A Question of Mercy (6 page)

When Adam came home talking about ocean life and fish that lived in rivers, Calder grew hopeful, even excited. “See? I told you. He's getting the hang of it.” But the hopefulness was brief. By the middle of the semester, the teacher, as well as the principal, reiterated what the doctors had told them years earlier. Only then, did Calder accept the truth.

Christmas that year came and went, and Calder moved around the house like a ghost. Just before the New Year began, he explained to Clementine that he could no longer live in the house.

“You're leaving us?” Clementine panicked.

“I can't do this,” he said. He didn't know what else to say. “I've left enough money in the bank for three months, and I'll send checks to be deposited every month. I'll take care of you both. I've found a job …” He stopped. Calder had worked for a company selling sports equipment to schools. He was successful and could find work easily.

“Where're you going?”

“I'll call you.” He did not tell her more.

“But …”

He did not say if he would ever come back.

The night Calder went away, he sat on the edge of their bed and told Clementine good-bye. She wouldn't beg. He left, going towards Adam's room. She heard the door close downstairs, softly. She heard the car start, then a long pause before it pulled from the gravelly driveway onto the road.

For many years Clementine hoped for Calder's return. She loved him. She hoped he would miss them and that she might wake up one morning to find him sitting in the kitchen; but, as hope faded, she learned to accept her lonely days. She applied for a job in town, finding sitters for Adam during the day. The sitters, though, could not handle Adam's unexpected tantrums, so Clementine took in washing and sewing, and worked from home. She felt chained to her life with Adam, and on certain days thought she could not continue. She needed to do something where she could meet people in the community. She joined the church.

One day as Clementine was telling a woman from church how hard it was to raise Adam, the woman told her about a state hospital where “someone like Adam” could live. “People would care for him,” she said. “It's a hospital near Raleigh. Cadwell. You should look into it.” The woman felt sorry for Clementine.

Cadwell, an institution with a large campus of buildings and grounds, housed brain-damaged children, as well as schizophrenic and psychotic adults. When Clementine went there for a visit, the rooms smelled so bad she held her breath to keep from retching. Patients walked the halls as though they were lost; others stood in locked rooms, staring out of small, barred windows. Several were yelling. Everyone looked unwashed. Clementine drove away knowing she could not leave Adam in such a place, but felt the strain of long caretaking days, while the prospects of her own life dimmed.

There were no other choices and, in the dark secrets of her mind, Clementine began to imagine the freedom she would have if Adam were to die suddenly—in a car wreck or maybe he would get sick and die in a hospital. Something innocent, quick, not painful. She hated herself when she dreamed of his death, but for several years those imaginings pursued her. She never told anyone about them, and felt monstrous when she thought about her desire to be free of him.

Adam, who trusted everyone and expected people to like him, was a lonely child. He sought out friends at the park, but as soon as other children recognized his strange behavior, they avoided him. Still, nothing stopped his overtures for friendship, and Clementine began to admire his perseverance. She developed routines with him—taking him to the park, the grocery store, to church; and, by the time Adam was ten, his open-heartedness had won the favor of many townspeople. Mr. Greenwood hired him to bag groceries, and others from church stopped him on the street to ask about Adam's beloved hubcaps that he had begun to collect from garages around town.

Clementine earned the reputation of being an excellent seamstress, receiving more orders than she could fill. Her own clothes, as well as Adam's,
were made of fine fabrics. With the money she earned, along with the money from Calder, she started a savings account for Adam. Their life together had taken a turn, becoming more settled, until Adam began to exhibit an interest in girls. He looked at magazine pictures of pretty women. He liked seeing pictures of girls in swim suits.

Then, out of the blue, Calder returned for Adam's twelfth birthday. Clementine woke to see a truck parked in front of the house. Calder was asleep in the front seat. She approached the truck. “Calder? You could have come in,” she said, as though no time had passed, as though he had not been away for five years.

“I wasn't sure if I'd be welcome.” Calder stepped out of the truck, thinner than she remembered, and his face looked angular, very much like Adam's.

“You are,” she said, and hoped he had returned for good, but didn't ask. During those first two absent years, Calder had phoned Adam every Sunday night; then the calls became less frequent. Now he was here.

When Adam woke and found his father sitting at the kitchen table, he ran to hug him. “Hey!” Calder said. “You're going to be twelve in a few days.” Calder buried his face in Adam's shoulder. Clementine looked away. “And I'm taking you to buy a new bicycle. You can pick it out. Whatever you want!”

Adam's face looked lit from inside. He could not stop smiling. “We can play ball,” he said. “I can throw now.” Clementine understood that Adam suspected his father had left because he couldn't play ball like the other boys. “I can throw good,” he said.

During those weeks at the house, Calder and Clementine lived as man and wife, and the house hummed with regular family life. Calder played ball in the yard with Adam and taught him how to ride a bike. In spite of everything, Clementine believed that Calder loved Adam, that Adam was the heartbreak of his life. But a day came when she saw his restlessness return, saw how he still wanted to deny Adam's real self. She knew he wouldn't stay.

“I want you to see who he is,” Clementine said. “Your son is a fine young man. He has a job at the grocery store, and he has friends. He goes to church; and people, at least some of them, are very sweet to him.”

“You've done a fine job with him, Clementine. A good job, but …” Everything in his face said he would leave.

