The tourists began flocking back to Commercial Street on weekends for their Christmas shopping, to buy the antique furniture, rusted kitchen tools, and odd-shaped, tinted bottles that Stampede was famous for. I would have lodged my usual complaint with Dirk about the commercialization of Christmas, but he wasn’t around so I complained to Willard instead.
“Think of it this way,” Willard told me. “The ones who come up here are the good ones. They don’t like disposable.” He had a point. They should have been my people. They were the ones who wanted to sit in the same kind of chairs that Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence had used.
I read The Second Sex, searching for messages. Rozene’s note was so cryptic. I identified with Simone de Beauvoir though. So many passages resonated with what I imagined Mom would have said. I loved the way she turned the supposed female disadvantages into pluses.
Rozene and I sat together at lunch a few times, but both of us acted as if nothing had changed since the ride home from Ned’s. My normal penchant for candor had ebbed and, for the first time in my life, I seemed to be choosing words rather than just letting them flop out of my mouth. I would have loved to tell her what had happened with Bagmore under the grandstands, how I tried to spit out his saliva on the way to the girl’s can afterward. I wanted to ask her how she would have handled it. Had I given the wrong signal? Was everyone else putting up with that kind of crap?
On the day before the Christmas Open House, when John Carlisle and the other Victorian home owners opened their doors to the public, Dad held back the front page for my normal review and edit.
“How come, Dad?”
“Trust me. This one I have to do myself.”
So I saw the story for the first time on the stack at Ned’s when I went in to buy my breakfast, a pack of crackers with cheese spread and a plastic knife, on the way to school. In fact, Ned had to point to the stack or I would have missed it. I’d stopped reading the Herald at home once I started flyspecking it at the office. Ned had a sly grin on his face.
“A lot of folks are going to be saying ‘I told you so,’ huh?”
There it was, in one of Dad’s minimalist headlines over a story that wasn’t even lead: “Local Publisher Charged.”
I grabbed the paper off the stack, mistakenly taking an extra in the process, and made for the back of the store. My God! This wasn’t driving under the influence or failing to yield. John Carlisle had been charged with rape in the third degree and sexual misconduct with a minor. I had to lean against the bread and cupcake shelves. My heart was a vibrator. Who? When? Come on, Dad. I raced down the column for details, but there were no names and no dates. If Dad had sanitized the story any more, we could have eaten off it, but he couldn’t hide the obvious. There was a God in heaven after all!
I wasn’t going to school until I found out the whole skinny, so I paid Ned and bolted for the office with the new issue rolled up in my hand like a billy club.
The reception desk where Pamela Palmer sat was empty and so were the offices I passed along the hallway. Someone had left the country music station on. Without knocking, I opened the door to Dad’s office and suddenly whatever was coming out of his mouth was vacuumed back in. Everyone turned to look at me. It was an office-wide meeting. Even Les Showalter, the driver who only worked delivery days, was there. It was as if they’d never seen someone with frayed cuffs and holes in the knees of her jeans that were dripping with loose threads. Or maybe it was because I hadn’t polished the scuffs out of my black oxfords or tucked the pendleton into my pants. After the incident with Bagmore, I’d gone back to the clothes I was comfortable with.
Dad was leaning back against the edge of the desk, his coat off, tie loosened, and a shock of hair drooping carelessly over his right eyebrow. He looked at his watch. “Piper, can you wait outside a minute?”
I looked around at Gerry Alexander and Louise Mead, the people I’d joked with in the doghouse. Their arms were crossed. Their brows were furrowed. I was a bum on the street with a Dixie cup in my hand. They were going to walk right by me. I could feel a blush working its way up my neck. My legs were wobbly.
“Let her stay,” Alexander said. “She’s one of us.” I could have kissed him on his split lip.
Dad rubbed hard under his chin with the edge of his index finger and changed the cross of his legs. I unfurled the paper I’d been choking in my hand. I didn’t know what I was going to say exactly, maybe filibuster the assembly by reading the story frontwards and backwards until they let me in on it, but I had to know what was happening. The implications were too important. Dad must have seen the makings of an episode.
