(2005) Wrapped in Rain (41 page)

I tried to stand up but felt a hand on my shoulder, pressing me gently back down.

Mutt held a baseball bat cocked over his left shoulder and was looking off in the direction of the kidnapper. I had never seen his eyes so clear. He patted me on the shoulder. "You know how you asked me to tell you before I hurt somebody?"

"Yeah," I said, holding my cracked ribs.

"Well, I'm telling you."

Mutt jumped over me, carrying the bat like a tomahawk, and ducked and dodged his way through the woods like the last of the Mohicans. He disappeared behind the trees, headed for Jase's harrowing squeals and muffled screams. I pulled myself up on a gnarled fence post, steadied my head, and listened. If I could pinpointJase, I still had time. Two seconds later, I heard the crack of Mutt's bat on bone and a bloodcurdling scream from a man in agony. I hobbled toward the sound, afraid of what I might find, and discovered Mutt walking toward me with Jase riding piggyback. Mutt's expression was no different than if he'd gone shopping for a loaf of bread. Jase buried his head on Mutt's shoulder and shook between sobs. Crumpled on the ground, with a grotesquely broken left leg, lay a man in horrific pain. His left knee had been torn sideways, and both bones in his shin had snapped in two, adding a new joint. Mutt, breathing calmly and not sweating at all, pointed at the man as if he were identifying a dog. "Trevor."

Jase unlatched his death grip from Mutt's neck and fell into my arms. "Unca Tuck." The sobs squelched his speech. "I don't want to go. I want to stay here with you. Don't let him take me. Please don't let him take me." I squeezed him tight and wondered what kind of man abandons a boy like this. What kind of man abandons any boy? I lifted his snotty and tear-stained face off my shoulder, wrapping both cheeks in my palms. "Hey, partner, nobody is taking you from me. Not today. Not ever. You got that?"

Jase pointed at Trevor. "What about him?"

I looked at Trevor, who was scratching at the dirt and attempting to crawl past Mutt's watchful eye. "They don't allow kids where he's going."

Suspicion and disbelief crossed Jase's face. "But, Unca Tuck, I want to stay here with you. I don't want to go. He"-Jase pointed down at Trevor again-"told me I had to go with him."

'lase, he lied."

"Well," Jase said, putting one arm around my neck and half-sitting on my thigh, "are you lying to me?"

'lase, this is our deal. Right now, you and me are making a pact. I won't ever lie to you, and you don't ever lie to me. Deal?"

Jase nodded. I spit on my hand and held it out to him. Jase looked suspicious again and turned toward the soft footsteps creeping up behind us. Katie knelt next to Jase, kissed his forehead, and said, "Go ahead, Jase." She looked me in the eye and wrapped both arms around Jase. "If Unca Tuck tells you something, you believe it." Jase spat into his palm and squeezed mine. When he locked his frail fingers around mine, the spit oozed out, falling onto the ground. Katie clung to Jase and held him for a few seconds. As she did, the weeks of worry gushed forth followed by the sobs of relief. I grabbed Trevor's cell phone and dialed 911. Trevor objected, but Mutt nudged his leg with the tip of his bat.

Jase let go of Katie's neck, tugged on my leg, and said, "Unca Tuck, I'm not going with him? Right?"

I wrapped him in my arms and squeezed him as hard as I could without hurting him. "Never."

"You promise?"

I sat him on my leg and nodded. "With all of me."

Trevor found the courage to lift himself onto one elbow and sneer at me. "You think you got all the answers, don't you? This isn't over. You may have been some hotshot at one time, but you don't know nothing about baseball, and you certainly don't know anything about being a father." The urge to strike Trevor in the face either with my hand, the bat, or both grew as he hid beneath a smug exterior that told me he had all the right friends in all the right places. But next to me stood Jase, and jase didn't need to see me hit Trevor. He needed something else.

