Was it possible that the boy had taken himself hunting? Maybe he had felt that bringing home a duck all on his own would earn Nathan’s approval. But no, if he wanted Nathan to be proud of him, he would not have sawed through the lock on his gun rack. That’s not the act of a young man seeking approval.
Nathan stood frozen, considering all of this, until the phone rang upstairs. It instantly formed a frosty core inside his gut. As if the ring itself contained bad news.
He vaulted up the stairs two at a time. Grabbed the phone off the kitchen wall.
It was Nat. Much to his relief, it was Nat.
“Where have you been?” Nat asked. “I’ve been trying to call you all morning.”
“I told you I was going to be away all morning.”
“You did? When?”
“Last night.”
“Oh. I need your help.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I’m in a little bit of trouble. And I need you to come bail me out.”
“Literally?”
“Yeah. Pretty much.”
“Where are you?”
“At Juvie Hall.”
Nathan sighed deeply. Well, at least he had been found. And would have to stay put. “Where exactly is that?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t exactly drive here on my own, you know.”
“Is there an officer there with you?”
“Well, that’s a pretty obvious one, isn’t it? No, I’m all on the honor system. I could walk right out the door, but I’m just too honest to do it.”
“When a person is in your position,” Nathan said, “it would behoove him to be polite to whomever he thinks can help.”
“Behoove? Whomever? That must be more of your English-as-a-foreign-language. Oops. You know what? Never mind. Forget I said that. In this case, I think I might actually see your point. I’m going to turn you over to one of these nice officers now. So they can tell you more about where I am.”
• • •
It seemed unfortunate to Nathan that all of the county offices were clustered together on to one campus in this town. Because, as it turned out, walking in the front door of Juvenile Hall involved using the exact same front door as one would use for either the men’s or women’s county jail. And Nathan did not enjoy his memories of the place. Not at all.
Despite two tries, no bond measure had been passed, and the place had deteriorated a great deal further in fifteen years. Nathan had voted in the affirmative twice since that first visit. But a two-thirds majority had been needed, and the measures had gone down to defeat just the same.
Nathan stepped up to the desk, only to be greeted by the same officer. It took him a moment to recognize the man. He was a good fifty pounds heavier. Much grayer and much balder. If only he could have retired, Nathan thought, before I had to come back here. He looked close enough to retirement age.
His name badge read Chas. A. Frawley.
The two men stood eyeing each other carefully.
It seemed impossible to Nathan that this man would remember him. Then again, he remembered the officer. After fifteen years. But it had been a disturbing episode for Nathan, and trauma tends to firmly cement memories in place. And, also, Nathan had the advantage of seeing the man in context.
“I know you. Don’t I?” Frawley said.
“I’m not sure,” Nathan said, being — uncharacteristically — not entirely forthcoming.
“I never forget a face.”
“I’ve come to see Nathan Bates. The juvenile you arrested today.”
“Wait. I know. You’re that guy who almost cost me my job. When that girl died in custody.”
So apparently Frawley had gathered his own trauma with which to cement the memory in place.
“I never said I was that girl’s father.”
“You never said you weren’t, either.”
“When you meet new people,” Nathan said evenly, “do you make it a habit to tell them whose relative you are not?”
“This was a bit of a different—”
“I can’t help feeling it’s all water under the bridge after so many years. I’m here to see Nathan Bates.”
The officer snorted. Threw — literally threw — the clipboard with the sign-in sheet on to the counter in front of Nathan. It slid over and hit him lightly in the stomach at one corner.
“At least this one’s alive and kicking,” Frawley said. “And kicking. And kicking. And kicking. Little hellion, if you ask me.”
I didn’t, Nathan thought. But he kept the sentiment to himself, feeling he was already on poor enough footing in this place.
“Can you please tell me what he’s charged with?”
“Armed robbery.”
Nathan’s jaw dropped, literally. He had to consciously remind himself to close his mouth. “That’s a very serious charge,” Nathan said.
“You’re telling me. Tried to knock over a gas station with a shotgun. Lucky for him nobody got killed.”
“Maybe the gun wasn’t loaded,” Nathan added. Hearing the hopefulness of his own words. As if he could shape the truth with them.
Frawley snorted. “It was more than loaded. It was discharged.”
“He shot somebody?”
“I only know what it says on this report. Weapon discharged. Gas-station owner injured. Nothing life-threatening. He was treated and released at the emergency room. Lucky for your boy. If he’d been badly hurt, you couldn’t have even afforded the bail they’d’ve set. If he got bail at all. Wait till you hear how high they set bail as it is.”
“I don’t need to hear that at all,” Nathan said. “Because I have no intention of posting it. I just need to see him.”
• • •
“Good,” Nat said. “You’ve come to post my bail.”
“No,” Nathan said. “I’ll come see you every visiting day. But I won’t put up bond for you. Because I know you’ll run away. You’re going to stay in here until your trial, and then you’ll go into the juvenile detention system and pay for what you did. I want you to tell me exactly what happened. I want to know how you could bring yourself to steal my shotgun and fire it at a perfectly innocent stranger.”
