by Jeff Abbott
Distant Blood
( Jordan Poteet - 4 )
Jeff Abbott
Jeff Abbott
Distant Blood
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
-Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Accidents will occur in the best-regulated families.
-Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
1
Mortal fear is knowing you've been poisoned. I sagged against the fine oak paneling, agony vying with numbness for control of my body. My heart raced with the knowledge that it was pounding its last rhythm, like the beat of a runner's shoes against the road as he surges toward the finish line, toward blessed rest. Bile rose in my throat and I swallowed, trying to steady my breathing. I slid down to the floor, dizziness and nausea washing across my body like an obscene tide. I tried to cry for help and my throat felt dead. Raising one leaden arm, I managed to focus my vision on the blurred figures in the room.
And blinking, saw murder done before my eyes.
Step back with me two months.
My name is Jordan Poteet, and I'm the library director for the small Texas town of Mirabeau. This sometimes quiet hamlet lies on a crook of the Colorado River in the rolling countryside between Houston and Austin. Mostly the houses are tidy, the flower beds edged with a draftsman's precision, the street loud with the laughter of playing children. But don't be fooled by Mirabeau's tranquillity. I've been back home for a little over a year and the past months have shocked me to the core of my being. I've seen death, and suffering, and loyalty, and love the likes of which I'd never known. But finally, my life had mellowed into a fairly easy ride-easy despite dealing with my mother's increasingly severe Alzheimer's and the unnerving fact that the man I forever thought was my father… wasn't. And just when I thought I'd sailed into relative calmness, ordering my life into a semblance of normalcy, my biological father, Bob Don Goertz, upset my boat. By issuing the invitation from hell.
My girlfriend Candace Tully did not react in the way I'd hoped.
“Of course you're going,” Candace said, brushing my hair out of my eyes.
We sat on the back-porch swing, sipping wine and watching the evening slide into purples and oranges as the sun set brilliantly against the hills. The loblolly pines were etched in darkness as light fled below the horizon.
“I am not going to this stupid reunion. All those people are Bob Don's family, not mine.” I gulped at my wine. I can be as stubborn as a government mule when I set my mind to it and I could feel my brain encasing in concrete recalcitrance.
“Jordan. I think you could show Bob Don some consideration.”
I hate it when Candace is entirely reasonable. Especially when I'm trying my darnedest to be difficult.
“I know. I don't want to hurt his feelings. But going to his family reunion; I'd feel like a total freak.”
“You're his son, Jordan. He's proud of you. He wants you in his life and he wants his family to know you. That's not unusual.”
“No, the unusual part is I didn't know he was my father for the first thirty-odd years of my life.” I stood and paced out to the yard.
The house, with my family relocated out to the horse farm we'd recently acquired, had taken on an air of abandonment and desolation. The garden, usually thick with tomatoes and other vegetables, lay barren. Empty wire circles and wooden stakes stood in forlorn disuse. Flower beds, denuded of blossoms, looked fashioned of lunar soil, bereft of life.
I missed the gentle swish of the broom while my mother, her mind rotted with Alzheimer's, moved back and forth across the porch, caught in an empty repetition that was only broken by taking the broom from her hands. I missed my sister's gentle nagging and teasing as she attempted daily to dictate the course of my life. I missed my nephew Mark's energy and sarcasm, his reliance on me that I never appreciated until he'd moved out of the house. My family was only a few miles away, but it felt as though they'd voyaged to the other side of the planet.
“There's nothing that we can do to change how you found out about your parentage,” Candace reminded me, grinding away in reasonable mode. “The Goertzes are your family as well.”
“I have a family, thank you kindly,” I said. “I feel no burning need for a bunch of new relatives. Lord knows the ones I have are trouble enough. If I want to shimmy up unexplored branches of my family tree, I'll call a genealogist and ask for the bastard discount rate.”
