by Jon Land
Dejourner waved him off. “You’ve never looked better.”
“But I’m starting to have to work too hard at it. Gotta run faster and faster just to stay in the same place.”
Dejourner was nodding. “As I recall, you spent five miserable years quite literally in the same place.”
“No offense, Henri, but I learned to hate your country during those years.”
“No offense taken.”
“You made that time bearable. I was stuck sorting paperclips, but you saw fit to throw some real work my way. It’s too bad our countries weren’t enemies; we could have exchanged prisoners.”
“With intelligence communities, enemies would be an accurate description. I was able to convince my superiors to let me use you only after persuading them it would make their American counterparts look bad. Such a rat race! You are lucky to be out of it.”
“And you?”
“Still a rat, I’m afraid.” Dejourner shrugged.
“Listen, I meant what I said about what you did for me back then, Henri,” Blaine said. “I owe you. I don’t forget my debts.”
Dejourner grasped his meaning and waved his hands dramatically before him. “Non, mon ami. I have not come here to request one of your famous favors.”
“Well, you sure as hell didn’t fly across the ocean to play a game more fit for recruits many years younger than us.”
“Please, Blaine, this is not easy for me. There is something I must tell you and I don’t know how. I spent the flight over rehearsing a dozen speeches. None of them worked.”
“Why don’t you try number thirteen on me now?”
“It’s not that simple. As many times as I rehearsed, I almost decided to just take the next flight home. I’m not sure I have any business being here. I’m not sure I have any business bringing you this news.”
“We’re friends, Henri. Friends always have business doing whatever they want.”
Dejourner grimaced as if the words bottled up inside him were causing genuine pain. “You recall a British woman named Lauren Ericson? You met her—”
“In London thirteen years ago. Let’s see, that would have made me twenty-seven: five years out of Nam and four operating in the same theater as you. Things were less complicated then.”
“The woman, what do you remember of her?”
“A knockout. Thought she was a model at first but she turned out to be a doctor, studying to be an orthopedic surgeon, as I recall. I was working with the British rounding up Al-Fatah operatives. We were on speaking terms then.”
“Pre-McCrackenballs …”
“Yes. Lauren and I were an item for three months or so and then she broke it off. That’s always the way it is for me.”
“Did she tell you why she broke it off?”
“She told me the same thing I’ve heard over and over again: I was a lot more fun to be with before she learned everything about me because she knew everything wasn’t all and she didn’t want to know it all. In a nutshell. My turn now, Henri. Where is this leading?”
“She died two months ago.”
Blaine wanted to feel grief but found it hard to muster any for someone he hadn’t seen in thirteen years.
“You haven’t come here to inform me I was mentioned in her will.”
“In a sense I have, mon ami. Lauren Ericson is survived by a son. He’s yours.”
Chapter 2
THE NEWS HIT MCCRACKEN like a hammer blow, knocking the breath hard out of him.
Dejourner had a memo pad out and was reading from it. “The boy’s name is Matthew. He’s three months past twelve and is enrolled in the third form at the Reading School in Reading, England. He is at present a boarder at the school after having lived the rest of his life in the village of Hambleden twenty-five minutes away.”
“How did Lauren die?”
“Traffic accident.”
“Does the boy …”
“No, mon ami. He has no knowledge of you. Lauren told him his father deserted them.”
“Then he does have some knowledge of me.”
The Frenchman eyed him sternly. “Your shoulders are still broad, Blaine, but don’t expect too much of them. She made the choice for reasons you understand as well as I. As near as I can figure, she broke off the relationship when she learned she was pregnant.”
“Because she felt no father was better than—”
“One who could never be happy living a normal life …”
“A sane life, you mean.”
“Call it what you will, but she knew it wasn’t for you. A child was the last thing you needed, and she understood that enough to do what she felt was right.”
“There’s more.”
“There always is. The practical side—and Lauren was a practical woman. If you knew of the boy’s existence, then so might your enemies. Once she elected to have the child, Lauren could not permit that. So the gesture probably was not aimed so much at you, as what you had given her.”
“Given her?” Blaine rose from his chair, strode to the window, and stared out at the nearby waters as he spoke. “We ate lots of dinners, saw lots of shows, and had plenty of fun. I didn’t mean to give her any more than I took.”
“Apparently the child changed things.”
Blaine swung around. “I think she mainly wanted a child, and there I was, ready and willing.” He smiled ruefully at his reflection in the glass, observing the scar which ran through his left eyebrow and his eyes that were blacker than the night. “Hope the kid got her looks anyway.”
“He did.”
“You’ve seen him?”
“I … checked up on him at the school, made the proper arrangements for his boarding and the like.”
Blaine closed the gap between them and watched the Frenchman’s eyes waver. “Wait a minute, Henri. Suddenly I’m getting the feeling that your stake in this is deeper than you’d have me think.”
Dejourner sighed deeply. His face looked flushed. “It is why I struggled so long and hard before coming to you, Blaine. Lauren was … my niece.”
