There was a squint to Marshall’s eye that looked, to David, like he was sighting down a rifle barrel. David took the easy way out and decided to agree. “Yeah, yeah. You do look quite a bit like my father.”
A tightness came across Marshall’s face that made him look as though he were in physical pain. David jumped, panicked for a second, thinking that the strain of the past few days had finally taken its toll and Marshall was having a heart attack. He reached out and grabbed the old man by the crook of his elbow.
“I ought to,” Marshall said, sounding strangely constricted. “You ought to see some resemblance.”
Suddenly, Marshall smacked a clenched fist into his open palm. It made a loud whacking sound that startled David. He leaned forward, staring at David. The oil lamp on the mantle gave his eyes a moist gleam, like a captive bird. “Why is it so hard?” he said, his voice still tight. “Why the Christ does it have to be so goddamned
hard?
”
“I . . . I don’t know,” David said, giving vague comfort—he wasn’t sure exactly what for. “We’ll be all right.”
“You didn’t know your mother very well, did you Davie?”
The question caught him off guard, and David merely shook his head no.
“She was quite a lady . . . quite a lady,” Marshall said, sadly shaking his head from side to side. His eyes took on a sudden, far-away look.
“I’ve seen some pictures of her, but I can’t really say as I remember her very well. I was pretty young when she died. What I remember most is how young she looked.”
“Ahhh.” Marshall continued shaking his head. “You don’t remember her very well. Even then, so long ago, she had old eyes . . . old eyes—like she’d seen a hundred years.”
For the moment, David forgot all about their situation and the threat Les Rankin posed for them. He was surprised and intrigued by Marshall’s interest in his mother, and again old memories stirred in the mustiness of the old home. David closed his eyes and looked in the direction of the oil lamp. He let the glow of the soft light fill his retinas with sullen, red light. “I sort of remember her, though,” he said distantly. “I mostly remember her hair. Billowing black waves. She used to dangle her hair in front of my face to tickle my nose. At least, I think I remember that.” He stopped abruptly and opened his eyes. “It was so long ago,” he said simply.
Marshall nodded. “Long ago.”
“But why did you mention her?” David asked, his interest keen. He sat bolt upright in the couch and looked at Marshall.
Marshall sighed deeply. “Probably the simplest way is to tell you right out.” Marshall placed his bony hand on David’s shoulder. Giving him a firm squeeze, he said, “Because, Davie, I’m your father.”
David let out a gasp and fell against the back of the couch. Marshall’s grip on his shoulder relaxed but did not let go.
After a moment of silence, as they measured each other. David said, “You aren’t kidding, are you?”
Marshall nodded. “No, I ain’t kidding.”
“Christ,” David exclaimed. He looked to the oil lamp and then back at Marshall. “Christ-all-fucking-Mighty! I . . . I can’t quite handle that.” He shook his head, trying to absorb it all.
“You’re the only person who knows, and I want you to die not tellin’ anyone else. I never told anyone ‘bout what there was—between me and Louise—your mother ‘cept for Pastor Clement.”
“Pastor Clement? He knows?” David asked, surprised. He tried to absorb it all, but he knew that it would take time—a long time to realize fully. He did realize now that, whenever he thought about his past, there would be an ironic overcast—to everything.
He thought about the way his father, that is, Stewart Logan, the man that until now he
thought
was his father, had treated him: so distantly, so cold.
Had Stewart suspected or known that David wasn’t really his son? All those years, living in a small town like Holland and having to pretend that David was his son.
And his grandmother? Had she known? Maybe that helped explain the way she treated him as he grew up. Her harshness, her discipline, her strict religion—perhaps they were all acted out to expiate the guilt she felt for her sons.
Had there been talk and gossip around town? That could explain, in a way, how certain people had treated David, how they had regarded him, both while he was growing up and now that he had returned to Holland.
And Pastor Clement . . . Pastor Clement. David considered how, so often, he had felt as though the pastor had singled him out for special attention. This new knowledge now colored what David felt about the pastor. Perhaps, because he knew the truth, he tried to reach out to David out of—what? pity? . . . sympathy?
And now, finally, the events of the last week seemed to fit into place much better. The estate and the settlement; David had thought for the last eight years that it was his father who was “missing, presumed dead.” He thought now with a deep pang of guilt how he had never really felt sad about his father being missing; he had never seen the estate settlement as anything more than a royal pain in the ass. This also helped explain why Stewart had disappeared so soon after the death and burial of his mother—David’s grandmother. With her dead and gone, there was no longer a reason to keep up the sham, pretending David was his son.
And, finally, Marshall—who for the whole of David’s life had treated him callously, distantly . . . all because he had to bear the guilt alone. The guilt that he had committed
adultery
and, by religious law, incest had worn him down, forged him into the seemingly cruel man he appeared to be to everyone in Holland. What a terrible burden, David thought, as he looked at Marshall’s—his father’s—frail figure.
". . . and I know there’s no way I can make up for time—for
everything
we’ve lost,” Marshall said raspily. “Sayin’ I’m sorry, that I wished to God it hadn’t been this way or that I’d do it different if I could, ain’t enough. Nothin’ . . . nothin’ could ever make you realize how hard it’s been and how—” his voice choked “—how much I wish it hadn’t been this way.”
David saw the tears run down his father’s cheeks, and he felt his own eyes stinging. It felt to him like he had spent his whole life putting together a jig-saw puzzle that made absolutely no sense. No matter what angle he had looked at it from, his life had been a meaningless jumble with no literal meaning—until now.
But now, the final pieces had dropped into place, and the picture was complete. David felt that, from now on, he would really know who he was. All of the answers to questions that he had never even thought important would now be answered.
