His Father's Son

by Bentley Little

  He dialed the number, waited two rings, three, four, and then Lyman Fischer picked up with a croaking, “Hello?”

  “Hello,” Steve said. “This is—”

  “I know who you are.”

  “Okay,” Steve said carefully.

  “Are you sure you want to do this over the phone?”

  He did know.

  “Why not?” Steve said, feigning casualness.

  There was a pause. “I been thinkin’ about what you said. At Jessica’s.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” He sighed. “Joe—your dad—was a good guy. A fun guy. What kids today would call a ‘party animal,’ I guess. You asked me if he was different when he come out of the service. I said no, but I thought about it a bit, and now I have to say yes. I mean, after he come back, we did the same things we always did, but the joy weren’t there. He was more . . . serious. Underneath. And mean.” There was another pause, and Steve could hear the rasp of Lyman’s breathing. “He’d killed people over there.”

  This was the same train of thought Steve had taken, and it was not a road he wanted Lyman—or anyone else, for that matter—to go down.

  “Okay,” Steve said a little too heartily. “Thanks for calling and letting me know.”

  “Don’t you want to hear—”

  “No,” he said, and hung up the phone. His hand was trembling. He stood there for a moment. Maybe he should have waited to hear what else the old man had to say, but what could it be? Blackmail was the first idea that came to him, and that sounded right. He hadn’t seen where Lyman lived, but Copper City was a poor town, and he had no doubt that the man could use some extra money. The idea filled him with fear, and he imagined a series of endlessly escalating payments, imagined himself living in constant dread of another phone call from Lyman Fischer demanding more money. His hands were still trembling, and he grabbed his right hand with his left, trying to keep both from shaking, the way he had as a child when his muscles started quivering after trying to perform some physical feat that his body was not strong enough to handle.

  Steve stared at the phone. What should he do? Pay? No. He doubted that anything could be proven, and he certainly didn’t care about gossip that might spread around Copper City. On the other hand, he wouldn’t put it past Lyman to look up his parents’ phone number and call. And he didn’t want his mother to know anything about this—even the hint of such a scandal would traumatize her.

  What would his father say if he were well and back to normal? What would he want Steve to do? Beg? Bully? Cajole? Let the whole thing slide?

  Kill him?

  Steve’s breath caught in his throat. That was crazy thinking. What he needed to do was talk to the old man, reason with him. They were both adults; they both knew the way of the world, and if Steve explained his father’s condition, told Lyman that his old friend had had a stroke and was suffering from dementia and would probably be dead sometime in the not too distant future, a lot of ugliness could be avoided.

  He picked up the phone, was about to call Lyman back, but suddenly thought that it would be a lot more effective if he talked to the old man in person. His head was still a little light from the beer, but he wasn’t tired and was thinking clearly. He could do this. He glanced over at the clock on the DVD player atop the television. It was almost eight. If he took a red-eye tonight, he could be in Copper City by morning and back here by early afternoon. No one would even notice he was gone.

  He went online, and sure enough there was a plane to Houston that stopped off at Albuquerque leaving from nearby John Wayne Airport at eleven. He could catch that flight and book a return trip that left New Mexico at noon tomorrow and arrived in Orange County just after one, Pacific time. The daytime flight cost nearly twice as much, but it was worth it not to have to sit around the Albuquerque airport for an extra eight hours.

  He booked the flights, printed out the tickets, arranged for an after-hours car rental, and tried to think whether he needed to take anything on the trip with him. Clothes? No. Toiletries? No. He couldn’t come up with anything, although he decided to bring his checkbook, just in case. If the old man wanted money and the attempts to dissuade him didn’t work, maybe they could come to some sort of agreement—as long as everything was in writing.

  He looked up Lyman Fischer in an online phone-book and wrote down the address. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake as last time and wait until he arrived before trying to find the location, so he printed out a map of Copper City, New Mexico, with Lyman’s house starred.

  The airport was less than ten minutes away and he still had over two hours to kill, so Steve turned on the television and started flipping channels, looking for something to distract him. But there was nothing good on, and he ended up going back to the computer, using tool packages from work to try to find more background information about Lyman Fischer.

  The man was a cipher. His current life intersected with cyberspace not at all, and whatever high school records existed, they had not been recorded online.

  On the plane, he fell asleep, though he did not know for how long. Ten minutes? Fifteen? A half hour? He dreamed of his father. It was an incident that had actually happened. Steve had been a freshman in high school, and his project had come in first place in the school science fair. He’d made a primitive solar oven out of a box and a pane of glass and some tinfoil, and while that might not have been as complicated or elaborate as some of the other creations, he’d done a tremendous amount of research, and his presentation more than made up for any possible shortcomings. Steve had never won anything before in his life, and he came home excited with the news. His project was going to be on display in the public library for a week, he told his parents, along with projects from all of the other schools in the district, and at the end of the week there was going to be an awards ceremony where ribbons would be given out. But his father had merely shrugged and turned away, and his mother’s awkward attempts at praise had not been enough to counterbalance the hurt and disappointment he felt. In the dream, the ending was different. His father congratulated him and gave him a hug, told his son he was proud of him, and when Steve awoke there were tears leaking out from beneath his eyelids onto his cheeks. He wiped them off, embarrassed and confused, thankful that it was night outside and the lights in the cabin were low.

