“He should have gone to prison. I’d like to know where he is. Is Jesse James his real name or are you making that up so I can’t find him?”
“That’s the name we knew him by.”
“Can I go with you tomorrow?”
“I don’t think …yes, if you want to. I have to be at Brownie’s at 8:00 in the morning.”
******
If Brownie was surprised to see Peter with his mother he kept it to himself. The ride to Rutland was uneventful and cold. Brownie drove his old El Camino truck with lap seat belts that were after market add-ons. The one in the middle, where Peter sat, was long enough for a sack of groceries, but not for a grown person. Peter had to suck in his tummy to get it to clasp shut. The heater worked, but the floor was rusted away from years on Vermont’s salted winter roads, and it was no match for the cold air that entered from the holes below their feet. Peter and Margie hugged themselves around their coats and pumped their feet to keep from freezing. Brownie was wearing his moon boots, thermal long johns under his twill trousers, and flannel shirt and his ski parka. He said his hands were cold under his gloves. Margie was wishing she’d asked Sam. The station wagon was on its first winter in Vermont and still had a floor as well as a heater that worked. Of course, then she felt guilty for the thought and thanked Brownie once again for his trouble.
By the time they’d parked the truck and walked to the hospital lobby it was 9:00. Brownie and Peter waited in the ICU Visitor’s Room while Margie ventured in to see her mother. It was a semi-private room but one of the beds was empty. A gray haired man, asleep and lightly snoring, was sitting in a chair close to the occupied bed. The patient, with clear plastic tubes hanging from poles and plugged into needles entering her left hand, was awake. More plastic tubing was plugged in each nostril. Oxygen, Margie thought. The woman’s face was gaunt, her cheekbones looked as though they would poke through her tissue-like skin if touched. Her hands were ropy with large blue veins. Mary Merryhill Bennet was fifty-five. Margie thought she must have got the room number wrong. This poor creature had to be in her seventies. Margie reluctantly turned her head to the empty bed. Was this the right room but she too late?
“You came, oh Margie,” the woman said. Her voice was small and phlegmy. She opened a hand in greeting. Margie cleared her own throat and put her hand in the woman’s before she spoke.
“Hello.” Could it be? Someone once so pretty, so vivacious, diminished to such a drastic degree?
The man awoke with a start and looked around as if to get his bearings. “You must be Margie,” he said. “I’m Bobby Bennett, your mother’s husband.” He gave her left hand a squeeze. Margie’s right hand was still enclosed in her mother’s.
Bobby stood up, went to the window and opened the drape. The dark room brightened with sunlight. Now Margie could see the yellow cast of her mother’s complexion.
“Tell me about you. How is your son, Peter? Are you married? What are you doing with your life? I’m starving to hear your voice,” Mary said, her breath labored.
Margie told her what little there was to tell, then asked if she wanted to meet her grandson. She did.
******
Margie entered the waiting room and motioned to Peter. He followed his mother down a long hall. He wondered what this grandmother that he’d never met would think of him. He was suddenly embarrassed about the crowded teeth that didn’t fit into his smile and promised himself he would keep his mouth shut.
Upon their entrance he too was greeted with the open hand impaled with tubes. He touched his fingertips lightly to his grandmother’s palm then pocketed his hand as if he didn’t know what else to do. “Did you know my father?” he blurted, his “mouth shut” promise to himself forgotten.
“Yes …” she answered.
“Do you know where he lives now?”
Mary’s eyes searched out Margie. It was obvious she wasn’t sure how to answer.
“I know the truth,” Peter said, “Do you know where he lives?”
Margie kept quiet. Surely her mother would say she didn’t know.
“Ludlow, I guess. The last I heard he was still living in Ludlow.”
“Thanks, Grandma,” Peter said, and for the first time that day he smiled.
******
Peter was never going to talk to Sam Gear again. He wasn’t angry exactly. After all, he had no call to be angry. He guessed he was feeling sorry for himself. He started down the hill on the way to the drug store Tuesday afternoon and saw smoke curling up from the shed behind the Gear house. Changing his mind he turned direction. He knocked then entered and wandered around the shed in silence while Sam, after a “Good morning,” cleaned up tools and put them away.
