“A boy we knew who worked at the liquor store sold us a pint of orange-flavored vodka. We went to the river, Gay and me, and drank it all.
“We were in my dad’s car and I was driving when we started back to town, but on the way, I had to stop and throw up, so she took the wheel to drive us to my house. O Boy stopped us out on East Main, took her to jail for drunk driving.”
“What about you?”
“He let me go.”
“Rowena, did you ever make a connection between her arrest and—”
“When you were born? Yeah, I did. It was nine months. Exactly nine months.”
November 7, 1968
Dear Diary,
Last week I finished that book
And Still the Waters Run
, which I read for the paper I had to write for American history. Today I got my paper back from Mr. Houser. He gave me a D-. He had drawn a red X through everything I wrote about the Trail of Tears, and had written “Undocumented” across the top of each page. When I held up my hand to ask about it, he ignored me.
Finally, I spoke up and asked him if he had read the book or if he had even heard of Angie Debo. I told him I could prove everything I wrote because it was in her book. Mr. Houser got furious and kicked me out of class. But I didn’t care. I knew my paper was good, I knew Angie Debo was telling the truth, and so was I.
Spider Woman
December 8, 1968
Dear Diary,
I finished a drawing today of an old Cherokee man looking across a flat and empty plain. Nothing but trees standing stark against a gray sky. I call it “The Day the Buffalo Went Away.” I’m going to give it to Oscar Horsechief for Christmas.
Spider Woman
I
vy was in the kitchen when she heard Mark clunking around in the next room. “You decent?” she yelled.
“No.”
“Good.” When she walked in, she found him standing on one crutch, trying to pull on the cutoffs that fit over his thickly bandaged leg. “Sleep well?” she asked.
“Dreamed I had a bullet hole in my leg.”
“How weird is that?” As she helped him into the shorts, she said, “Amax Dawson just called. Said he needs to see you.”
“Did you ask him to come over?”
“He drove by here a little while ago, but was scared off by the reporters and satellite trucks out front.”
“Can you drive me to his place?” Mark asked.
“He’s reluctant to have you come there. Afraid you’ll be followed. And he told me this is too big to talk about over the phone. He says he and his source have to remain anonymous.”
“His source? Sounds like he’s found himself a ‘Deep Throat.’”
“Let’s hope so,” Ivy said.
“Well, if he won’t come here, and he doesn’t want me to go there, what am I supposed to do?”
“I’ve already worked that out.”
“Great. Am I going to be a plumber again?”
“Not this time.”
“Meter reader? Tree trimmer?”
“Put on your shirt, smart-ass. We’re going out.”
At a few minutes after nine, Ivy helped Mark into her van, ignoring the reporters who yelled questions at them from the street. As she backed out of the drive, both she and Mark acted oblivious to the hubbub around them.
Two vehicles followed them to the DeClare Medical Clinic, where Ivy dropped Mark off at the front door before she put the van in the parking garage.
Unhurried, he took the elevator to the third floor, to room 305, the office of Dr. Alkoff.
The waiting room was crowded. Mark took a seat between a woman with a cast on her leg and a teenage boy with his arm in a sling. When two reporters walked in, one took the last empty chair, which was across the room from Mark; the other stood near the window.
Five minutes later, a nurse opened a door at the end of the waiting room and called, “Dr. Albright?” Mark pulled himself up with his crutches and followed her through the door and down the hall.
“Here you are,” she said. “The doctor will be with you shortly.”
Amax was smiling when Mark entered. “Any problems?” he asked as they shook hands.
“No, it went just the way Ivy set it up. She could probably have a career with the CIA.”
“How do you know she doesn’t? Here, I’ll take those,” he said as Mark settled in a chair and handed off his crutches. “I heard Kyle Leander’s been arrested for the shooting.”
“O Boy’s arrested him, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“You have any suspicions?”
“I have the feeling O Boy was involved some way, but it’s just a gut feeling. Nothing I can prove.”
“Maybe I’ve got something here we
can
prove, something he can’t slither away from.”
Leaning forward, Mark said, “Let’s hear it.”
“Do you remember how I found out about you, about who you really are?”
“Some friend of yours who works at the sheriff’s office, wasn’t it?”
“Olene Turner. We used to date back in high school, been friends ever since. Well, she showed up at my house before dawn this morning to bring me this.”
Amax handed Mark a box the size of a book, its lid wrapped in gift paper, bright yellow bow taped to the top.
“A birthday present?” Mark asked.
“No, but she wanted it to look like one. She didn’t believe anyone at O Boy’s office would follow her, had no reason to think they’d even suspect she had access to this, but she didn’t want to take any chances. Go ahead. Take the lid off.”