  They landed in Albuquerque without incident less than twenty minutes later, and walking through the terminal he felt almost as though he were coming home. He had been here only once before, but that had been a mere two weeks ago, and everything around him seemed intimately familiar, from the closed McDonald’s stand to the Hertz rental kiosk to the gray-uniformed black man buffing the floor near the restrooms. Strange, he thought, how an acquaintanceship with physical surroundings gave a person a sense of belonging. But there was something comforting in that, and it gave him confidence as he made his way to the front of the terminal.

  The woman at the airplane’s ticket desk had the key and rental agreement for his car, and Steve signed the paperwork and walked outside, where he found his vehicle—a blue Toyota Camry—at the far end of an open lot. The Camry was equipped with a GPS system, and though he had a vague idea of how to get to the eastbound highway that led to Copper City, he programmed the system to make sure and followed the on-screen instructions through the maze of streets near the airport.

  There were only two hours until dawn, and he thought he could sense already a slight lightening of the sky in the east. It was probably just his imagination, or an effect caused by the overbrightness of the low full moon, but it caused him to speed up, and ten minutes later he was out of Albuquerque and into open country, the lights of the city nothing more than a faint glow from behind the series of low, rounded rises behind him.

  He drove. Through the desert, through the dying night. Hands tight on the wheel, clenched as though they were holding on to a rope suspended over a bottomless pit. There was not a thought in his head. He was like a driving machine, intent only on rea
ching his destination, and he kept his attention focused only on the road.

  It was nearly seven by the time he approached Copper City. Seeing a sign for a nearby lake, he suddenly remembered that he and Sherry were supposed to go to Laguna Beach today for an antiques flea market, and he stopped on the outskirts of town, pulling to the side of the road next to an abandoned diner and taking out his cell phone to call her. It was six rings before she finally picked up—she liked to sleep late on the weekends—and when she answered with a tired, “Hello,” he summoned up a fake cough and made his voice sound as low and ragged as possible. “It’s me,” he said. “I’m sick.”

  “Oh, no!”

  “I don’t think I’ll be able to make it today.”

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, concerned.

  “Food poisoning, I think. I had some of those happy-hour tacos last night with Jason, Dennis and Will. There might’ve been something wrong with them.”

  “Do you want me to come over and—”

  “No!” he said quickly. He sounded too healthy, so he coughed again. “No,” he said, lowering his voice. “I feel really bad. I’m just going to stay in bed and sleep it off.”

  “Why are you on your cell phone?” she asked.

  Was she suspicious?

  “The phone next to the bed doesn’t have a dial tone,” he lied, “and I didn’t feel well enough to go out into the other room to see if that one works.” He started making gagging sounds.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I think I’m going to throw up again. I’ll call you tonight.”

  “Take care of yourself,” she said worriedly.

  “I will,” he promised. “I gotta go.”

  He clicked off and took a deep breath, praying that she’d listen to him and wouldn’t try to come over to visit, thinking he’d better come up with a good excuse in case she did. He waited a moment, then started the car, pulling back onto the highway.

  Lyman’s house was little more than a shack. If it ever had been painted, the color had long since been beaten off the decaying boards by years of harsh weather. There was a folded newspaper at the edge of the wild thigh-high grass that constituted the front yard, and he picked it up and carried it with him to the front stoop. He looked for a doorbell but couldn’t find one, and ended up knocking on the metal frame of the rusted screen.

  Lyman was at the door seconds later. He was dressed in Levi’s and a work shirt, and had obviously been up for some time. “Yeah?” he said gruffly, then started when he saw who it was.

  “You said you wanted to speak with me?” Steve said.

  The old man seemed unsure at first how to react; then he opened the door, took the newspaper from Steve’s hand and said, “Come in.”

  Life had not gone well for Lyman Fischer. He and Steve’s father had set out from the same starting point, but their fortunes had forked early on, and now their lives had nothing at all in common. In contrast to his parents’ immaculately maintained home with its tasteful if slightly outdated furnishings, Lyman’s place was a charmless pigsty, with a recycling bag full of beer cans next to the door and piles of newspapers atop every available inch of furniture. Through the open doorway into the kitchen, Steve could see an old radio that had been taken apart on the breakfast table. He would not have expected such a level of squalor from the man he had met at Jessica Haster’s potluck, and it went a long way toward explaining why he might be after money.

  Steve stood just inside the door, determined not to be the one to break the ice. He wanted Lyman to spell out what he wanted without the help of any cues Steve might inadvertently give him.

  The old man held on to the newspaper. “Why’re you here?” he asked finally.

  “You said you wanted to talk.”

  “Talk. Not visit. I dint invite you over.”

  “Well, I’m here now.”