“I look like you,” Peter blurted finally. His face was turned away from Sam and he pretended to study a calendar nailed to the wall. “You notice the resemblance?”
Sam thought about his answer before he spoke, afraid his first reaction would be hurtful. Peter did not look anything like Sam, unless a young Elvis Presley with two sets of teeth looked like Garth Brooks with one. No, Sam and Peter could not have looked more unrelated if Hollywood had had a hand in picking them.
“I’m not your dad, Peter,” Sam said as he turned from his puttering to look at Peter who was still staring at the calendar, or the wall, or nothing.
“I know that. I was just fooling around.” Peter turned to face Sam. “When did you say you were leaving? Saturday?” His voice wavered, but he managed dry eyes.
“I’m going to miss you, Peter. Listen, I’ll be visiting often and calling. I’ll give you my phone number and a calling card before I leave. You can call me anytime for any reason.” Sam put his arms around Peter and hugged him. Peter stood like a statue, but allowed the hug.
“Well, guess I better get on down to work,” Peter said stepping back from Sam. “If I don’t see you before you leave, have a safe trip.” He was out the door and running down the hill, before Sam could think of anything more to say.
CHAPTER XX
Peter liked to think of himself as fiercely independent. None of his classmates had jobs other than James with a newspaper route and Quince Summer whose father employed him at the lumber mill. Jobs were hard enough to find for adults, let alone kids. Still, he couldn’t to do this by himself and the only person in the world who might consider helping him was Piccolo. He arrived at the school yard early Wednesday morning and walked to the smoking area where Joe usually hung out. He spotted him leaning against the brick, clustered with a motley group of non-athlete students, a cigarette hanging from his lips.
“Hey, Piccolo,” he said approaching with his shoulders bunched against the frosty weather. “Can I talk to you a minute?”
Joe shrugged, took a drag, blew out a cloud, and eyed Peter with a look of bored attention.
“It’s private,” Peter said, “Can we walk?”
“Later,” Piccolo told the group and followed Peter toward the parking lot.
“I need to find a guy,” Peter said as they started away.
“Yeah?”
“I believe he lives in Ludlow. If I can get an address, can you get us there?”
“Dunno. This got anything to do with the pharmacy?”
“No. Nothing like that. Just somebody I got to find for personal reasons.”
“Michelson boys got pretty personal. You havin’ trouble with drugs again?”
“It ain’t that. Look, it’s something I have to do and I can’t let anyone know I’m doing it, see?”
Piccolo stopped walking, looked Peter up and down, threw his cigarette butt on the pavement and ground it with the toe of his shoe. “Think I better know the reason. Sheriff’s panting to find cause to lock up my ass. I ain’t looking to give him it.”
“It’s a secret, Joe. I don’t want it … you know, out.”
Piccolo shrugged again, eyed Peter, stood his ground and waited.
“I think my father is alive and I think he lives in Ludlow. I need to find him.” Peter’
s lips trembled; he shifted from leaning left to leaning right, his legs turning to mush. His gaze was on his feet. It was warmer today, nearly thirty-five degrees, and Peter was suddenly burning up.
“When do you want to go?”
“Tomorrow?”
“Can’t tomorrow. Friday, two-thirty, meet you in front of the post office.” With that Piccolo turned and left Peter standing in the parking lot.
******
Sam faxed the project report Mike West requested Wednesday morning from the Chart House. He had tried to e-mail it from his laptop but couldn’t get his wireless connection to work from the house. In the business of making maps, the Chart House was a mainstay for the past one hundred fifty-odd years in the small town of Green Mountain. Still owned and operated by the Johnson family, the tiny building housed an enterprise that created and shipped maps around the world. Sam’s sister, Rita, had worked here on Saturdays during her senior year at Green Mountain. The young woman helping Sam today reminded him of Rita. He needed to call her; tell her the news about Brownie and their mom. Surely Allison would call her, ask her to be in the wedding. He was long gone and living in North Carolina when that part of his family fell apart. He wondered if Rita could remember better than he what the final straw had been in her case.
