—
About a month later, my daughter, who was home from the little college two towns over, we call her Bunny, was reading the newspaper at breakfast. Her habit was to scan the police reports to see if any of her old high school chums had been picked up for DWI or speeding. “Uh-oh,” she said, drawing the paper close to her face.
“Uh-oh, what?” her mom asked.
“Dad’s buddy Jack got arrested for underage possession of alcohol.”
“What do you mean, my buddy?” Bunny’s gonna make a hell of a sadistic wife someday. “Where’s it say that?”
“Right there in the paper.”
I took it from her and found the right column. “Damn.”
—
So why should I care? But that afternoon, when I finished with the mayor’s new steam heat system, I was anxious to get out to the Maxys’. Get back out in the cold, anyway. His honor has four feet of insulation in his attic, and he keeps his house like a sweat lodge.
When I got out there I asked Jack to put his coat on and come sit with me in the truck awhile.
After he climbed in, I said, “I see you got your name in the paper.”
He pushed back his hoodie. “Yeah. I got a citation when I bought some beers for Marv.”
“Marv live here with the Maxys?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, why’d you do it?”
He looked off toward the plain, plain house for a long time. “I was tryin’ to get along with him.”
I tapped him on the shoulder and he turned to me. “Did he threaten you?”
“Let’s just say I have to live here until I’m seventeen or eighteen, depending on what judge controls my case.”
The wind began gusting out of the north and my truck started to rock. Felt like it was trying to start and drive off someplace better than where we were. “And then what?”
“I think about that. To start, I could fix the old place so’s it was good enough to live in, then sell it off and go to college.”
“I don’t know. A house goes down fast in this part of the country when nobody’s living in it.”
Jack didn’t look at me. “Last thing I did before the sheriff picked me up was to drain the pipes and flush the toilets dry.” He bobbed his head and snickered, once. “The heater stopped again. I checked the fuse box and number two went out. The blower motor shorted, I guess.”
I stared across my hood where some dry snow was bouncing like soap powder. We talked for a good while. A long time, in fact, until most of the light was gone. He told me he missed playing basketball for his school. The Maxys didn’t want to drive him to the games. “I wish that was different,” he said, with the only really sad note I’d heard in his voice. Then he smiled and said, “I wish I lived with you instead of these people.”
“Yeah,” I said, pretending to agree, but looking away and knowing that he saw how I felt about that. “I wish I could afford to.” I hated to tell him that. It wasn’t true, but when you take over somebody else’s life, it’s not a casual thing.
“You don’t have to say nothing about it,” the boy said. “What would be nice and what will happen are usually two different things.”
“I guess so,” I said. I couldn’t look at him.
He opened the door to the truck, then, but before he could slide off the seat my arm went out and grabbed his elbow. I didn’t do it. My arm moved by itself. Funny how those little motions take place that aren’t connected to my brain.
“What?” Jack said, surprised.
“When do you get off school?”
“Quarter to three in this county.”
“Sometimes I need a gofer or somebody to hold up pipe or pull a wire. You got time for doing a little work? If things go right, you could work all day on Saturdays.”
—
So that’s what we did, the cold months. I scheduled jobs so he could fit in around three and work till six, six-thirty. I picked him up, or the wife did, or one of the Maxys. First thing I noticed is he didn’t waste time as a worker. Learned how to wire thermostats and check Freon levels, and with his pay he bought some books on electronics and heating systems. Saturdays he put in a full day, just like me, installing ductwork, replacing burners. I paid him what I usually had to pay a grown helper.
Summer rolled around and he worked full-time, then cut back in the fall when school cranked up. I could see a change in him. Jack paid even more attention to his work. And he always looked like he was thinking. Sometimes I asked what was on his mind, but he never would tell, just kind of gave me a slow smile and rolled those nut-brown eyes of his. All I knew was that he didn’t piss off his money on handheld games and junk, though he did have an old-man cell and a better multimeter than I carried. He gained a little weight. Got taller all of a sudden. Strong jaw for a boy.
—
The next year he graduated right under valedictorian. I didn’t go to the ceremony, but a few days later I called him for a job in the new subdivision. I picked him up at the Maxys’ and saw right away he had a black eye and a few scuffs on his cheeks. I grabbed the top of his head and turned his face toward me. It felt good in my hand.
“What happened to you?”
He blinked slowly and gave me a grimace, but it was kind of comic the way he did it. “Marv’s going through a rough time” was all he said.
“Well, you’ll be away from him as soon as you reach eighteen.”
He smiled big-time, then turned away and gazed out the windshield over the farm next door as if he owned it and everything he could see for miles.