“Okay,” he said, “but you’re under the same constraints everyone else is. Nothing I say leaves this room.”
Louise Mead scooted over to free up the left half of her folding chair. “Sit down before he knocks you down,” she whispered and winked. I was in. Finally, I wasn’t Tom Scanlon’s daughter; I was going to be Tom Scanlon’s employee and, therefore, the recipient of a whole lot more information.
“As I was saying, the state must still prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. Meantime, the law says he’s innocent.”
Pamela Palmer’s hand floated up. She was chewing gum and it cracked just as Dad motioned toward her. “Have you talked to him yet?”
“Yes, I have.”
“Well …?”
“He was as shocked as the rest of us.” They always said that, I thought.
“In all candor, Mr. Scanlon”—Pamela asked the question out of the side of her mouth like this was all on the QT—“what do you really think?”
Dad shot her an accusatory look. “The truth? I think it’s bunk. I’ve known John Carlisle since he was a kid. Someone’s gold digging.”
Pamela nodded respectfully as if to signal her allegiance. It was obvious what was going on. This was John Carlisle’s paper and these were John Carlisle’s employees. Dad wasn’t going to let anyone break ranks.
There were more questions about when the trial would be (he didn’t know), whether he’d be held in jail (he was out on his personal recognizance—no surprise, he played dominoes for quarters with the judges), and when my dad had found out (day before yesterday). I figured he’d already told them who the kid was and the other details before I got there. I’d wait until everyone cleared out to catch up. Dad looked like a candidate for the United States Senate, deftly handling each question and pointing his finger at whomever had the next turn. He spoke with conviction, which was his nature, and he had a good radio voice, an even better television face. Not a perfect face, that would have been boring, but even the minor imperfections were heading in the right direction. The eyelids that weighed down his eyes made him look more intense. The upturn at the end of his nose was playful. The thin scar on the side of his neck suggested a man who’d overcome adversity.
Louise Mead was fidgeting and I had to brace my feet to prevent her from wiggling me off the chair. I knew there had to be a Salem long floating across her frontal lobe as she regretted for the umpteenth time that she’d quit smoking. “Tom,” she said, “what’s this going to do for circulation?”
“Let’s not pile fear on top of speculation, Louise. I’d rather deal with facts.” Of course, Louise was hardly the one to scold over exactitude. She did want ads, where exaggeration was expected. Everyone in the room knew that Dad was ducking, but they gave him as much room as he wanted.
When he’d taken the last question, he walked over behind his desk. “Come on, we’ve got a paper to put out.”
There was a release of energy in the room. Every limb that had been cocked suddenly fired. Shoes hit the floor, nylons chafed, people jumped up to shake Dad’s hand. Pamela Palmer threw her arms around him as if he’d been the one charged. Affection in front of his employees must have embarrassed Dad because rather than return the embrace he just let his arms dangle at his side. He was glaring straight over her shoulder at me and I could tell he was peeved I’d skipped school, but I was ready to thr
ow his own words back at him. “One of my dreams was to own a business where my kid could learn to work,” he’d told me. “I don’t want you to be just another employee. I want to see ink in your veins.”
Well, here I am, Dad, ready to drink your ink.
I waited in the back and accepted the pats on the shoulder as people filed by, shaking their heads and muttering. “Who would have thought?”
Louise Mead was the last one to leave and whatever she was saying to Dad she punctuated it with finger pokes into the space between them. Pow. Pah. Pow. Unrelieved nicotine anxiety. I could imagine what she was saying. Tom, put some distance between you and that man. You’re the boss here. You’re the one everyone looks up to. She had a roughness about her that let her cut through the crap. Dad had been reduced to head nodding. Louise’s parting gesture was a sharp snap of her fingers. Just say jump, Tom, and we’ll ask how high.
On the way out, she brushed close to me and whispered, “I softened him up for you, sugar.”
