“What?” he prompted, seeming more amused than anything
else, but with just a hint of concern behind the laugh.
“It’s like I said, Grandpa, he really got to me.
I mean, I believed him to the point that I actually, I don’t know, dug into it
a little. You know?”
“
Whadya
mean
dug into it
?”
“You know, I looked into it. Investigated, I
guess you could say.”
His eyebrows moved together ever so slightly and his
eyes narrowed.
“Investigated, huh?
Christ,
that
was more than twenty years ago, Tuck
. What the hell is there to
investigate.
”
“More than you’d think, actually. See, they kept
the evidence. All these years they kept the evidence up at the Sheriff’s
office.”
“You don’t say?”
“I do. It’s been in a little shoebox in a
backroom. Just sitting there collecting dust all these years.”
“How ‘bout that.”
“Yeah, how about that?”
I volleyed back, the words coming out a little sharper than I had
intended.
I smiled softly and sipped my drink.
“So, Sheriff Buck, he just let you have a look at it,
did he?” Then he lunged toward me and from the edge of his seat said,
“What did you find in the shoebox, Tuck -
shoes
?”
The whiskey was starting to hit him now. He
laughed hard and leaned back in his seat again.
“No,” I smiled, “no shoes. But there was a
plastic bag with some socks in it.
Underwear, too.
All of it Katie’s, of course.
And to tell you
the truth, I doubt Sheriff Buck even knows I’ve seen the evidence.”
“Paula?”
I nodded. “Sometimes it pays to be the nephew of
the mayor.”
I rose from my chair. “So anyway, there’s a lot
they can do with evidence these days that they couldn’t do back then.”
“Yeah?
Like what?”
“Like DNA testing.”
Grandpa set his empty glass on the end table and rose
from his chair. Walking toward the bay window, he wiped a hand over his
mouth to clean away the froth around his lips.
“Anyway, I uh…well, Grandpa, I ended up – let’s say
‘borrowing’ - a hair sample from your comb – not the easiest of tasks, by the
way,” I said smiling.
He started to say something, stopped. Raised his
hand, lowered it.
Wiped a hand across his glistening,
mostly bald head.
I continued. “So, I take that one hair of yours
and Katie’s underwear and I take them to this girl I went to school with –
Laurie Monroe. You remember her, don’t
ya
?
Norma and Glenn’s daughter.
Real
smart girl.
Anyway, I sent them to Laurie at the county hospital
to do a DNA comparison. You know they can do that now? I mean, technically
Laurie shouldn’t be doing this, but you know how it is with old friends.”
Suddenly, like someone had just yelled “draw”, Grandpa
turned around to face me with his trigger-finger pointed at my chest.
“Jesus Christ, Tuck! You, you, what, you hear some
bullshit story from a hundred years ago and just, what, just forget everything
else? Just forget everything and turn on your own family?”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry. I don’t know
what else I can say. I just, I haven’t been myself lately – you know, with
the baby and all – and then Keller hits me with this stuff and...I don’t know,
I guess I just needed something else to think about.”
He turned back toward the window.
Outside, a boy and a girl road by on
their bikes.
Maybe
they’re going to The Garden.
“What will these DNA tests show?” he asked, tracking
the bike riders.
“The truth.
That you’re
innocent and I’m an ass for ever thinking otherwise.”
“Well,
good
. That’s
good.” Then after a moment he scratched his head and said, “
But, uh, what if they make a mistake?”
“A mistake?”
“Well, yeah, sure. What if they do something
wrong and it looks like they might match or
somethin
’?”
“No, Grandpa, it doesn’t work that way. If they
match, well then, that would make you Katie’s killer.”
He did not answer. I moved next to him by the
window.
“
So it’s not
going to match, right? Right, Grandpa?” I repeated louder.
Then lowering my face in front of him to catch his gaze.
“Right?”
He jerked his eyes back up, back to the moment and
said “What’s that?”
“How else could your DNA match the DNA from the semen
on Katie’s underwear?”
“A mistake.
Like I
said, they could make a mistake.”
“No. I told you, it doesn’t work that way.
They can’t make a mistake like that.”
“Christ, Tuck, I wish to hell you hadn’t dragged me
into this mess.
That was a hundred
years ago.”
I stood up and pulled out the letter I had stashed in
my back pocket. I flashed it in front of him long enough for him to see
the hospital address in the upper left hand corner and “Gaines” on the address
line, his own name hidden under my thumb.
“As luck would have it, I just got the results back
from Laurie today.
Didn’t think it would come back so
quick.”
Blood gone from his face, air
wheezing from his mouth and nose, round stains under
each armpit, his chest heaving so hard I wondered if this is what a heart
attack looked like from the outside.
“What am I going to find in here, Grandpa?”
The look on his face took me back again to the night
Katie had gone missing when I had begged him to tell me he was going to find
her. A look that a child might see as sorrow, but an adult recognizes as
guilt. I thought about the doctor from my nightmare. How he had
winked at me and smiled that razor-blade smile, holding the dead child out in
front of him. The same way Grandpa had done with Tory that day she’d gone
missing.
I tore at the corner of the envelope.
“Tuck,” he said, thrusting a hand out toward me
suddenly.
“What, Grandpa?
What is it? Is there something you want to tell me?”
I paused, thought about Katie.
