In-between Hour (9781460323731)

by Claypole White, Barbara

  “He never used to be social. You bring out his inner chatterer.”

  “Listening’s part of my job. But with your father, it’s the joy of hearing him reminisce. His knowledge of plants and herbs is a bonus.”

  She poured a small amount of whiskey into his glass, then checked the level and added a splash. Should he have offered to fix drinks? He’d never been good at sexual stereotypes, acting all hunter-gatherer-ish. His dad had always been more of the mom; his best friend, Ally, more of the alpha-male. He wasn’t sure where that left him.

  “How long since you’ve had rain?” he said.

  “About ten weeks. I’ve been a bit distracted recently. Sort of lost track of the days.”

  “Yeah, funny how that happens.”

  She gave him a quizzical look. Her eyes—how had he not noticed before?—were such a deep blue they were almost violet.

  “There you go.” She handed him a glass, and he smiled his thanks.

  Then she turned on her heel and filled her own glass. Neat, no ice, and again, a conservative amount. His dad’s voice intruded into his thoughts: Fill ’er up please, Angel.

  “Do me a favor. Don’t offer my dad a drink.” Now he was being flat-out indiscreet. Did vets have to follow the same code of ethics as doctors?

  “He’s an alcoholic?” She reached up into a cabinet, pulled out a plate and then turned to open the breadbox.

  “Borderline. Possibly. I don’t know. I should have told you when I signed the lease.”

  “And yet you didn’t.”

  “I was worried you’d say no.”

  Cellophane crinkled as Hannah opened a box of crackers and arranged them in a firework burst around the Brie. “Thank you, for being honest. But it wouldn’t have made a difference. I’m a pushover for people who are lost. Metaphorically speaking.”

  Did she mean him or his dad? A whisper in his subconscious said, Tell her about Freddie. She’ll understand. But if he did that, he’d be expanding the parameters of his lie. And even lies needed boundaries. Besides, Hannah would figure out he’d used her and her best friend to perpetuate said lie, which made him a total shithead. A soulless slug. And he could tell himself he didn’t care what Hannah thought, but that would be another lie.

  “Does your dad drink to drown his sorrows?”

  No, I’m the one who does that. “He drinks because he likes alcohol.”

  “Then I don’t see the problem. He’s what—late seventies, eighty? He lost the woman he loves, his memory is failing. And moving is a known trigger for stress. If alcohol allows him an hour or so of escape, where’s the harm?” She handed him the plate. “Could you carry that out for me?”

  “Wow, thanks.”

  “For what?”

  “Making me feel less incompetent. I feel as if I should set ground rules for him. I feel as if—”

  “You should be the parent?”

  “Totally.”

  They walked back outside, onto the porch with a view of the cottage and his dad’s bedroom window.

  He inhaled and held the breath for an impossibly long moment. The air shimmered with dry heat, and a warm wind had picked up. Will shivered. He didn’t like wind any more than he liked cats. Maybe it was growing up listening to the wrath of hurricanes rattling the bones of the forest. Or maybe it was the dread that came whenever his dad was at a gig, and his mom dragged him outside in his pajamas to dance in the lightning. He no longer wore pajamas, and he no longer danced. He’d seen firsthand what happened when you released such energy, such passion.

  Hannah curled up on an old metal rocker that had clearly been refurbished. Will placed the cheese next to her, away from the dogs, and sat on the top of the steps. Away from Hannah.

  “How’s the search coming,” she said, “for a retirement community?”

  “Badly.”

  They had visited only three retirement homes in four days, and the old man had sabotaged the last tour by pinching a nurse’s butt. His dad had never done anything so demeaning before. And now what? He no longer dared leave the old man alone, not since returning from a quick toiletries-purchasing trip to discover the electric kettle warming up on the gas stove. Needed to add buying a replacement kettle to his growing to-do list.

  “Don’t think I’m interfering,” Hannah said, “but can I make a suggestion?”