Mark opened the box and lifted out several pieces of paper folded in half. “What is this?”
“Copies of an arrest report on Gaylene Harjo. A jail blotter. And a prisoner property receipt. All signed on the night of June 28, 1970.”
“My God, Amax. How did your friend get hold of these?”
“Olene is tight with one of the deputies who got wind that the sheriff was out to destroy some records having to do with an old arrest. When she heard it involved Gaylene Harjo, she kept her eyes open. Saw O Boy empty a file cabinet drawer into a box and take it to his office. When he was called away to an armed robbery, she went through the box, found this file and copied it. Then she replaced it in the box where she’d found it and brought these to me.
“Now, I’ve made the connection between the night she was in jail and the date you were born. Isn’t too hard to figure what happened, is it?”
“You’re thinking she was raped while she was in jail.”
“And there’s a good chance that whoever raped her is the same man who killed her.”
“Let’s not jump too far ahead, Amax. We ought to take this one step at a time.”
“I’ve been taking those steps for so many damn years now, and I still haven’t been able to clear my daddy’s name. But this,” he said, tapping his finger on the arrest report, “proves that O Boy is guilty of something. And I won’t stop until I find out what it is.”
“Can you blame him?” Mark asked. “All this time trying to prove his father’s innocence, and now believing he’s so close.”
“I know,” Hap said, “but Amax can’t go running into O Boy’s office waving these papers, accusing him of rape. There’s always the possibility that what he’s guilty of is covering up for someone else.”
“Sure, but who?”
“I don’t know. But you’ve got to consider this: Not all pregnancies last exactly nine months. She could have gotten pregnant a few days earlier or a few days later, which means that June twenty-eighth is not necessarily the day you were conceived.
“Secondly, even if she did get pregnant at the jail, it doesn’t mean she was raped. As far as we know, she never reported an attack. So, it could have been consensual sex. After all, Rowena said Gaylene was drunk.”
“But if it wasn’t rape, or even consensual sex,” Mark said, “then why would O Boy work so hard to cover it up?”
“I don’t know. Yet.”
Hap shuffled the papers in his hand and began to read aloud from the property receipt. “Brown plastic purse, two keys, comb, lipstick, billfold with nine dollars, seventy-four cents, fabric belt, senior ring, charm bracelet, pair of imitation pearl earrings.
“Everything was accounted for when she was released; she signed the receipt at ten forty-three.”
“So that means she got back everything taken from her before she was put in a cell.”
“Right. And if she . . .” Hap looked puzzled. “This doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “According to the arrest report, she was stopped on East Main at nine oh-seven p.m. for ‘going left of center, then swerving onto the shoulder.’
“But this property receipt shows she was released at ten forty-three p.m. Now if she was so drunk she couldn’t control the vehicle, how did she sober up in an hour and thirty-six minutes?”
“What are you getting at, Hap?”
“Someone got her out while she was still drunk. And I doubt it was family. Didn’t you say she made Rowena swear she would never tell anyone? Obviously Gaylene was trying to make sure the Harjos didn’t find out.”
“And it wasn’t Rowena because she was drunk, too.”
“So, who’s the first person comes to mind?”
“Kyle Leander.”
Kyle looked like a walking coma when he was led into the courtroom. Glassy-eyed, he stared straight ahead but appeared to see nothing. His head bobbed as if it were attached to his shoulders by springs, and he was so slack mouthed that a thin line of drool ran from his lower lip to his chin.
He had, Mark guessed, been given a fishbowl full of drugs from which he could choose his favorite colors.
He was wearing an orange jumpsuit several sizes too small and three inches too short, handcuffs and shackles, which caused him to walk stiff legged and heavy footed.
Even though Kyle was probably the one who bailed Gaylene out of jail when she was drunk, and although he might have been the one who got her pregnant that night, Mark couldn’t help feeling sorry for him as he was paraded in front of the packed courtroom.
The arraignment lasted less than five minutes, so pat that the performers might have been reading from a script. The upshot was that Kyle was judged incompetent to understand the charges brought against him so was ordered by the judge to undergo thirty days of psychiatric examination at the Haven, the institution from which Kyle had recently taken a “break.” Hap said he wouldn’t be surprised if Kyle was put back in the same room he’d just escaped from.
When court was adjourned, Hap led Mark through the judges’ lounge so the media couldn’t follow, then out the back door to his car, a 1988 Chrysler that looked like a Dumpster inside.
“How in hell am I going to get a chance to talk to Kyle?” Mark asked.