“Then you …”
Dejourner rose to face him, having to look up to meet his eyes. “You needed someone. So did she. Yes, I arranged it. And what it did for you at the time proved I was right. You were like a son to me, and I saw what that awful war had done to you. It stole from you your youth and set you on a path that denied honest sharing, compassion, love if you wish. I knew that path because I walked it myself.” The Frenchman’s expression grew somber. “I was almost fifty, single and alone, having known only love for my country, which as you often have told me can be a cold and callous partner. You had to see the other side. I had to show it to you.”
“When did you learn of the child?”
Dejourner looked away. “I didn’t know it was yours.”
“You suspected.”
“But I didn’t know!” Then, more softly, he added, “I supposed I did not want to know. I did not learn the truth until a covenant in her will reached me with the entire story. Lauren had grown up an orphan. She did not want the same for her son.”
“Then she expected me to—”
“She expected you to be true to your own heart. She knew the kind of man you were, that you would do what was right and fair. I’m not sure, no, I am sure she had no desire for you to approach the boy. She merely wanted to insure his future would be watched over by someone she trusted.” Henri’s eyes reached out toward him. “You must do what is right and fair for the boy, but you must also do the same for yourself.”
“A rather difficult combination to achieve under the circumstances.”
“Your heart will guide you, mon ami.”
“You don’t really expect me to walk into the boy’s life now, do you?”
“I expect you to do what is right. And whatever you choose, it will be right. I have done my part. I have stayed true to my conscience as well as Lauren’s covenant.”
“And by so doing, you may be exposing the boy to the very thin
gs she wanted to avoid when she—and you—chose not to tell me he existed.”
Dejourner nodded. “Now you can understand the predicament I have faced these past months. Sleep has not come easy, believe me. I thought of you, I thought of Lauren, but in the end I thought of the child, and that is what swayed me.” The Frenchman reached out and grasped Blaine’s forearm tenderly. “He deserves to know you, mon ami, perhaps not as a father but at least as a man.” Dejourner pulled away. “I leave it to you.”
“How old are you, Johnny?” McCracken asked the huge Indian. They sat facing each other in the log cabin Wareagle had built in the woods near Stickney Corner, Maine. The town was three hours from Portland, and Blaine had driven there the minute Dejourner had departed.
“Blainey?” Wareagle responded, turning so Blaine could see his tanned, leathery face that had remained unchanged for the nearly twenty years they’d known each other. They had served together in the same covert division in Vietnam, Johnny a lieutenant to Blaine’s captain. If McCracken’s exploits were legendary, then Wareagle’s were the source of myth. He could charge into a minefield or weave through a firefight without fear, because death, he claimed, was something that stared you down before it took you. And your best chance to avoid it was to stare right back.
“I just got to thinking that with all the shit we’ve been through together, I don’t even know how old you are.”
Wareagle moved sideways to lift a boiling kettle from an open flame and poured the water into a pair of mugs that held his homemade tea. “As old as the last season and as young as the next.”
“I mean in years, Indian.”
“Blainey, a man’s years vary like his thoughts. We are here from birth to the end of our chartered time, and what passes between is measured in whatever terms we choose.”
“You’re talking to a man who recently turned forty.”
“A man who did not drive all the way up here to celebrate.”
Wareagle finished stirring the cups and brought Blaine’s over to him where he sat in the high wooden chair. McCracken felt himself swallowed by the size of the furnishings. Everything in the cabin, from the height of the ceilings to the furniture, had been built with Johnny’s seven-foot proportions in mind. Blaine took the cup and sipped its steaming contents. He could taste the sweetness of the molasses and honey and felt somehow soothed.
“I got a belated birthday gift a few hours ago. Thirteen years belated.”
Wareagle sat down opposite him and leaned back so his ponytail of coal black hair flopped over the chair’s top. He said nothing.
“I’ve got a son, Johnny. He’s twelve years old, his mother’s dead, he’s at a school over in England, and he doesn’t even know I exist.” Blaine’s words came in a rush, as if hurrying the tale might make it easier to tell.
Wareagle just sat there across from him. Beyond the windows, dawn had come and gone, but the promise of the day was gray and overcast.
“I don’t know what to do. I can’t even think about it ’cause it scares me.” Blaine forced a laugh. “Listen to this. Look at what we’ve been through, all we’ve done. After that, is this what it takes to scare me?”
“The unknown holds the most terrifying prospects for us all, Blainey.”
“You know what I mean, Indian.”
“As well as the problem facing you: either you go to England or you don’t.”
“Reduced to bare terms, that says it all.”
“All life can be reduced to such terms, Blainey. We complicate our existences by creating additional choices that merely confuse our decisions. You speak of all we have accomplished and so often together. In those situations life stripped us of all choices and left us only with actions. We thrived because the thinking was spared us. We could heed the words of the spirits because nothing was in our heads to get in their way.” Wareagle eased his chair a bit closer to McCracken’s. “We faced physical complications with immediacy and relentlessness in the hellfire. That is what kept us alive. Moral complications must be treated the same.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“You didn’t ask one.”
“Then let me make it as uncomplicated as I can: do I walk into the boy’s life or stay out of it?”
The Indian leaned back and sipped his tea. “What was I doing when you arrived?”
