Distant Blood

by Jeff Abbott

  “And my father. My—other father,” I interjected quickly. My real father, I'd nearly said, and bit the words off just in time. But the reality was, as far as the dictates of biology went, Bob Don had claim to that particular title.

  He lowered his arm. “Yes, of course. You've got his kind streak. Most of the time.” He sat down and began to slice into his steak. “Sit down and eat, Jordan, before your supper gets cold.”

  I took an uncomfortable seat. I was evading his demand, but he had neatly skipped past my question. I considered telling him about the cards, but knowing Bob Don, he would have insisted I stay put and out of any potential harm's way. I wasn't about to be skittered off by a sick threat. My own curiosity gnawed at me as to why someone was going to such careful trouble to frighten me off the family tree. If I pressed him for details on who in the family might be dangerous, I might need a reason to justify my queries. For now, I decided to keep my own counsel.

  We ate in silence. The meat was meltingly tender, the potato creamily smooth and peppery, the salad crisp, but it all tasted like cardboard in my mouth. My bones felt like they were trembling inside the bag of my skin. I had been avoiding publicly acknowledging Bob Don for over a year, and he was going to force the issue. No pun intended.

  I chewed a chunk of meat, my appetite fading. Why wasn't I ready? I snuck a glance at him, scooping out the buttery innards of his baked potato.

  Because he wasn't my daddy. He was a nice man, a kind fellow with a big heart, but he wasn't the man who raised me and taught me and spanked me when I deserved it and hugged me when I didn't. He wasn't Lloyd Poteet, and he could never be. You cannot erase twenty-odd years of fatherhood with an announcement of true paternity. You can't push your daddy's memory deeper into the grave by turning to all folks you know and saying, “This man is my real father.” It's not possible. If our hearts are homes, some rooms can't be rented out once the occupant dies.

  Thankfully, Bob Don abandoned the subject and we ate the rest of our meal with the drone of the baseball game on the radio as our companion. We drank beer and we talked of the weather. He did not tell me family stories and I did not ask him to. He did not mention again that I was his child. He exhausted his collection of Aggie jokes and I made myself laugh through them all. But I felt a creeping, unfamiliar misery nestle in my chest.

  I was saying goodbye to him in the den when Gretchen returned from visiting her aunt.

  “Hello, hello,” she chimed as she came through the kitchen door. She gave her husband a cheek kiss and favored me with her uncertain smile. I've sometimes wondered if the long years of drunkenness wiped the memory of how to truly smile from Gretchen's mind. Her grin is half grimace and it never settles correctly into her face. “Did you boys enjoy y'all's dinner?”

  “Yes, it was great,” I croaked, coughing for no reason. We made an odd tableau in this den: the very scene where a wasted Gretchen had brayed out her hatred of me, blaming me for her long years of inebriation, and finally the truth that I was Bob Don's bastard. His precious bastard. The times I came to this house, we did not linger in this room, as though its walls still held the faintest stain from her venom. It was still the spot on earth where my world unraveled for all time.

  “Did you have a nice visit with your aunt?” I asked her.

  She blinked at my inquiry—kindness from me was suspicious. “Yes, we did. Poor old aunt's not getting younger. But it was nice to see her.” She patted Bob Don's arm and I saw genuine affection light her face.

  “I'll be going, then. Thanks for the dinner, Bob Don.” I feared for one long, unmerciful moment that he was going to mention his desire to claim me as his son; surely he had discussed this with Gretchen. Hadn't he?

  He simply shook my hand. “You're still planning on coming to the reunion, aren't you?”

  “Of course,” I assured him. I saw the corners of Gretchen's eyes crinkle in consternation, then her smile— her offish, odd smile—slid into uneasy place on her face.

  I wished them good night and drove home, peering into the rural darkness. A blanket of stars unfurled above my head as a wall of clouds pushed onward toward the Gulf, clearing the sky of its low haze.

  Gretchen hated me—or at least she had once. Could she be behind the cards? If I never became a part of Bob Don's family, I could not trespass on her territory. I imagined her hands smearing blood across a card, razoring a printed face, pasting letters with malice.

  It scared me that I could easily see her hands busy with such work.

  Two days before the reunion.