“Pedophile,” I said, spitting the word at him.
Then after a moment, “Killer.”
It came out in a voice that I didn’t recognize as my own.
He gulped hard and lowered his hand. “No,” he
said. “No. That wasn’t me. That was a hundred years ago.”
The clocks ticked through the moment.
The only evidence that the world hadn’t
altogether stopped.
“Tell you what,” I said. “I don’t want to know
what’s inside. You understand me? I DON’T WANT TO KNOW!” I
yelled and slapped him across the face with the
envelope.
I pulled back, stepped away,
caught
my breath. He cowered in his chair, unable to look up at me.
“I already know, so I don’t want to know. So,
here’s what I’m going to do. It’s nine o’clock. I’m going to put
this envelope back in my pocket and I’m going to walk up to Mustang’s and I’m
going to drink until I can’t see straight. And then at two, when the bar
closes, I’m going to open up this envelope and I’m going to read the results
and I’m going to come back here, Grandpa. Once I know what I already
know, I’m going to come back here and I’m going to deal with it. You
understand me? Five hours from now, I’m going to know. Don’t waste
these five hours trying to come up with excuses or lies, Grandpa. You
better use these hours like they’re your last.”
Slowly, I carried my bluff to the screen door, opened
it, and walked out without looking
back
.
He was gone when I got home from
Mustang’s that night. I couldn’t see where he
had packed anything, no real signs that he’d left for good. Didn’t notice
any suitcases missing and the drawers in his bedroom dresser were still full of
clothes. In fact, there were only two things that I knew for sure were
missing. One was his pick-up truck and the other was that picture of him
and Grandma on their wedding day. That picture of the person he always
wanted to be.
And had been – a hundred and one years
ago.
Disappearing just after his wife had
died,
everyone could only speculate that the grief had just
been too much for him.
“Poor old Hollis,” friends said, “just couldn’t stand
the thought of being without her.”
“Poor Dad.”
Paula said.
“It hurt him so much to see mom in pain that he couldn’t even visit her in the
hospital.”
“Poor Grandpa, he’ll be back in time. When he’s
ready he’ll come back to us.”
But I knew. I knew that he wasn’t coming
back.
Ever.
Poor old Hollis Gaines.
The day after Grandpa left, I found another grave
letter at Ethan’s grave. Between what was written on the lines of those
pages and what I read between them, I finally found out the truth of what had
happened to Katie Cooper.
Katie had come looking for me that afternoon, wanting
to make sure I was okay after what had happened at the basketball court with
Edie and Son. But Grandma had taken me, Gavin, and Heather shopping in
Glidden. Grandpa stayed home. He was watching television and
drinking whiskey from the bottle when Katie came to the front door looking for
me.
“He went to town with his grandmother,” he said
, hiding the bottle behind his back.
“Oh,” she said. “Well…well, did he seem okay?”
“Yeah, sure, far as I could tell he seemed fine.
Why, what’s wrong? You want to come in and wait? They won’t be gone
too long.”
He shut the door behind her and took
another swig from the bottle, then tucked it away in
his back pocket.
“Just have a seat, sweetheart. I’ll turn
something on the television for you.”
He watched her as she walked across the room to the
couch, running her hands behind her as she sat to fold down a skirt she wasn’t
wearing. His eyes burned and he swallowed the cotton out of his
mouth.
Licked his lips.
He felt old Jack
Daniels walking around inside him.
Warming his belly,
stirring him, inviting in those unnatural thoughts that his sober mind
constantly struggled against.
He wasn’t struggling now. It
felt good not to struggle.
Then, falling back in the chair across from her, he
said,
“Well, well, you are sure turning
into a fine young lady, Miss Katie.”
“Thank you.”
“Yes. Yes, indeed. Miss Katie, the fine
young lady. Come on, stand up and let me get a good look at you.”
When she politely refused, something inside him began
to rise up. The birth of something that had always been alive, but
because of the struggle had not lived. But he wasn’t struggling now.
He pulled the bottle out of his pocket, unscrewed the
cap, and drank until it was gone. He tossed the empty bottle to the side
and said, “Okay, then. I guess I’m just going to have to come over there.”
He moved next to her on the couch and cupped her face,
holding her head up like an offering. Then he lifted her from the couch
and made her stand
in front of him.
“Yes, indeed. Miss Katie, the fine young lady.” Then looking down
his nose and smiling, he said, “Such a pretty little girl. Step back for
a second, let me see the whole picture.”
His heart raced as he took
her hands in his. “You sure are growing up fast,
aren’t you, Katie?”
Frightened
now,
Katie just shrugged her shoulders.
“Oh, come on,” he slurred. “
You must know what a big girl you’re becoming, don’t
you?”
“I guess,” she said with a shrug. “I should
probably get going, Mr. Gaines. Could you tell Tucker I was here?”
“And so pretty, too.
Pretty all over.”
“Pretty here,” he said touching her face.
“Pretty here”, pressing his hand against her heart and
holding it there.
“Pretty from head to toe.”
“In fact, you are so pretty, Katie, that I could just
eat you up.” The last few words were growled out as he lurched at Katie,
grabbed her by both shoulders and pulled her into him, wrapping his arms
completely around her.
“I need to get going, Mr. Gaines. My mom’s
expecting me,” she said in a meek little voice that made him think of Little
Red Riding Hood.