Stranger Son

by Jim Nelson

  "When can you go up?" Dr. Abney asked, raising his glass.

  "I'll leave tomorrow morning," Mark said. "If you could have the money ready—"

  "I've got it on me," Dr. Abney said. "You have a place for the night?"

  Mark nodded toward Emeril. "Your brother arranged a room."

  Dr. Abney wore a casual silk shirt with palm trees embroidered down each side. He reached in the shirt's pocket and produced a folded stack of leafy green bills. He handed it across the table to Mark.

  "Where did Emeril put you up?" he asked.

  Mark's hand swallowed the stack of cash in one clean motion. Ruby recognized that motion. She used it whenever money came her way. Every Hagar she'd known could palm a wad of green like a professional magician palming the ace of spades.

  "The Sandpiper," Emeril said.

  "Nice place," Dr. Abney said. "I wish the owners would put a new coat of paint on it, though. Kind of an eyesore from the highway."

  Glasses were raised and touched. "To Mark," Emeril said. Dr. Abney grunted agreement.

  They drank. A silence settled on the cabana. Dr. Abney startled slightly when he realized Ruby was standing at the cabana entrance with the tray at her side.

  "Something the matter?" he asked her.

  "I was just going to ask if you needed anything else, Dr. Abney."

  He motioned for her to leave. Ruby returned to the kitchen lost in thought. She was planning. Her next destination was the Free State of Jefferson, and she was leaving that night.

  Twelve

  The Sandpiper Inn was built into the side of the hills forming Pismo Beach's easternmost limits. The motel's right angles and cantilevered roofs evoked the aesthetic ideal of every California coastal motel circa 1962. While it could use a fresh coat of coral-colored paint, as Dr. Abney had suggested, the interior had been well-maintained and did not feel of its age.

  At least, such was the opinion of Dr. Mark Benford, who made his appraisal from the Sandpiper's bar. His window view from the padded booth was of a great black expanse salted with stars above and a shimmering reflection of the bone-white moon on the water below. Down the hill, headlamps streaked both directions on US 101.

  The waitress brought him a third Scotch and 7-Up with a square napkin and a fresh fingerbowl of Chex mix. He crunched on a few broken pieces of the mix and sipped his fresh drink. From the overhead came an instrumental of "The Girl from Ipanema." Or maybe it was "Crickets Sing for Ana Maria." He always mixed them up.

  "Hi." The girl dropped her oversized backpack on the floor beside the table. She slipped into the booth bench across from him.

  Dr. Benford peered up from his drink. Scotch and 7-Up dripped from the tips of his mustache. Moisture had sharpened them to points.

  "Hi—hey." He set down his drink. "You're Frank's house girl."

  "I can help you in Jefferson," Ruby said. "You need a nurse."

  "I do not need a nurse." Benford glanced over Ruby's head. "Does Frank know you're here?"

  She laid it out for him calmly. "All I'm asking is for a ride to Jefferson. I'll help you any way I can. I don't have much money—"

  "The trip is all paid for," he said. "What has gotten into you?"

  "Don't tell Dr. Abney I'm going with you," she said. "You don't have to. They'll think I ran off. These types of people, they're used the help just up and leaving. They'll find another girl to replace me. Trust me, by this time next week, they'll have forgotten about me completely. They won't even recall my name."

  Dr. Benford took up his drink. It hovered before his lips while he evaluated the house girl. She wasn't a girl. She wore make-up around the house, he could tell that now, even with the bar's dim light illuminating her face. Frank's wife was that kind of woman—requiring the help wear make-up, no first-names, and so on. With the cosmetics, he'd mistaken the gray streaks in her hair as blond. No, this plain house girl looked nearly forty to his eye.

  "You're taking a mighty big gamble," he said. "If I was friends with Frank—"

  "But you're not." She added, "I think."

  "We're both doctors," he said.

  "I'm betting you don't have a house girl."

  "So?"

  "I've lived with the Abneys for two months now. We're not like them." She thought back on Rochelle. In most households, Rochelle would have been serving lunch, not Ruby.

