod and reel caught the biggest walleye, Grandpa?” Kent asked, falling right in with their shenanigans.

Wesley scowled at his brother. “Well, damn it, Clyde, you hung your fish on that damned old rusty scale that was prob'ly used to weigh the whale that swallowed Jonah!”

“Old, but accurate.” Clyde grinned.

“Then tell him whose rod and reel caught the biggest northern!”

“Hey, wait!” Kent interrupted. “Wait, wait, wait! What's a northern? What's a walleye?”

Both men gaped at him in rank stupefaction.
“What's a walleye!”
they blurted out simultaneously. They looked at him . . . at each other . . . back at him. Their expressions seemed to say,
poor slighted child
. Then Wesley shook his head. “Boy-o-boy, do we have our work cut out for us!” he said, reaching up to remove a fishing cap that wasn't there, intending to scratch his head beneath it. “Boy-o-boy-o-boy.”

They had a fabulous day. Kent learned much more about his grandfather and great-uncle than he did about his father. He sat on a slip-covered sofa and listened to the two of them tell about when they were boys in Alexandria, Minnesota, and their folks had run a resort. He learned that in the
summers they'd slept in an unfinished loft over a shed, and at nighttime they peed in a fruit jar they kept under the bed until their mother found it while cleaning one time, and made them each lay a turd in the jar and leave it uncapped for two weeks before they could throw it away. It was a hot summer. The loft was ninety-five degrees by midafternoon, and well before the two weeks were up Wesley and Clyde had vowed to their mother they'd never again leave a pee jar under their bed, but would make the long walk down the path in the back even in the deep mosquitoey night.

Back then they'd had a friend they called Sweaty, who wasn't the brightest light on the Ferris wheel, but he was so much older than the rest of the boys they claimed he'd had his driver's license in sixth grade. Old Sweaty was mighty popular with the pre-driving crowd in their early teens. A bunch of them used to run around in Sweaty's car, stealing watermelons and putting Limburger cheese on manifolds, leaving snakes in people's mailboxes, gluing dimes onto sidewalks, and putting sugar in saltshakers at the local hangouts. They laughed and laughed about the Halloweens when they'd filled paper bags with dog shit, lit them on fire on people's doorsteps, then rung the bell and run. And once they stole a huge bra and underpants from the clothesline of their English teacher, Mrs. Fabrini, and hoisted it up the flagpole at school.

“Hoo-ey! Remember how big she was?”

Clyde held out his hands as if holding two overstuffed grocery bags. “Like a couple of yearling pigs in a gunnysack.”

“And back here, too!” Wesley swatted his rump.

“Why, when the wind blew them underpants the science teachers took their classes outside 'cause they thought we were having an eclipse of the sun!”

“And remember her mustache?”

“Sure do. She shaved more regular than the boys in the junior class. Matter of fact, I think a lot of them envied her. Not me though. I 'member, I had a pretty thick beard already by that time.” Clyde rubbed his jaw, squinting one eye. “Girls were eyeing me up pretty good already.”

“Oh, sure. I suppose you were goin' to whorehouses already, too.”

Clyde only chuckled, self-satisfied. “You jealous, Wesley?”

“Shee-it.” Wesley pressed back on his kitchen chair, expanded his chest, and scratched it with two hands. “At'll be the day I'm jealous of a pack of lies from a man with blood pressure that's four times higher than his IQ.”

Tom let them carry on, watching Kent's face, catching his eye occasionally and exchanging secret smiles of amusement. At the mention of the whorehouse, the boy looked a bit startled, but he was bright enough to figure out this was an ongoing refrain between the two old men. After they were done showing off, Wesley got out some photo albums and showed Kent pictures of Tom as a boy.

“This here's your dad right after we brought him home from the hospital. I 'member how colicky he was and how your grandma had to walk the floor with him, nights. Here he is with the little neighbor girl, Sherry Johnson. They used to play together in the backyards, and I used to take them to swimming lessons together. Seemed like your dad was born swimming though. Did he tell you he went all the way up through Senior Lifesaving? Now this here”—Wesley's hard fingertip tapped the page—“this I remember.” The photo review went on through Tom's high school football pictures to college graduation and his wedding day.

The albums were still strewn on the kitchen table when a
car horn sounded and everyone looked at the back door. It had a window with a limp red-and-white-checked curtain through which four people could be seen getting out of a red Ford Bronco.