“I don’t think you will. At least not here. They’ll take him back to his cell until the hospital sends transportation for him. Between now and then, I’m certain he won’t be allowed any visitors.”
“Well, if Kyle is the one who got her out of jail that night and took her to Arthur’s cabin, then—”
“Mark, do you know your blood type?”
“Sure. It’s AB positive. Why?”
“Let’s find out what Kyle’s is. We might be able to determine whether or not he’s your father.”
“And how will we do that?”
“What are friends for?”
Hap parked outside the office of Drs. Westfall and Kenders, then suggested Mark come inside to wait.
“This might take a while, depending on how busy they are in there. And it’s too hot for you to sit in the car. My air conditioner’s gone kaput.”
Inside the office, Mark took a seat in the patients’ waiting area while Hap went to the counter, where a black woman slid open the window between them and shook Hap’s hand.
“Hi, Happy,” she said, a smile lighting up her face. “Haven’t seen you in a month of Sundays.”
“Barb, you’re looking good.”
She stood up, turned around and struck a model’s pose. “Lost twenty-two pounds.”
“I can tell. How’s Henry?”
“He found every pound I lost.” She laughed.
“And how about Rebecca?”
“Becca’s making good grades, staying out of trouble. Since you got her out of that jam last winter, she’s headed in the right direction. I can never repay you for that.”
“Oh, you might be surprised.”
“What can I do?”
“I need to talk to you for a few minutes, Barb. Privately, if that’s possible.”
“Sure, come on back.”
Mark watched Hap go through a door that said
PERSONNEL ONLY,
then saw Barb close her window and disappear into an office behind her desk.
On the table beside him, Mark found copies of
Parenting, Healthy Living
and
Newsweek,
a March issue that he’d read months ago.
He picked up the copy of
Parenting
and read the lead article about the first six weeks of a newborn’s life. Then, just as he’d started a true-life story of a mother who gave birth to triplets, an elderly couple came in. The man held the woman’s hand and guided her to a seat.
“What time does the movie start, John?”
“Honey, you’re here to see Dr. Kenders.”
“Oh.”
“You want your sweater on? It’s cool in here.”
“Maybe when the movie starts,” she said.
The old man noticed Mark sitting near the corner and nodded, then helped his wife into her sweater, not easily accomplished. “There,” he said. “Would you like to look at a magazine?”
“No, silly. The lights will go down soon. What time does the movie start?”
“You’re here to see the doctor, Mildred.”
Mark could remember such ramblings from his mother in the months before she stopped speaking entirely, but by that time, she was already in Ambassador Manor, an Alzheimer’s care facility in Burbank.
He had gone to see her every morning, to feed her breakfast when she would eat, to clean up the mess when she wouldn’t. But his visits had gradually diminished until, finally, he’d stopped going at all. He’d felt guilty, but not guilty enough to make himself sit beside her, making inane conversation that she neither understood nor responded to unless one of her less than human sounds could be considered a response. But now, watching the couple across the room, he felt the stab of regret.
When Barb returned to her seat behind the counter and reopened her window, she said, “Good morning, Mildred. John. How’re you all doing today?”
“What time does the movie start?” Mildred asked.
“Let’s get you in to see Dr. Kenders first.”
“I’ll take you to the movie this afternoon, Milly,” John said.
When Mark stepped up to the counter, Barb smiled and said, “You’re with Happy, aren’t you.”
“Yes.”
“He’ll be out in just a second.”
“I wonder if you could sell me this?” Mark showed her the copy of
Parenting
he’d been reading.
“No, but I’ll give it to you.”
“I’d be glad to pay.”
“Absolutely not,” she said.
“You ready?” Hap asked as he joined Mark at the counter.
“Sure.”
“Thanks again, Barb,” Hap said.
“You and Matthew come to the house for dinner when you get hungry for my chicken and dumplings.”
“Soon. Bye now.”
When they neared the car, Hap said, “Kyle’s blood type is O.”
“And that means?”
“He’s not your father.”
“I brought you something today,” Mark said, handing Ivy the
Parenting
magazine. “While I was waiting in the doctor’s office for Hap, I read an interesting article about the bond that’s formed between baby and mother during the first six weeks. Thought you might like to see it.”
“Thanks,” Ivy said. She leafed through the magazine for about thirty seconds, then tossed it on the kitchen table.
“When is your baby due?” Mark asked as he poured himself a cup of coffee.
“You know what I’m hungry for?” Ivy said as she opened the refrigerator door.
“Pickles,” Mark guessed.
“No! I think that’s an old wives’ tale.” She made a face. “The thought of a pickle makes me about half-sick. No, I want stuffed olives dipped in peanut butter.”