  "I wouldn't go that far," he said. "But I did have to work part-time every year I was in medical school. I'm not going to retire until I'm 67. I doubt Frank has seen a patient in years." Drink at his lips, he said, "I doubt he's worked an honest day in his life."

  "All I'm asking is for a ride north."

  He sipped and thought. "I won't call Frank on you," he said. "But taking you into Jefferson is out of the question."

  The waitress appeared. "Care for something?"

  Ruby nodded across the table. "I'll have what he's having."

  With watery, suspicious eyes, Benford peered skyward to the waitress. "On my tab."

  "I can nurse," Ruby said after the waitress had left. "Certainly you need—"

  "I don't need a registered nurse," he said. "Which you are not." The t in not was crisp and clipped.

  She shrugged and flipped up her chin. "Maybe I am."

  "No Hagar is registered anything."

  It took the air out of her spunk.

  "Except registered postlapse with the state," he said. "Doctors know it when we see it. But you pass pretty well. You've done a good job hiding it." He shrugged and returned to his cocktail.

  She discreetly peered down at her body. She was unsure if he was offering her a compliment or not.

  "Do you think they'll spot me at the Jefferson border?" she asked.

  "If the Jefferson border patrol even smells Hagar on you, they'll drag you straight to the prison in Susanville." He sipped again, a bolder drink. "They have a wing just for girls like you. No bridge houses in Jefferson. No social workers checking in on you. If you're a bridge and you've been fixed, you are an illegal in the eyes of the Free State of Jefferson." He added, "Their justice is swift and righteous."

  Ruby's drink arrived. She had no idea what she'd ordered. It tasted like sugary tobacco with a twist of lime. She blanched and set it aside.

  "Would they check me if I was a nurse?"

  "You're not a nurse."

  "What if they thought I was?" She looked him in the eyes. "What if you told them I was? You. A medical doctor."

  He set down his drink and sized her up. The alcohol had made his face rubbery. His cheeks seemed to be sliding off his skull. His wet mustache drooped into the shape of a boomerang.

  "I'm not going to ask why you so desperately want to get into Jefferson," he said. "It's your suicide. If I'm caught transporting a Hagar, though…" He shook his head. "Even if they don't lock me up, I'll lose my license to practice." His sagging cheeks, the color of mashed potatoes, inflated and deflated bumpily as he breathed. "You know, maybe I will ask you why you want to go to Jefferson."

  She said, "Dr. Abney molests me."

  Peering cross-eyed through glasses sitting askew on his face, he said, "That's not the first time I've heard that. Won't be the last, I'm sure. The man's a horse's ass. We're alumni of the same medical school. That's the extent of my regard for the Abney family."

  "Don't make me tell you more," she said. "I just want to be away from here."

  He drank and drank some more. He pinched up the mix with three fingers and ate it silently. Crumbs fell from his mouth and joined the other crumbs scattered on his shirt and tie. Not the first time his dinner was served in a snack bowl.

  "I'm guessing you need a room to stay in," he said. "Mine has a spare bed."

  She reached across the table and gripped his hand. "Thank you."

  "We leave first thing in the morning." He finished off the last of his drink. The spent ice cubes tinkled down to his mouth. He motioned the cocktail waitress for another, saying, "How did you know I have a soft spot for Hagars?"

&nbs
p; Thirteen

  Benford's avowal to leave first thing in the morning was hollow. On the fourth ring of the front desk's wake-up call, he picked up the handset, returned it to its cradle, and went back to sleep. When he finally did rise, he sat in his underwear on the edge of the bed for twenty minutes scratching his beer belly and sides and staring glassy-eyed at the room refrigerator. Ruby knew what a hangover looked like. He padded barefoot to the bathroom and took a long shower. Ruby sat on her bed wrapped in the blanket waiting for her turn. When she emerged from the bathroom clean and dressed, he was dressed and ready too. He treated her to a pancake breakfast at a Shoney's next to the highway onramp. They did not leave Pismo Beach until noon.