  Will tugged on his lower lip. A conversation that started with don’t think I’m interfering couldn’t end well. The dog called Daisy joined him, even though she was shaking.

  “Your dad likes Poppy. Poppy likes your dad. And her business, well, it’s not doing so well. And no offense, but you look pretty stressed out while you’re pacing on the porch. I was wondering if you would like some help? If you were willing to hire her, just for a few hours each day, you could get some writing done, visit retirement homes, whatever, and it could work out to everyone’s advantage. I’ve been trying to encourage Poppy to develop an art therapy program—that’s why she was volunteering at Hawk’s Ridge. Maybe your dad could be her guinea pig. What do you think?”

  What did he think? It was as if he’d reached a solid hold on a rock face, a place where he could pause and compose himself.

  “I think you’re amazing,” he said. Then he did something so out of character that he was more surprised than the dogs. He leaped up to hug her. And as he veered toward Hannah, Rosie nipped him in the butt.

  Thirteen

  Hawk’s Ridge was off his radar. Will was done with that place. Done! His dad’s old room was empty except for a bottle of Wild Turkey abandoned, with care, in the middle of the carpet. A small act of rebellion that had given Will real pleasure. The furniture was in storage; his mother’s knickknacks were in his trunk.

  He glanced at the bottle of Bushmills on the passenger seat. Maybe Hannah would stop apologizing once he gave her the gift. Rosie had administered little more than a warning shot. Abused creature she may be, but there was nothing damaged about her canines. He’d felt them up close and personal. If Rosie had wanted to maul his sorry ass to pieces, she would have done so. And if Hannah wanted to invite him over to share the Bushmills, he’d accept. Within less than twenty-four hours, the tightness in his throat—a hybrid of heartburn and slow asphyxiation—had vanished.

  Climbing out of the Prius, Will retrieved the mail. The sales flyer from some chichi lingerie boutique was unexpected, the flyer from Southern States Cooperative about birdseed wasn’t. What a relief to find zip addressed to Will Shepard. On the other hand, no one knew where he was. Even Ally didn’t have the full details. It was as if he was hiding. Maybe he was.

  Poppy had to leave by five, and it was ten till. Perfect. He could give her the money with a passing hi and bye and avoid a second conversation littered with double entendre. This morning’s encounter had been awkward enough.

  Putting Poppy on the Will Shepard payroll would’ve been ideal, but she’d demanded off-the-books cash. Will peered into his wallet. No cash, for real? He never ran out of cash. Ever. Growing up poor meant he always carried at least a hundred dollars in small bills. If nothing else, he kept twenty-five dollars in singles for the homeless guys and the buskers.

  The details of everyday life had been sliding through the cracks. But not anymore. Now that Hannah had given him room to breathe, he was going to pull back and apply the problem-solving skills of climbing to the business of resettling his dad. Tackle a rock face without a strategy and you could drift onto hazardous rocks. Rush, and you could face calamity that proved fatal. And he had been rushing.

  Will looked around, taking his time. The leaves couldn’t be far off their peak, and yet they shriveled and fell without a blaze of color. Only the dogwoods were putting on a display this year. Across the road, a large hand-painted sign dripping fake blood advertised a haunted forest—Two Nights Only! A scarecrow hung nearby lik
e a decapitated body on the gallows. Its pumpkin head lay splattered on the ground.

  The sound of tinkling glass came from his back jean pocket. Had his agent resorted to texting? Will yanked free his iPhone and stared at the screen.

  “At powwow in Pleasant Grove,” he read aloud. “Home @ 6. Dad and Hey You. X”

  Mail scattered to the ground. Somewhere a leaf blower whirred like an oversize dentist’s drill, a harsh, grating screech that made Will grind his teeth.

  Why had he been so cavalier and handed over the care of his dad to strangers? Why had he trusted Hannah? She had no idea what she was getting into, none. He and his father had removed themselves from tribal life for good reason. And this wasn’t a family hoedown. It was a powwow. On tribal lands. Jesus.

