He saw a stiff, gruff old man in a wrinkled shirt and jeans whose hands were the only graceful part about him gesture toward the river and then point up the trail while the camera circled around him and he heard himself talk about the boys and the dog, responding to Carrie Donnel’s question about how the dog was a birthday present from his wife, Mary. She’s gone now, isn’t she? she said and the old man in the picture nodded. And so is Red now, she said and the old man nodded.
He thought he looked a little bewildered on the screen, also that you could clearly see the anger, which surprised him. Especially you could see it when he spoke of the prosecutor’s decision not to charge the boy. Ludlow thought he’d been good at concealing his anger all along but the camera didn’t lie and there it was, just as he had to suppose it always had been, clean and visible.
At the end of the story she stood before the camera and said that nationwide, for the killing or violent abuse of animals, offenders were fined on average only 32% of the maximum fine possible and spent only 14% of the maximum jail time. Most offenders, she said, never even came to trial. She quoted Ghandi to the effect that the greatness of a nation and its moral progress could be measured by the way it treats its animals.
In York County, she said, it might also be measured by the justice it seeks for Avery Allan Ludlow and his dog, Red.
They’d shot that speech after he’d gone and Ludlow was moved by it now and respectful of the soft aggression of her delivery. He resolved to thank her in some way although at the moment he did not know how.
The phone lay off its cradle. He’d taken it off in case someone should try to call him during the broadcast but now the handset lying beside the cradle seemed both a reproach and an invitation to him. He still hadn’t phoned his daughter yet Now half the county knew about Red. It was high time that she did too. In fact it was long past time but first he wanted to get some food inside him and a beer or two.
After he’d finished his steak and eggs and a second beer and cleaned off the dishes he looked up her number in Mary’s old address book. He found it there in Mary’s small neat script. He dialed and then put his finger down on the connect plunger thinking what do I want to say to her and slowly dialed again. The phone rang twice. Then he heard her voice.
‘Hi, Allie,’ he said.
‘Dad?’
‘Am I interrupting dinner?’
‘No. Dick and I are going out to eat tonight. I was just getting ready. There’s a new seafood restaurant by the government center we want to try. How are you, dad?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘I’ve been meaning to call.’
‘Me too. How’s Dick doing?’
‘He’s fine. Overworked as usual. Every Fourth of July he just goes crazy here. He’s got the parade to deal with, the concerts at the Shell, the fireworks over the river and more fireworks in the Commons. All of that plus, you know?’
‘I could see where he’d be busy, all right.’
‘Life at the Mayor’s office. Business as usual.’
‘How about you, Allie?’
‘I quit my job at the V.A. Hospital. We’re . . . I’ve been wanting to tell you, dad . . . we’re trying to have a baby.’
‘Really?’
‘For four months now. So far, no luck. We may have to go for some tests once Dick’s work lets up. I don’t know.’
‘That’d be good, Allie. A baby, I mean. Your mom would have—’
‘I know. Wouldn’t she have loved that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you really sure you’re okay, dad?’
‘Red died,’ he said.
‘Oh, god. When?’
‘Sunday.’
‘Oh god.’
For a moment neither of them said anything, the silence stretching from Moody Point to Boston as though nothing existed between.
‘You loved that old dog,’ she said. ‘What hap—?’
He didn’t want to tell her.
‘He was a damn good animal,’ he said.
‘Get another, dad. You really should. I know you think maybe it’s too soon, but—’
‘People say that. I’m thinking about it.’
‘I think it would be a good idea. You shouldn’t be up there all alone. In the meantime, listen, you could come visit us for a while if you wanted. We’d love to have you.’
‘You haven’t got the room, Allie. And Dick’s got his work. I’d just be in the way.’
‘No, you wouldn’t.’
‘Sure I would. And you know I would. Don’t worry. I’m fine here.’
‘How’s grampa?’
‘Your grandfather’s the original Comeback Kid. Every time his body floors him again he comes back meaner than ever. Hospitals and nursing homes kill people half his age all the time. Not him.’
She laughed. Then there was a silence.
‘Listen, dad, you haven’t—’
He knew what she was going to say. He just hoped she wouldn’t just this once.
But he guessed that in a way she had to.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve spoken to Billy.’
‘No.’
‘And you won’t, will you? Not even feeling lonely the way you are.’
‘Who says I’m feeling lonely?’
‘Dad, I just don’t think this is good for you. Billy’s—’
Behind him the window exploded.
He dropped off his armchair to the floor, instincts kicking in, glass flying all over and around him. He felt it pepper his bare arms and face and neck and heard her shriek come at him small and far away through the phone line, the phone clutched in his hand exactly like a club now, heard her yelling, Dad! Dad! as the rock rolled across the boards and stopped in front of him. He saw a white sheet of paper fastened to the rock by four elastic bands.
He got to his feet saying, It’s all right, baby, I’m fine, I’m okay into the phone as he went to the window and heard the car screech away kicking up road dust, a dark sedan with no headlights or tail-lights heading fast down Stirrup Iron Road toward the main road below.
There was an inch-long triangle-shaped sliver of glass sunk deep in the palm of his hand. He could hear his blood dripping on the wooden floor.
