Sons from Afar (12 page)

James didn't seem to be able to answer.

“Because we don't go to this school,” Sammy said, stepping up beside James. He wasn't going to let this man think he could bully him. Maybe he could bully away at James, but Sammy was a different story.

“Why aren't you at your own school?”

“We're not hooking,” Sammy told him. It wasn't a lie. He'd have said it, and said it exactly the same way if it had been a lie, but it wasn't. He didn't say any more than that, because he
almost hoped the man would draw the wrong conclusions, and try to get them in trouble, and then they would show him.

“It's not what you think,” James said, trying to smooth things over. At the expression on Mr. Ferguson's face he changed his way of saying it. “We haven't explained ourselves.” Sammy wished James wouldn't interfere; he could handle this Ferguson man.

“A woman named Mrs. Rottman—”

“Her,” Mr. Ferguson grumbled.

“Mrs. Rottman told us you might be able to help us. We're looking for information about a former student, here at the high school. She said you might remember him—Francis Verricker.”

“Verricker?” Mr. Ferguson leaned back in his chair and smiled to himself. “Bet your boots I remember Verricker. I was the one who got him thrown out, which may be the best day's work I ever did.”

“Yes, sir,” James said, agreeing. “So I guess you knew him.”

“I knew everything I wanted to know about him. He was a bad one. Always in fights—and he didn't fight clean, either. Bad with the girls, too.”

“Is that why he got expelled? Because of the fighting?” James asked.

Mr. Ferguson folded his fingers together over his stomach. His cheeks pouched back as he smiled again. “Better than that. He got expelled for making book. Verricker was running a gambling operation—it was small-time, but he was a small-time type. He'd take bets on the games—you know? He even gave odds, he'd work them up himself, depending on what school we were playing. It didn't matter what sport, he'd be there like some weasel back in the corner—football, basketball, baseball—his pockets full of chits and his hands grubbing around the dollar bills. I caught him at it, found a couple of people who'd lost a lot to him
and were happy to talk, and we gave him the boot. He was trying to act like some Chicago big-time gangster or something, like this was Chicago or something. That boy had no sense of reality. He didn't even put up a fight. He just crumbled to little bitty pieces—and went away.”

“Do you know what happened to him after that?”

“No. I never asked. I've seen a lot of kids like him in my time, all thinking they can break the rules and get away with it, with no feeling for the school. He was one of the worst. None of them fooled me for long.”

“Ah,” James said. Mr. Ferguson leaned forward again, his pleasant memories concluded. He wanted them to leave.

“I don't know if you remember when this was?” James answered.

“Why should I remember a little creep like Verricker? Just, sometime right at the end of the war, forty-five it must have been. I remember thinking it was too bad he wasn't in time to get drafted.” He opened up a manila folder, as if he was going to read it. “It would have been good to think of him being killed off.” He picked up his pencil and held it over the top sheet of paper in the folder.

“Well, thank you for your time,” James said. The man ignored them.

James didn't say anything, not all the way back into town. Neither did Sammy. Sammy had nothing to say. When they were finally sitting in the grass, waiting for Rev. Smiths to come out of his meeting, James opened his mouth. Sammy thought he'd want to talk about what kind of man their father had been, and he didn't feel like talking about that, but instead James said, “Weren't you even a little afraid of that Mr. Ferguson?”

“Why should I be? Were you?”

“You never are, are you,” James said. He was sitting up, pulling
shoots of grass and rubbing them between his fingers until his skin was stained green. Sammy watched his nervous fingers, pulling up, rubbing, dropping the squeezed grass back down onto the lawn.

“Anyway, you got busy asking questions, like always,” Sammy reminded his brother.

“I guess.”

“You weren't expecting good news, were you?”

“I dunno,” James said. “But I always wondered, and now I can see why Momma didn't name me after him.”

“She named me after her brother.”

“I don't even know why my name is James,” James said.