  “I'd really prefer you not go,” I murmured into the soft spill of Candace's hair. She smelled of flowers, and of lime from the ceviche she made for dinner. Moonlight played along our bare bodies as we cuddled in bed.

  “Why don't you want me there?” Her tone was measured, which meant I might be in trouble.

  “Because it's going to be complicated enough, sweetheart. I think I need to face the Goertzes on my own.” I fib best when not having to look directly into Candace's face, and I examined the top of her head with intense concentration. As if knowing my thoughts, she shifted in my arms to turn her blue eyes straight on my face. I hazarded a smile.

  “Is that it?”

  “Yeah.” I kissed the top of her forehead. I could hardly say, I'm getting vicious hate mail from someone in the family who doesn't want me around. And I don't want you to be in danger. So stay home. That wouldn't work— Candace would be bodyguarding my butt all the way to Uncle Mutt's island.

  “Strikes me as odd,” she mumbled against the tender flesh of my throat, “that you don't want to acknowledge Bob Don as your daddy, yet you're bound and determined to go to this reunion. Meet his family, let them meet you. If that's not acknowledgment, I don't know what is.”

  I swallowed as she began to play her fingers through my hair. Her other hand began a slow exploration of my chest, grazing a nipple and sending a shiver through me. I didn't speak. “So what's up, Jordan? I suspect you're not telling total truth here.”

  “Listen, darling, it's nothing to be concerned over, I just think it might be best if you didn't go.”

  She ran her fingernails across my chest, in a sensual tippy-toe that left me holding my breath. She lingered near the nipple again, and grabbed with sudden force. I winced.

  “Honesty time, hon. What's going on?”

  I pried her hand off from its death grip. She kissed me quickly in apology. So I told her about the cards.

  “Sweet God.” She sat up in bed. “That's a crime, Jordan. We're calling the police.”

  I touched her shoulder. “No, we're not. I don't want Bob Don to know about this.”

  “Let me see these cards,” Candace demanded. I retrieved them from their hiding place, and carefully using a cloth, she read them. She stared at the bloodstained greeting card with disgust, and shook her head at the mutilated model.

  “This is god-awful sick,” she finally murmured. “And just why the hell weren't you going to share this problem?”

  “I knew you'd freak. And I didn't want you to worry. Now you see why I don't want you to come—”

  “And why do you want to go?” she demanded. “Why put yourself in danger, babe? If you don't want Bob Don for a father—and you can't seem to decide—” She ended in a shrug and gestured at the hate mail. “Why not stay away from this—this—psychopath?”

  “I don't scare easy,” I said with a bravado I didn't feel, “and I'm not going to be warned off by idiotic pranks like these cards. I want to know why now—why is someone so determined to keep me from the reunion? Why?”

  “Curiosity may kill more than cats,” she cautioned. “If you're going, I'm going with you. You'll need someone to watch your back.”

  “You sound like a bad cop show.”

  “I'm not joking, Jordan. I'm not letting anyone hurt a hair on your head.”

  I blushed at the intensity of her words, which was somehow more revealing than our casual nakedness in bed. And I knew better than
to argue. “Okay, fine. As long as you stay out of trouble.” My blood ran cold at the thought of Candace near anyone who could send such missives, but we'd moved past the point of debate—I saw the stony set of determination in her face. “And not a word to Bob Don. I have my own plan for dealing with this sicko.”

  “Tell me,” she murmured.

  So I did.

  I WONDERED IF ANY PASSING MOTORISTS WOULD render aid if I leaned out the car door window and screamed.

  “—and that's when I decided Sass and I would not only be sisters-in-law, but be best friends,” Gretchen continued. “She was just so kind to me, and chock-full of marital advice when Bob Don and I got hitched.”

  “Lord knows she should have been,” Bob Don muttered. “Sass'd been married often enough. I half thought she was gunning for the world record for times down the aisle.” Even his normally jovial temper seemed strained by the long drive.

  It was not an auspicious start to our family reunion. Mostly in that I did not want to be reunited anytime soon with my loved ones in this car, much less make the acquaintance of a whole passel of new kinfolks. For all his enthusiasm for this trip, Bob Don seemed itchy. Gretchen's paean to his family irritated him, and he'd snapped more than once at his wife. Candace was strangely quiet, offering no relief from the ongoing Gretchen monologue. Gretchen appeared determined to sparkle all the way to Uncle Mutt's home. Not even the stars in the sky glitter quite that long.