Candace came up behind me and tapped me firmly on the shoulder. I turned to face her. God, she was everything I had ever wanted, with her kind smile, logical mind, thick chestnut-colored hair, and intelligent lake-blue eyes. She was nearly too petite for a tall fellow like me, but strength radiated out of her and I'd always been drawn to it like metal to magnet. She stood on tiptoe, put her hands on my shoulders-her signal for a kiss. I leaned down and pressed my lips to hers. When the tender embrace broke, she cupped my face in her hands and gently pecked at my closed eyelids. Her palms felt warm and soft against my face.
“Jordan,” she breathed softly, “these people are part of you. They will want to know about you and you will want to know about them, even if you don't believe that right now. Go. Meet them. Otherwise, you're always going to wonder if you don't. And Bob Don-”
“I know. It's important to Bob Don. But as much as he's done for me, I still find it hard to think of him as my father. I mean, to say it aloud, to see him in my daddy's place-”
“He's not trying to replace your father,” Candace whispered, her breath soft against my chest. I'm sure we made quite a gossipmongering sight for the neighbors, locked in this long cuddle. Not that I cared. Talking to her, holding her this way, felt far more intimate than our ardent lovemaking had. I'd been scared of the deepening closeness between us, but I'd resolved not to let fear turn me away from Candace.
“He could never replace my dad,” I answered, resting my chin in her soft-smelling hair.
“He doesn't want to. But he wants to be a father to you- he's not trying to be a clone of your daddy that raised you. Don't you see the difference, hon?”
“No. I've just been fitted for my emotional blinders.” I leaned back and smiled down into her face. “I'm just being stubborn. It's my specialty.”
“Yet I still love you.” She punched me in the shoulder. “You know Bob Don's wanted to claim you as his own son for years. Give him the chance, Jordy. He didn't have a choice in not acknowledging you.”
Yes, he did, I thought bitterly, but I kept this most selfish musing to myself.
Candace continued: “He did everything that he thought was best for you. He let you grow up in a healthy, loving home. He could have made you a pawn, used you against your own parents. He never would have been hurtful. Give him this, please. Think-think of what you might lose if you don't try. He's your biological father. He matters.”
“The things I let you talk me into.”
She nestled close to me and I felt her face smile against my chest. “It's just 'cause I love you.”
“Will you go with me? Don't leave me alone with the Goertzes. I don't know how delighted the rest of his family will be with the new bastard son.”
“Of course. So it's settled?”
“Yes.” I nodded, smiling.
She kissed me again, with fervor, and ran her fingernail deliciously along the bare skin of my arm. “Then let's go upstairs.”
She took my hand and we retired to my bedroom. I lost myself in her, in the warm tangle of her arms, in the delectable slide of skin against skin, the soft wonder of her lips against mine.
***
“An island? Your uncle lives on an island?” I lowered my fork (replete with a goodly chunk of my sister's chicken-fried steak) back to my plate.
“It ain't a big one, Jordan, but it's all his.” Bob Don Goertz beamed witii pride. “Uncle Mutt's done real well for himself. He gave me the seed money for my car lots.”
“Uncle Mutt?”
“His Christian name's Emmett, but when me and my brother and my sister were little we couldn't say Emmett- we said Em-mutt. It got shortened to Mutt.”
“Do you have an Uncle Jeff to go along with this Uncle Mutt?”
Bob Don guffawed. “God, you're funny, son!”
I could recite the Magna Carta and he'd think it was amusing. I don't like it a bit when he starts edging the pedestal over for me to climb up on.
“Naw, no Uncle Jeff. But they're all just gonna love you, Jordan, I can tell already-”
“I'm sure.” I was more than willing to let the assembled Goertzes devise their own opinions about me. I certainly planned on forming my own judgments regarding them. “And how did-excuse me-Uncle Mutt acquire this island?”
“Won it in a poker game.”
I managed to keep hold of my fork, but barely. Out of the corner of my eye I saw my big sister Arlene hovering, pretending to wipe down a table. I'd had a grueling day running the Mirabeau Public Library, and I'd offered to take Bob Don to lunch. Of course I picked the Sit-a-Spell, the downtown cafe co-owned by my sister and Candace. To be seen dining elsewhere in Mirabeau would have been to invite retribution the likes of which I cannot imagine. Of course, Sister isn't exactly kind-minded toward Bob Don. He would forever be the man who nearly ended our parents' marriage. If I told her I was accompanying Bob Don to visit his uncle who'd won offshore real estate while gambling, she'd have a conniption fit.
