Blood Ties

by Nicholas Guild

  “Now don’t ever ask me any more questions, because I don’t like to think about it.”

  By the time he was nine years old, or perhaps ten, Stephen had worked out for himself that his father was lying. His mother would never have left him behind. Therefore, she had been driven away, or had herself been left behind or she was dead.

  And there had been no scene, no tears or shouting. Only silence.

  It was not that Stephen didn’t love his father. He could no more stop loving his father than he could stop breathing. So his conclusions were drawn reluctantly. They were forced upon him by his attempts to find some order in his life, some coherent explanation of events.

  And they did not obsess him, at least not until he began to push against adolescence. He had plenty of other things to think about.

  Occasionally his father would take him along to jobs, and he taught his son the elements of many different crafts. His father was a good teacher: orderly, precise and patient. Those were good times.

  At other times Stephen would be alone in the empty house. His father wouldn’t come home for dinner, wouldn’t come home until the next day, once in a while wouldn’t come home for two or three days together. There was never any explanation.

  Stephen could take care of himself. He could cook, in an elementary way, and he cleaned up after himself because his father hated a mess.

  What he feared, above all else, was abandonment. Would his father finally not come back at all? Was that what had happened to his mother? Had he simply left her somewhere?

  And the world in which he would be alone was such a fearful place. He knew this from the newspapers.

  Wherever they happened to be, his father always brought home the local papers. It was his evening entertainment, to spread them out on the kitchen table and read them. Stephen never saw his father read a book, but the newspapers were a kind of passion with him.

  And their pages were full of death.

  Much of the time Stephen was alone in the house, and what schoolwork he brought home was ridiculously easy. So he picked up his father’s habit of reading the news. There were always murders.

  It would start with the discovery of a body. A woman’s corpse would be found in some out-of-the-way place. The police didn’t like to comment, but generally someone would provide the shocking details. Then the county medical examiner would release his report—wrongful death. The investigation would drag on and on and, eventually, there would be another, suspiciously similar crime. The papers would be full of it.

  And sometimes versions of the story would find their way into school yard gossip. The little girls would talk about how their mothers had started taking them to and from school.

  At first, Stephen assumed that murders just happened, that they were a normal occurrence, like thunderstorms. Women just got cut up every now and then. It was like being killed in a traffic accident.

  It was only gradually that he began to understand that, wherever he and his father went, the newspapers would start carrying murder stories.

  It was just bad luck, he thought. Only toward the very end did he begin to consider the possibility that luck had nothing to do with it.

  In the meantime he had another mystery to solve—the fate of his mother.

  They were migrants. They traveled light. The houses his father rented were always furnished. They didn’t really own anything they couldn’t put in the back of the pickup truck.

  But there was always one suitcase that Stephen never saw open. Dad would take it up to his room and put it in the closet. They just carried it around with them.

  Finally, one day when Stephen was alone in the house, he decided he would have a look. He went upstairs to his father’s room, opened the closet door and took the suitcase out. It was a white, hard-shell Samsonite. He discovered that it was locked.

  This presented a problem.

  But a lock implied a key, and Stephen knew that his father kept all his keys on a ring he carried around in his pants pocket.

  When his father returned, Stephen said, “Dad, it looks like rain. You want to get the truck into the garage?”

  His father was sitting at the kitchen table, reading a newspaper. At first he seemed not even to have heard, but then, without even looking up, he took the keys out of his pocket and dropped them on the table.

  “You do it,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  Stephen was eleven and tall for his age, and he had been able to reach the gas pedal for over a year. So driving was just another of the skills his father had taught him. On back roads where there weren’t any cops, his father would let him have the wheel. He wasn’t bad at it.

  The garage was just a shack, detached from the house, and it was kept padlocked. Most of the time Dad couldn’t be bothered and would just park his truck in front of the house. But these days he was working as a painter and he had a couple of canvas tarps in the cargo bed. It wouldn’t do to let them get wet.

  It was summer, and even at seven in the evening there was plenty of light. Stephen went through his father’s keys as he walked out to unlock the garage. There was the key to the truck, the house key, one for the padlock on the garage, another for his toolbox and a smaller key with a short blade that might do well enough for a suitcase.

  Stephen was tempted to take this one off the key ring and put it in his pocket, but he gave up the idea almost at once because his father would probably notice there was a key missing.

  But at least now he knew where it was.

  Over a workbench that nobody ever used was a single lightbulb dangling from the garage ceiling. Stephen pulled the string to turn it on and scanned around for something that might allow him to take an impression of the key.

  There was a small can of wood dough, which he managed to pry open with the house key. He found a piece of cardboard about the length of his finger and smeared some of the wood dough over it, rolling it smooth with the side of the can.

  By then he was beginning to feel horribly exposed and decided he had been inside the garage long enough. He went back to get the truck.

  Once he had the truck bedded down, he pressed the suitcase key blade into the wood dough, first one side and then the other. Then he closed the can, putting it back where he had found it, and wiped the key clean on his shirttail. The entire operation took no more than about thirty seconds.