Nat’s eyes registered genuine alarm. “I didn’t shoot anybody! Is that what they’re saying? Then they’re lying! Because I never shot anybody!”
“The man at the desk said the weapon was discharged. And that the gas-station owner was injured.”
“Will you at least let me tell you what happened?”
“Fine,” Nathan said. He crossed his arms against his chest. Leaned back, feeling the hard plastic of the chair press into his back. “Tell me.”
“I’m just trying to get him to open the cash register. I’m holding the shotgun on him. And he reaches down to open the drawer. And then what does he do but pull a little pistol out of the drawer and fire it at me. I mean, who does that? Pulls a gun on a guy who’s holding a loaded shotgun right in your face?”
“So you would have me believe it was all his fault? For trying to defend his business?”
“I didn’t say that. Anyway, I threw myself out of the way. You know. So I wouldn’t get shot. And I fell down. And the gun just sort of … went off.”
“So you did shoot him. Whether you meant to or not.”
“No! I didn’t! I didn’t hit him. I hit the cash register. And a piece of exploding cash register hit him in the cheek. I know that’s what happened because I was still there when the cop helped him pull it out. He sort of sat on me until the cops came.”
A long silence. During which, at least, the boy had the wherewithal to appear humiliated.
“And if the round had hit him?”
“But it didn’t.”
“If it had?”
“It was only birdshot.”
“Do you know what birdshot can do, fired at close range? Right into someone’s face? You could have killed that man. And it’s really only by luck that you didn’t. That the morning wasn’t a complete and utter i
rreversible disaster is really not to your credit at all.”
Another long, embarrassed silence.
“I know,” Nat said. “I’ve thought about it.”
“Well, you’ll have time to think about it a lot more. You’re probably here until you turn eighteen. Because I meant what I said about the bail. You are the one who did this, so you will have to be the one to pay.”
The boy said nothing for a long time. Then he said, “You’re right about one thing. I would have run out on the bail.”
“Why did you do this?” Nathan asked. “Are you trying to get my attention?”
The boy shrugged. “Everyone else does bad things. Why shouldn’t I?”
“I don’t. Lots of people don’t.”
The boy sighed and brushed hair back out of his eyes. “I believed you,” he said. “I believed that as long as you were alive you’d never wash your hands of me. Never stop trying to civilize me. I was trying to get far away.”
“I see.”
“Wash your hands of me now?”
“No,” Nathan said.
• • •
Nathan had been home for several hours. He had fed Maggie and the pup in their run. Heated up a TV dinner for himself, hamburger patty with mashed potatoes. Eaten it in front of the news.
Then he brought Maggie and the nameless pup into the living room with him.
It wasn’t until he turned off the TV and looked at the clock — noting that it was nearly eight o’clock — that he remembered.
He tried to look up Eleanor’s number in the phone book, but it wasn’t listed.
It took him several minutes, but he found her phone number in his old client records, in a banker’s box in the garage.
When he got back inside, the pup was in the process of urinating against the corner of Nathan’s couch.
Uttering mild, barely offensive curses, he first threw the pup back into the run, where the dog whimpered and yapped. Then he headed back to the garage for carpet and upholstery cleaner. But he stopped, knowing the phone call was more urgent. Which, considering Nathan’s penchant for sanitation, made it unusually urgent.
She answered on the second ring.
“Oh, Eleanor,” he said. “I am so sorry. In fact, I’m more than sorry. I’m downright ashamed.”
In the intervening silence, he could hear the puppy’s heated complaints.
“I probably shouldn’t have asked you,” she said.
“Eleanor. I’ve been a widower for three years. You’ve been a widow for fifteen. There is nothing the slightest bit inappropriate about you asking me to dinner.”
“But when you didn’t show up, I thought—”
“Well, you thought wrong,” he said. And told her, in about the three- or four-minute version, of the addition and then the subtraction of the boy he found in the woods. “Have you ever had a day like that?” he asked. “When something happens that’s so huge it just erases everything that came before it?”
Silence on the line, during which Nathan believed she really was considering his question.
Then she said, “I suppose the day Arthur had his heart attack was a day like that.”
A vivid memory reared into Nathan’s consciousness. Opening Flora’s door at eleven A.M. to see why she wasn’t awake yet. He firmly pushed the image back down again.
“I’m sorry for what you must have thought,” he said. “And I’m sorry because your dinner must have been ruined. And I don’t suppose I’d blame you if you didn’t think I was worth the second chance. But maybe I could take a rain check …”
At least this time he wouldn’t have to worry that leaving Nat alone would amount to trouble. Because all the trouble in the world had already come to stay.
1 October 1975
He Still Doesn’t Really Know You
Several days later, on the boy’s birthday, Nathan came to visit.
In fact, he had been to visit every day since Nat’s incarceration. But on this day he made more of a production of the visit. He tried to make it special without being sad, as special occasions in tragic circumstances tend to be.
