Autumn Blue (3 page)

S
IDNEY AND HER FRIEND
Micki steered their children through the crowded fairgrounds toward the livestock exhibits. Attending the Winger County Harvest
Fair was an annual tradition, one Sidney couldn’t deny her daughters, though her heart was not in it, to say the least.

Today her girls wore matching pink denim jackets that their grandmother had sent from Desert Hot Springs last Christmas. Sissy’s
had a gray streak across the front from rubbing it against the corral fence where they had watched a friend from school run
her pony through the barrel race. Andy, Micki’s nine-year-old son, led the way down a row of wooden stalls to the Goliath
of the hogs, a huge mottled gray blimp with legs. It tried to push itself up from the straw where it was sprawled, then seemed
to think better of it, falling back with a breathy grunt. The children began to clap and chant as cheerily as Richard Simmons’s
disciples: “Get up! Come on; you can do it. Get up!”

The sow pushed up on her haunches, holding that immodest pose while she contemplated her next move.

Everyone laughed, including Sidney. “That’s why I don’t eat bacon,” she said. “Fat, fat, fat.”

“Oh, like you’ve ever had an adipose cell in your entire body.” Micki held out her bag of popcorn but Sidney shook her head.
Her perky blond friend looked great despite the garbage she continually consumed. The receptionist for Leon Schuman Insurance,
she was known for keeping a stash of chocolate in her desk drawer at all times. They sat on hay bales in the middle of the
barn, where they could see their children as they scrambled from stall to stall. “Now aren’t you glad you came? I told you
it would do you good.”

Sidney pulled a bottle of water out of her straw bag and took a swig, her eyes roving the crowd on the slight chance that
Ty might be among them. A handsome dad with one child straddling his neck and another held by the hand leaned over a gate
and began making hog sounds. People around them laughed and joined in, though the pig seemed unimpressed. Sidney sighed. “That’s
what I want.”

“What? A man who can grunt? They’re everywhere; trust me.”

“A man who spends Saturday with the kids. Look at that little boy looking up at him. His dad is his hero—and all it takes
is a little snorting. He doesn’t have to be in a rock band or send elaborate gifts to make up for all the visits that got
postponed to some mysterious date in the future.” Sidney saw a vision of Tyson watching expectantly for his father from the
living room window, fidgeting, flopping from sofa to chair to floor, same scenario but different face as the boy grew from
an excited six-year-old to a preteen whose eyes had grown dull from atrophied hope. At some point he had wised up, forsaking
his post at the window and aloofly pretending he didn’t care whether his father showed up or not. Sidney’s soul tore open
every time it happened, while Ty’s heart had seemingly formed such thick scars from the repeated wounds that it had hardened
into a clenched fist. The girls had never bonded with their father enough to care much.

Sidney’s eyes began to flood again. She inhaled, filling her aching chest with the sweet scents of hay and cotton candy, forcing
her eyes to focus on her daughters: Rebecca, a joyful and dramatic ten-year-old, thin and long-armed like her mother, and
Sissy, still endowed with some cuddly baby fat, pushing eight.

“Dodge is going to be shocked someday to see that the girls aren’t babies anymore,” Sidney said. “He still sends them baby
dolls for Christmas, if he remembers at all. Do you know what he sent Tyson when he was twelve? A truck. A big Tonka dump
truck for a kid that was playing Internet chess with guys from France. I swear he must have sent one of his groupies to get
Christmas presents for the kids.”

Micki shook her head. “Time flies while he’s having fun. How’s he doing on child support?”

Sidney laughed. That was the least of her worries. “The band apparently has a new gig in a different town. Support Enforcement
can’t find him again. I wish he’d just get famous so he’d be easier to track down. Plus he’d be rich and that couldn’t hurt.”

They got up, brushing hay from the backs of their jeans, and followed their kids out of the barn toward game booths full of
cheap toys and stuffed animals.

“Remember Jack Mellon?” Sidney asked. “The butcher I dated a couple of years ago?”

“Sure. That was the Vegetarian-Meets-Beef-Every-Night-Guy chapter of your life,” Micki said through a mouthful of popcorn.
“You found him intellectually unstimulating, as I recall.”

