Autumn Blue (14 page)

He suddenly remembered the kid in the house and felt foolish. Raking leaves into neat piles just to spread them over the lawn
again could be construed as insanity, and proving to people that he was not losing his marbles had become a preoccupation
recently. Millard glanced furtively toward the front window. Tyson was no longer at the dining room table cheating at solitaire.
What was the kid doing? With a twinge of uneasiness, he stepped toward the garden for a better view. Not slouched on the sofa.
Oh, there he was, standing at the side window. Millard followed the boy’s gaze westward, out to the untamed five-acre field
beyond his picket fence. And then he saw what the boy must have seen: a buck emerging from the woods with a rack big enough
to display every forgotten hat in Red’s Barber Shop. The deer raised its snout to the wind before dropping its powerful neck
to graze. He was majestic, Millard thought, suppressing the urge to grab his rifle and pump some lead into the hide covering
the buck’s heart. His days of hanging deer by their hindquarters from the maple tree behind the garage were over. Too much
work and too much venison. But if that old boy dared to even look over the fence at his apples, well, that would be a different
story.

Millard headed for the garage, shuffling through his scattered leaves. He hung the rake in its appointed place on the pegboard
along the back wall with a sigh of defeat. God commanded man to take dominion over all the earth, and then he sent things
beyond his control to try him. Moles, gales of wind, rampant boys. He tossed his gardening gloves onto the work bench. His
once ordered life was a flurry of dry leaves, spiraling out of control.

As he approached the front steps, he paused. The eave of the house sheltered the window from glare and he could see Tyson
clearly, still across the dining room at the west window, his back to Millard. The boy’s shoulders drooped; his arms hung
at his sides. He looked for all the world like a juvenile gorilla Millard had once seen at the zoo, staring at the glass that
enclosed him. Like the ape, Tyson looked as lifeless as if a plug had been pulled from his soul, draining all hope of living
in his native habitat again. Millard cleared his throat loudly, stomping a warning of his approach on the porch steps, and
removed his dirty shoes.

He found Tyson back at the table again, his back to Millard, flipping cards from the deck in his hand.

“There’s a big old buck out there,” Millard said. “Don’t think I’ve ever seen that one before.”

“I have.”

“You sure? He’s not the only four-point in the forest.”

“I know him.” Tyson slapped a series of cards down in rapid succession. “He knows me, too.”

Wild deer weren’t exactly sociable in Millard’s experience, but something made him ask, “Would he let you walk right up to
him?”

“Not anymore. He wanders off if I get too close. Somebody got to him. There’s a nick out of his ear. I think he got shot at.”

Not even an eagle could see a nicked ear from that distance. Millard pulled his high-power bird-watching binoculars from a
drawer next to his easy chair just as the phone on his lamp table rang. “You might as well get that,” Millard said. “It’s
always for you.” Tyson got up and took the phone from its cradle. Sure enough, it was the court’s computer monitoring system
calling again to confirm that Tyson was where he was supposed to be. The calls were random, anywhere from two to five a day.
A robotic voice would ask to speak to Tyson and he had two minutes to get to the phone. Millard heard the boy repeat a series
of numbers back to the voice recognition software (the numbers were different every time) and hang up the receiver.

The buck raised its head, sniffing the air. “Well, I’ll be darned.” Millard dropped the field glasses to his side. “That’s
a bullet hole all right.”

“He beds down at the bottom of the hill. Not far from Sparrow Creek.”

Millard turned to look at Tyson. “Do you know the whereabouts of other animals?”

Tyson nodded.

Millard dropped into a chair at the table. “Like what, for instance?”

The boy shrugged. “Like skunks and coyotes and mice. There’s a big old cedar stump on the other side of a pond.” He gestured
in the direction of the woods behind his house across the road. “Some skunks live in there. I usually see them come out only
at night. I watch coyotes in the daylight sometimes, though. There’s a whole family of them in this little cave behind a fallen
tree over there beyond this pasture.”

That was the longest paragraph Tyson had ever spoken to him. Millard glanced out the window. The buck was gone. “I hear those
coyotes at night. Sounds like a boys’ choir tuning up.”

“There are seven of them. The pups were born last spring, just before school got out.”

