Montaro Caine (2 page)

“This is Luther,” Dr. Banks told Caine. “Luther, this is Dr. Caine. Now step aside, Luther.”

But the boy interrupted by reaching out to Robert Caine. In his hands was a sleek black circular object that resembled a woman’s compact. Caine, still holding his Dictaphone, pointed his microphone at the child. “For me?” he asked with a smile, looking down at the boy.

“Son,” the boy corrected in a garbled, guttural voice that was not easy for Robert Caine to understand.

“The sun?” repeated Caine, gesturing up toward the ceiling.

“I think he means your ‘son,’ ” Banks explained. Then Banks asked Robert, “You do have a son, don’t you?”

“Oh yes,” said Caine, looking at the boy with surprise, wondering how Luther could have known. “I do have a son, and this is for him?”

The boy nodded.

“That’s very nice of you,” said Caine, examining the item. “And this is very nice, too. What is it?”

“It’s a ship,” Luther said in his halting speech, which sounded as if it arrived after passing through a mouth filled with marbles.

“Aha. It’s a very nice-looking ship,” Caine said, though the object didn’t bear even the slightest resemblance to a ship. He turned it over, rubbing his fingers along its smooth surface, then held it to his ear and gave it a gentle shake; the compact seemed to have a hollow interior, and Robert made a gesture toward prying it open.

“You’re not supposed to open it,” the boy said firmly.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Robert. “But I think I hear something inside.”

“Yes, but it’s not delivering anything to you. It’s coming to get something.”

“And what’s that?”

“Information,” the boy stated.

“What kind of information?”

“It’s a secret.”

“I see.” Caine thought for a moment, then smiled. “But suppose my son wants to know. What do I tell him?”

“I’ll tell him when he comes to see me.”

“When will that be?”

“When he’s older.”

“Has it got a name, this ship?” Caine asked. He felt awkward and didn’t know what else to say to the physically afflicted child.

Dr. Banks stepped forward. “All right, Luther, Dr. Caine has to be off. He has a plane to catch.”

“Thank you, Luther,” Caine said as he and Dr. Banks proceeded down the hall.

“It’s called the Seventh Ship,” Luther shouted.

After a brief look over his shoulder at the small lone figure standing in the hallway, Caine, making sure that the boy was out of earshot, asked Banks, “What’s his situation?”

“He makes objects out of wood,” replied Banks as they continued to walk.

“He made this compact?” Caine asked.

“To him it’s a ship,” Banks corrected with a playful smile.

“Whatever it is, he made it?”

“Yes.”

“From wood?”

“Yes.”

“The finish is remarkable. It’s beautiful—as a compact, that is,” he added with a chuckle.

“Oh that’s nothing,” replied Dr. Banks. “He can sculpt.” Banks slowed his pace and pointed as they approached a door near the exit. “His room is right here. Why don’t we just peek in for a second?”

Luther’s tiny, windowless room was surprisingly well ordered. Everywhere were carvings of toys, buildings, cars, animals, and birds, all astonishingly realistic.

“The hospital allows some of his work to be shown at two art galleries in the city, and in several others around the state,” said Banks. “His situation is the same as Tom Lund’s and the others in our study—all the classic signs of retardation, except in the one area where they are exceptional.”

“How old is Luther?”

“Fourteen.”

To Caine, the boy had seemed much younger, perhaps because he was so short, only around four-and-a-half feet tall.

“What’s his last name?”

“He doesn’t have one,” said Banks. “He was abandoned when he was two or three years old. Because ‘Luther’ was all he could tell them at the agency when he was first taken there, they called him Luther John Doe. They never learned anything about his background, so now he’s just ‘Luther.’ Come, I think you’d better be off.”

As they exited Luther’s room, Banks continued, “On your next visit, after you see Tom Lund, maybe you’d like to spend a little time going over our findings on Luther.”

“I certainly would,” said Robert Caine. “But let me ask you something.”

“Yes?” asked Dr. Banks.

“Did you ever tell him I had a son?”

Banks shook his head.

“Then how could he possibly know?”

“I have no idea,” said Banks. “Probably he just guessed.”