It was twenty-five degrees and Sam decided he was insane for having walked the blocks to the map house even though it was such a short distance. He clapped his mittens together, then cupped his frozen nose and stomped his feet on the sidewalk outside the diner. He needed a cup of coffee and told himself he had as much right as anyone to get one. But he hesitated, aware that she didn’t want to see him. That, he should leave town quietly and let her and Peter forget he existed. They’d be well over him by the time he returned for his mother’s wedding some eight months away.
“Whatcha hangin’ around out here fer?” Amos Piccolo wanted to know. “Come have a cup with me. Any truth in that rumor ’bout you bein’ Petey’s dad?” He’d crossed the street from the Post Office and came up behind Sam just as he had about decided to walk on home.
Sam followed Amos into the diner and sat on a stool at the counter. “No. I’m sad to say it isn’t true, Amos. I’d be proud to be that boy’s dad, though.”
“Yeah? Well, too bad. Town thought they was off the hook of worrying ‘bout the two of them.”
Sam didn’t imagine Amos spent much of his time in that regard, but who knew what really went on in his neighbors’ heads. “How’s your wife doing these days, Amos?”
“Dunno. She’s up in Oregon with her sister. Been gone near two weeks now. She rings the girl and talks some, but nobody tells me nothin’.”
The girl was Amos’ daughter, Angela, two years younger than Joe and the girl Peter had on the back of the snowmobile the night of the bonfire. She had dark hair and was slim like Joe, but luckily had her mother’s features. A pretty girl, and tall, Sam remembered.
Hannah walked up to the counter. “What can I do you for you, gentlemen?” she asked.
“Cuppa,” Amos said.
Sam shrugged. Hannah poured out two mugs of coffee. “Anything else?” she said in a clipped voice, not Hannah’s usual demeanor.
“Thanks,” Sam said.
“Go away,” Amos said with a flittering gesture of his hand at her.
“My Joe is involved somehow with Peter and I want to know what’s going on,” Amos said.
Sam did a double take. “What? Tell me again?” he asked the old-looking guy sitting next to him.
“I want to know what the hell is going on between my son and yours,” he said. “Is that plain enough?” He looked up at Sam and Sam wondered how Amos’ attitude and his eyes could have changed in the few minutes from entering the diner to now. No drugs or alcohol could possibly be involved. The guy was nuts. Plain and simple.
“Amos, Peter is not my son, and as far as I know, friendship is going on.”
“Friends? Joe and Peter are friends?” Amos stared at his cup, lifted it to his mouth and put it back down on the counter. “Hannah, is Margie back there cooking?”
“She is. Fixing supper.” Hannah gave Sam a look, made her eyes open wide, and skewed her head. “What you want, Amos?”
“To talk to her,” he said too loud. “What else?”
Hannah pushed through the swinging doors to Margie’s domain. “Amos’s out there causing a ruckus. Askin’ for you.”
Margie came out wiping her hands on her apron, her eyes darting from Sam to Amos. “You want to talk to me, Amos?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Sam tells me Peter and Joe are friends. That a fact?”
“I believe they are,” Margie said.
“Okay then. Okay.” Amos sat back on the stool, leaning further than sensible, and nodded his head. “Okay,” he said again. He finished his coffee, shook Sam’s hand without another word and left the diner. Sam took a deep breath, ran a hand across his forehead as if that would erase the bizarre behavior that just transpired, and hopped off his stool to leave.
“Ring me up,” he told Hannah who was still staring after Amos’ exit.
“You paying for him?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
Sam watched Margie out of the corner of his eye. She hadn’t made eye contact, acted like she hadn’t seen him at all. He was already gone. Well, okay. No clinging vine here. More like who gives a shit? Jesus Christ, he felt bad.
******
Peter buckled himself into the pickup truck. Joe Piccolo juggled the stick into reverse, changed gears and out of the Post Office parking lot they cruised. Peter had looked up the name in the Ludlow phone book at school and found an address for a Jesse James.