“Coyotes are pretty private animals, with a keen sense of smell. I’m surprised they’d come out while you’re anywhere in the
vicinity.”

Tyson shrugged. “I saw the dad sometimes—the male—before he had a whole family. He got used to me being around, I guess. I
used to lie on this little hill at the edge of the woods for hours, watching the clearing because so many animals came through
there on their way to the creek. I figured out his territory by watching where he peed, marking his borders, you know?”

Millard nodded. “Your mother told me you like to spend a lot of time in the woods.”

The solitaire game froze up, even after the boy had run through his deck five times. He scooped the cards into a pile with
a sigh of frustration. “Living all cooped up in houses is stupid. And school. I don’t know why everyone thinks it’s normal
to live like that—with walls all around them.”

“Come December you might think differently. Even the animals crawl in somewhere to keep warm.” Millard buttoned another button
on his gray sweater just thinking about it. “And school—well, that’s just a necessary part of life. A young man needs an education.
Why, you’ll be a man before you know it. What do you intend to do with your life?”

The boy rolled his eyes and plopped his deck of cards onto the table. “I’ve got to take a pee.” He pushed out his chair and
headed for the bathroom.

Millard fumed. Disrespectful kid. Why did he bother with him? The boy had a good mind according to his mother. But he was
wasting it. Kids nowadays took everything for granted. They had it too good. Back in his day, boys longed to go to school
but too often got pulled out to till the family farm while their fathers traveled to any town that had work. Still, even during
the Great Depression, when kids had so little in the way of material things, they seemed happier than the kids of today.

The phone rang again. So soon? Millard picked up, expecting to hear a robotic voice. “Hello.”

“Mr. Bradbury? It’s Mark Dane, Tyson’s probation officer.”

“He’s in the bathroom. Can he call you back?”

“Sure. But while I’ve got you here, how’s he been doing since we met last week?”

“Oh, all right, I guess. He comes and goes right on schedule.”

“Is he keeping up with his schoolwork?”

Millard glanced at the backpack on the floor over by the couch. Books had been pulled from it that morning while Ty searched
for his deck of cards and there they lay, untouched. “Oh, it’s coming along.” Millard was surprised by his blatant lie. If
the kid didn’t do the work, they’d toss his butt in juvenile jail. Millard would be free of him.

“Make sure his mother drops his assignments off at the school by Friday,” Dane continued. “Principal Weston and I are keeping
in touch. Now, on another matter: Tyson’s community service. Deputy Sheriff Estrada has been in touch with me and has a project
lined up. Since Tyson is on house arrest, he’s going to have to be closely supervised. Will you tell him the deputy will pick
him up from his home Saturday morning at nine?” Millard heard the toilet flush and the bathroom door open. “Here he is. You
can tell him yourself.”

He passed the phone to Tyson and watched him as he grunted one-word answers into the receiver, his head and shoulders in their
perpetual drooping state like a begonia in desperate need of water. The boy glanced at the schoolbooks on the floor. “Uh-huh.
Yeah. Okay.” He listened some more. “I know.” He hung up without saying good-bye and stared out toward his house across the
road.

“Community service, eh? What does that look like?”

“Fixing a porch and building a wheelchair ramp.”

Millard nodded in approval. “Good. They think that’ll take up your required forty hours?”

“It’ll take me forty years. I don’t know how to do that stuff.”

Millard wondered if the kid’s dad ever showed him which end of a hammer to hang on to before he took off. “Oh, I’m sure someone
will be there to oversee the job. You’ll learn.” He walked over to the sofa, stooping to pick up the carelessly strewn schoolbooks
from the floor. “American history, geometry, English . . .” He tossed them one by one onto the coffee table. A packet of papers
was clipped together. “These must be your assignments. Have you looked at them?”

“Yeah.”

“How much have you got done?”

“Nothing.” The kid dropped into Millard’s blue chair.

Millard frowned as he took the liberty to ruffle through the pages. “Let’s see what you’ve got here. ‘Read chapter eight in
your math book and work the problems on pages 52 and 57.’” He flipped to the next page. “Says here your English assignment
is to write a one-page analysis of a poem you like.”