After Louise closed the door, the only sound was the hum of the computer, interrupted by an occasional gurgle as the processor bit something off and swallowed. Sometimes I’d heard Dad turn on the portable radio on his credenza and listen to National Public Radio, but right then I wanted the country music station, something bluesy and overdone to break the suction of silence between us. He was leaning against the edge of the desk again with both his legs and arms crossed. He wasn’t coming to me; I had to go to him. I let the newspaper flap across the backs of the chairs like a playing card against bike spokes as I walked slowly toward his desk. I reminded myself that in this room I was his employee, so didn’t he owe me the same explanation he’d given everyone else?
“Now you know why I had to proofread the front page.” His voice was kind. This was going to go better than I’d thought.
“You were in a pretty awkward spot, huh?” I rolled the paper up and slid it back and forth through the loop I’d made with my thumb and index finger.
“I couldn’t not report it. Nobody’s beyond the reach of the public’s right to know.”
I had to think about that for a moment. With my dad, I’d learned to operate in a different gear. Maybe it was his Jesuit training. The universe isn’t just a jumble of accidents, Piper. There’s an order in the essence of things, even in the intangibles like fear or jealousy. It’s our job to discover that order. If you didn’t get off on principles and syllogisms, you wouldn’t understand my dad. That’s just who he was. But, hey, this one was going in the right direction. I was part of the public so didn’t I have a right to know? I was feeling giddy again, the same rush I’d had in Ned’s when I first saw the headline. Dad hadn’t even mentioned my truancy. I put my foot up on the closest chair and leaned on my knee so we could talk man-to-man.
“Who was the kid, Dad?”
He brushed his hand in the direction of my leg. “Don’t put your shoes on the furniture.”
“Oh … sure.” I stood up and resumed reaming the finger loop with my newspaper.
“The bench-press rules don’t allow us to disclose names of minors in a situation like this.”
“Did you tell them?” I gestured to the empty couch and chairs.
“Piper, I’m not going to budge on this one.”
I wanted to cuss, but instead I just crammed the end of the paper into the palm of my hand like I was snuffing out a cigarette. The bench-press rules don’t allow us? He sounded like the Pope. “So much for the public’s right to know,” I said.
“Don’t get cute.”
I shook my head in frustration. “Dad, this affects me. It affects us. What did he do?”
“He didn’t do anything. Didn’t you hear what I said? This is an accusation …”
“Okay, okay, what was he alleged to have done?”
He stood up, uncrossed his arms, and gripped the lip of the desk. His lids tightened down over the tops of his eyes. “Okay, you asked and I’m going to tell you. This is in the charging affidavit. If you went to the courthouse, you could read this.” His Adam’s apple moved up, then down, as he gulped. “They say he sodomized a boy … you know what sodomy is?” I nodded, my mouth too dry to speak. “There are multiple counts. They’re saying it was a predatory relationship. It’s hard even to say it.” He wiped away the start of a tear under one eye and took a deep breath. “Now you know more than they do.”
“I know how you feel about the Carlisles, Dad, but … isn’t there a silver lining in all this?”
“Hah!” He stood up and went around behind his desk. I knew he was about to kick me off to school and I had lots more to say. It might be a long time before we worked ourselves back to this same ledge together.
“The paper won’t sell, will it … with this kind of cloud?”
He lifted things off the desk and flopped them back down. We’d never discussed the argument I’d overheard between him and Carlisle and I half-expected he’d tell me to leave it alone the way he told me to take my foot off the chair. “It was only an inquiry, but yes it could affect a sale. How’d you know about that?”
“You know, loose lips in the doghouse.”
“If he goes down it’s because I let him go down.”
“That’s crazy, Dad. You’re not his guardian. Let him take the flop.”
He coupled his hands together like a train hitch. “John Carlisle and this paper are like that. He needs someone in his corner.”
This wasn’t making sense. Even the Catholic Church had corrupt popes, but the institution lived on. Why didn’t Dad let go? John Carlisle was dead weight in a leaky life raft. If Dad held on, he was going down with him. “He doesn’t need you. He needs a psychiatrist.”