“I hope I won't be expected to play poker wim him. I don't believe I could ante up.”
“Oh, Uncle Mutt doesn't gamble much anymore. Says he's older and wiser. Plus it's harder for him to hold his cards since his middle fingers got shot off.” Bob Don popped a potato pancake into his mouth and chewed with a grin.
“Shot off? During a poker game?” I asked faintly.
“Oh, no. That was over a woman. A fellow caught Uncle Mutt in bed with his wife.” Bob Don seemed amused at this family trait.
“Oh.”
“And his ex-wife.”
I swallowed my food-untasted. The rough edge of the fried meat left a burning trail down my throat. I coughed and gulped water. “Uncle Mutt was in bed with this man's wife and ex-wife-at the same time?”
“Yeah. Uncle Mutt's always had what you'd call a fair amount of energy. I always figured I got my initiative from him.”
“I sincerely hope you're referring to selling cars, Bob Don, and not bedding women.” I prefer not to dwell overmuch on the sex life that my mother and Bob Don shared.
“Oh, yeah.” He quickly tucked into his green-bean casserole. (It was what Sister termed “the fancy kind,” made with fried onions and mushroom soup.) He never wanted to talk about his relationship with my mother either, except the never-ending litany of how he had loved her. I wondered if he still did. And as for Bob Don's wife Gretchen-well, her husband's emotional investment in my mother couldn't be comforting.
“And just how old is Uncle Mutt now?” Considering Bob Don was in his fifties, Uncle Mutt could hardly still be giving new meaning to simultaneous orgasm.
“Oh, he's around seventy. Still got a lot of gumption. 'Course he's not the oldest member of the family. That'd be Uncle Jake.”
“Older brother to Uncle Mutt?”
“No, he's Uncle Mutt's uncle. Sort of. You see, Uncle Mutt's daddy, Thomas Goertz-he was my granddaddy- he had two wives. The first was named Mildred, and she was my grandmother. Uncle Jake's her bachelor brother and he's nearly a hundred now. Anyway, Jake always lived with Papaw Tommy and his family. Mama Mildred had two children with Papaw Tommy, then she died in the flu epidemic in 1918. Papaw Tommy remarried-we called his second wife Mama Claudia-and she was mother to Uncle Mutt and Aunt Lolly.”
“Aunt Lolly?” I felt the need for a scorecard and resisted the urge to jot notes down on a napkin.
“Uncle Mutt's younger sister. Her real name's Louisa, but we all call her Lolly. She's widowed, so she takes care of Uncle Jake.” He picked at his food, suddenly ill at ease. “Aunt Lolly's sweet, but she's gettin' nuttier than a pecan tree. I don't think she'll be able to take care of Uncle Jake too much longer.”
“But”-I counted on my fingers, retracing the convoluted Goertz family tree-”Jake's not really Lolly's kin, right? He's the brother of her father's first wife, right?”
“Yep. But Uncle Jake was forever part of the family, even after his sister died.” Bob Don appeared horrified at the suggestion Uncle Jake be turned out from the hearth simply because his sister had been dead for nearly eighty years. “And then there's the twins, Philip and Tom-except they don't look alike, ain't that a kicker?-and then your aunt Sass and your cousin Aubrey-”
I held up my hand. “Please, no more. I'll chart the tree when I meet the clan.” If the Goertz family history was as twisty as it sounded, I'd need the services of a genealogist whose hobby was contortionism. I smiled at Bob Don. “I'm sure they're all fine folks.”
He snorted. “Well, I guess I love 'em. But I'm particularly partial to Uncle Mutt. He's my favorite. Aside from you.”
I smiled. I could see now just how much this reunion meant to Bob Don. He was proud of being my father and wanted to share his happiness with his loved ones.