—
Jack’s birthday was July 23, a Wednesday. He’d asked for a couple days off. I didn’t see him until Friday, and I asked him that afternoon if Mrs. Maxy had baked him a cake, and he just snickered and kept shoving duct at me. Didn’t say much the whole job. On Monday I called him for a thermostat install, but his cell didn’t answer, so I rang up old man Maxy, who said he wasn’t in. I went out and did the job myself and didn’t get home until seven-thirty. After supper and a bath I called him again, and Maxy said he hadn’t seen him yet. I tried his cell again and got nothing, so I was a little bit worried. The next day we were supposed to start on an apartment building over in Frost Falls. I told Maxy to have him call me, but by the time I fell asleep I hadn’t heard anything. I figured maybe he and Marv went out and did something crazy, like I did on my eighteenth birthday. Maybe he climbed a water tower or something. So I laid off calling him the next day. I went down to Abe’s Plumbing for a part, and when I passed the kid’s old house I saw a sold sign in front. Whoa. I called Oscar at Sauerville Realty and asked him about it.
“Yeah,” Oscar said, out of breath like always. I pictured him squeezed behind his secondhand teacher’s desk, a cigarette rolling between his fat fingers. “I closed that on Wednesday last. I hope you weren’t interested in it.”
“No, no. I just know the kid who inherited it. He works for me.”
“Jack? Yeah. That’s some kid. Old school, huh? Got manners.”
“What’d he get for it?”
“He cleared about $89,000. Not bad considering the exterior. The appraisal was $119, but he wanted to sell quick.”
“I didn’t think it was worth near that.”
“Well, he’d installed a new heating and air-conditioning system, redid all the plumbing and much of the wiring. I’d seen him over there early mornings before school working away, carrying supplies up the street in a wheelbarrow from Abe’s.”
My mouth fell open a bit at that news. “What’d he do with the money?”
“I don’t know. We gave him a cashier’s check.”
I smelled a rat, so I went down to Abe’s and asked about it. The old man told me Jack had bought a lot of stuff on my contractor discount.
I had to ask. “Did he charge anything to me?”
“Hell, no,” Abe said. “He paid cash for everything. I thought maybe you were trying to sneak a cash job by to save a little tax money. He ain’t in trouble
, is he?”
“I don’t think so. He was just fixing his old house on his own, I guess.”
“Branching out, eh? Taking a chance. Well, I’d give that young ’un a discount if he goes into his own business. He’s a worker, that one. Reminds me of you, a little.”
I was turning for the door, but when he said that I did a one-eighty. “What?”
“Likes what he’s doing, and he’s good at it.”
“That’s a good thing, all right.”
Abe pursed his lips in thought. “But it looks like he’ll take a chance. That’s not like you.”
When I drove back down the street, someone had backed a truck up to the porch of Jack’s house and was already loading furniture. I pulled to the curb and met a tall older man coming out carrying a box of silverware. “Hi, is Jack Swenson here? He’s an employee of mine.”
The guy said nope, that he was from Antique Gold Mine and Estates over in Frost Falls. He’d bought everything in the house from basement to attic.
I gave him a look. “You paid him a good price?”
The man put down the box and whistled. “He had a few nice things mixed in with the junk. His grandpa had a small coin collection and a few nice Winchester rifles. I had to pay full retail for the guns, but they’re a big draw at the auctions.” The man frowned, like he realized I was suspecting him of something fishy. “He wasn’t a sucker, let’s put it that way. He pretty much knew what everything was worth. It’s that damned Internet. Everybody’s an expert nowadays.”
Next, I stopped at the bank, and, sure enough, he’d cleaned out his account. The teller, Sadie, my first cousin, whispered that Jack had told her he was going to use an Internet bank to hold his money. I didn’t need to go to the lawyer who handled the estate because by then I knew Jack must have harvested the whole kit and caboodle. His grandfather’s stocks, an old brick warehouse and lot on the poor side of town, the family car, and everything else had been changed into electrons and deposited in a place where he could access funds from anywhere in the country.
—
For months and months I tried every way I knew to find where Jack was. It got to be a hobby. The cops sort of looked, and the Maxys, but he was gone. Right into thin air. Between jobs I searched for clues on the Internet, and when my son went off to Arizona to college in the fall, taking my laptop with him, I haunted those fast machines in the library, just looking. I don’t know why I did. Maybe for the mystery of things. Where does someone who’s totally disconnected go to connect?
I kept focusing on the damaged cousin the boy had said was in a nursing home in Fargo. I needed a name. One day I called my cop friend, Deputy Toller, and asked who the oldest lady in Mr. Swenson’s neighborhood was.
“Bud, why do you want to know?” He sounded kind of grouchy, but I guess I’d be too, coming off a shift of trying not to get shot at.
“What are you, a cop or somethin’?”
“Ah, shut up.”
“I’m still on Jack’s trail.”
“Yeah, well I wish you luck. As far as old ladies who’ll talk to you, try Ms. Salmen at 900 Charles Street. Big yellow house on the corner, about a block from the Swensons’.”
“Thanks.”
“Hey.”
“What?”
“Why’re you so hot to find that kid? He owe you somethin’?”
“I don’t know. I’m wondering if he’ll ever come back. I need the help.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Look, I know Ms. Salmen. She taught me in first grade. Next time I get a chance I’ll drop in on her and see what she knows about the Swensons’ family connections. If you show up on her porch she might think you’re from the government or something and clam up.”
“Good man,” I said.
