The Son of John Devlin (9 page)

Emily nodded. “Unlike with your father,” she said.

“My father was everything. He filled both parental roles, and I had him until I was nine years old, so that loss …”

She shook her head in sorrow. “And the idea that you were alone in this world,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind my inveterate candor, but I wanted to tell you that. How affected I was by that experience.”

He smiled at her and looked into her eyes for a moment longer than he’d meant to.

“I kind of like your inveterate candor,” he said, “so I’m not offended at all.” He was pleased, in fact, that she held such an interest in him.

Emily shut her eyes for a long moment. When she opened them, they were wet with tears. “Do you miss him often?” she asked.

“Every day,” he said without hesitation. “I feel no sense of closure with my dad at all. Just the opposite. He was there one day and gone the next, and I was stunned by it and didn’t at all get it. And I have a retrospective sense that he was a profoundly unhappy man when he died, and that, for a son, is very painful to think about. It’s very hard to think someone you loved that much suffered so terribly.”

“What do you remember about your dad?” she asked. “Your most vivid memories?”

“That’s easy,” Jack said, smiling broadly. “Hour after hour after hour of him playing catch with me in the yard when he would come home from work. I remember him first in uniform, those dark blue, heavy, coarse wool uniforms. He wouldn’t change, he’d just walk through the door and I’d race to hug him and beg him to play catch, and he’d grab his glove and we’d be out the door.
And then, later, I remember him as a detective coming home in a baggy old suit, his necktie half undone, shirt wrinkled, and the same thing: He wouldn’t change, he’d just head right outside and we’d throw the ball back and forth for forty-five minutes or an hour, sometimes longer. And he’d throw me pop-ups or grounders. And he never got tired of that, never complained. He smiled throughout and joked with me and would tell me when I made a nice catch or a strong throw and when I didn’t.

“I can recall very vividly him standing there with his suit pants on, his shirt, his tie sort of hanging to one side, his jacket laid out on the grass nearby. I remember the fence to Mrs. Dacco’s yard where the ball would go if I made a high throw. I remember my dad would have a cigarette, a Camel, usually, dangling from his lips while we played.

“And, finally, when we were done, we would walk slowly to the door and he’d put his arm around my shoulder, and what I remember about that is just being completely happy. Just really happy.”

Happier, Jack thought, than he’d ever been.

The night was cold as they made their way back to the house, then huddled before the radiant warmth of the fireplace.

“So how do you think it happened that he got in with that crowd?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t—”

“If you’re not comfortable,” she said quickly, “then I don’t want you to feel as though, you know …”

“No, I’m comfortable,” he said. “It’s just not something I talk about very often.”

“But you think about him all the time,” she said.

“I do. Yes.”

“Because you loved him so, so much, and that shows through,” she said.

He was surprised. “I wasn’t aware that—”

“Are you kidding?” she said. “You guys had something special. I think that’s so wonderful. I’m just sorry that, you know, he was involved in all that. It’s just a goddamned shame.”

She seemed angry all of a sudden, angry, perhaps, that this father had done that to his son. She was not the first person in his life to express a feeling of anger toward Jock Devlin. Nor, he suspected, would she be the last.

But Emily could see she had gone too far, and she retreated to the kitchen.

“So what happened after your father was gone?” she asked, upon returning from the kitchen.

He was momentarily confused.

“To you,” she said.

“Oh, well, I went to live with my aunt, my mother’s sister.” He looked into the fireplace for a moment but said nothing more.

“And how was that?” she asked.

He shrugged. “That was fine. She was a nice person, but life kind of overwhelmed her. She was widowed. Her husband had worked for the MBTA and died of a heart attack on the job, so she got an annuity plus a Social Security survivor’s benefit, so she had enough money to get by, but she was a fragile woman. She had three kids of her own. They weren’t too thrilled when I moved in.”

“You were lucky to have her,” Emily said.

“I guess,” Jack said, “though I never felt that way. She was reluctant to have me, but there was no alternative. There were no other surviving relatives, nowhere for me
to go. I mean, a foster home, but she couldn’t live with that on her conscience. The best thing was that they lived in Roslindale, and so my entire routine—school, sports teams, friends—all remained the same. None of that changed.”

