Bloodline (21 page)

She was small and trim, sitting at a desk piled with repair manuals and order forms and scattered greasy parts. Her ashtray was from
a car and she had a cigarette going in it. A cat jumped up on the desk and she didn't shoo it off or even show she'd noticed.

“He's popping it out right now,” the woman said. “I'd tell you to have a seat, but you'll get your pants all dirty.”

So I stood and waited and watched. She was fiftyish, sort of mannish but handsome. Her hands and arms were tanned where her sweatshirt was pushed up. The sweatshirt said
USS
SARATOGA
in big letters, blue on gray. The woman whistled along with the music as she shuffled through the piles of papers.

“You know somebody on the
Saratoga
?” I asked.

“Not just somebody,” she said. “My son.”

I was thinking that there was something great and very American about that, the kid from this backwoods hollow in Maine sailing the world on an aircraft carrier, when the cat jumped down and came over and rubbed my legs. The woman picked up the phone and said, “Danny, you still there?” and Danny was, because she started talking about having a complete front-end for a Dodge four-wheel-drive, and she'd let it go for three.

“Where's the man needs the Chevy window?”

I turned and a guy turned to me. He was her age, tanned, too, with big greasy hands and an easy grin.

“That's me,” I said.

“Well, my friend, you're in luck,” he said.

He walked out the door and I followed. Outside, a long window was leaning against the fence, and he stood it on end and brushed it off with the hand.

“I knew I had a couple of the plain-Jane ones,” the guy said, reaching with his other hand to get a cigarette from his shirt pocket. “One was cracked, and I busted the other one trying to get it out.
That leaves this one. This one's got the sliding window and it's perfect, and I'll let you have it for the twenty, since we got you all the way out here. Cost you a hundred new, and this one's all good.”

He moved the sliding part in the center.

“Only slid on Sunday,” he said.

Clair put the window in. He was sawing wood when I pulled up, with the window between two pieces of cardboard in the back of the truck. Clair turned his chain saw off and pulled his ear protectors down. I called over that I'd gotten a window, and he pointed toward the barn. I pulled the truck up the ramp and into the dim raftered cavern and parked beside his tractor.

“Have to hunt all over?” he said.

“Nope. Some little place in Searsmont.”

“Hurd's place.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Nice people.”

“Hell, yes. Jimmy Hurd's an awful nice guy. Wife's a peach.”

“Son in the navy, huh?”

“Didn't know that. Guess I haven't been down there in a while.”

“On the
Saratoga,
the carrier, she said. Seemed kind of proud.”

“Has a goddamn right to be,” Clair said, putting his saw on a workbench. “A goddamn right to be. There's a kid who's gonna make something of himself, if he plays it right. The service has saved a lot of kids, I'm telling you.”

Maybe Missy should have signed on, I thought. Then I realized Clair didn't know.

“I got some bad news this morning,” I said.

Clair was climbing into the bed of the truck. We lifted the window out and put it on the bench by the saw.

“Whoa, a slider,” Clair said. “What's the news? You gotta get a real job?”

I smiled.

“No. Not yet. But you know that girl with the baby? I guess I told you about it. Maybe it was Mary. This girl who goes to college in Portland. She gave up her baby for adoption. It was part of this story I'm doing.”

“Yup.”

“The cops came this morning and said she was dead. They found her by the side of the road down there in Portland.”

Clair stopped rummaging in his toolbox and looked up and listened.

“I was supposed to go see her. Today.”

“What, she get hit by a car or something?”

“They didn't know yet. If she was, it was hit and run.”

“What'd she want to see you about?”

“She was having second thoughts about the adoption. She said she was going to ask for her baby back.”

Clair looked at me.

“And the next day she's dead?”

“Yup.”

“These baby people play rough, don't they?”

“Oh, I don't know about that.”

Clair took a thin-bladed chisel from his toolbox.

“Let me tell you something, Jack. I don't believe in coincidences.”

“No?”

“Nope. When things seem to be connected, nine times out of ten, they are.”

I didn't say anything.

Clair climbed into the bed of the truck and started prying the rubber gasket out from around the smashed window.

“You know what I think?” he said. “I think we better teach you how to shoot.”

The old window came out in pieces. Clair handed them to me and I tossed them into the fifty-five-gallon drum that was his trash can. He took a piece of clothesline and stuck it in the slot in the gasket and then we picked the window up and held it in position. As Clair eased the edge of the glass into the slot, I pulled the clothesline out just ahead of him. We went around and the window slipped into place.

“Hey, look at that,” Clair said.

I grinned.

“One for the good guys,” I said.

“Yessir,” Clair said. “Come on up to the house and we'll celebrate.”

I backed the truck out of the barn and parked it, sliding the window open and closed a couple of times. It worked fine. Let Kenny just try to break this one. I'd … I didn't know what I'd do.

Clair was washing his hands at the kitchen sink when I went in. He finished and tossed me the towel and I did the same. Mary came in from out back, her arms full of clothes from the line.

“Hi, Jack,” she said, and dumped the clothes in a pile on top of an antique blanket chest. She started folding and stacking the laundry.
I leaned against the counter and Clair handed me a cold bottle of Budweiser and opened one for himself.

“Mare?” he said.

“Chablis,” she said. “There's a bottle open in the fridge.”

Clair poured her Chablis into a rose-tinted wineglass and put the glass on the kitchen table.

“You're a dear,” Mary said.

“I know it,” Clair said. “Jack, pull up a chair. Take a load off.”

I sat and he sat and Mary kept folding. One pile was for her and one was for him and a third was for things like towels. Clair raised his glass, first to his wife and then to me.

“Cheers,” he said.

“To your health,” I said.