“Did I say that? Well, anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot about where I’ve gone wrong with Tyson. What I could have done differently,
you know? I try to remember when he became so moody and dark—and you know what I keep coming up with? It was right after that
time. The Beef-Every-Night-Guy chapter. Jack was good with Ty. He took him to do all kinds of guy things, played with the
kids in the yard. Maybe I was just being too picky. I mean, what’s more important than finding a man who loves your kids?”

“Well, mutual attraction is always nice.”

Sidney sighed. “That would be good. What you and Dennis have. Your family is my unwritten standard, you know. You’re still
in love after all these years, and Dennis is the perfect dad. Oh, don’t roll your eyes! You know what I mean. So he brings
Andy home dirty and late and full of junk food. Stand back and look at it from my perspective. I’ve pumped every known vitamin
and mineral into Ty since he was a little squirt, but it’s not enough. It’s not what he needs most. He needs a dad. One who
actually loves him, I mean. So far my girls seem perfectly happy, but they never really knew Dodge so it didn’t mess them
up when he left. But Ty has been through it twice. He was six when his father left and it devastated him. Then he finally
connects with a man again and I pull the plug.”

“Jack still works at the Dunbar Traders Market,” Micki offered. “At least last time I stopped in there. He was looking pretty
good for a guy with bloodstains all over the front of him.”

Sidney made a face. “What? You think I’m going to drive twenty miles away for groceries and show up at his department for
a slab of corned beef? I’ll bet you anything he’s married by now anyway. He definitely had marriage on his mind. That’s what
sort of scared me.”

“Did the girls like him?”

Sidney shrugged. “Sure. But they didn’t connect with him like Ty did. It was a guy thing, you know?”

Sissy came running, stumbling at Sidney’s feet. She stood, giggling, wiping her dusty hands on her pink sleeves. “Mom, can
we have some money for the rides?” Her youngest, though a beautiful child, had been compared more than once to the
Peanuts
character Pigpen. Dirt was attracted to her like metal shavings to a magnet. If Sidney didn’t insist on it, a comb would
never slide its way through Sissy’s long, dark hair, which today was braided into a thick rope, loose strands already hanging
across her puppy-dog eyes.

Rebecca danced up to her mother, her jacket tied around her waist, and bowed. “Oh, queen mother, bestow upon us thy riches,
we pray.” Her long, slender arms were still tan (she had her father’s skin coloring, but dark blond hair like her mother),
and her hands were clenched pleadingly at her chest.

Sidney reached into her pocket and pulled out a $20 bill, enough to buy lunch supplies for a week the way she shopped. She
hesitated only a moment before lifting her chin and smiling her most queenly smile. “Your wish,” she said as she offered the
bill with a flourish, “is granted.”

“Oh, thank you! Thank you!”

Andrew had simultaneously made his own withdrawal from his mother. The three children ran toward an obnoxious-looking ride,
grotesque arms raised spiderlike in the air while encapsulated victims screamed and spun in terror. Micki grabbed Sidney’s
arm. “Come on, Sid. Let’s go on the rides!”

“Are you nuts?” Sidney pulled her arm away. “People like me don’t go looking for panic. I’ve got enough stress in my life
without buying tickets for it.” Micki looked disappointed. “You go. Get rid of some adrenaline. You know what I want to do?
I want to see the quilts and the art exhibits, all those things that bore you to tears. Why don’t we meet up over there at
the picnic tables by the taco stand after a while?”

Micki agreed and ran to catch up with their kids at the ticket booth.

Sidney wandered through a crowd of familiar faces. She nodded and smiled from time to time, feeling like a bottom-dwelling
flounder in a school of happily darting perch. She didn’t fit in there. Not today. She stopped and stared at the whitewashed
building that housed quilts, rows of brightly colored canned pickles and peaches, paintings made by students and old women,
photos of long shadows made by fences, and other attempts at black-and-white genius. It would be the same as last year and
the year before and the year before that. She had won a blue ribbon at Harvest Fair once. It was for an old jam cupboard that
she had painted with a toile fruit basket design on the front, and that was before she was even good at it. Of course, hers
had been the only entry in the category of painted furniture, so it wasn’t like she could take second place or anything.