  “You’re just like your dad,” Lyman said, and though the words were spoken derisively and meant as criticism, Steve didn’t take them that way. No one had ever compared him to his father before—certainly not either of his parents—and he actually felt a little proud that this old fuck saw a resemblance.

  “How am I like my dad?” he said. “Am I mean?”

  He saw a flash of fear in the old man’s eyes then, a recognition that he wasn’t in control of the situation. Steve felt emboldened. He took a step forward. “I don’t appreciate spending my night flying halfway across country and driving out to the middle of nowhere because you’re trying to blackmail me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Really? Is that why you called to tell me that you think my dad might have killed someone?”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Lyman assured him.

  In two steps, Steve was upon the old man. He whipped his right arm around that wrinkled neck and got him in a headlock, filled with a rage so deep and wild that his pulse was pounding in his ears, his vision blurred. He’d teach the greedy bastard to try to hold him up for money. Lyman let out a single-syllable squawk, and then he was gasping for air, his bony hands trying in vain to pry off Steve’s arm.

  Steve squeezed. Although he’d brought along the checkbook, this was what had been in the back of his mind all along. Deep down, he had known it would happen, had known he would do this. Why else had he arrived here so early in the morning if it wasn’t to make sure that he would not be spotted, could not be identified?

  Dry, wrinkly skin pressed against his arm and the crook of his elbow, and beneath the floppy wattles he felt ridges of cartilage. At that second, he literally held the old man’s life in his hands. Or arms.

  He didn’t have to go through with this, he told himself. He could simply let go and walk away.

  But it had already gone too far. If he quit now, Lyman would press charges, he would end up in jail, and his whole life would be ruined. Not to mention the fact that his father’s deeds would be brought to light and the entire world would know what had happened all those years ago.

  It came to him then—the reason his father had killed his first wife. She had been pregnant with another man’s baby. Lyman’s baby. While his father had been in the service, his friend had moved in on his wife and she had succumbed. The two of them had dated in high school. Maybe they’d never stopped seeing each other. Maybe even through the blissful early days of the marriage she had been fucking her old boyfriend behind his father’s back.

  Steve was doing this not just for himself but for his dad.

  He squeezed.

  Lyman kicked against him, lashed out wildly. A hand slapped his forehead, and Steve doubled the pressure, constricting the old man’s airway. A foot connected with his shin, but the foot was shoeless and the pain was minimal. In the last few seconds, the dying man grew more desperate, throwing the weight of his body backward, forward, to the left, to the right, trying to break the hold, trying to pull Steve down to the ground. But nothing worked, and with one final spasmodic jerk, Lyman stopped struggling, his hands falling limply to the sides. Steve let go, and the body slumped to the floor. For it was a body now, not a man. Whatever it was that had made Lyman Fischer Lyman Fischer was gone, and all that was left was this inert form that would soon start to rot.

  Steve was breathing heavily: a combination of panic, exertion and fear. Backing away from the body, he looked frantically around, trying to determine what in the room he had touched. Nothing, he thought. He had rapped on the edge of the screen with his knuckles, but Lyman had actually opened the door, and since he had done nothing but stand there and talk, the only prints of his fingers were on . . .

  The newspaper.

  Close call. He picked up the newspaper from where Lyman had dropped it on the floor, intending to take it with him and toss it in a trash can at the airport before getting on the plane.

  Walking to the door, he peeked out, saw no one on the sidewalk, no one on the street. He pulled his hand inside his sleeve, opening the door that way, touching the handle with the
cloth rather than his fingers.

  Striding quickly to the car, he got in and drove away.

  He threw up in the desert about twenty miles out of town, leaping out of the car just in time and puking into the gravel on the side of the road. He had seen scenes in movies in which this happened, and he had never really understood them. Why would someone vomit after killing a person? But he knew the answer now. It was the body reacting against doing something it had been taught never to do. He felt another onrush of nausea, leaned over and puked again.

  There was no one around to see him, and Steve wiped his mouth with his hand, wiped his hand on his pants, then got back in the car and drove west toward Albuquerque.

  It was raining in California when he returned. A cold off-season storm had settled over the region, and, landing in Orange County, the plane descended through what seemed like miles of cloud before emerging in a downpour. Since the terminal connected directly with the enclosed parking structure, he was able to reach his car without venturing out in the weather, and by the time he pulled onto MacArthur Boulevard, the rain had subsided to a drizzle. Thank God for that. He turned onto the 405 freeway, heading toward Long Beach. Aside from that short snooze on the plane on the way over, he had not slept for over thirty hours, and he needed to go home and go to bed. It probably wasn’t safe for him to be on the road. But he felt wide-awake and wired, and before he turned in, he wanted to visit his father.

  A red Corvette with tinted windows sped by on the left, splashing water onto the driver’s side of the windshield, and for those few seconds that it took the wiper to make its return arc across the glass, Steve was blind, seeing the freeway before him as a blurry world of dark shapes and crimson lights. If he’d been driving closer to the Explorer in front, he might have hit the vehicle and gotten into an accident. But the wiper swished over the window, the glass was cleared, he could see again, and he continued on.