She frowned and cocked her head to the side. “So who were the adults who mattered in your life?” she asked. “It doesn’t sound like you were close to your aunt.”

“Not at all,” he said. “It was a very reserved relationship. Very arm’s length. But I had several people who were important to me. One was a hockey coach I had, Mr. Edwards. He was an older guy, his own kids were grown, but he loved to coach and he really kept an eye out for me. He always made sure I had a ride to games.

“And there was Tom Kennedy, of course,” he continued. “He very quietly made sure I had whatever I needed in the way of equipment or money for travel to tournaments, that kind of thing.”

“Tom Kennedy the deputy superintendent at BPD?” she asked.

He nodded. “He’d been my father’s partner way back. And he really was more of a mentor to me than anyone else. As a matter of fact, when I was I think ten or eleven, he took the initiative to go and sign me up for the Dexter Hockey Camp in Brookline, and I spent the summer there. That’s what turned me around in hockey, helped me turn it up a notch. I was a much better player at the end of that summer, and the following winter I was recruited for Catholic Memorial. In fact, he paid for that camp, which was not cheap. He paid for the whole thing. And I remember when one of the coaches there said my skates were too small and that it was time I had a really
good pair, Tom drove me out to Needham Sporting Goods and bought me my first pair of Tacks.”

“Tacks?”

“Made by CCM,” Jack said. “The Cadillac of hockey skates then. He was very supportive of me. He knew people at Catholic Memorial and helped me get in there.”

“So you lived with your aunt through high school?”

“Yes,” he said. “But I was never there. I’d leave for school early in the morning, and then I’d have practice after school and I wouldn’t get back to my aunt’s until maybe six o’clock or later, and then I’d do my homework and go to bed.”

“Was she a good cook?” she asked.

Jack shook his head. “She was a funny woman, Emily,” he said. “I can’t answer that because she never cooked.”

Emily reacted with surprise. “What do you mean?”

“I mean she never cooked. She’d heat up frozen things like vegetables or macaroni and cheese or TV dinners. But I don’t ever remember her actually cooking anything, like making a meat loaf or cooking pasta or anything like that. She never did it. A lot of the times I’d eat at school before going home. The Irish Christian Brothers would have their supper at five-thirty, and a lot of nights I’d get something there. Or I’d get pizza or a sub on the way to my aunt’s.”

“You’re kidding,” she said.

He shook his head. “No, I’m not kidding at all. Mr. Edwards gave me money, and Tom Kennedy, too. Both of them had a sense that my aunt wasn’t exactly with it. And they knew I couldn’t get a weekday afternoon job because of sports, so they made sure I had money for lunch and pizzas and stuff. To go to school dances. They were both very generous to me.”

“And you stay in touch with both of them?” she asked.

“Tom and I have lunch every few months, yeah,” Jack said. “Mr. Edwards is quite elderly now. He’s in a nursing home in West Roxbury and I see him at holidays mostly.”

“Amazing that now you work with Tom,” she said.

“It’s ironic,” he replied, “because when I was in college he and I would get together regularly for lunch or whatever, and when I was beginning my senior year I told him I was thinking of joining the force and he told me I was nuts. He all but made me apply to law school. His whole argument was that I was opening doors by going to law school. Increasing opportunities. He was right.”

“You know, whenever you mention where you lived you say ‘my aunt’s,’ you never say ‘home,’ ” Emily said. “I guess it didn’t feel much like home.”

“It was just a place to be, a place to stay,” he said. “I knew I was there because I had no place else to go. It never felt like home to me in any way. I remember what feeling that was, the feeling of being with my dad, and staying at my aunt’s was—I mean, Jesus, it was never anything like that.

“If you want to know what my relationship with my aunt was, on the day of her wake, when we were all at the funeral home, after the wake everybody went back to her apartment because her three kids were all there. This was my senior year in high school. The middle of winter. And after the wake I went to practice. My life went on. It was not that big a deal. We never connected in any way, so it was never a loss for me. I mean I was sad for her kids, but it had no real meaning for me.”