  The interior of the car smelled stale. At least he's not a smoker, Ruby told herself. Dr. Benford steered the Ford with a casual, almost bored manner. He was the kind of driver who kept his hands at the bottom of the steering wheel, nudging it left or right with his fingers to adjust with traffic and follow the curve of the lanes. Ruby found it unnerving.

  They quietly argued for forty-five minutes while heading north on US 101. The argument was over Ruby pretending to be his nurse. As far as he was concerned, the nurse bit was merely a ruse to get her past the Jefferson border check. He told her he could get her past the border check without a story. After that, he would gladly drop her off anywhere she wanted in Jefferson, as long as it was en route to his final destination.

  "It's not a ruse," she said. "I can help you."

  "Why are you so adamant about it? Why can't you just accept the ride I'm giving you?"

  Ruby searched for an excuse. "I need the money," she said. "Not much. Just a little bit for helping you."

  "I'm not paid in full until I return to Pismo Beach," he said.

  "I saw him give you some money back there."

  He quieted. "Frank fronted me a stipend. For expenses." He spoke up again. "I'd rather just give you a ride and send you on your way. No, really," he interrupted her, "I cannot have you along for this job. If this goes bad and the Abneys find out I brought along their Hagar domestic as a sightseer, they'll skin me alive."

  Benford struck Ruby as a fundamentally impatient man. He maintained a withdrawn calm, for the most part, but when he reached a certain point, he became obstinate. She did not see him as a doctor with a pleasant bedside manner.

  "I'm good with kids," she said.

  "So what?"

  She searched the air. "Maybe I can help keep him calm while you're—what are you going to do to him?"

  "It's a physical," he said. "An examination. I'll take him to the local hospital for a blood draw. If I don't see anything wrong with the child and the blood work comes back negative, I give him a clean bill of health and collect my fee."

  They sat in silence for twenty minutes. The brown hills beyond San Miguel loomed like low dark clouds hovering over the countryside. Ruby could see the mission from the highway. She could see its cactus garden and the bell in the stucco tower.

  "I don't know all the details," he explained without prompting. "The boy is some distant relative. Somehow he got dumped on the Abneys as a baby and they didn't want to take him in. They found a couple in Calaveras County to adopt the boy. I think they're distant relatives too—I don't know how, though. These rich families clamp down on their secrets and keep outsiders at arm's length."

  "They're giving him free medical?"

  He laughed and shook his head. "Frank and Emeril aren't in the business of free. No, the Abneys send a check to the boy's guardians once a month. That was their deal with the government in order to get the boy out of their hair. But when Jefferson separated from California, it put a lot of those legal agreements into limbo. California ruled the Abneys had to subsidize this boy until he turned twenty-one, but now the boy lives in a state that used to be California but now isn't, so…" He shrugged. "Their lawyers ginned up some excuse to stop paying and they're pursuing it."

  "How much do they send a month?"

  "It's a pittance," Dr. Benford said loudly. "You should know how tight-fisted these people are. How much were they paying you?"

  "Room and board," she said.

  "Jesus."

  He turned off the radio. He'd kept it on the entire trip so far. Subdued classical music had filled the air between them for an hour now.

  "From what I gather, they think if they can prove he's physically sound, their lawyers can move to terminate child support early. This gets them off the hook five years early." He added, "It will also cut him out of any claim to the family fortune."

  "You can't do it," Ruby said. "Don't see him."

  "First you want to be my nurse, now you don't want me to go." He stared across the car at her. "As I understand it, these people are not well-off. It'll give me a chance to make sure the kid's in good shape. That's worth a free check-up. And I'm not going to lie for Frank's or Emeril's sake. If the kid's got something wrong, I'll report it. Otherwise—" He returned to watching the road, hands at the bottom of the steering wheel. "Otherwise, I'll report he's fine."

  Fourteen

  Ruby vaguely recognized the San Mateo Bridge from her childhood. Other landmarks from her youth were missing. Not that she could name them, it had been so long since she'd traveled through the Bay Area. She said nothing as they passed through Berkeley, her home town. She did not want to reveal any more to Benford than necessary. He might not be Dr. Abney's friend, but he seemed to know Emeril, and Emeril was an Abney.