Sammy almost groaned aloud. Now James was going to go haring off to find out why he was named his own name. Well, that trip Sammy wasn't going to go along on. Besides, there was no way of figuring it out. Besides, what did it matter how you got your name, since it was your name. He got up and started just walking around the building. The stone walls went right down to the flat ground, as if they continued cutting down into the earth. The walls were flat and straight, the corners squared off even, and up above, the steeple tried to push its way right into the sky. Standing at the base of the steeple, close up to the cold stone wall, it looked as if the steeple was about to fall over on him. It wasn't true, but that was the way it looked, an optical illusion. Sammy liked that.

He thought James was probably getting het up about names to avoid thinking about what Frank Verricker was like. Sammy didn't need to avoid thinking about what their father was like: He felt like he already knew the guy, inside and out.

Rev. Smiths came out of the building among a bunch of other ministers, all wearing the exact same hats and suits. He said he hoped he hadn't kept them waiting, and James said he hadn't, and reminded him that he was doing them a favor. They got
back into his car, with James in the front seat because Sammy had grabbed the back. Once they were on the highway, heading south, Rev. Smiths asked, “Did you find out what you wanted?”

“We found out some things,” Sammy said, when James didn't answer.

“Seek and ye shall find,” Rev. Smiths said, not asking any more questions.

“Something was opened up to us,” James said then, without turning his eyes away from the road ahead. “But I guess I don't know just what it was.”

“I didn't know you went to church,” Rev. Smiths remarked.

“I don't,” James said. “I've read the Bible.”

“Really? Why?”

James looked at the driver then. He always enjoyed showing off at people with the things he'd read. Sammy sat back, away from the front seat. James explained: “In fifth grade, my teacher said the Bible was one of the underpinnings of western civilization. I liked that idea so much—the way kids get fixated on things—so I decided to read it. It took years. I didn't read much of it in fifth grade, although I started.”

James was all ready for a big talk about the Bible, and things in it, like a reading comprehension quiz, Sammy thought. But Rev. Smiths didn't ask him questions to find out what he remembered. “Do you know,” Rev. Smiths asked instead, “what Gandhi said when somebody asked him what he thought about western civilization?”

“No, what?” James asked.

“He said, he thought it would be a good idea.”

James laughed out loud, and Rev. Smiths joined in, sort of chuckling. Sammy looked out the window, at the distant line of trees at the edges of fields. He didn't laugh, but that wasn't because he didn't get the joke.

O
ne thing about being a dork was that you weren't constantly interrupted by people when you had things to think about. James had some things to think about. For example, he had his father to think about. That kept him busy as he sat on the bench during the first home baseball game, and when he rode with the team, alone in his seat at the center of the bus, to the first away game. That game was up in Cambridge, of all places.

They won the home game and lost the Cambridge game, no thanks to James either way. He was busy sorting the information he had gathered into different lists. Or, rather, trying to sort the information. Because whenever he thought about it—even just to the extent of just sorting things out—his whole mind got blown over, by feelings like dark night winds blowing clouds across the whole sky. He couldn't even think whenever he thought about it. Except to recognize Francis Verricker—he figured he knew that man pretty well.

But coming home on the bus, coming home from Cambridge again, as twilight darkened into evening, sitting, looking out the dirty window while voices talked around him, James found he could look at those lists without that heavy wind rising up and knocking him over. He had finally figured out that on game days he wouldn't have to play baseball at all. Realizing that, James smiled to himself: he could get enthusiastic about games. The
darkening landscape swept by the window, and he could think.

First off, there were some hard facts, that was the first list. Those facts might be clues, if he put them together the right way. He might find some kind of a lead among them. The second list was soft facts, things filtered through the eyes, or opinions, of the two people he'd talked to, who had actually known his father. The third was guesswork, intuitions, trying to put together what those people had implied and figure out the common ground between them, trying to get a sense of who the boy had been and what his life had been like then, there.