  He switched off the garage light.

  Of course, now there was the problem of what to do with his key print. It needed time for the wood dough to harden, so he couldn’t very well leave it out in the rain. And he dreaded taking it inside the house with him because Dad would expect his keys back first thing. He considered just chucking it away and forgetting the whole business, but then what if his father found it in the yard the next morning?

  How long had he been outside? Four, maybe five minutes. Dad probably hadn’t finished the paper. The stairs were less than six feet from the front door. The kitchen was in the back of the house. He set the piece of cardboard on the third step and then went into the kitchen.

  Dad was still sitting there. He didn’t even raise his eyes when his son walked in and set the keys down on the kitchen table.

  Stephen went to the refrigerator and took out a can of Coke.

  “I got some reading,” he said, his voice as flat as he could make it.

  His father looked up, seemed to consider the matter for about three seconds and then nodded.

  “Okay.”

  From the stairs he picked up the piece of cardboard and carefully carried it up to his room. He put it in his desk drawer. He would think of a better hiding place tomorrow.

  Then, for perhaps twenty minutes, sitting at his desk, holding a math book he had checked out of the public library, only the fear of being heard kept him from sobbing. He wanted to go back downstairs and confess everything to Dad. He was a bad boy. His father was certainly right and his mother had deserted them. He hated her, but even more he hated himself.

  Gradually the
fit began to wear off, yielding to a sullen misery. His mother had loved him. It was impossible to believe anything else. And she was gone.

  What else mattered?

  About an hour later, his father came up the stairs, pushed the door open a few inches and looked in. “Go to bed, Steve.”

  “Okay, Dad.”

  His father went back downstairs.

  Stephen slept in his underwear and, as he was taking off his trousers, he happened to glance at the desk drawer that held his key impression. Suddenly he was afraid his father would come in while he was asleep and search his room. He had never done anything like that—at least not that Stephen knew about—but Stephen had never before given him a motive.

  The wood dough had hardened nicely. He had a winter jacket with pockets deep enough to keep his hands warm. He slipped the impression into the right-hand pocket, closed the closet and went to bed.

  As he waited to fall asleep, he began to experience a certain feeling of triumph.

  * * *

  Over the next few days, Stephen considered the possibility of casting a key from the impressions in the wood dough. He thought of melting down a tin can, but he had no idea how to do that, or how to handle the metal once it liquefied. Besides, it would probably just burn up the wood dough. Finally he gave up on the idea.

  But could he file down an existing key to fit the impression? The luggage key was small and there were only two teeth on the blade, about an eighth of an inch apart. It seemed a realistic possibility. All he needed was a key and a small file.

  The key was not a problem. Rented houses were full of long-forgotten keys. Stephen found one in the basement, in the top drawer of a beat-up old dresser some previous tenant had left behind.

  The tools were almost as easy.

  Stephen enjoyed considerable liberty. He and his father lived about two miles outside a place called Lewisburg and he could hike into town any time he felt like it. He didn’t have to ask permission. Dad didn’t care what he did.

  There was a movie theater in Lewisburg, and Stephen went to the first matinee every Sunday afternoon, when the price was two dollars. He earned the money from odd jobs around town. After a residence of four months, he knew all the storekeepers, and he would drop in and ask, “You got anything needs doing?”

  Sometimes he pushed a broom, sometimes he washed the windows, sometimes he helped with the stock. He was a good worker, careful and clean, and he was cheap.

  It took him exactly a week to earn enough to pay for a Six Piece Needle File Set (price, $4.49) and a pair of locking pliers (price $2.39) he could use as a vise, but he would have to skip the movies that Sunday.

  Another week went into making the key.

  Dad was a pretty good locksmith, although he was rarely employed at it, saying the pay wasn’t that great and he didn’t like being shut up in a shop all day. But he changed all the locks on every new house they moved into, cutting his own keys. In about ten minutes he could cut a key by hand, which was almost a lost art. Stephen had had plenty of opportunities to observe the work.

  But making this key involved special difficulties.

  First he had to find a place to do it, since it wouldn’t do to leave any brass filings around the house. He found a spot outside, across the road, beside a creek where there was plenty of concealment and the sound of the fast-rushing water would partially cover the scraping of the file. He even found a tree hollow where he could hide his tools.

  He could do this. All he needed was to take his time and be very, very careful.

  Then, when he had the key so that it matched the impression perfectly, and took it home to try it out, he discovered that it was too thick to fit the lock. This meant another trip to the hardware store—and another movie missed—to purchase a flat file (price $2.49). He then had to hunt up a discarded brick so he would have a flat surface on which to plane the key down.

  Still, in the end he had his key.

  He carried it around in his pocket most of the next day, waiting for school to end, but when he got home Dad was already there, reading his newspapers at the kitchen table. The next day was a Saturday, so Stephen had to wait through the weekend with the key hidden under his mattress.