  "I heard you say you go to Jefferson a few times a year."

  "I vacation in South Lake," he said. "I have to pass through Jefferson to get there."

  "But I thought Lake Tahoe was in Jefferson now."

  He drove quietly. "I don't go to Jefferson," he said. "I go to South Lake Tahoe." The distinction seemed important to him.

  "Dr. Abney thinks Jefferson isn't a real state."

  "You listened in on quite a bit of our conversation, didn't you?" Dr. Benford said.

  "What about Emeril?"

  "Oh, he's anti-Jefferson too. He's just not such a blowhard about it."

  "What do you think?"

  Benford pursed his lips in thought. It caused his mustache to tent forward under his nose.

  "I'm a pragmatist," he said. "They separated, so it's a separate state now."

  "What do you mean, pragmatist?" She vaguely knew what the word meant but wasn't sure how he was using it.

  "The ballot measure to separate lost the popular vote across California," he said. "But each of the twelve counties now in Jefferson voted for it by wide margins. So the Jefferson people went to Congress, who approved the separation provided Sacramento agreed to it. The California senate conceded with every legislator voting in abstention."

  He glanced at her. Her expression gave her away.

  "That means they didn't contest the separation," he said. "Sacramento threw up their hands and said, 'We're sick of you pestering us, so have it your way.'"

  The Bay Area traffic thickened as five o'clock approached. Benford slowed and accelerated the Ford to match the inconsistent speed of traffic.

  "It wasn't a clean separation," he said. "Frank's right, it probably wasn't even legal. But somewhere in there is a justification for splitting away from California. That's what I mean by pragmatism. Now," he added, perking up, "I do not approve of what they've done since taking power. No state should be able to shut down its borders. And there are areas in Jefferson where the rule of law comes from the barrel of a gun. That's not right. No one gave them permission to run the state that way."

  "I read about the prisons." Ruby was feeding him.

  "Don't even get me started about the prisons," Benford said, winding up.

  "Is California really asking for their prisoners back?"

  "It's weird," he said. "You would think any government would want hardened criminals off their books. Yet here are two states fighting over who gets to keep them. What I worry about, though," he breathed out, "is Jefferson deciding to clean out the prison
s."

  "Clean out?"

  "Look," he said. "Have you ever read about Pol Pot? Or Pinochet? The Russian Revolution?"

  "Not really." Not the kinds of subjects bridge schools teach to ten-year-old pregnant girls.

  "The California senate voted 'no contest' because they knew if they didn't, the Jefferson people were going to pick up their guns and fight for separation. That's how bad it got." He shook his head. "That's how bad California let it get. Well, the Jefferson people won the freedom they wanted, but they didn't get the fight they wanted. They've got these wolf packs patrolling the border—that's what they call them, wolf packs. They're volunteer militia armed to the teeth driving up and down the foothills looking for trouble. And they're finding it because they're making it."

  Benford went quiet. The silence gave him time to deflate.

  "That's what winning is like a lot of times," he said. "You win and it's not good enough. You want more. People get a lot of emotional energy out of being the underdog. It feels good telling yourself you're the victim. And that's what's going on in Jefferson. They were the underdogs. Everyone said they were crazy. They were up against California, after all, the eighth largest economy in the world. The Jefferson people told themselves they were untrained minutemen fighting the British Empire. But they got their state after all, and they got it without firing a shot. Now they're asking themselves when they get to start shooting." Wound up once more, Benford's hands moved up the steering wheel. They gripped the wheel hard enough to make the foam within it crunch. "Someone's gonna get killed. That's when it's going to get ugly."

  "I don't understand," she said meekly. "What's a Pol Pot?"

  "Revolution," he said. "What the Jefferson people wanted was a revolution and they didn't get one."

  "But what does that have to do with Folsom prison?"

  "That's what revolutionaries do when they take power," he said. "They release their comrades and clean out the prisons of the rest. Today, Jefferson thinks serving time is justice. Soon they're going to think executions are justice."