“Chopping wood outside.”
“For when?”
“Winter.”
“And now May is barely upon us. Preparing for what lies ahead is the essence of all life. Preparation holds the greatest opportunity for avoiding complications. But what if the seasons reversed themselves? What if winter began tomorrow? Then my pile of wood would be woefully inadequate. Would I freeze?”
“You’d find a way not to. You’d survive.”
“Even with the vital preparation unfinished?”
“The first cold wind would be your warning. Snow in May would give you a pretty good notion things were fucked up big time.”
“And what would I do?”
“Bring the wood inside, make sure it stayed dry, chop as much as you could, and stack it right here in the living room. Conserve whatever you had until you were sure you had enough.”
“And are emotions any different, Blainey? Must we not conserve and adapt them as well to the change of emotional seasons the spirits bring upon us without warning? We survived the hell-fire because we expected whatever might come. Preparation helped, but keeping our minds open is what saved us. We responded to the moment, not the hour, and we never closed our eyes to what was before us in the hope it would go away. Ignoring the cold, Blainey, would not have made us warm. Yes, the wood must be chopped. We must never forgo preparation for any events, even those that frighten us with their suddenness. If we do not accept that suddenness, as we did in the hellfire, we die. There are many ways to die, Blainey.”
“And we’ve seen just about all of them, Indian.”
“Never all. Not even most.”
Blaine nodded. “I think I get the idea.”
Wareagle sipped his tea. “Travel well, my friend.”
Chapter 3
THE IVY-COLORED BRICK walls of the Reading School rose in the damp mist that had swept in across the countryside. Blaine drove through the front gate and down the tree-lined entry road that took him past a collection of playing fields, or “pitches” as they were called over here, en route to a central building adorned with steeples. He was still not entirely convinced he was doing the right thing, and each slow climb over a speed bump along the drive brought him that much closer to turning back.
He had flown TWA out of Boston Monday night and arrived at Heathrow early Tuesday morning. From there the M-4 brought him straight to the city of Reading, where he had made reservations at its largest hotel, the Ramada Inn. He was not expected at the school until two P.M., which gave him four hours to rest and recharge himself following his uneasy sleep in the first class section of the jet. He soaked in the bathtub, showered, and grabbed a sandwich in the simplest of the Ramada’s restaurants, loitering the additional minutes away inattentively watching news on the television.
He crossed the Reading School’s final speed bump at five minutes to two and asked a group of boys dressed in charcoal gray suits where he could find the residence of housemaster John Neville who was expecting him. The boys’ answer came politely in unison and they pointed to the red brick house nearest at hand. Blaine parked his car and stepped outside. He felt the damp mist assault him instantly, reaching through his clothes and flesh for bones to chill. He noted a large bell tower perched atop the school’s central building as he walked toward the housemaster’s residence. He rang the buzzer and a chorus of heavy barks and snarls came from the inside before the chimes had even ceased.
“Come on now, back up!” he heard a thick voice order, and then the door was opening.
“Mr. Neville?”
“John. You must be McCracken. Henri told me to expect you to be right on time. Please, co
me in.”
John Neville was as big and thick as his voice, a powerfully built man with bands of muscle swimming through forearms revealed beneath the sleeves of his rolled up rugby shirt. Blaine was impressed by the strength of his grip as they shook hands. Neville closed the door behind them and the dogs, huge German shepherds, growled their suspicion.
Neville tapped one on the snout. “Enough of that, Bodie. You and Doyle go play now.”
“Bodie and Doyle?” Blaine asked.
Neville smiled warmly and the expression gave his face a youthful glow. His complexion was pitted, but there was color in his cheeks and life in his voice.
“I see you recall ‘The Professionals.’ ”
“British detective series from years back. The dogs are named for the heroes. I spent considerable time over here years back.”
“So Henri told me.”
“What else did he tell you?”
“Just the barest details. You’re good to do this, Blaine.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“I’ve got tea ready in the living room.”
They moved from the hall into a spacious den dominated by a fireplace layered with the remains of yesterday’s fire. The radiators were old-fashioned, and to help break the chill a pair of space heaters had been strategically placed. The dogs followed them at every step, nuzzling against Neville for attention as soon as he sat down in the chair adjacent to the one he directed Blaine to. He fussed over Doyle, and Bodie growled from deep in his throat.
“Enough of that!” he scolded. “I won’t tell you again.”
Bodie lay down, whimpering softly.
John Neville handed a cup of tea across to McCracken from a tray. “Got something stronger to mix with that if you want.”
“No, thanks. This will be fine.”
Neville leaned back. A shock of dark hair slid over his forehead and he pushed it back. “You’ll want to hear about the boy.”
“About Matthew.”
“Matt he likes to be called. Good student and a top athlete as well.”
“Soccer?”
Neville shook his head and stroked Doyle’s shoulders. “Rugby’s the thing here. We’re a relatively small school as far as enrollment goes, so we could never hope to compete effectively in either if we tried for both. Rugby’s a tradition at Reading. There are lots of traditions. That bell tower you were admiring outside, seniors love to climb into it and carve their initials on the bell.”