‘Hang on a minute,’ he said into the phone and heard her voice wanting to question him, frightened. ‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘Everything’s all right. I’ll be right back.’
He went to the kitchen listening to the glass crack and splinter beneath his shoes and rinsed his hand in the sink and then carefully removed the shard of glass. He tossed it into the sink and ran his hand under the water again, took a handful of paper towels and clutched it tight to stop the bleeding.
Then he went back to the phone to he to her.
‘My god, dad, what the hell was that?’
‘We have been having a little trouble. Some kids up this way’ve been throwing rocks, breaking windows nights. They just broke mine. I’m okay. Little cut on the palm of my hand I ought to attend to, though. Nothing to worry about. But it looks like I’m going to have to vacuum the living room. I’d better get off the phone. You go on and have a good time at dinner and don’t you worry about me. It’s just a prank. Just kids. That’s all.’
‘Some prank! Jesus!’
‘I won’t argue with you there.’
‘You sure you’re all right?’
‘I promise.’
When he was able to reassure her and get her off the phone he looked down at his hand and saw that the ball of toweling was soaked through. He was going to have to do better than that In the medicine cabinet he found gauze pads and iodine and adhesive tape. He was shaking. He cleaned and bandaged the wound and walked back into the living room. The cool wind through the window billowed his drapes so that they reached out to him as he stooped to pick the rock up off the floor.
He pulled away the elastic bands. Beneath the sheet of paper the rock was roughly the size of a baseball and he saw that it had come from a stream or a river, it was clean and worn sm
ooth yet had no scent that would indicate the sea. He uncrimped the paper and turned it over. The words and letters were out of a magazine, pasted there.
YOU LOOKED GOOD ON TV YOU OLD FUCK
YOUR ONE
AND ONLY APEARANCE
HA HA
He noted the misspelling of the word and wondered if that was on purpose. He wondered if your one and only apearance was supposed to be some kind of threat. He put the paper on the kitchen table, weighted it with the stone and went to work on his broken window.
Eleven
‘I can tell you what the note means,’ Carrie said.
She had driven down from Portland and they were sitting in Arnie Grohn’s place having dinner. Her station was picking up the tab and she’d wanted to take him somewhere fancier but Ludlow felt at home here.
‘The note means that as far as the station’s concerned, the story ended with last night’s broadcast. And whoever threw your rock knew all about it.’
She stabbed at her Porterhouse steak as though it were a living thing.
‘No follow-up you mean? Nothing?’
She leaned forward, her eyes intense. From the moment they’d sat down he could see she was angry, as unsuccessful in her own way as apparently he was at trying to hold it inside.
‘I wanted to go out to the McCormack house today,’ she said. ‘That would be the natural thing to do at this point, perfectly normal, get the story from Danny’s point of view or at least get his or his father’s “no comment” on videotape. Get them closing the door on our faces, whatever. I had the camera crew set and ready to go when the senior editor walks in looking like someone’s just told him he’d been smiling all day with a piece of spinach in his teeth. He says he’s sorry – and he is sorry, Av, I can see he is – but we’re going out to cover some apartment-building fire instead. A goddamn fire. Nobody’s even killed, in this fire, Av. There aren’t even any injuries to speak of. You see where I’m going with this?’
‘He got ordered off.’
‘You’re damn right he did. And this is a decent guy. He’s one of the reasons I still work at this toy-town station. He was embarrassed as hell. He knew that we knew exactly what was happening.’
‘Who could do that? Make him back off that way?’
She shrugged. ‘Had to be one of the station owners. It could have been somebody’s own idea, or it could have been pressure from a sponsor. If the sponsor was big enough. I don’t know who applied the screws. But there’s some kind of old-boy thing going on here.’
‘Your editor wouldn’t tell you?’
‘Believe me, Av, I asked him. I damn near walked off the job today and he knew it. But Phil’s a buck-stops-here kind of guy. What he’s got to do to keep his station going, he does, even if it means doing something he doesn’t like, something as shitty as this. If it was his decision to knuckle under, and it was, he’s willing to take the flak from us and so be it.
‘I’m morally certain he fought as hard for this story as I would have,’ she said. ‘But sometimes in this business you’re just up against it. You do what the money boys say you do or you walk. Period.’
‘I wouldn’t want you to walk over this, Miss Donnel.’
‘No. I didn’t think you would. And it’s Carrie, for god’s sake. I wouldn’t want Phil to walk either. So I let him off the hook. I covered the goddamn fire.’
She speared another piece of steak and then set the fork down on the plate and finished her beer instead. His own beer was already gone so he caught Gloria’s eye and ordered another round for both of them. His pork chop sat untouched on the plate.
‘I want to thank you for what you’ve done,’ he said. ‘What you’ve tried to do. Not everybody would have bothered.’
‘I’m not through with this, Av. Not yet. I just have to find some sort of angle. Something big enough so that they can’t afford to ignore it. I just can’t think right now what that could be.’
The beers arrived and he drank some.
‘Sam Berry told me that we can sue even if they refuse to prosecute,’ he said. ‘Hire our own forensics man and subpoena the shotgun and maybe get to him that way. The money’d be nothing but . . . it’s something I guess.’
