Two if by Sea

  “Tarmac. Because he was the color of the runway at the airport, not quite gray and not quite black.”

  “Tarmac shoved the bad guys and Dad jumped off and tied them all up.”

  “He’s little,” Colin said. “He would believe any scary crap.”

  “It’s true. I don’t tell him the real scary crap because he’s only little,” Frank said.

  He had, in fact, chased down an armed rapist and his wannabe slasher buddy after the buddy cut open his pregnant girlfriend’s belly. Both mother and baby survived. But that had been one incident out of one. The truly grisly TV-cop-opera incidents in Frank’s career he could count on one hand.

  But the stakes were high here with Colin. Frank aimed to impress.

  “I hate it here,” Colin said.

  “Worse than the nuns?”

  “Maybe. This thing with skates is for wankers. My dad took us to Gabba once . . . and now, they were sports.” This was Wooloongabba, the Brisbane cricket ground.

  “Yep,” said Frank. “Cricket. The sport of the titans. They stop the game so their mommies can bring them cookies. Look, why’d you even want to come here?”

  “Somebody had to see to Ian!” Colin said, hacking at the ground with the hockey stick Frank had bought that afternoon. “It looked like fun, like Disney and those mountains with the guys skiing. But all you do here is work and sleep and ride stupid horses. The old lady is okay, but your Claudia, she’s yabber yabber about how do you feel . . . just leave a guy alone! What a wowser. And the school’s all for babies. I could do all that stuff when I was three.”

  “Collie, Claudia’s good,” said Ian. “She’s like a good mom.”

  “Not mine, thanks!”

  “I don’t like you to be mean on Claudia. She took you running.”

  “She couldn’t even keep up,” Colin muttered.

  Frank broke in: “Well, you need something to do besides watching TV and reading and poking people in school with pencils. Soccer . . . ah, football, soccer, starts in the spring. And you only just got here. Give it a chance.”

  “Reading! Who wants to sit and read about a bunch of fairies with horses?”

  “That’s a stupid thing to say. We don’t call people fairies,” Frank said.

  “Dad, they are fairies. It’s the Green Fairy Book,” Ian put in. “Don’t they like people to call them fairies? Do they get mad? Do you call them little people?”

  Frank’s mind sputtered. “A guy needs a sport. Let’s go in. Or, are you scared?”

  He hated himself for saying that. This little desperado was fifty-three inches tall. Colin would never have seen ice, much less tried to stand up on it. He might be hell with a soccer ball, but hockey was a complex skill set that meant the ability to control two exacting disciplines, the reason people played field hockey. If Colin failed, he’d fall deeper into the bitterness that seemed to be his default position, despite his confiding moments with Claudia.

  To Frank’s surprise, the first thing he heard was his own name called. Bellowed. “Frank Mercy! You sonofabitch!” (Colin smiled triumphantly.) “I thought you went back to the beach babies and the kangaroos! Somebody said you left town.”

  Billy Stokes (he was still called “Billy”) was part of Frank’s high school circle, to the extent that Frank had one. They’d played American Legion baseball together—Billy at shortstop, Frank at first—and during junior year, for a while, in some kind of bemused way, Frank went out with Billy’s sister Katie. On their second date, Katie suggested that they both take advantage of the fact that they were healthy, young, and knew each other well enough to know that neither one of them was a junkie, to lose their virginity. This had seemed like a fabulous option to Frank at the time, despite his being in love with another girl—also, disconcertingly, called Kate. Now it gave him pause, when he met Billy as the U-11 hockey coach for the district, and wondered if his sister had ever told him that story.

  “Bill!” Frank said. “How have you been? What has it been, ten years?”

  “I see your mom and Edie all the time in town . . . they told me you got married a couple of years ago . . . Who’s this?”

  “How’s Katie?”

  “Oh, big as a house. Must weight a hundred and seventy-five. She and Ray Shawcross had five in eight years. All boys! He’s a school principal in Rockford!”

  “Well, this is Colin. Colin is . . . my son. Through adoption . . . well, in the process. This is Ian, his brother. Their family was killed in the tsunami in Brisbane, and my wife and her whole family were killed also . . .”