Mary Hadley emerged from the exhibition building, making eye contact before Sidney had a chance to turn away. Mary had lived
next door to Sidney back at the apartments, and her son had adoringly followed Ty from puddle to pond in the brushy lot behind
the building, searching for creatures to put in washed-out mayonnaise jars. “Hey, Sid. How are you? Gosh, I haven’t seen you
since you moved!”

Sometimes it was the things that people didn’t say that hurt the most. Mary asked about the girls. Was Rebecca playing soccer
this year? What teacher did Sissy get? They chatted all around their overlapping lives, somehow never mentioning Tyson, the
boy who had eaten macaroni and cheese at Mary’s table as many times as her boy, Ricky, had dined at Sidney’s. No, she didn’t
need to ask about Ty because Ty Walker was the kid everyone in Ham Bone, Washington, already knew about.

Sidney didn’t go in to see the quilts. Instead she said good-bye to Mary, ducking between the horse barn and the back of the
bleachers overlooking a dirt arena where a youngsters’ rodeo was going on, so that she would avoid running into any more old
friends. She wandered toward the old log cabin set back by the outer fence. It had been part of one of the original homesteads
there in Ham Bone, sitting on the county fairgrounds now because the real estate it used to occupy had become a parking lot
for the Cascade Savings and Loan. Members of the town’s historical society had restored it, redecorating the inside to look
the way it might have back in 1879 when William Dangle, the town founder, lived there while mining for gold. Since that didn’t
pan out so well for him, he began logging, making his fortune not so much from the timber as from the rich, mostly level farmland
that was exposed.

It was quiet there on the back side of everything. Most of the locals were no longer interested in the old cabin with a rusty
crosscut saw mounted on the wall of the covered porch.

Beside the cabin was a new acquisition: a miniature white chapel, the one that used to rest alongside the state highway leading
to Mount Baker before the road was widened. The old sign had been moved, too: Weary Traveler, Stop and Pray. Sidney was curious.
She had always wondered how many people could fit inside the tiny steepled structure. She stepped up on the creaky porch and
pushed on the double doors.

Her girls would like this. It was like a playhouse, only it was a play church. There were four short pews, benches really,
facing a small oak podium. If Rebecca were there, she would be behind that podium in two seconds flat, preaching flamboyantly
to an imaginary congregation. Sidney smiled. She used to take her kids to the community church in town. It was not long after
the girls witnessed their first baptismal service that she saw them baptizing other children down at the public pool. There
had been a plethora of repentant sinners that day, waiting in line while Rebecca, a white towel draped over her shoulders
like a robe, immersed them “in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, ’til death do us part.”

She stepped around the pews and looked up to the pine boards on the vaulted ceiling. In the distance she could still hear
the voice of the rodeo MC and an occasional cheer from the small crowd.

The tears came unexpectedly, and she sank down onto the first pew, pulled a tissue from her pocket, and dabbed at the corners
of her eyes as she stared at the patterns in the worn hardwood floor. She had lost him. Despite all her attempts to protect,
to guide, to prepare her son for this world. As a newborn she had wrapped him tightly in soft flannel because the maternity
ward nurse told her it made the infant feel securely embraced in his mother’s womb. Over the years she had buckled him into
car seats, bundled him in warm jackets, held his hand so that he wouldn’t wander into the street or get himself stolen at
the mall. But it was all in vain. She had protected her son in body, but somehow failed to defend his vulnerable heart.

“Oh, God,” she whispered. “I don’t know what to do. Please bring someone to help me. Someone to help Ty. A father who will
love him and the girls. I just can’t do this on my own.”

She sat still for some time, grateful for the solitude, a sense of peace settling over her. She felt calm, as if God really
had heard her cry for help and the angelic Coast Guard had already been dispatched, hovering over Tyson, preparing to rescue
him, wherever he was, his head bobbing among the dark waves.

M
ONDAY NIGHT
there was still no sign of Tyson. Sidney made a cup of licorice tea and plopped into the big green wing back her mother had
given her, propping her feet on the coffee table with a sigh. Her first sip of tea scalded her lip. She jerked, lowered the
mug to her lap, and dropped her head wearily to the back of the chair.