  I don't mean to complain. Honestly. But my stomach had started roiling at the idea of being introduced to a bunch of complete strangers (although they were technically blood kin) and tension gripped my limbs. I wanted Bob Don's family to like me and accept me—but at the same time I wanted not to care about their reactions to me. I tried not to reflect overmuch that at least one of them seemed inordinately displeased that a stray sperm of Bob Don's had ended up sentient, blond, and breathing.

  A final card had arrived the day before, a last-ditch effort to avert my arrival at Uncle Mutt's. I had not even shown this one to Candace; it would have scared the bejesus out of her. At the moment the card lay safely contained in a bag in my suitcase, along with its fellow couriers of hate. I could nearly imagine a faint throb of evil emanating from the car trunk, like a telltale heart.

  The card's designer had intended comfort; the front of the greeting, in flowery script, said IN DEEPEST SYMPATHY. Open it and you saw the rest of the sentence, hacked from magazine letters:

  FOR YOUR IMPENDING DEATH

  YOU'RE NOT ONE OF US

  WE'LL MOURN ONLY A MOMENT

  I wish I could say a cold shiver raced through me when I read those words; it seems the normal reaction, and I pray for normality in my life. But at this last, most bitter missive, I felt only a numb disbelief that someone hated me so. What crime had I committed, aside from the accident of my birth? (A crime I could hardly be judged and hanged for.) I'd spent the rest of the day in a quiet funk.

  I had not rallied for this morning's drive to the coast. Bob Don's sudden silence, Candace's odd detachment, and Gretchen's prattling hadn't improved my mood. She rarely veered from discussion of her sister-in-law and she made no useful announcement, like “How's Cousin Herbert enjoying life outside the insane asylum?” If I wanted to identify my torturer, I would have to play investigator. Again. And people believe I go looking for trouble?

  The landscape unfolded past us as the Cadillac raced toward the coast. The gently rolling hills of pastureland fenced in idle herds of Red Brangus and Santa Gertrudis cattle, grazing in the heat. We stopped at the brown-mustard-colored grocery store in tiny Swiss Alp for Dr Peppers. We arrowed through the heart of Czech Texas. In Schulenberg and Hallettsville I saw bumper stickers written in Czech next to bumper stickers that advised me to love or leave America. We headed south on Highway 77, and as we approached Victoria the pasturelands gave way to the flatness of the coastal plain. In Victoria, an old Texas town that seems to have every new fast-food restaurant imaginable, we turned south onto Highway 87, bulleting through small towns like Placedo and Kamey. As we continued through Calhoun County one side of the road seemed thick with an unfurled skein of bush that never quite ended; the other side of the road was charcoal dark farm soil. An empty railroad track ran parallel to the road, as if from a forgotten time. Oil pumps, the eternal symbol of Texas, moved in languorous thrusts near the road. The July air grew perceptibly denser with humidity as we headed south.

  Port Lavaca, which guarded Lavaca Bay and its bigger parent, Matagorda Bay, came up quickly, a sleepy, salty hamlet. Port Lavaca works too hard to be a pretty town; most of the businesses seemed industrial, the eateries cheap, and old, hand-painted signs for last winter's local elections still stood in forlorn disuse. Bob Don insisted on stopping at a colorfully painted Mexican restaurant that looked like a botulism testing site but had marvelous home-style food, prepared by a chattering grandmother who scolded Bob Don in Spanish for not visiting more often. After our meal, we drove further out on the jutting chunk of Calhoun County and headed down Highway 1289 toward Port O'Connor. The land here was hardly coastal looking—tilled flatland, tall grass, horses and cattle grazing, profusions of thick bush. I rolled down the window and could smell the barest tinge of salt. We drove over marshy areas, with signs that said NO FISHING FROM BRIDGE. Old men and boys, black and white and brown, sat inches from the sign, watching their lines dangle in the water with the patience of statues. They did not even look up as the Cadillac rumbled past.

  Fishing is the main reason for Port O'Connor's existence (aside from target practice for hurricanes—Carla nearly destroyed it in 1961). Every other billboard seemed to advertise the county's best fishing guide or a boat stall for cheap rent.