James set to work on the first list, the facts. He rode silent in the coach's car from school to his driveway, trotted silent up the driveway between dark fields, pinning down the facts. When he entered the kitchen, he heard piano music from the living room and saw that his grandmother was just sitting at the kitchen table, listening. It was Thursday. Maybeth was having a piano lesson with Mr. Lingerle. An extra place was set at the table, because Mr. Lingerle always stayed for dinner after the lessons. James didn't stop to listen, and didn't disturb his grandmother. He went right on up the stairs and into Sammy's room. Sammy was sitting on his bed, cross-legged, doing nothing.

James dropped his books by the door, with a noise that made Sammy look up. “He was years older than she was,” James announced. “Our father. Because I've been thinking, Mrs. Rottman said he was in third grade in 1938, which means he was about eight, which means he was born around 1930. He could have been nine, you see,” he explained at Sammy's confused look. “It's only a rough date, but Momma wasn't born until 1942, so he was more than ten years older than she was.”

“So what?”

“It's not normal, it's—she'd have been awfully young for him, if you—”

“Just because something's normal doesn't mean that's the only way. Or even the best way,” Sammy argued.

“But—” James tried to think of an example his brother could understand. “It would be like Mr. Lingerle marrying Maybeth.”

Sammy looked at him then.

“He's old,” James said. “And she's just a kid. See what I mean?”

Sammy was still thinking. Probably cooking up some stupid objection, James thought, as if this was an argument he had to win or something.

“Mr. Lingerle has got to be at least twenty-six, and she's only fourteen—” James continued.

“But that wouldn't be so bad for her,” Sammy said. “Would it? Because he'd know what she was like, and she might be happy with someone who was older, who could take more responsibility. Except, he's fat.”

Sammy was so obtuse, it almost had to be deliberate. James had just mentioned that as a comparison. Sammy was avoiding what they were really talking about. James got up from the bed and bent over to pick up his books. “They never got married anyway, so maybe it doesn't matter how old he was. Do you ever wonder why people get married?” he asked his brother. “And fall in love?”

“No,” Sammy said, not interested.

*   *   *

When Mr. Lingerle was eating with them, they didn't have pie or cake, or even pudding, for dessert. Sometimes they didn't have dessert at all, or sometimes Maybeth made a bowl of cut-up fruit, oranges or grapefruit, apples, bananas. That night, as Mr. Lingerle spooned up segments of grapefruit, he told Gram that his doctor would approve.

Mr. Lingerle sat at the opposite end of the long table from
Gram. She looked down the table at him when he had told her that. “You're not ill?” she asked.

“No. It was just a checkup, but you know how doctors are.”

“No, young man, I don't,” Gram snapped. Because she snapped, James knew she was worried.

“I turned twenty-eight this month—” Mr. Lingerle explained. “It seemed sensible to have a checkup. I haven't seen a doctor for years.” He buttoned and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. “I know, I look older than that,” he said.

He did, James realized. He looked almost middle-aged, the big expanse of blue shirt at the end of the table, with his thin hair and lack of energy.

“That's because of your weight,” Gram said.

“That's what the doctor said,” Mr. Lingerle agreed, without sounding upset or nervous at all, as if he didn't feel embarrassed about the way he looked. Maybe he didn't, James thought. It wasn't that he looked awful, just awfully large. He seemed to be pretty peaceful with himself, which James had trouble understanding, because he would bet that Mr. Lingerle would have been a real outcast at school. “Diet and exercise, he said.”

“He's right,” Gram answered. She got up to pour two cups of coffee and to bring one down to Mr. Lingerle's place. “What about it, then?” she asked, giving him his cup.

“I hate exercising,” Mr. Lingerle said. “I hate every minute of it. I've tried,” he apologized. “Well,” he smiled at himself, “not hard and not for long, but—I have this irrational reaction, anger and frustration and every minute feels like an hour.”

James could sympathize with that.