“That’s too bad,” Emily said.

“I guess,” Jack said. “It’s okay, though.”

“So life just sort of went along for you in high school? Smooth sailing.” Jack hesitated.

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“Oh?”

He shifted his position. “I had some … ah … some difficult times.”

She waited, but he said nothing more.

When he did not reply, she said gently: “I’d like to hear.”

He looked away, then back at her. Why did she want to know? he wondered, but he knew as soon as he’d asked himself the question that he was being defensive. She wanted to know because she was interested in him. Because she cared about him.

“I got into some trouble,” he said evenly. “When I was in school. I had a kind of violent temper, and every now and then I’d fly off the handle and get into a fight.” He paused and looked down at the floor. “I was a very angry young man.”

She nodded sympathetically. “Understandably,” she said.

“And every once in a while my anger would get the better of me.”

“Isn’t that part of being a boy?” she asked.

“These were nasty.”

She hesitated. “Nasty?”

Jack took a long, slow breath. “There was a kid named Hills,” he said, “who played defense for Matignon High School. They were our main rivals. We’d win the state championship almost every year, but when we didn’t win it, they did. Anyway, the games between us and
Matignon were always very intense. Hills was a big kid, six-five, something like two twenty-five. Great skater and he hit very hard. So we were playing them this one night and he was really on me all through the game. Lot of trash-talk, taunting me. He wanted me to do something stupid so I’d get a penalty. You can’t score from the penalty box. So I ignored him, but then in the third period we get caught up ice behind the play. Ref is down the other end following the play, nobody’s looking, so he gives me a couple of slashes in the back of the knees. No padding. It hurts, but it can also do some damage. I ignore it, though, because the ref usually sees the person retaliating and I don’t want to get a penalty.

“But on the next shift, there’s this kid we have, a little guy, a freshman, very fast, who’s on our fourth line. A great kid, very talented, extremely enthusiastic. But small. And he’s out there and he’s along the boards, his head down, and Hills comes in from behind and levels him. Totally illegal check with no purpose other than to hurt the kid. Which he did. The kid’s knee buckled, went the wrong way, and bang, he was out for the rest of the season. Hills gets a two-minute penalty and skates to the box with a big smile on his face.

“Fortunately, we go on to win and the game ends, and we go into our locker room and they go into theirs and we shower and change and kind of hang around. So after a while I leave the locker room and I’m walking down this long hallway under the stands, and suddenly I come to the end of the hallway and there’s this waiting area near the rear entrance to the rink. And there are a couple dozen people milling around. I don’t pay any attention and I’m walking out, and all of a sudden I hear
this low voice, kind of whispering, saying: ‘Going to the hospital?’

“And I turned and there’s Hills, standing right behind me. ‘Going to the hospital to see your pal?’ he says. And he’s got this smile on his face as though he’s happy this little kid has been hurt. And he’s talking very quietly because he doesn’t want any of the parents or other people around to hear him.

“I’m carrying my equipment bag and a couple of sticks, and I put them down and look up at him and say, also very quietly, ‘Let’s go right now.’ And he starts to step back, but I don’t let him. I throw a punch that just catches him on the edge of the jaw and kind of stuns him.”

As Jack said this, Emily turned away and winced.

“And it got worse from there,” Jack said. He did not tell her all of the details—did not tell her that he had caught Hills with eleven unanswered punches to the head, eleven exactly, for one of the parents there had counted and later provided testimony in court. The whole incident lasted no more than twenty or so seconds. Eleven punches in under twenty seconds, with Hills, staggered by the first blow, attempting in vain to cover up.

At the hearing in juvenile court, one of the parents testified that Jack Devlin had seemed as though he was “insane. We screamed at him to stop, but he wouldn’t. And we saw him reposition himself so he could get his punches in at the boy’s mouth.”

By the time three of the fathers were able to drag Jack off, Hills was bleeding from the nose and mouth, with three of his front teeth shattered and his nose broken.

The last punch, one of the parents testified, sent Hills against the wall, falling heavily in an awkward position,
the back of his head crashing into the cement. He’d slumped to the floor, unconscious.