  As he bent down to pick up the mail, his left knuckle grazed gravel splattered with fallen dogwood berries—berries the color of fresh blood. He flexed his fingers, itching with the need to restrain someone. Itching with the need to restrain Hannah. And what the hell had happened to Poppy?

  Jumping back into the Prius, he threw the mail aside and snatched at his seat belt.

  The tightness in his throat returned. This was what happened when you reached out to others. You dropped your guard and they blindsided you with do-gooder intentions. Maybe that had been his dad’s philosophy all along with his mom: close ranks against other people’s interference. Will shook back his hair. God save him from the good intentions of others. In fact—the car squealed onto the road—God save him from others.

  * * *

  Stuck doing twenty miles per hour behind a peloton of cyclists pedaling frantically as they hogged the road, Will streamlined his irritation into a plan. Enough hiding out in a rented cottage with his brain-addled father, a pretty holistic vet and a motley bunch of dysfunctional dogs. He was done with this screwed-up version of happy families. And his dad had forfeited the right to call the shots the moment his delinquent behavior had hurled both of their lives into chaos.

  Will passed the tribal sign to the right and pulled into the car park.

  Weren’t the powwows normally in June? And why hold one all the way out here, on the tribal lands? The living village was closer to the interstate—a more logical location. Will was sixteen when the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation had held its first powwow on the old ghost field—before it became the site of the living village. Dancers cooling off in the Eno in buckskins, the crush of people, drums beating—the event had bewitched him with his first taste of family pride. But by the time construction of the village had been finished, and the Occaneechi had won state recognition as North Carolina’s eighth official Indian tribe, his mom had managed to poison even that part of his life.

  He needed to get back to the city, back to deadlines, back to forcing himself to write—write faster, write better, write more. He had become a writer to forget, not to enjoy a lifestyle of bright, shiny things, but his success was the Siamese twin of Agent Dodds’s success. Every Dodds adventure upped Will’s personal stakes, gave him more to lose. And right now, he stood to lose a career ten years in the making. A career that funded two grown men plus a defunct college account.

  Tomorrow he would start preparing for the reality of moving his dad to New York, even if that involved doping him with tranquilizers, strapping him into the Prius and making a getaway across state lines. Because really—Will slammed the car door and stomped across the field—enough was enough.

  See Will run. All the way back to New York.

  Drums. He slowed his pace. The beat of drums pounded up through the earth, through the flattened grass, through the soles of his Converse and into his calf muscles. The drums tugged at him, calling him to dance.

  No. He wasn’t being pulled back to a life of poverty and mental illness, a life of being trapped between two worlds and not belonging to either. Not belonging to the tribe because he looked so all-white American. Not belonging at school because he wasn’t a jock: he was a writer. The small kid in kindergarten whose only friend was a girl; the high schooler with the crazy parent. The first-year college student with the white-trash mom who made a spectacle of herself at his last powwow, throwing it around like a whore.

  She should have been watching from her lawn chair, tapping her foot, keeping company with all the other nonnative spectators. But his mom? Sit on the sidelines when she could have been kicking up her heels like a middle-aged Rockette? No, his mom had jumped up, burst into the circle of dancers and decided to strip.

  Who would have blamed his dad for throwing her out after that? But the old man had calmly wrapped a blanket around her shoulders, and guided her, as if she were an invalid, back to the truck. His mom had fought to begin with, ensuring the Shepard family held center stage among the tourists out for an afternoon of entertainment: normal families who wanted to admire the costumes and the dancing, peruse the stalls and buy trinkets. Instead, they got to participate in the theater that was his nuclear family. But it wasn’t only strangers who’d witnessed her behavior—it was also a bunch of students Will had corralled into volunteering on the construction of the Occaneechi village. New friends from his new, untarnished college life.

  That was the final blow, the one that made forgiveness impossible. His dad had chosen to stay with her; Will had chosen not to.