  “I heard that, Frank. Hoped it was a mistake.” Billy hunched down to greet Colin. “You like to skate?”

  “Well, I never did. Where I live, it’s hot all the time.”

  “Is it always hot in Australia?” Billy asked Frank. “I never knew that.”

  Colin sighed loudly. “That’s why they call it the southern hemisphere—”

  Frank interrupted. “Go on. I’ll be right over there. And I’ll come back as soon as Ian’s sorted. If you yell, I can hear you.”

  “I’m not going to yell, for Christ’s sake,” said Colin.

  Billy’s eyes went wide and he shrugged. “I’m sorry,” Frank said, and he heard, distinctly, Fuck you. “Cut that out right now, Colin.”

  Ian said, “I’m changing my mind. I don’t really want to fall. But Colin loves it.”

  “He’s just said it was for wankers. How do you know he loves it?”

  “You shouldn’t say ‘wanker,’ Dad. It’s like a swear. It has penis in it.”

  “Okay, but how do you know?”

  “He’s saying he loves it.”

  Frank glanced around the partition: Colin was flying across the ice, bobbing and crossing at the corners.

  “You can’t tell me that kid never skated,” Billy said. “He’s better than my son. And Jeremy started skating when he was two.”

  Just then, one of the group of guys in navy-blue SGIS jackets—like grown-up septuplets, all about the same height, the same coloring, the tamped-down Zamboni caps—motioned to Billy. “Frank, your mother called! There’s a fire at the farm. Now, I’m sure it’s fine, Frank. Terry Jovovich’s wife is on the fire department and she said the trucks were already there . . .”

  “Was my mom okay? I’ll get the boys . . .”

  “No, no. Just go, Frank. Leave them here with me. I don’t have another group until ten. Let me work a little with Colin. Maybe Ian, too. They don’t need to see that.”

  “What happened?”

  “They say the old man’s pipe was what started it.”

  “What old man? What pipe?”

  “Your grandfather. Jack. They say that he dropped the pipe he was smoking.”

  “He’s never smoked. Not once in his life.”

  Frank laid on the horn all the way back so no one would even suspect that he might stop at any lights. As he turned onto Sun Valley Road, ashes flew toward him like black snow. An ambulance shot past him, running lights, as he made the driveway. Who was hurt? Patrick’s low cabin was adjacent to the house, but set back from the corner where the old wing of the house almost met the old stable, a ruin Frank used as a cursory roof for protecting baled hay and a bench he had set up for mending tack. The only horse in there was Prospero, in the hospital stall Frank and Patrick had knocked together for him, to isolate him from getting kicked or overexcited. The big square stall accommodated Prospero’s walking ramp and the shiny mobiles of exercise equipment the veterinary physical therapist brought in. The vet could back her van up to the wide mouth of the makeshift stall on the days she loaded Prospero to take him for X-rays and heat therapy.

  It had crossed Frank’s mind that the corner of the old barn where the roof was sturdiest, where he stored hay, was probably too close to the corner of the house, or at least to one edge of the broad covered porch that encircled the house. That would all be corrected when Pro was better and Frank knocked the whole thing down for good. But when he thought about that prox
imity, it was the possibility of rats getting into the house that he worried over—not fire.

  As he wheeled up the drive, the last froth of flames was already sinking to black steam, but the smell that came toward him on the wind was cloying and unmistakable, and it was not fire.

  Not Glory Bee, Frank selfishly prayed. Not Sultana. Not Saratoga.

  In their thickest coats, Eden and his mother huddled halfway down the drive as Marty and Patrick led the horses up to the high pasture. The dog, Sally, slunk quaking and whining at their feet. Frank urged them all into the truck as he began to leg it up the road. Marty came back, and caught up with him in a few strides.

  “Is Edie okay? And the baby?”

  “She’s fine,” Marty said, but he looked miserable.

  Patrick came past and nodded to Frank. “Have a care, guv. I’ll see to the horses,” he said, and Frank turned back to his brother-in-law.