  “We'll do some fishing,” Bob Don promised me. Of course, I thought, that's what fathers and sons do.

  He pulled into Port O'Connor proper, stopping near the main beach—a very narrow one—and pulling into a small but well-kept driveway for a little cottage. The other homes around it looked full of vacationing families.

  I craned my neck out the window to see the brackish, greenish water of Matagorda Bay. Gulls swooped above the beach as screaming children hurled bread in the air in delight. The birds were white-breasted and gray-winged. A cloud of them cawed and wheeled as two children further down the beach lured them with new treats. A sailboat plied past and I saw a pretty girl in a bikini lean against the boat's railing as though she were unimaginably bored.

  “I'll fetch Rufus,” Bob Don grumbled, opening the car door and slamming it shut with extra effort. He stormed toward the cottage. Gretchen was firmly locked in I'm trying my best mode and she pivoted toward the backseat with a frighteningly energetic smile.

  “Y'all are just going to love Sass!” she assured us for the nth time.

  “I love her already.” I smiled through clenched teeth.

  “Jordy,” Candace admonished me. She patted the back of Gretchen's beringed hand. “I'm sure that we'll all get along like houses afire.”

  “I'm so excited. They don't know about my recovery. At least, Bob Don hasn't said anything to them about it.” Gretchen lowered the vanity mirror and, after rummaging in her purse, primped with powder and lipstick.

  I watched the back of her permed gray hair as she ministered to herself. The hardness of my heart toward her softened a bit. I won't pretend that Gretchen and I have had an easy relationship. And I couldn't easily drop my suspicion of her. She was the one who'd viciously and drunkenly informed me of my parentage during one of her binges. She'd also gotten involved in a pathetic scheme to ruin my reputation, which I could have sued the hell out of her for, but had never mentioned again, out of consideration for Bob Don. Since she'd come to work for me at the library as a volunteer (Bob Don's idea, certainly not mine), we'd made forays into healing the breaches between us. She'd sobered up. I tried not to step on her toes too much in developing a relationship with my new father. But she resented me and I resented her, and the process of learning kindness toward each oth
er was slow and difficult, like wading through beachside rocks without turning an ankle. Nothing said I ever had to like or love Gretchen—those were emotions I found it impossible to associate with her—but civility, for Bob Don's sake, was a reachable goal. As long as she had no role in sending me hate mail, we could get along fine.

  “Gretchen,” Candace said softly, “you look fine. Don't worry so much about powdering your face. You look pretty.” I wasn't the only one making an effort to be kind.

  “Why, thank you, Candace sweetie.” Gretchen smacked her lips together once to even her lipstick. “I know a young lady like you—someone from a more refined background— is going to appreciate the Goertzes.”

  I chose not to take that comment as a slam toward me, but as more of Gretchen's interminable butt-kissing. Candace doesn't need to worry about money, so she's higher on the food chain than I can ever hope to evolve. Unless I win the lottery.

  Gretchen snapped the mirror back into place with an authoritative air. “Candace, I'm so glad you're here. You can show Jordy the ropes of dealing with quality people.”

  I saw Candace tug at her top lip with her pearly front teeth, quelling a rejoinder. I operated under no such restrictions.

  “Thank you, Gretchen, but I know which fork to use. I'll manage just fine around people with nicknames like Sass and Mutt.” Not a worthy kindness, but I was on edge and not feeling charitable.

  “See that you do, Jordan. I know that Bob Don thinks you poop French vanilla ice cream, but I know how sharp-tongued and boorish you can be. It's not classy, and I don't want you to embarrass him in any way.”

  “If he was ashamed of me, Gretchen, he wouldn't have begged me to come.”

  “He didn't want your feelings hurt, Jordy. I'm sorry to tell you that, but how would you have felt if you knew he'd gone off to a family reunion and not included you?”

  “Just fine,” I retorted, but I didn't elaborate. How would I have reacted? I had been the one keeping Bob Don at an arm's length, not publicly acknowledging him as my father in our hometown, politely accepting his help and his money with my mother's nursing and his business advice with our new horse farm. He'd been longing for decades to be a father to me, loving me from afar, keeping his pride for me locked firmly away in his heart. He'd given me the key and I'd yet to use it.