“Danged if it isn't Ryan and the kids,” Wesley said, rising and going to the door. “Doesn't look like Connie's with 'em though.”

He opened the door and called, “Well, look who's here!”

An assortment of voices called, “Hi, Grandpa!” and “Hi, Dad.”

Tom rose, too, feeling a faint grip in his stomach. He hadn't been expecting this—his older brother and kids, who knew nothing about Kent. They lived an hour and a half north, in St. Cloud, so Tom didn't see them very often unless their get-togethers were planned.

Things happened all at once. The four new arrivals crowded into the cabin, Kent rose to his feet in slow motion, casting a questioning glance at Tom; Clyde got up to do some hand shaking and back whapping, and Ryan spotted his younger brother.

“Well, I'll be damned. Thought I'd have to go over to your house to find you.”

They shook hands and gripped arms affectionately. “It's your lucky day, big bro. Where's Connie?”

“At some big antique show with her sister. I rounded up the kids and said, ‘Come on, let's go visit Grandpa.' ” He cast a curious glance at Kent while inquiring of Tom, “Where's Claire?”

“At home.”

“Kids too?”

“Yeah.”

“They okay?”

“Yeah. Everybody's fine.”

“And who's this?” Ryan turned his attention fully on Kent. He was a big, bluff replica of Tom, gray above the ears, full-chested, wearing glasses.

“This . . .” Tom moved near Kent. “This takes a little explaining.” Certainly fate had handed him this opportunity for a perfectly good reason. He curled a hand over Kent's shoulder. “Which I'll be happy to do if it's all right with you, Kent.”

Kent looked directly into his father's eyes as he answered, “Yes, sir.” But the boy's fascination could not be held from this unexpected gold mine of relatives: a real uncle . . . and cousins—three of them!—close enough to his age to maybe become his friends, if things went right.

Tom squeezed his shoulder and in a strong, resonant voice devoid of apology, announced, “This is my son, Kent Arens.”

The room grew so silent you could have heard moss growing on the family tree. Nobody moved. Nobody breathed. Then Ryan, suppressing his bewilderment, reached out with a mitt like a boxing glove and shook Kent's hand while Tom spoke.

“Kent, this is your uncle Ryan.”

“How do you do, sir.”

“And your cousins Brent, Allison, and Erica.”

Everybody stared at everybody else. Quite a few faces blushed. The two old men watched carefully, gauging reactions.

Wesley finally said, “Well, isn't anybody going to say anything?”

The girls murmured, “H'lo,” and the boys shook hands perfunctorily. Erica, age fifteen, still gaping at Kent, breathed, “Well, gee . . . I mean, gosh, where have you been all these years?”

A few chuckles eased the strain, one from Kent before he answered, “Living with my mother in Austin, Texas.”

Everyone looked embarrassed again, so Tom said, “Sit down, everybody, and Kent and I will tell you all about it. There are no secrets anymore. Everybody at school knows, and everyone in the family—with the exception of Connie, of course, and you can tell her when you get home. It's not every day you find an extra relative, so we might as well start this relationship out right—with the truth. Dad, maybe you better make an extra pot of coffee.”

They all sat down and Tom told them the unvarnished truth, omitting nothing. Sometimes Kent filled in details, exchanging gazes with Tom, or running his eyes past the others, awed yet by this plethora of relatives after a lifetime of having nearly none. They drank coffee and root beer and ate some store-bought cupcakes, and Kent found personal trivia to exchange with Brent, who was in his last year of college at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, studying to be a speech therapist. Allison was nineteen and working at a bank. Erica seemed unable to get over her stunned amazement at Kent's existence, and every time she spoke to him she got rattled and red.

Ryan and Tom found time to be alone later in the afternoon when dusk was gathering and it was nearly time for Ryan and the kids to head home.

“Come on outside for a minute,” Ryan said, and the two brothers put on jackets and went out into the frosty gloom of October. Side by side, they leaned against the cold fender of Ryan's truck, looking up at the lowering clouds that were stacked like corrugated steel in the opening between the pine trees. A pair of mallards wheeled past. The wind swirled in the clearing around the cabin, plucking at their hair and twisting the long dried grass beside the untended driveway.
Sometimes they thought they felt flakes of snow on their faces, but could not see it against the metallic sky.