  Finally Monday came. He waited through school, then took the bus home. His father was nowhere around.

  The key fit and the suitcase lock snapped open. Inside were women’s clothes, two pairs of flat women’s shoes and a red wallet. He recognized the wallet at once. It was his mother’s.

  Inside the wallet he found a driver’s license, issued by the State of Ohio some fourteen years previous and bearing his mother’s picture and signature. The name on the license was Elizabeth Dabney, which must have been her maiden name. The address given was 1380 Route 9, Circleville, Ohio 43113.

  It was the first time he had seen his mother’s face in four years. He held the license in his two hands and wept bitterly.

  In the change purse he found his mother’s wedding ring.

  That was enough. He put the ring back in the change purse, dropped the wallet into the suitcase and closed the suitcase, reminding himself to relock it.

  He got out of the closet, out of his father’s room and out of the house as quickly as he could. He went across the road and down to the creek, where he sat with his knees under his chin, his arms wrapped around his legs, for a long time.

  At least, he assumed it was a long time. He was perfectly unaware of the passage of time. He was completely absorbed in his private misery.

  He wished to God he had forgotten all about his mother. He wished he had never looked inside that suitcase.

  When the shadows of the trees became long and dark over the water, he knew he would have to go home. He would have to face his father and keep all of this inside himself. There wasn’t any choice.

  * * *

  Two weeks later, Dad traded in his pickup truck and bought a van, a dark blue Chevy Astro.

  “She was ready to die on us,” he said about the truck. “A hundred and seventy thousand hard miles. We’ll be able to carry more stuff in the van.”

  “Are we leaving here?”

  “Yeah.” Dad nodded slowly, as if the idea had just occurred to him. “Time to shake the dust again. We’ll leave Saturday, after I’ve been paid. That’ll give us Friday evening to load up.”

  And Saturday morning they were on Interstate 64, heading for Arkansas. Stephen, who hadn’t had much sleep the night before, was dozing when his father reached over and shook him awake.

  “Did you return that library book?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Sure. Day before yesterday.”

  “What was it called?”

  Stephen tried to remember, wondering what difference it made. “Advanced Mathematics. It was a sort of introduction to calculus.”

  “Is that what you were studying in school?”

  “Oh Lord, no.” Stephen found the question amusing. “They’re still doing long division.”

  “Then what good’s that stuff gonna do you?”

  “I just like it.”

  “Why?”

  “I like solving problems.”

  His father considered this answer for perhaps three seconds and then threw back his head and laughed.

  “I’ll just bet you do, sport. I’ll just bet.”

  12

  Mound City, Arkansas (population, approximately 300) was their last home. A developer was putting up some condos in Marion, and Dad got a job doing electrical work. He rented a house about a half-hour walk from the Mississippi River.

  It was the middle of summer and the temperature outside would be close to eighty degrees by daybreak. The countryside was flat and uninteresting. With school out, there was nothing to do. Dad seemed to come home only to sleep. Sometimes he would be gone the whole weekend.

  Mound City was just a village full of bedrooms. There was no library and hardly any businesses. On foot, which was the only way Stephen was going to get anywhere, West Memphis was a good hour and a ha
lf away. For about two weeks he walked it nearly every day, looking for odd jobs. It was something to do. But the local kids, turned loose from school, were also looking and didn’t relish the competition. After he got beat up a second time, Stephen decided to stay home.

  And at home he was left with plenty of time to think.

  He kept coming back to the fact of his mother’s suitcase, trying to find some way to exonerate his father. Why did he have her wedding ring? Had she given it to him, a parting gesture? That was at least imaginable. But why would she leave her clothes and wallet? Had she run away with nothing?

  By the time she disappeared, the driver’s license would have been some years past its expiration date. If she had renewed it, or gotten another in some other state, why would she have kept the old one in her wallet? In all his memories of their travels, his father had driven. It was always Dad who went to the store. Stephen had no memory of his mother ever having driven the truck. Given Dad’s choice of houses—solitary places, a mile or more outside of town—she would have been almost a prisoner.

  No, not almost a prisoner. A prisoner.

  Then how had she escaped, except into death?

  The third Saturday after they arrived in Mound City was Stephen’s twelfth birthday. His father hadn’t come home Friday night and didn’t show up again until late Sunday afternoon. He just came home, sat down to eat his dinner, which he had brought with him in a McDonald’s bag, then went to bed. The birthday was never mentioned.

  Always before there had been something. Not a present, usually. Rarely a present, or even a card. But usually a smile and a “Happy Birthday, Steve.”

  This year, silence.

  And that silence underlined a change in the relationship between father and son that had begun … when? When they arrived in Arkansas? Before? Stephen couldn’t be sure.

  But recent. Dad had started getting careless about some things, like groceries. He didn’t always make sure, before he disappeared for a few days, that there was enough in the refrigerator. Stephen’s recent birthday dinner had consisted of a few handfuls of Sugar Corn Pops and a beer. That was all there was.