He brought a birthday cupcake — a whole cake seemed excessive under the circumstances — half a roast duck in foil in a paper grocery sack, a photograph of the still-unnamed pup, and a small wrapped gift.
He stepped through the front door of the county facility, silently mourning how familiar the place had become.
“Ah. You,” Officer Frawley said as Nathan signed in.
Nathan could still see his own name prominent on the sign-in sheet among yesterday’s visitors. There were only two, save himself.
“Yes,” Nathan said. “Me.”
It was a veiled criticism of the kind of useless prattle Nathan despised. Any type of small talk was abhorrent to him. But the officer had no way of knowing that, so it had not been a rude comment, or at least could not have been perceived as such. In fact, Nathan assumed that to Frawley it sounded quite a normal thing to say.
“Any progress on the return of my shotgun?” Nathan asked. As he did each time he signed in.
“No, but it’ll happen eventually. The wheels of evidence grind real slow. What’s that in the wrapping paper? Not likely I can let you in with that. Unless you’re willing to unwrap it. I pretty much have to visually inspect anything you bring inside. Are you willing to unwrap it?”
“I guess I can if I absolutely have to. But it’s his birthday. I hate to ruin the surprise. I suppose I could wrap it again when you’re done looking. If you have some tape I can borrow.”
“Hmm. Sorry. No tape. We use staples on everything. Let me take a closer look at that, then.”
Nathan handed it over.
It was small, light and soft. It was not in a box of any sort. Nathan hoped it would be obvious, just by feel, that it had no real potential to be dangerous.
“This is OK. I can make an exception for this. Couldn’t possibly hurt anyone, whatever it is. So, the little miscreant has a birthday today.”
“His name is Nat.”
The officer looked up at Nathan. Gauging. Measuring. It was clear from Nathan’s voice that the man had over-stepped a line. His interest seemed to be in learning how far.
“Right,” he said. “My mistake.”
“Anyone can make a mistake,” Nathan said. Aware that much of his fate rested in the hands of prison employees for several years at least.
“No one else visits every day,” the officer said. “Why is that?”
“I couldn’t speak for anyone else.”
“Actually, I guess I meant, why are you so different?”
“I’m not sure I can speak to that, either,” Nathan said. “I am the way I am. We all are the way we are and I’m not sure any of us really knows why.”
“I guess you got a point there,” Frawley said.
• • •
Nathan set the cupcake, the roast duck, the photograph and the gift on the wood table between Nat and himself.
Nat picked up the photo.
“What’s this?”
“Your new dog.”
“You got me a dog for my birthday?”
“No. I got you a dog the day you got arrested. I just hadn’t gotten around to taking his picture until now.”
“Well, that makes more sense. Since you didn’t know I wouldn’t be around to meet him. Too bad about that. Are you going to take him back?”
“No.”
“You’re keeping him for me?”
“If you want him.”
“Of course I want him. What’s his name?”
“He doesn’t have one. He’s your dog, so you name him.”
Then the boy’s eyes landed on the wrapped gift. The mystery of it clearly knocked all other thoughts out of his head. Even thoughts of dogs could not withstand the curiosity evoked by a wrapped gift.
“Open it now?” the boy asked.
The guard looked over Nat’s shoulder to assure himself it was no more than Nathan had claimed.
&
nbsp; “You may open it whenever you choose.”
The boy tore off the paper and stared at the gift. “It looks like a tiny little cap,” he said, turning it over in his fingers.
“It is.”
The guard backed off to the corner of the room again.
“Who could wear a cap this small?”
“You, when you were only one day old.”
“You mean, I was wearing this?”
“That’s right.”
“When you found me? I was wearing this? And what else?”
“You were wrapped in a sweater. A full-size adult sweater.”
Nathan tried to gauge the boy’s reaction from his face. His eyes. To see if the gift pleased or displeased him. It had been clear to Nathan all along that the pendulum could swing either way.
And yet it was a risk he’d felt compelled to take.
But there was nothing in the young man’s face by which Nathan could judge. It was something like trying to peer into a room while the shades are pulled down.
Nathan wondered briefly if life was hard for Nat in here. If the other young men were bigger. Tougher. But it was an unanswerable question, and one he could do nothing about, anyway. He considered it none of his business, and was certainly not about to ask.
“Now where did she get a cap this small, do you think?”
“My theory is that she knitted it. I know she was a knitter.”
Nat snorted. “Right. Like my grandmother. Must run in the family. I never once had a hat or a scarf from the store. Or socks or mittens, for that matter. So, how did you get this? Wasn’t it, like, evidence or something?”
“They took it off you in the emergency room and just threw it on the floor.”
“And you’ve kept it all this time? Why give it to me now?”
“I wanted you to know that she at least had some ambivalence. She left you to die but part of her wanted you to live. She was trying to keep you warm.”
Nat sat back in his chair. Suddenly. Hitting the chair back with a thump. He twirled the tiny cap around his index finger a few times, then tossed it up in the air, caught it, and crushed it tightly in his palm.
When I Found You Page 11