“So that explains why you never got married and why you lived alone out by the Bog,” David said. He felt incredibly dumb saying that, but those were the words that came out.
“I
was
married!” Marshall said emphatically. “In the sight of God and in my heart, your mother and I were married! And I know that when I die, and if there is a Pearly Gate up there, she’ll be waitin’ for me. I
know
it!”
David suddenly froze, startled. The question that popped into his mind was, he knew, the last piece of the puzzle. “How,” he said, making a special effort to keep his voice sounding solid, “how did my mother die?”
As soon as the question was out, it seemed as though Marshall withered away, became almost translucent in the orange glow of the oil lamp.
“If I knew that—” Marshall said, struggling to keep his voice from breaking as tears coursed down his cheeks. “If I knew the answer to that question, son, I’d die a happy man.”
David nodded, unable to speak.
“You know that she drowned in the Saco River, right? That she swam from one shore to the other and then couldn’t make it back.”
Again, David nodded silently.
“Some folks say it was a terrible accident. That’s how the newspaper reported it. But others . . . others say that she did it on purpose that she killed herself.”
David shook his head, unable to look away from Marshall as his eyes watered over. “I know. I . . . I heard some talk when I was growing up.” He felt uncomfortable, watching his uncle—his father, crying there in the dimness of what had once been the family home. There was a painful irony that all through his childhood, living here with his uncle and his grandmother, he had never realized that he wasn’t with his
real
family.
Marshall continued, his face twisted with pain. “What no one knows, though, is what happened before she drowned. That’s been another thing I’ve had to carry, with me my whole life. I ain’t told nobody.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” David said softly, “if you don’t want to, if it’s too painful.”
“You have a right to know. Somebody has to know.” Marshall inhaled, braced himself, then continued. “We had met over on the far shore, away from everyone else. Louise had told me that we had to stop seeing each other, that what we were doing was sinful.
She even said that maybe you weren’t my boy, but I knew you was.”
“That was when I was about five years old, right?”
Marshall nodded. “Yeah, you were just ‘bout to start kiddy-garden.” He rubbed his cheeks, trying to wipe the tears away, but still his eyes watered. “We talked quite a while, ‘n finally, she just told me flat-out that we had to stop seein’ each other—that livin’ a lie was killin’ her.”
David said, “She could’ve gotten a divorce and then you could’ve gotten married?”
Marshall shook his head. ”‘Course not. Not in them days. Hell, I know these days kids get married one week and divorced the next, but this was 1949. People didn’t get divorces then like they do now—’specially in a small town like Holland. And then . . . then we
never
could have gotten married. It would’ve been like admittin’ our adultery in public.”
David nodded his understanding. “So then what happened?” he asked. He knew that telling all this was tearing Marshall apart, but he felt he had to know; he was, after all, the result of their relationship.
“We was gonna’ swim back to rejoin everyone else, but we knew we couldn’t come back together. That would’ve been too suspicious. There had been enough talk about us around town for us to be extra careful. I—” Again, Marshall’s voice choked off in a sob. “I went back first and your mother was gonna’ come along a few minutes later, only . . . only she never made it.” He snorted loudly, wiping his eyes with both hands.
“Jesus,” David muttered, shaking his head and staring blankly at the oil lamp’s glow. “Jesus.”
‘Course, there’s always people who’ll start stories, ‘n when your mother was found downstream a few days later, people started talkin’, sayin’ she killed herself.”
“Jesus.”
“And that . . . that . . . wonderin’ if she had just drowned or really meant to die is what I’ve had to live with.” He pounded his fist angrily on the couch raising a puff of dust. “Everything else—you know people talkin’ ‘bout me, kids soapin’ my windows ‘n throwin’ rotten vegetables at my house, everything—
everything
, none of it bothers me because I have to live with what I
know
happened and what
might have
happened.”
Marshall’s shoulders shook violently, as though he was wracked by a fever. David sat next to him, his hand shaking as he reached out and touched Marshall’s arm. He wanted to say something to let him know that he understood, but words tangled in his mind. He watched helplessly as this frail, ruined man—his father—wept.
Suddenly, the sound of Marshall’s sobbing was lost in a deafening explosion. Both men jumped from the couch, looking at each other dazed and confused. Another explosion roared through the living room. The lace curtains bellied inward with the shock, and glass and splinters of wood showered onto the floor. David dropped to the floor, grabbing at Marshall’s arm as he went down. He glanced up at the ceiling and saw where the buckshot had ripped out a wide swath of pitted plaster.
Marshall crouched down slowly, his legs stiff. He started to speak, but David waved him to silence.
From outside, they heard a soft click, the sound of the person outside reloading. Then a third explosion ripped into the living room.
“I wonder who the hell that is,” Marshall said hoarsely.
“Just stay down, for Christ’s sake,” David hissed. He glanced at the window, tensed, then scuttled across the floor from the living room to the dining room. Once out of sight from the windows, he flattened his back against the wall and slowly rose to a standing position. Cautiously, he peeked around the corner, hoping he hadn’t been seen. His heart was thumping so hard he felt a sharp, ice-pick pain under his collarbone. Blood whooshed in his ears.
This is it
, he thought wildly.
This is it, the face off.
He looked at the windows where the curtains hung in loose tatters. He saw or thought he saw a slight motion behind them. It might have been a person or the night breeze. Then, slowly, silently, the long black barrel of a shotgun separated the curtains and pointed into the room.
“I know you’re in there, old man,” a voice outside shouted. David knew instantly that it was Les Rankin; there was no mistaking his voice—it was as cold and polished as the gun barrel. “You know damn right well I’m gonna’ get you. No sense fucking around, is there?”
VIII