Saying it out loud made Ludlow feel practically helpless. It was so damn little against the dog’s life and against the meanness in the boy. Not even the boy’s name on a criminal record.
He could see she felt the same.
‘A lawsuit’s not enough,’ she said. ‘Too many people sue other people every day. It’s not news. It’s nothing.’
She was right. It was nothing.
He was not going to find his justice here, not where he’d always looked for it, under the law and in the common decency afforded by human being to human being. Ludlow thought about what she’d said about something they couldn’t afford to ignore and looked down at the plate in front of him, the wasted chop he had no heart to eat. And days later he thought that maybe it was the pork chop and the rest of his meal sitting untouched on the plate that finally moved him to do what he did. So small a thing.
‘Miss Donnel . . .’
She gave him a look, reproachful.
‘Carrie. I think I’d like it if we could just pay the check and get out of here. If that’s all right with you. I want to thank you again. You’ve been very kind.’
‘Sure,’ she said.
He called for the check and she paid it on a credit card.
‘Why don’t you buy me a nightcap, Avery? A real drink in a real bar. I could use one. Maybe we can just sit and talk a while. Not about any of this.’
She leaned forward. Confidential. Something mischievous in her look.
‘By the way,’ she said. ‘I think our waitress likes you. You notice?’
‘Gloria?’
He looked around. Gloria was two tables down, putting beers in front of Sid and Nancy Pierce. She turned and gave him a smile.
‘Hell, I’m old enough to be her grandfather,’ he said.
She laughed. ‘Stardom, Av. You were on television last night. You’re glamorous now.’
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘And Nixon’s in the White House.’
Twelve
It was the simplest of motions. A turn toward him in the parking lot of the bar as he opened the door for her, her hands going to his shoulders and then her mouth on his.
He couldn’t have been more surprised if she’d pulled a gun and shot him.
Thirteen
He watched her dress in the pale bright moonlight through the window, amazed that there was a woman in his bedroom again after all these years, more amazed that it should be this woman so much younger and smarter than he was who had wanted him. It saddened him to see her nakedness disappear into the clothing, like the passage of birds through the autumn sky. She was looking at a photo framed on his dresser, tucking in her blouse and then picking up the photo, turning it toward the moonlight.
‘This is Mary?’
‘Yes.’
‘She was beautiful.’
‘She never thought so.’
‘Well, she was wrong, then.’
She placed the photo down and picked up the one beside it.
‘And this is your daughter.’
‘That’s Alice, yes.’
‘What is she here, twenty?’
‘That’s the year before she married. She’s twenty-three there.’
‘She looks younger. Takes after you I guess.’
He laughed. ‘My god. I hope not.’
‘She could do worse. How old are you, Av?’
‘Did I ever ask you that?’
‘No.’
‘Well, then.’
‘I wouldn’t have imagined vanity.’
‘Hell, I’m sixty-seven. I’ll be sixty-eight in August.’
She put the second photo down beside the first.
‘What about your sons?’ she said. ‘There aren’t any photos here.’
‘I don’t have any sons.’
S
he sat down beside him on the bed and placed her hand on top of his and leaned toward him. The blouse was still unbuttoned and he could see the narrow breastbone and even more than the hand on his it was the sight of her soft pale flesh that was a comfort to him and went a ways to stop the sudden trembling.
‘Yes, you do,’ she said. ‘Sam told me.’
‘He shouldn’t have.’
‘If you don’t want to talk about it, I won’t press you. But don’t blame Sam. I’m a reporter. I find out things. Sam’s a good friend to you.’
He nodded. ‘Back then, when it happened, a man couldn’t have asked for better.’
He sighed and lifted himself up on the pillows.
‘You want to know about my boys?’
‘If you want to tell me.’
‘All right. Tim was eleven, the older boy was twenty-four—’
‘Billy.’
‘That’s right. I don’t use his name much. Just when I talk to Alice. And then she’s the one who always manages to bring him up. So that I don’t call Allie too often either. I know that’s wrong, but . . .’
‘You don’t want to keep on going over and over it again. And here I am asking you to. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s all right. I don’t mind you asking. I would have once. But it’s different with Allie. She has this idea in her head that I should be in touch with him. That it’ll make things better for me somehow. I don’t agree. Only problem I’m having with you is, I don’t know where to start on it.’
‘Start with Tim.’
‘We had him late. I was forty-eight and Mary was forty-two. So that he was kind of a surprise to both of us. We had to fix up the attic in order to give him a bedroom, got rid of all the stuff we’d stored up there. He turned out to be a good boy, an easy boy. Favored Allie that way and his mother.
‘Billy’d been different right from the start. And we probably loved him all the more because of it. You know how that can be. You see a boy struggling to get hold of what other kids seem to come by so easy, your heart goes out to him. It seems to me he always had a way of turning a good thing sour on himself He went out for baseball his sophomore year and I coached him. He made the team easily too. Shortstop. Then broke his leg stepping off a curb in the parking lot right after the second game, which his team lost, by the way, when he tried to sidestep a hard line-drive. So they weren’t even real unhappy to see him go.