I couldn't help but wonder-would I have invited him to a family reunion of my mother's kin? I wasn't exactly trumpeting from the rooftops that my surname should be, by all rights, a little further up the alphabet. He took more pride in me than I did in him-after all, he'd known I belonged to him since the day I was born. He'd had thirty years to get used to the notion; I had barely a year. It's still not enough time. But shame at the thought that I was treating Bob Don unkindly colored my face.
“As long as Uncle Mutt doesn't challenge me to cards, I'll be fine.”
“He won't. Probably. Of course it's a bit hard to foretell exactly what Uncle Mutt's going to do-” The further misadventures of Bob Don's kinsman were delayed by the arrival of my sister, setting big bowls of banana pudding crowned with vanilla wafers on the table. If you've never had this, it's God's own treat.
“I don't think we'd ordered dessert quite yet.” I smiled. Sister favored me with a wry scowl.
“On the house.” She plopped a third bowl down and scooted into the booth, next to Bob Don. “Gretchen says that y'all are heading out to a-family reunion soon.”
Sister never took the news of my paternity very well. I believe she's grateful to Bob Don for his many kindnesses to us, but his new position in my life rankles her. You don't like to regard your adored little brother as a constant reminder of your own mama's unfaithfulness. I'd become a symbol of my mother's imperfections.
“Well, yes, Arlene, I have asked Jordan to come with me to my family reunion in July. I'd really like for him to know his Goertz relations.”
Sister smiled a smile that said, He already has a family, thank you kindly. Fortunately Bob Don lacks a Berlitz book for Sister's various eyebrow raises and gleaming stares, so he plunged on in happy ignorance. “I'm just so pleased that he's decided to come, 'cause everyone's gonna be thrilled to meet him.”
“Sister-” I started, but she didn't let me finish.
“I just don't know if July's a good time for Jordan to be away from the horse farm,” she said airily.
“Why? Has Mark forgotten how to shovel manure?” Let me be the first to say how minimal my contributions to the horse farm are. I modernized the software; I did most of the hiring, although most of the folks working there stayed on when my nephew inherited the farm from an old family friend. I told Mark he could not spend any of the large amounts of money bequeathed to him. (That part I particularly enjoyed. Mark is fourteen and I love telling him no. Uncle's rights, you know.) “I imagine, Sister, that the farm will not slip into a crack in the earth if I'm gone for a few days.�
�
Sister framed her lips in a familiar combative stance when her eyes widened and I saw Candace gesturing to her from the kitchen. “Just a sec,” she muttered to me, and retreated to the roiling steam to consult with her partner.
“That girl is just never going to cotton to me.” Bob Don twirled his spoon in the creamy pudding. Disappointment curdled his normally kind features into a frown.
“Sure she will. If I can get along with Gretchen, you can get along with my sister.” I tapped my finger against the back of his hand. I don't touch Bob Don often (and no, I don't know why) and he brightened with a smile.
“Well, son, I'm glad to hear you and Gretchen are mending fences.”
“Yes. It's been much easier since we cleared the minefields away.” I stuck a spoonful of pudding and cookie into my mouth, not really wanting to discuss Bob Don's wife Gretchen. I'd made as much peace as possible with that woman, all for Bob Don's sake. He had the easier reconciliation to make; after all, Sister wasn't a crazily mean bitch. Tidying up my discord with Gretchen required the patience of a saint, which I fortunately have. Usually. Okay, occasionally. At least during leap years.
Sister returned to the table, toying with her blonde pony-tail and smiling like the grin had been pasted on with fancy glue. She sat down next to Bob Don and squeezed his arm in affection. I tried not to choke on my pudding.
“I think this reunion idea is just wonderful,” Sister purred. “Bob Don, of course you should get Jordan to go. Far be it from me to suggest otherwise. And Jordy, it's just absolutely necessary that you bond with your Goertz kin-folk. After all, they're your people, too.”
“Are y'all nipping cooking sherry back there?” I craned my neck for a better view into the kitchen. Candace ducked out of sight, presumably to go flour a chicken for frying. I suspected my butt'd been dusted as well. I narrowed my gaze at Sister, who replied with a cherubic smile. (The last angel to sport that grin was Lucifer immediately before he took the down elevator.)