  “What’s wrong, Marty? That old stable was nothing but a rat condo anyhow.”

  “The old man is dead, Frank. Your mom’s a basket case.”

  Jack, Frank thought, and a portrait shivered for a moment in his mind, of Jack running up and down in the low pasture—his favorite horse, Rough Magic—chasing him like a puppy, although both man and horse were old then, Jack well into his seventies and Rough Magic nearly thirty.

  Marty said, “He somehow walked out from that porch behind the old barn, and Jesus, Frank, we don’t even know how. I didn’t think Jack could walk on his own. The fire department said he was smoking his pipe and dropped it . . .”

  Frank said, “Jack didn’t smoke.”

  “Even when he was young? He must have taken it up again.”

  “No, he couldn’t have. He was a beast on the subject of smoking, a real monster. He never had a cigarette in his life. When I was a kid, there was a guy who worked here. I remember his name was Nate Stead, because he called himself N. Stead. He’d walk all the way up to the top of Penny Hill to have a smoke, but Jack caught him. He hit that guy right across the back with a quirt, and I thought my dad was going to kill Jack if N. Stead didn’t kill him first.”

  “Frank, the firefighters didn’t even have to search. They found a pouch of tobacco and smoking stuff near that old rocker on the back porch—”

  “Where was Jack?”

  “He apparently walked over to the barn and dropped the pipe in the hay.”

  “He didn’t smoke. Marty. Ever. And where would Jack have found a pipe and tobacco? How did he stroll over from the porch to the barn? He could barely walk, and never in the dark. Why would he be outside on a cold night, out having a smoke? Did my mom see him leave?”

  “Your mom was with Eden at Annabelle’s . . . is that her name?”

  “At Arabella’s.”

  “They were giving Edie a little baby shower, the older ladies. And I was upstairs reading. I just ran outside because I heard the horses. I never heard a sound like that. They were screaming, Frank.”

  “They’re scared of it. And they were confined.”

  “Pat and I had a helluva time getting them out. We had to cover Glory Bee’s eyes, and Pro . . . we couldn’t . . . help Pro.”

  “Pro’s dead?”

  “We couldn’t get him out, and we couldn’t reach the stall. I’m sorry, Frank. We had to get the others.”

  Frank said, “Shit. Did you call Claudia?”

  “She had some event in the city.”

  “Well, I should see to Mom. It’s okay, Marty. The house is barely touched, and Jack was ninety-six . . .”

  Then, clearly, Frank heard, Help, Dad. Help.

  “I don’t think that they’re even going to investigate,” Marty went on. “As to arson.”

  Dad! Help!

  Without bothering even to speak to Marty, Frank turned and beat it back to the truck. As he got close, he yelled, “Get out, Mom. Get out, Eden. I’m sorry. I need the truck.”

  “Frank!” Hope cried. “What?”

  “I have to get the boys.”

  “Why didn’t you bring them back? Are they still at the skating rink? I need you to be here. Your grandfather—”

  “Mom, get out of the truck!” he shouted, no louder than he meant to. Frank put his arms under Eden’s and lifted her down, while Hope, indignant, braced and slid herself down from the tall running board. Frank wheeled the truck down into the gully next to the drive and back up again, hitting seventy as he gained the road, laying on the horn a second time through the two stoplights in town, hoping that whoever was out patrolling would follow him, and would try to stop him . . . He would welcome police. He would explain that his nine-year-old kid communicated with him telepathically and if they would just find him, then they could take Frank to the hospital for the mentally ill at Mendota, and he’d go willingly.

  The rink was quiet, but a light was on deep within, and when Frank blasted through the door, the only ones left on the ice were Billy’s older private-pay students preparing for college tryouts.

  “Where are my boys?” Frank yelled from the door.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Where are they?”

  “They went with Patrick. He came in to get them.”

  “I just saw Patrick . . . Billy, how do you know Patrick?”

  “The little short guy? Works at Tenacity? Got an English accent? Red hair? Sure. When your mom called . . .”