  Memories stacked up here like unopened parcels marked Return to Sender: his mom ripping off her shirt; the bra—old, graying, since everything that started out white ended up gray in their house; her pale stomach and protruding ribs. Her diet was liquid by then and she was borderline anorexic. Maybe she was anorexic—something else that went undiagnosed.

  They had to get away from this place before the old man confronted the same memory and recalled his wife acting like a pole dancer in a strip joint.

  Legs shaking, Will pushed through the crowds gathered around the stalls, through the heavy smell of fried food and sage, through the master of ceremonies’s voice, the singing, the jingling of bells and the drumming. Always the drumming. Who’s your people, boy? Who’s your people?

  “Willie! Is that you? It is! How’ve you been?” His father’s second cousin once removed tugged Will into a hug.

  “Good, sir.” Lying really did improve with practice.

  “Look at you! You gonna come dance? Your daddy, he’s been having a fine old time. He got to see my grandson, Little Wolf. He’s fourteen now. Reminds me of you the way he can dance! I’ll never forget our first powwow with you in your regalia. All the girls, they were fainting at the sight of you with that long blond hair. Cut your hair, I see. How old were you back then? Sixteen, seventeen?”

  “About that, sir.” Will didn’t remember any girls except for the one he’d failed to impress.

  “Your mama, she was something that day. Your mama, she was—”

  Crazy. Will waited for him to say crazy.

  “Such a beauty. Voice like honey.”

  Seriously? That was what Uncle Stephen remembered about his mom, or was he going senile, too? Granted, the tribe’s first powwow was not the one where she’d flaunted her lap-dancing skills and her total disrespect for the ceremony. No, that had come three years later, but even so it was a memory to erase all others.

  “Why didn’t you tell us you’d come home?”

  The drums continued to echo through his skin, through his muscles, through his blood. Calling him to dance.

  Uncle Stephen smiled the enigmatic smile he’d always had, the one that said, Boy, I know where you’re coming from. Then he brushed back his hair and pushed on his marine corps baseball cap. “I reckon it’s time for the Veterans’ Song. Your daddy, he’s over on the other side with the purtiest young lady I’ve seen in years. Can’t decide if he’s keeping his eye on the fry bread in the food trailer or on her. She your lady friend? Mighty fetchin’. Almost as fine as your mama.”

  Could people not forg
et that he was related to his mother? He’d certainly tried hard enough.

  “No, sir. She’s our landlady.”

  “She have anywhere else to rent?” Uncle Stephen guffawed. “Don’t be a stranger, you hear me, Willie?”

  “I hear you, sir.”

  The drumbeat grew stronger, and the smell of sage was thicker now, making Will’s head swirl. A white hawk screeched and dipped down into the middle of the dance circle. Color and sound swirled. The bells on the Head Lady’s dress jingled. Her long black hair was braided to her waist, just as his mom’s had been. His mom’s hair was dirty blond, same as his, but she always wore it braided. She had no family history of her own, so she’d co-opted his dad’s. Stolen it and wrecked it.

  Half of him screamed to leave; half of him—the half he’d long denied—pleaded to stay. And nowhere could he see Hannah or his dad. How hard could it be to find a tall man with a shock of white hair pulled back in a leather thong?

  “Willie!” His dad spotted him first. “You got our text, then?”

  His dad was with Poppy. Where was Hannah?

  Poppy walked toward him with a broad smile. She didn’t even have the decency to blush. “I’m teaching your dad to text,” she said.

  “I’m amazed he can see anything as small as a phone keyboard since he isn’t wearing his glasses again.”

  “Oh, Hannah lent him her reading glasses,” Poppy said.

  “I thought you had to be home by five-thirty.”

  “Plans change.” Poppy gave Will a blatant once-over.

  “And where’s Hannah, other than avoiding my wrath?”

  Poppy laughed. Yeah, he had that effect on people when he tried out anger. Like an invisible member of the chorus line, he wasn’t cut out for front-row emotions.

  “Let me get this right—you’re pissed because we’re giving you a break and enjoying an afternoon out with your dad? And by the way, this was my idea. Not Hannah’s.”