I stepped closer, resting my hand on Trevor's mangled leg. "Let me tell you what I know about baseball." I held out my hand, and Mutt placed the barrel end of the hat into it. I wrapped my other arm around Jase and brushed the tears from his face. When I spoke, I did so tojase, not Trevor. `Baseball is a simple game, really. It's when a little towheaded boy with sweat dripping off his face and bruised shins swings a big stick and knocks a tightly wound leather thing past his dad and through grass that is two days overgrown. He then runs to first base-a towel thrown in the corner of the yard. On to second-maybe that's a spare glove thrown down for the occasion-while Dad tries to tag him. Laughing, the kid rounds thirdnothing but a worn spot where grass won't grow-and heads for home-maybe a bucket turned on its head. All the time, the kid is chased by a dad who is amazed that God actually trusts him with a little boy like this. Winded and sticky with sweat, the boy kicks home plate or slides in exclamation. But it's not over, because the kid then looks to Dad for affirmation. That look is both the beginning and the end. Because"-I gently pointed Jase's chin toward Trevor-"then he asks, `Did I do it right, Daddy? Are you proud, Dad? Do you like spending time with me? Can we do it again?"' I looked at Jase, then back at Trevor. "And think hard before you answer, because it may well determine the path of that boy's soul." I leaned closer, my face just a few inches from Trevor's, and whispered, "And anything other than yes is ..." I stood and held Jase's hand. "Is a crime against every boy ever born." I stood over Trevor and tapped him on the leg. "That is baseball. But more importantly, that's what's at stake here."

The police followed the ambulance toward the hospital with a promise to return later in the day to record our statements. Jase, Katie, and I walked to the house, hand in hand, but said nothing. Dandelions spotted the waisthigh hay as we walked through the pasture. Our feet kicked off the edges and sent wisps of dandelion dancing around our heads and floating downwind. I took a deep breath, squeezed Katie's hand, and thought I caught a whiff of Cornhuskers mixed among the wisps. My body ached, I was limping and could've used a few aspirin, but it was the best I had ever felt in my life. Mutt walked behind, balancing the bat on his shoulder and whistling Johnny Appleseed's song. I'm not sure, but his chest looked a little bigger. Almost swollen.

"Unca Tuck." Jase pulled on my arm.

"Yeah, pal."

"Are the police going to cut off my daddy's you-knowwhats?"

"I don't think so, pal. They'll try a few other things first."

Jase looked satisfied and tugged again. "Unca Tuck?"

"Yeah, buddy," I said, catching Katie's eyes.

"Will you throw with me?"

"GOOOOD MORNING!" THE KID SCREAMED FROM THE driver's seat and hopped back to his window. I had heard the loudspeaker when he turned down the driveway. Actually, most of southern Alabama heard it, so I left my office and met him at the base of the steps about the time he circled the drive.

"Little early today, aren't we?" I asked. It was 7:00 a.m.

He rubbed his hands together like he was starting a fire and said, "Naw, it's never too early for ice cream. Where's that family of yours?"

I liked the sound of that. "They're inside sleeping."

He glanced behind me and pointed. "Not anymore."

Jase slammed the front door, ran down the steps, and repeated his rehearsed performance at the window. Mutt walked in circles, eyeing the truck and looking over the mechanicals. His head was spinning. Calculating is more like it. Katie stood at the top of the steps, nursing a cup of coffee and giving me hand signals to buy a bottle of bubbles for Jase.

I turned to the kid. "How much you take for this whole thing?" I waved my hand from the front bumper to back, getting Mutt's attention in the process.

The kid tried to look surprised, but he had been fishing for this all along. "What? You want to buy my truck? Buy my business? Buy my very means of existence?"

He was laying it on pretty thick. "I want to buy your absence on my driveway." I smiled. "And if I own this truck, I'll want a guarantee that you'll never drive down it again-in anything."

The kid's eyes flitted around the truck like he was adding up all the numbers. I'm no dummy. He knew his number before he ever drove down the drive. "Nothing less than five."

"You're dreaming. I'll give you three and pay you cost plus 20 percent for all your inventory." The kid narrowed his eyes and communicated his disgust. "You think you're going to get a better offer today?"

He leaned through the window, and I could already hear him investing the money. He took off his wig, scratched his head, stuck his hand through the window, and said, "Deal."