The veins in the side of Dad’s neck engorged and he clenched his fist like an Irishman in a pub who’d just been called a candy ass. “I’ve worked for the Carlisles for twenty years. The roof over our heads was paid for with Carlisle money. I’m going to investigate this thing myself! I’ll find out what the truth is. And when I do, I’ll print it and let the chips fall where they may!” He slapped his day calendar down on the desk so hard that a pencil jumped. He seemed crazed by the whole thing and what he was saying sickened me. I’d always thought of John Carlisle as someone Dad had put up with. The paper worked in spite of Carlisle, not because of him. In his heart, I always thought Dad must have despised him more than anyone in Stampede. The Scanlons were self-made, the Carlisles were inherited, surviving on someone else’s money, someone else’s sweat. Scanlon sweat. But the more Dad talked, the more he was pulling us into the same tent as the Carlisles.
“If you’re going to take sides, why don’t you take Mom’s side?”
He spun his head around. “What’s she got to do with it?”
“Why didn’t you investigate her death?” I was strangling the newspaper in my hand, resisting the temptation to throw it at him and quit his damn paper. I didn’t know exactly where I was going with this. It was still murky and I hadn’t had the chance to figure it out yet, but there was a connection here. It was the part I’d hoped Dad would help me with. I’d visualized us on the same page, him sitting me down, marshaling his formidable deductive skills, and telling me how this exculpated Mom.
“I’m not going to stand in my own office and argue with you about John Carlisle. The truth will win out. It always does.” He turned away from me and started fussing with the papers on his desk. He’d gone back into his journalist’s vestments. We were back at day one of life after Mom, when my life with Dad had really begun, and he was trying to shield me with ignorance again. Why couldn’t he run our relationship the same way he ran the newspaper? The truth was king for the paper, but it was a thief between us.
It was mid-morning when I left Dad’s office and the repair and sales vehicles gathered for the donut break had filled the street in front of Marge’s—Cascade County PUD, U.S. West, Washington Natural Gas, and the Stampede Police. Marge poured coffee for one of the booths by the window and mouthed me a greeting through th
e steamed up glass. I took my hand out of my jacket and waved back. She was smiling, pleased to be busy. There was a rack next to her cash register for newspapers and I guessed for once the Herald Stampede would outsell USA Today.
In the middle of Commercial Street, a truck with a tall stepladder on the flatbed was parked under one of the artificial Christmas wreaths strung across the street. A short guy in galoshes wearing one of those Russian hats with ear flaps that stuck out from his head like shelves stood two steps from the top, unscrewing one of the dead bulbs. Three people steadied the ladder. As I walked on up the street, I noticed that most of the wreaths had come undone during the windstorm we’d had a few nights ago. The storm before the storm.
I thought of Mom and wondered how she’d have taken the news of the charges against John Carlisle. She’d always looked up to him as a cultivated man. When she couldn’t think of the name of an artist or a painting, I’d heard her say, “John will know.” And in that appreciation they’d formed a bond of outcasts. He was too high up the ladder and she was too far left of it to be accepted. Mom wasn’t vindictive like me. When I’d asked her if she didn’t just hate the people of Stampede sometimes for the way they gossiped, she said, “In the right circumstance, every one of us is capable of doing just about anything. How can you hate what’s only human?” I wasn’t a total stranger to darkness. I’d read Lord of the Flies. I’d watched the heirs of the widow in Zorba the Greek pick her house clean before the corpse had cooled. If I’d been the starving Raskalnikov, I could have bludgeoned the old pawnbroker. That kind of survival instinct resonated with me. Put me in a dark alley with Condon Bagmore and I’d cut off his scrotum next time he tried to come on to me. Give me a shallow pond with John Carlisle and I’d hold his head under until the bubbles stopped rising for what he’d done with Mom. And when I found out who he’d diddled with, I’d push him under and drown him again.
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