—
I got busy and kind of let Jack slide out of my mind for a while. I guess I thought someone else was worrying for me. Before I knew it, two weeks had gone by. Then a month. Me and Linda began missing our kids. Sure, we had the relatives, but when we went to the house at night and ate supper, we were alone.
—
A couple three years went by and one afternoon I ran afoul of a 220-volt line in an old machine shop that was upgrading its system. I shoved in the big two-handed plug that led to their welder, and a long blue arc came out alongside that plug like a fire hose squirting electricity. I was thrown off a catwalk and broke two vertebrae in my back. I was messed up for about three months. When I got out to work again, it took me forever to creak around and get things done. My hands were damaged as well as my back. I needed a helper but couldn’t find anybody other than old guys who thought they knew more than I did, or dopehead kids. Nobody I tried worked out, and the upshot of the accident was that my income was cut in half.
One day I was in the kitchen, sitting at the table, dizzy from the pain pills and stiff as a poker. The wife wasn’t home yet, and I started thinking about Jack. I remembered that conversation we had outside the Maxys’ house years before, the day we’d talked for so long. When he was close to tears and asked me to be his guardian so he could live with us for a year. I remembered turning him down. Well, I gave him a job. How far do you have to go, anyway? That job was something, and I didn’t understand why he used it to bankroll his getting out of town. I still didn’t know how I felt about that. Kind of cheated, I guess.
I got up and went out into the yard to get some fresh air in my lungs. It wasn’t too cold, just a few spits of snow tapping the tin roof on the garage. I heard a jet plane high up, a quiet mumble above the clouds, and wondered if Jack was living so close that he could hear the same plane somewhere on its route.
I started to think about Jack’s mother. My only connection to Doris Evelyn Swenson was when I was a senior in high school. A friend got me a blind date with this good-looking blonde who he said went to the private school in Frost Falls. I remembered driving over to the Swensons’ street all prepared to go in and meet the folks, but she was out by the mailbox, shoulders hunched like a hitchhiker desperate to get on down the road. She was a big, fair-haired, loud girl, pretty, all right, and first thing she asked me was could I get her a drink. She never stopped talking about how lousy Sauerville was, how stupid all her teachers were. After a movie in Frost Falls, she showed me a place to go park and make out. Right away she gave me two shark-attack kisses. I felt more like a meal than a date, and just when she began to push me down a local deputy came and parked behind us with his brights on. I wound up taking her for a burger, which she ate in about four bites like it was life itself. I took her home, and all the way there she had her window down like she was hoping to be blown out into the darkness. She was a scary girl, so I never called her again. The point of this is that if things had maybe gone different, I could have been Jack’s dad. I might have run away and joined the navy for four years, and Jack would have had the exact same life he’s had. At the moment, I was having a little trouble telling the difference between a kid I might have made and Jack himself. I folded my arms and looked up at the now-empty sky. I mean, kids are kids. Suddenly it seemed like a thin line between what made one mine or not mine.
I thought about Deputy Toller and turned for the house, and his wife gave me his cell. He was on duty, but he answered, and when I asked him about some old lady he’d told me about, at first he acted like I was crazy.
“Yah, yah, now I remember you asking me about Mrs. Salmen. I’m pretty sure I called you about that and left a message on your machine, but you never got back to me. That was quite a while ago, bud.”
“Well, did she know about the cousin in Fargo?”
“I can’t recall what she said.”
“Can you phone her again?”
“I don’t think so. She died last year.”
“Well, damn. Don’t you remember anything?”
“Got a few things on my plate myself, buddy. I remember talking to Donna about it, though. Call her back. She’s got a mind like Velcro. Whup, that guy just ran the stop. Gotta g
o.” I heard a chirp of siren before the line went dead.
I called his wife back. She’s from the South, so I had to be nice for a few sentences, asking about the kids and all, before I got down to business.
“Oh yeah, I remember Jimmy telling me about Mrs. Salmen. She was friends with Jack’s grandma. The cousin was on old Harry Swenson’s side of the family. And her married name was Schoen, same as my mother’s grandma’s maiden name. Elsa Schoen.”
So the next day I got Jimmy Toller to make some official police-type calls, and after three days he found out that Elsa Schoen was still alive, not in a nursing home but in a high-end village for “limited people” in Plotkin, this side of Fargo. The manager of the facility told him that since Elsa never had company, she’d be glad to see me. No, she couldn’t talk on the phone because of her hearing.
When the wife got home that Friday, I followed her into the kitchen and told her I was driving over by Fargo the next day, early, and explained why.
She got that little warning tic in the corner of her mouth. “What can she tell you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Jack contacted her and she has some idea where he is. I kind of doubt it, but then maybe she knows the other guy, Jack’s great-uncle.”
“The weather’s supposed to turn nasty.”
“I like nasty weather. Money for the furnace man.” I gave her a grin she didn’t return.
Linda settled her rear end against the stove and folded her arms. “Baby, is this a guilt thing?”
“Guilt thing? Hell, no. What are you talking about? I’m just wondering what happened to the guy. If he’s all right. He worked with me a fairly long time.”
“Okay, don’t get steamed at me.” She got this expression like she had something more to say but was holding back.
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