  Frank turned away from Billy and ran out into the empty parking lot. Who had called? A few minutes before, he’d been grimly grateful that there would be no arson investigation, despite the fact that this surely was a set fire, because Frank knew that an investigation of any kind could lead to the spurious identity of Ian Not-Donovan Not-Mercy. Now he would call the FBI if he had to. The fucking Marines. A fire caused by old Jack’s . . . pipe! Frank knew now he should have never left the boys, or gone back for them the moment he heard about the spurious pipe! An old man’s life, the destruction of a pregnant woman, a whole family—a family and their home, their horses—these were just small expediencies if they could get to the boy. He dug in his pocket for his phone, fumbled, dropped it, watched in horror as the glass shattered. When he scraped it up, it still functioned, but Claudia’s number went over to voicemail. Frank limped off down the street, in the direction of the pool building, but then turned back toward the truck. What could he do on foot?

  His phone chimed and Claudia said, “I already know. I know. I heard Colin.”

  “Where are you?”

  “It was a while ago. He said help. He said, Help.”

  “Claudia, where are you?”

  “I went to the farm, after your mother called me . . . but now I’m in town . . . in Spring Green.”

  “So am I.”

  “He’s not saying anything. If he can’t call us, he’s unconscious,” Claudia said. “There wouldn’t be anything Ian could do.”

  “He could make them stop. He could make them let him go.”

  “Only if he can reach them, Frank. They wouldn’t send someone to take them if it was someone he could get to. Who has human feelings. They must be smart enough to know he can only have the Ian effect on someone who has—”

  “Claudia, not very many bad guys are very smart. And not many people are truly psychopaths,” Frank said. “I’m calling the police. Hang up.”

  Frank heard the officer answer, “Spring Green Police . . .” before he realized he was standing directly in front of the police station, nearly under the upended cone of light that spilled out over the steps of the miniature municipal building, where small bridges with iron-lace fencing with metal weavings representing black-eyed Susan and scarlet catch-fly connected the library with the fire department, the department of public works, and the police.

  “I’m calling to report that my two boys are missing . . .”

  “Is this Frank Mercy?

  Struck still, Frank finally said, “Yes.”

  “Frank, I think it’s fine. This is Shane. Shane Baker. We had a report about fifteen minute
s ago from a man walking his dog, an older guy who declined to leave his name, about two little boys trying to break a window at the pool building. I think there were three boys, a teenager with them at first, but he drove away when they hid under the steps. Maybe they’re hiding because they think they’re going to get a spanking. We sent a car over there just now, but the officer didn’t see them right away—”

  Frank heard Claudia scream, “Frank! Over here.”

  She came stumbling through the park, past the little band shell where Eden and his mother set up a cardboard stand for three summers and sold hotdogs and bloated, greasy cream puffs for a fund to make those little bridges between the buildings. Claudia came out of the darkness into the false, orange Arizona of the sodium-vapor sunlight. She was staggering, carrying Colin, whose eyes were shut, his mouth slack, and his pale hair, his white waffle jersey, and even his gray sweatpants were black with blood.

  There was no sign of Ian.

  TWENTY-TWO

  IS HE CONSCIOUS?” Frank said, and stopped. Fear had made him foolish. “Is he breathing?

  “He’s fine,” Claudia said. “It’s . . . he says it’s not his blood.”

  “Colin, where’s your brother?”

  “He’s on the steps at the pool,” Colin said. “He’s outside. He has the skates and the hockey sticks. We have to go back. They could come back.” He held out his arms to Frank and started to cry. “I thought she was gone, but she came back.”

  Claudia turned and ran back across the park. Frank’s phone was still lying in the grass where he had left it.

  It was still speaking, as though Frank had never left it.

  “You were right! Hiding!” Frank said when he reached down with one hand and picked it up. “What a night for us.” He pressed the bar to disconnect. “It’s okay, Collie. It’s okay. I’ve got you. Claudia will get Ian.”

  Slowly, carrying Colin, Frank walked through the deserted streets.

  “Will you still keep me?” Colin said softly. “I don’t really hate her.”