by Robert Price
Chapter Twenty-Four
The longer Carrie Phillips and her son Tommy stayed at the reception, the more guests she spoke with. And the more guests she spoke with the more she questioned her decision five years ago to let Tom slip away without taking any responsibility for their son. She began to think that perhaps she had unwittingly short-changed her child by letting Tom off the hook so easily.
The sad fact was, Tom died without his son ever meeting him. But, ironically, her decision to raise Tommy alone was the one thing in her life of which she was most proud. Single motherhood had changed her in profound ways. Almost overnight, when Tom abandoned her and Tommy was born, she changed from being a vulnerable young woman who gauged her self-worth by her ability to secure a man’s approval, to being an empowered woman capable of making independent decisions.
Now, after talking with people at the reception, she began to re-assess her decision of raising the boy alone. It had been a selfish one. It was becoming evident that there existed a whole world in Newbury, that is, the Hubbard family, of which she and her son knew very little, if nothing at all. She started to think that her Tommy should meet his father’s family.
Not only that, but it appeared that at some earlier point in his life, Tom had inherited the open stretch of land near where she and Tommy had parked on Quinns Way.
That was Tom’s land? she thought.
Carrie first heard about the possibility of Tom owning land during an argument. Actually, what she had witnessed was more of an ambush than an argument. Two older men, whom she gathered were Tom’s uncles, practically assaulted a gentle, bookish-looking man in the dining room by the bar. They accused the man of land-grabbing, claiming that since Tom lacked a son to pass his land onto, the bookish man was swooping in from California with Tom’s sister for the sole purpose of stealing the land out from under them. Unfortunately, that was all Carrie had heard because Tommy, tired from the long morning and frightened by the fracas, burst into tears. At the time, Carrie was more concerned for her son’s immediate well-being than a couple of drunk old men ranting about stolen land. So she rushed Tommy into the kitchen.
The older men’s words, however, had started her thinking.
Since that disruption by the bar, she had attempted, with little success, to lead all conversations in which she participated toward the topic of Tom’s possible land ownership. But she was an outsider. And in a small town crowd such as this, the conversations kept returning to safe subjects, like her cute, attention-grabbing son.
“He is really something,” Ted Dorsey commented as the boy walked around the living room engaging in what appeared to be a series of serious conversations with adults. “I try to encourage ours to be more sociable, but you know kids … And, well … I’m not the most out-going guy myself, so I guess, in a way, they take after me.”
“Could very well be,” Carrie replied, dismissively, eager to steer the conversation to her own interests. “This is really such a beautiful area. Your wife Shelly mentioned earlier, when we were talking in the kitchen, that you folks live in town?”
“Sure do.”
“It’s different than the city.” Carrie, much shorter than him and unafraid of using her good looks, tilted her head to the side and, looking up, let a warm gaze settle directly on his eyes. She wanted him to feel comfortable enough to engage in the discussion of her choice. “Makes me think about how much I miss the country,” she said. “Like just walking up to the house, by that stretch of open land back there. Was that a field, like for farming?”
“You mean down the street? It’s a field alright, but I don’t think it’s farmed, maybe hayed. But it’s the last open one around here. Over the other side, though, off Hay Street, there’s the Trustees Land, Old Town Hill, the Parker River Preservation and there are still a few horse farms and haying fields and some corn. But the town is changing. Progress, progress.”
“The Trustees?” Carrie suddenly envisioned the Hubbards as a wealthy hillbilly family, rich with trust funds and acres of property.
“The land conservation group? They’re big—nationwide, I think.”
“Oh,” Carrie tried to hide her disappointment. “That field down the street, is that the Trustees’ land, too?” She wanted him to answer, “No, that’s Tom’s land, and now that he’s gone who knows what will happen to it? If only he had a child to pass it on to.”
Instead, Ted lightly kicked the floor with the tip of his shoe. “No …”
He had started to think about Carrie not as a mother but as a single, attractive woman. This made him shy, and although he’d already spoken with her once before, slightly nervous. Nevertheless, he was curious enough to momentarily overcome jumpy nerves and ask her about herself. “It must be difficult to be a single parent in the city. Or, well, I guess there’s probably lots of help—services?”
The question had come out all wrong. Wanting to simply ask what it was like raising a kid in the city, instead he ended up sounding like he assumed she had difficulties supporting herself.
“I’m sure there are plenty of services in Boston,” Carrie answered, dismayed by Ted’s turn of the conversation. “But Tommy and I, we get along just fine.” She looked around for her son and lit up when Ezekiel gave her a small friendly wave from across the living room.
“Umm, Carrie,” Ted said, nodding toward her son on the other side of the room.
Tommy had wandered over to the two old men, the same Hubbard brothers who had frightened him to tears only an hour earlier. The small blonde boy stood between the two curmudgeons with arms apart as if exaggerating the size of a fish he’d caught. The two men leaned forward enthralled by what the boy was telling them. Alley scratched his whiskers and Peter gnawed on an unlit pipe. The scene looked like an etched illustration or a Rockwell painting of a simpler time, an earlier era.
Carrie acted alarmed: “Oh no,” she said to Ted. “Do you think I should get him?” In truth, she was pleased. First she’d let Tommy break the ice with them and then she’d introduce herself and finally, once and for all, find out about the land.
“They’re really harmless,” Ted said, taking a step back to allow Ezekiel into the conversation. “He’ll be fine.”