Four days later Calder left for the second and last time. Clementine did not believe she would welcome him back again, but for a long time she would miss him. The family was a unit of two now. Adam was hers and she would forget how the rhythm of her days had been disturbed or how she had once dreamed of a different kind of life. In a few years Clementine signed
the divorce papers so that Calder could remarry, and she no longer thought about what she had wanted before Adam; she knew only that she wanted Adam to enjoy his life and to have a memory of happy times. She didn't know what patience or strength it might take to give him that memory; but she knew that everything seemed easier now, without Calder.

Adam waved to his mother on the sidewalk when he rode his bike—a royal blue Schwinn B-6 with big ballooner duck tail fenders, black wall tires, a six-hole rack, chain guard, and leather grips. He wobbled, but kept his balance. Clementine watched him ride all the way to the end of the street.

Adam

Blades of grass came up between his toes. He played a game with the other kids who called his father Coach. When the other boys hit the ball it flew in the air like a bird, then his daddy waved for Adam to pick up the bat and take a turn. His shadow had a bat too. His shadow swung its bat and the ball whizzed by him like a bee
.

“Let him hit it,” somebody yelled. “Let him get a hit.” So the boy pitching threw the ball slow and easy and the catcher behind him said “Swing,” so Adam did, but too late and missed again
.

“Run anyway,” someone said
.

“No, he can hit it. Let him hit,” Coach yelled. And with the next swing Adam tapped the ball and it bounced plop, plop a few feet in front of him, and he could see a squirrel run across the field and somebody yelled, “Run, run, Adam.” Adam ran like the squirrel. He imagined he was running very fast. He didn't know why he had to run, but he knew where first base was and he ran past first base and everyone cheered. Adam smiled at the cheering and headed back to sit on the bench, but the first baseman told him to stay there and pointed to second base telling Adam, “I'll tell you when to run.”

The sun was hot and Adam's father came to first base to pat him on the back and say “Good hit.” The bright sun and shadows, as well as the fun of running, kept a place in Adam's memory. At the right time Adam ran to second base, but he kept on going, straight out into the back field, running while the other boys kept waving him toward third. They finally laughed, so Adam laughed too. Adam's father was not laughing as he walked Adam back to the bench. “Sit here,” he said. “This'll be over in a little while.” And the dark shape of his father's back got smaller and smaller as he moved further away. And it walked away more times after that day
.

His father was gone one winter day and Adam caught the chicken pox. Spots popped out on his body. His Mama dotted him with pink lotion. “Don't scratch. Don't,” so he scratched when she wasn't looking. His stomach and feet and toes
and arms all had splotches. His face in the mirror had them too, and his ears. He laughed in the mirror. He thought his daddy would come home when the red spots were gone, but it was a long time
.

When his father came back home, time had gone away. Adam was twelve and had a chicken pox scar still visible on his arm. His mother made a yellow cake with chocolate icing. His father bought him a bicycle. Now he could ride like the other boys on the sidewalk. But he wobbled and fell and kept falling until he could hold the handlebars straight and pedal very fast. Then his daddy said he had to leave again. Adam knew it was over, but didn't know why. He straddled his bike rubbing the long curved handlebars, and tried to think of ways that he could be good enough to make his father stay
.

A few days later, before light, his daddy said goodbye again. Adam got up in his pajama bottoms and followed him to the door. “Don't get up,” his father told him. “Go back to bed.” But Adam followed him to the door. The house was still full of night. When his father opened the door, a cool air hit Adam's chest. He curled forward with the chill. “Go back to bed,” his father said. The air was wrong and his father's voice sounded off-pitch, and throaty. Wrong. Then the door closed with a soft sound, and the black air inside the house smelled like pennies
.

As Adam climbed into bed, the door kept closing and closing before his eyes, and the dark air seemed like a door itself, until he was asleep. He dreamed, remembering the shape of his father's back and head—walking away. Leaving always felt cold
.

He woke to hear his mother crying
.

— 8 —

D
uring those first weeks Jess caught a few rides, and though they never took her far, she was aware of easy miles going by, and grateful for the relief in her legs and feet. Some old boots found in a box by the side of the road—waterproof, with no holes in the sole—were too large for her feet and rubbed blisters, so she used soft rags to pad the empty spaces. At least they kept her dry. She had seen signs for Chattanooga, and the map she found in the garbage showed that Chattanooga was close to the Georgia line. She was headed toward Lula, Alabama. She felt lucky when she crossed into Georgia.

She had seen the car again today. A muddy brown and white two-tone Chevrolet with a dent in one door and a sticker on the back bumper that said: I Like Ike, though part of the sticker had been torn off and it read instead
ike
Ike. She had seen a similar car on the day she left home. It had been parked in front of her house, but not in the driveway. People hardly ever parked on the street, so she noticed.

Then, a few days ago outside Albertson's Grocery Store, near Ringgold, Georgia, a man driving that same car had pulled up beside Jess and stopped, but she kept walking. She thought she saw the car again this morning, same man, wearing a hat with the brim pulled down over his eyes. She had been stunned to see the ike Ike sticker on the bumper. That's when Jess became more vigilant, and wished she had something better than just scissors.

At a garage repair shop near Dalton, Georgia, Jess used the restroom to wash thoroughly with soap and water. She chopped off her hair to barely shoulder length and pulled it back into a short ponytail. She decided to buy crackers or chewing gum but, as she rounded the corner of the station, she saw a state police car and two troopers talking to the owner. They stood with feet apart, looking staunch and immoveable. They blocked the door to the station.

Too late to turn around
, she thought.
I need to go in, as though nothing is wrong
.