“Do you like Lisa Heathro?” Peter asked Joey out of the blue.
“What’s to like?” Joe answered.
“She says you’re a couple. Thought you should know,” Peter said. “Thought she might be lying.”
When Joe made no comment, Peter asked, “You like her?”
Joe shrugged his shoulders. “She’s okay,” he said.
“Really?” Peter was flabbergasted. Lisa really was knock-out gorgeous. Joe was Joe. Dark, tall and thin with a knife for a nose. He dressed in clothes that looked to be Salvation Army rejects, and his hair was long and unkempt. Joe and Lisa—“Beauty and the Beast.”
“What, really?” Joe said. “She’s Angie’s friend so I’m civil.” A rare grin slid up one side of Joe’s mouth. “I may have kissed her once.” The grin disappeared. “So what?”
“So, she acts like you’re engaged, or something.”
“Depends on your definition of engaged,” Joe said.
“What’s your definition?” Peter countered.
“We’re not engaged in any definition,” Joe said.
Peter decided Joe was ending the conversation and knew he should drop the subject, but couldn’t resist asking, “Have you ever had sex?”
“With Lisa?” Joe looked at Peter. “If I had, I wouldn’t tell you.”
“I meant with anyone? Just have you?”
“Maybe.”
Peter had learned that Joe’s maybes were yeses, but that no details would be forthcoming. Still, Peter couldn’t help himself.
“Was it great?”
“So-so.”
Exhilarated that Joe was still talking to him, Peter pushed on. “You ever smoke weed?”
“Gives me a bitch of a headache,” Joe said.
“Who’d you have sex with?” Peter was on a roll. Couldn’t stop now.
“Can’t tell ya.”
Afraid he was crossing the line with Joe, who must be his best if unlikely friend, Peter said, “If I’m asking too many questions, just tell me to shut up.”
Joe eyed him but didn’t say anything. Peter remembered a rumor circulating school last year linking Joe and a teacher.
“That rumor about you and Miss Tilly—true?”
“Shut up,” Joe said.
Peter didn’t know a whole lot about Miss Tilly. She was new to Green M
ountain last year. Young as far as high school teachers went, maybe twenty-four or so. Peter thought she was pretty plain looking, homely even, like his mother. She was single, taught English Literature. She hadn’t taught any of his classes yet, but she had a reputation of being a “motivational and gifted teacher” as well as the other reputation. The “other” might not have reached the ears of faculty. It was hard to tell in Green Mountain. The debris brushed under the Green Mountain Town carpet could fill a landfill.
Peter tried to envision Joe with the prim, spinster-like Miss Tilly, but the vision refused to materialize.
“You have Miss Tilly in any of your classes this year?” Peter asked.
“You writing a book, Merryhill?”
“Sorry.”
******
Twenty minutes later they were seated outside a motel that advertised rental units by the month. The units were free standing huts that had seen better days. Actually, Peter thought they looked like condemned shacks—some of the hovels had boards where the windows used to be. Peter walked to the slightly larger one marked “Office” but his knock went unanswered. The whole place had a deserted look—weeds peeking out from the hills of snow piled around by a plow; a lone, rusting, pickup truck missing two tires; dead silence. Not one of the units had telltale smoke from a fireplace, or whir from a heater to tell of a living soul. No smell of cooking, only a hint of sewer. Peter walked to the idling pickup where Joe waited.
“Looks deserted except it’s plowed.”
Joe turned off the engine and stepped out of the truck. “Let’s try knocking on doors.”
They knocked on each of the ten units. Not a sound emanated from any of them. Back in the truck Peter thought he saw a curtain move in the window of the entity next to the office. He nudged Piccolo’s shoulder and pointed. They both saw the opening in the dingy drape that was not there when they knocked. Peter walked back to the tiny house. “I’m trying to locate my father,” he yelled at the door. “Can you help me, please?” The opening in the curtain closed. Peter waited a minute before he yelled his request again then banged. Finally, he heard a sound and leaned his ear against the wood.
Learning to Live Again Page 16