“Well, okay,” Carrie said, leaning toward Ezekiel, offering him a cheek to kiss. She was unsure as to why she did this; it just felt like the natural thing to do.
Without thinking, Ezekiel leaned forward to kiss her. The encounter felt easy and genuine, perhaps a result of their earlier walk to the house together. Whatever it was, they both noticed each felt a fondness for the other, the way old friends might.
Ted turned away, embarrassed by their kiss. He felt like a prude. Though he considered himself a liberal-minded Christian, tolerant of others—and open to public displays of affection when they were absolutely necessary, such as at weddings and funerals—a black man kissing a single white mother in a room full of strangers was beyond his liberal-mindedness, and so he excused himself, ducking out with, “I wonder what has become of my wife and children?”
“I haven’t seen you since we walked in the door,” Ezekiel said. Straightening his posture, he towered over Carrie Phillips. “Did the little man find the toilet okay?”
“What a memory you have,” Carrie replied, a flirtatious twist to her voice. “Yes he did, just in time, in fact. And ever since he’s been the toast of the party.”
“Good to hear he’s spreading cheer. How are you holding up? How is mother?”
“She’s good, tired but good.” Carrie smoothed her skirt. Although the wet splotch had dried, she remained uncomfortable. The discomfort, however, was more psychological than physical. “I still haven’t seen Tom’s mother. I met her at the gravesite, but I was hoping to, well, say something more to her.”
“I just came from talking with her,” and, cupping his hand around his mouth, Ezekiel whispered into Carrie’s ear, “She seems out of it, like she’s not even there. She’s really quite bereaved. Yes, bereaved … I think.”
“That’s sad.”
Ezekiel’s eyes widened and pulling back he mouthed the words, “… and stoned.”
“Really?” Carrie replied with more breath than sound. As she did, Tommy’s distinctive cry of distress rose again. Cringing at the sound, she turned to see the two old Hubbard men standing over her son. Concern for Tommy overrode a temptation to laugh at the old men’s expressions. Their dumbfounded faces displayed how clearly shocked and disturbed they were by the boy’s outcry. Carrie marched over and squatted in front of the boy, ignoring the Hubbard brothers. Ezekiel followed.
“What’s wrong Tommy?” she asked in a motherly voice.
“Ma’am, we didn’t mean nothing by it, seriously. The boy just started crying.” Peter Hubbard shook his head and nervously twisted the bowl of his unlit pipe.
Frowning, Alley Hubbard repeatedly stroked his mustache. “Just started crying, just like that,” he said, backing up his brother’s story that the boy’s crying had been totally unprovoked.
Carrie lightly wiped the tears from the boy’s cheeks.
“You must have said something.” Ezekiel felt real concern for the boy’s well being.
“Nothin’! Nothin’ that woulda made him cry, anyway,” Peter Hubbard spoke slowly, deliberately. He tried to sound sober, even though he had been drinking all day.
“Nothin’!” his brother Alley agreed.
Carrie’s silence held the brothers hostage. Although she winked to Ezekiel to let him know that Tommy was fine, she made the two old men wait through an entire uncomfortable minute while she coddled Tommy. Then, looking up at them, she sternly demanded, “What were you talking about?”
“It’s just that Tom, our nephew … ” Peter Hubbard said, putting the pipe back in the corner of his mouth. “See, we were his uncles, and this little one reminded us of him. Could be like he was family or something.”
“Well,” Alley Hubbard added, talking to his brother, “then you told him Tom died in the war. That’s when he started crying.”
“You listening to their stories, Tommy?” Carrie asked the boy. “Did the stories frighten you? They weren’t talking about you, you know. They were talking about another Tom.”
Tommy frowned. His tears were already passing. Other people in the room were now catching his attention. Standing, Carrie stopped brushing Tommy’s hair and he immediately wandered away.
“You were Tom’s uncles? Hold on, don’t tell me,” Ezekiel said, putting up his hands like two stop signs. “You’re Peter Hubbard, the older, and you’re Alley Hubbard, two years younger? Pleased to meet you. My name is Ezekiel, and this is Carrie, the little one’s mother.”
“I’ll be damned. How did you know all that?” Alley Hubbard exclaimed.
“Tom and I were close,” Ezekiel proudly replied, and although he couldn’t remember Tom ever uttering a kind word about them, he enthusiastically offered a hand.
“You must have been,” said Peter reaching for Ezekiel’s hand, “cause, we’re kinda outside of the family.”
“But Tommy always liked us,” added Alley, still twisting the side of his mustache. He shook Ezekiel’s hand and looked over at Carrie, surveying her up and down through the haze of eyes blurred with drink.
Suddenly self-conscious, Ezekiel realized he might have said too much, calling the brothers by their names and citing their ages the way he had. He excused himself.
“Right, which is why that should be ours,” said Peter, ignoring Ezekiel’s departure and nodding his head toward the window. Taking the pipe from his mouth, he returned to his chair. Alley watched his brother and then followed the old man’s lead and sat down, too.
“What should be yours?” Carrie asked as she rubbed her hands together, warming them.
“That field down the end of the street,” Peter Hubbard complained. “It was Tom’s, and now if this damn family don’t go and screw us out of another inheritance, it’ll be ours. We ain’t waitin’ to die for nothin’—we’re waitin’ ’til things get set straight around here.”