Tyson scoffed. “Poetry sucks!”

Millard flashed back to a rebellious student he had tried to teach back in his days at Silver Falls High. Donald? Dennis?
A kid who would write on his jeans, his hands, anything but a piece of paper. That boy had felt the same way about English,
which had infuriated Millard. So many good minds going to waste while his feebleminded son struggled with telling his right
hand from his left.

“You’ve got a problem, then.” Millard dropped the packet to the coffee table. “You either have to wade through this
sucky
situation like a man or sit out your sentence behind bars. It won’t be so bad, though. You’ve already done a week in jail.
You’d have less than fourteen weeks to go. That’s what? About a hundred days. In fact, you might as well be bored there as
here. I say you just let it slide. Take a load off both of our minds.”

Tyson scowled. “Maybe I will.”

“You’d rather be locked up where you can’t even see a bird fly by than exercise your brain a little bit?”

“Nobody’s locking me up. They’d have to find me first and they never will.”

“What is it with you? You think you’ve got it so bad; everyone’s out to get you. You poor, mistreated boy. Everyone else—your
teachers, the law, me—we’re all idiots and you’ve got the world all figured out. You’re pathetic!”

Millard snatched up his newspaper, swatting the air in front of Tyson. “And you’re in my chair!”

B
RADBURY’S DOOR
flung open before Sidney had a chance to knock. Tyson emerged, his backpack hanging from one shoulder, his face wearing the
angry countenance that had become too familiar. Her father used to warn her when she made a face to be careful; it could get
stuck that way. Perhaps that had happened to her son. She poked her head in the doorway. “Hi, Millard. How did it go today?”

The old man sat with both hands gripping the arms of his faded blue chair. His narrowed eyes spoke first. “Splendid. Like
a tea party in the morgue.”

“Mom, I’m going home,” Tyson said over his shoulder as he stormed off the porch. She watched him push through the picket gate,
letting it swing behind him.

“Not good, then.” She stepped inside and closed the door to keep the cold night air outside where it belonged. “What did he
do?”

“Nothing. Not a blessed thing all day. I tried to get him to do schoolwork but he’s got his mind set on giving up. He lies
around here like the King of Ham Bone eating and watching TV.”

She dropped her head, shaking it sadly. “I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t do that. I’m just venting a little steam, that’s all.” He pushed himself out of the chair. “Why don’t I get your
food containers?”

She followed him into the kitchen, where the counters were clean, dishes washed and resting in a drainer by the sink. “Did
you guys finish off that bread already?”

“That was the best loaf so far. I ate some for breakfast while it was warm and made a sandwich for lunch. Tyson did the rest.
Good soup, too. My daughter, Rita, is getting jealous. You’re a much better cook than she is.”

Sidney laughed. “Ooh, now I’m really motivated. Let me know when she’s coming again. I’ll make a gourmet feast.”

“Yeah, well, feel free to throw a little meat in there sometime.”

She raised her chin. “Millard, I like you too much to do that.”

He chuckled, shaking his head. “How’s the car running?”

“About the same. I pray over it every morning and it eventually starts. The only time it wouldn’t kick in was the morning
of Ty’s hearing—which turned out to be a blessing for me and a curse for you. If you hadn’t been there to save the day, Ty
would be in jail right now.”

Millard’s lined face grew solemn. “Might be the best thing for him.” He cleared his throat. “The probation officer called
today.”

“Yes, Mr. Dane called me at work, too. About the community service project.” Sidney tucked a plastic container inside her
slow cooker, and she and Millard walked together toward the front door. “I understand Deputy Estrada is going to pick Ty up
on Saturday and actually work with him on the project.” She shuddered. She longed for the day she would never have to deal
with that condescending man again.

“Do they still suspect it was your boy that committed that other robbery?”

“I don’t know. The man at the Sheriff’s Department wouldn’t tell me anything. Made me feel like a criminal for asking.” Sidney
paused at the door. “Ty has only three days to get this week’s assignments done. Did he even look at them today?” Millard
shook his head grimly. She sighed, a wave of fatigue washing over her, making even her clothes feel heavy. “I’ll talk to him
about it tonight.” She hugged him with her free arm. “See you in the morning, Millard.”