“And a new window,” Clair said. “May it have a long life.”

“So what's this kid's problem, Jack?” Mary asked. “He just doesn't like you?”

“I'm beginning to get that feeling.”

“No, he just didn't get enough attention growing up,” Clair said, his big hand wrapped around the brown bottle. “I think we ought to get him some counseling.”

“We could all chip in,” I said.

“Right. Poor kid just never learned to express his feelings. I think you owe him an apology, calling the cops on him the way you did. Should have had him in for Oreos and a glass of milk.”

“Right. Shooting at me was really just a cry for help.”

“Absolutely,” Clair said.

Mary looked up from her folding and rolled her eyes.

“What was his name?” she asked.

“Kenny,” I said.

“And how did you cross paths with this fellow?”

“Just lucky, I guess. No, I was trying to find some high school kids for this story on kids having babies. I met these girls and they took me to a gravel pit that's some sort of hangout for kids around here. Kenny was there, and he decided he didn't like me. Said I was a narc and all this nonsense.”

“If you were, wouldn't he be in big trouble, shooting at a policeman?”

“I'm sure. But he knows I'm not a cop. He just didn't like my looks. Or he didn't like me being with the girls.”

“Moving in on his women,” Clair said.

“Who are old enough to be my daughters.”

“Wouldn't be the first time.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “Seventeen going on twenty-five.”

“Kids are in such a rush to grow up,” Mary said, leaning over to take her first sip of wine. “They don't know how good they have it as children.”

“Children having children,” I said.

“So how is your adoption article coming?” she asked.

Clair looked at me, suddenly somber.

“Jack's running into some heavy weather.”

Mary looked at him, then at me, and waited for an explanation.

“Yeah, you remember when I was talking about this Missy Hewett girl?”

She nodded.

“Well, she gave up a baby for adoption. Would have been about four months ago, I guess. She's, I mean, was in college. So I went to talk to her about it, this was in Portland, and she went on about doing it for the good of the little girl, how she didn't want her baby
or her to be locked into the kind of life she'd had with her mother. Her mother's a serious alcoholic, has had ninety-three different guys over the years. Nice enough person, though.”

“You met her, too?” Mary said.

“Yeah, but she might not remember it. She was drinking vodka like it was water.”

“She must be very sick. Very troubled,” Mary said.

I hesitated, as if not saying it would make it go away.

“Well, she's got more troubles now. They found Missy dead. On the side of the road in Portland.”

Mary looked more saddened than shocked.

“What happened to her?” she said softly.

“When I talked to the police this morning—God, that seems like years ago—they didn't know. They had to wait for the results of the autopsy. So maybe she was hit by a car, I don't know. They said she was dressed to go running.”

“But she couldn't run fast enough,” Clair said.

And after that, there was a moment of silence.

Yes, I sure knew how to bring down the party. Mary's wine sat on the table, minus one small sip. Clair was holding his beer, lost in thought. I picked at my Budweiser label, digging at the warning about pregnant women drinking.

I wondered what kind of warning Missy Hewett had gotten. If any.

“Well, you know, that's very sad,” Mary said. “It's very sad because this girl was working so hard to do the right thing.”

“Got herself down to that college,” Clair murmured.

“And the baby,” Mary said. “That must've been very difficult.”

“I'm not a mother, or a parent, but I think that would be hard as hell,” I said.

“Very, very hard,” Mary said, her voice almost wistful, her hands playing absently over the laundry. “The very same instincts that were telling you to do it for the baby's own good would be telling you not to.”

“Your head would say one thing and your heart another?” I asked.

“No, I think it's more that your heart would say two different things. You carry a child for nine months and there's this bond there, believe me. When I was carrying our girls, I felt like I knew them long before they were born. We talked. They kicked me, did their little flips and flops. When they were born it was like, I don't know, like meeting a pen pal you've had for a long time or something.”

“And then you'd say good-bye,” I said.

“And it might really be in the baby's best interest,” Mary said. “You know, it's funny. These girls who give their babies up are probably the ones who would do anything for that child. I mean, if they can go through that, the separation and everything, they probably could go through anything.”

There was a pause and we all stared.

“And you know what's funny, too?” I said. “Missy Hewett, this kid, went through all this. Having the baby. Giving it up because she didn't think she could offer it a life any better than her own. Went through this whole thing, put herself through this unbelievable wringer, all for nothing.”

“Just to get hit by some drunk and left by the side of the road,” Clair said.

“Just a kid,” I said.

Mary looked thoughtful.

“Well, if you're looking for some kind of justice, maybe that's it,” she said. “At least the poor thing had some say in where her child ended up.”

It was a gloomy gathering. Mary finished her folding and brought the piles of clothes upstairs, leaving her Chablis untouched and growing tepid. Clair took a couple of pulls on his beer but his heart wasn't in it. Mine wasn't either, and we both knew it. After five minutes, I put the bottle on the counter, gave Clair a smile and a wave, and went out the door to the truck. I drove back home and, this time, backed the truck into the driveway so the windshield was facing the road. I could get another windshield but I probably wouldn't find another window “only slid on Sunday.”

Inside, I sat in the chair by the back window and watched it grow dark. I listened to the birds chirping and trilling in the dwindling light of dusk and I thought about Missy and her baby, on whom I couldn't put a face. I wondered where that baby was, whether she had felt some twinge when her mother died. I thought about this for a long time, about the push and pull that Missy must have felt, the need to be alone, to get ahead versus the need to nurture her own child. It made me feel alone, too, and I felt some of that push and pull myself until finally, I hoisted myself out of the chair and up the loft stairs to bed, where a single bat scratched at the rafters and then, as I drifted off, disappeared.

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