I pointed at his outfit. "Suit too?"

"It's yours."

"Move over." To Katie's wide-eyed amazement, Jase, Mutt, and I loaded up and drove across town to the kid's house. I wrote him a check for $3,500, signed the title over to Mutt, and handed him the keys.

"Here, you drive." Mutt's eyes lit up like he had found the Holy Grail. He slipped on the red wig, pinned the red bulb nose onto his, punched the play button for "The Entertainer," and eased off on the clutch. His smile alone was worth $3,500. We drove all morning while Mutt got on the intercom and said, "Under new management! All ice cream today is free!" That really got people's attention, and by ten in the morning, we had given away everything Jase hadn't eaten.

Back in the driveway, Jase hopped down, ran to Katie, and pointed back at the truck. "Look, Mom, it's our own rolling confession stand." Two weeks had passed since the Trevor incident, and I had been spending enough time now with Jase that I could interpret most of his language. This one stumped me, and Katie noticed the quizzical look on my face.

Katie wiped the ice cream off Jase's lips and said, "Put a r in place of the f."

"Ohhhhhh."

KATIE FILED CHARGES, AND THE COUNTY COURT JUDGE sentenced Trevor to five years in prison, but he wouldn't get to serve them until after he served thirty-five years in New York for fraud, embezzlement, and falsified tax returns.

Since Mutt's return, he had transformed Waverly. The outside glistened like new construction. He had chlorinated and pressure washed the entire outside of the house twice. Even the weeping mortar had come clean. The slate roof glistened, and the copper drainpipes looked handpolished. Much of the exterior trim had been replaced, primed, caulked, and repainted. The front porch had been regrouted, most of the windows had been scraped and caulked, and many of the exterior doors had been replaced because the bottoms had become swollen in the rain. Mutt installed new lights outside, including several spotlights in the trees around the house. He replaced the railing across the entire front porch, refinished the porch furniture, and painted it with an exterior semigloss that glistened in the early morning dew or midnight moonlight. Somehow, he had used the tractor and a few come- alongs to raise the front gate so that it no longer looked like a circus tent. He planted camellias, repaired the sprinkler system that wound down the drive, fed water to the weeping willows and live oaks, and trimmed the Leyland cypress surrounding the front drive. He even polished the brass lion's head door knocker.

And to say the inside of Waverly was clean would have been an understatement. We could have eaten off the bottom of the trash can. Every corner of the house had been washed down, dusted, and if need be, sanded, stained, repainted, or repaired. Lights, fans, door locks, and burners that hadn't worked in a decade now did. I knew Mutt had made real progress when, for the first time in almost a decade, the old grandfather clock shook the house at 7:00 a.m.

Mose couldn't believe it either. He kept walking around the house, shaking his head, murmuring to himself, and smiling. He looked at me and said, "Tuck, my sister wouldn't have believed this."

At daylight, Mutt walked downstairs and shook me. "Tuck, Tuck, wake up." I rubbed my eyes and wondered why my brother was wearing his clown suit at 6:00 a.m.

"Yeah, buddy?"

"I had this dream."

"Can you tell me about it in the morning?"

"It is morning." He sat down, took off his wig, straightened his red nose, and fumbled the wig in both hands. Gibby had mixed a recent cocktail of two medications that seemed to be putting Mutt on a more level playing field. Higher lows and lower highs. The result meant that since the swamp in Jacksonville, Mutt had had no Thorazine. He continued. "I found myself at the door of this huge, enormous cathedral. It's bigger than a hundred churches. I'm banging on the doors for hours with all I'm worth, and finally, they break loose. I stumble through, but it's empty. There are no pews. The inside is a mile long. Maybe more. The floor is a chessboard of polished pearl or ivory and black granite, and all the corners are perfectly straight. The walls are several stories high topped with polished granite bleachers that rise up several hundred feet and out of sight. The bleachers and rafters are filled with angels. Hundreds. Thousands. Maybe millions. And they're singing this chorus. Sometimes it's a low hum; other times it's these roaring songs and words I've never heard. Then at other times it's songs like Miss Ella used to sing-although they sound better than she did.