On the flight back to Kansas City, Robert Caine made numerous entries in his diary, worked on the file he had already started on Tom Lund, and contemplated how he might expand his studies to include Luther John Doe who, he wrote, intrigued him. The private one-hour sessions he had conducted with Lund, exploring the abilities of the young man’s brain, were among the most fascinating hours Caine had ever experienced, and he sensed that sessions with Luther would prove to be just as enlightening. Lund’s brain was one that had difficulty with some of the most elementary problems of everyday living, and yet in certain areas of mathematics, he could astound the most knowledgeable in the field.

Caine hoped to have at least six more sessions with Lund before the end of the year, plus another six with Luther, after which he planned to present his paper to Dr. Banks for his approval before submitting it for publication. But Dr. Caine’s plane never reached Kansas City. Ten miles from the runway at Mid-Continent International Airport, it crashed, killing everyone on board.

M
ONTARO
C
AINE, STILL EIGHT YEARS OLD YET FEELING AS
though he had aged a lifetime in the past few days, stood trembling in his family’s kitchen, gazing out at the long, dimly lit hallway that led to his late father’s study. He was surrounded by his father’s friends and by the relatives and colleagues who had gathered to mourn the passing of Robert Caine. And yet Montaro couldn’t recall a time when he had ever felt more alone. From behind him, he could hear the voice of his grandfather P. L. Caine. Montaro’s mother and his grandfather had brought his father’s remains home. An open casket was not part of the tradition in which P.L. had been raised, but he liked the sense of closure that arose from such ceremonies that he had attended in America. Now, Robert Caine’s body was lying on view for a last farewell, and P.L. thought it would be best for Montaro to be alone when he said his final good-bye to his father.

“Go on,” Montaro heard his grandfather say. But Montaro held tight to his mother.

Sarah Caine took her son’s hand in hers. “No, Sarah, you stay here,” P. L. Caine told his daughter-in-law. “Let the boy say his good-bye in private.”

His mother let go of his hand and Montaro walked forward. He felt terrified by the thought of being alone with what would surely be a
terrible sight—the dead, mangled body of his father. His mother gave his hand one more squeeze, then ran her fingers through his hair. “It’s all right,” she said. “We’ll be here.”

Montaro looked up into his mother’s eyes for reassurance, then turned to face his grandfather. The child took some strength from the tears that rolled down the old man’s cheeks. “The difficulties of life can lick a man or they can strengthen him. It’s the man’s choice,” P. L. Caine told his grandson now. Montaro understood his grandfather’s words, especially his use of the word “man” instead of “boy”; the choices he would have to make now were the choices that men had to make.

Montaro looked up at his mother once more before he turned and walked out of the kitchen. “A man has to stand up to hard times, no matter what,” he heard his grandfather say. This time, P. L. Caine was speaking to the others around him in the kitchen, but his words were still clearly meant for his grandson’s ears.

The boy walked down the hallway, past his own room, past the guest room where his mother’s brother Uncle Jim and Jim’s wife, Aunt Carol, were staying, then across the living room toward his parents’ wing of the house. He wondered if it would be possible for him to scare himself so badly that he would die like his dad. Die of fear. And now as he reached the massive mahogany door that led to his father’s study, a sudden bombardment of horrible images of what he might find in the coffin exploded inside his head. He felt petrified, unable to move; he stood staring at the forbidding entrance beyond which unspeakable nightmares no doubt awaited.

He could turn back, he thought as he stood before the door. He didn’t have to face his father’s body alone; the choice was his. But then how would he face his grandfather afterward? “It’s the man’s choice,” P. L. Caine had said. And now Montaro asked himself,
what would a man do
? He weighed his fears against his grandfather’s wishes until deep down inside himself he decided on the course that he had to take even if it would kill him. There was no escape; he could not disappoint his grandfather.

Montaro took a deep breath and rushed the door, which flew open from the forward thrust and threw him into the room. His father’s
open coffin stood in the center of the study surrounded by pink and white flowers. Montaro shut his eyes tight and put his hands to his face to cover them. Then slowly, hesitantly, he squinted and peeked at the body through the openings between his fingers.

Montaro was surprised and relieved to find that his father looked alive. There was no blood. Robert Caine was wearing his blue suit with matching tie—he just seemed to be sleeping, Montaro thought as he moved a cautious step closer. His fears gradually subsided, allowing room for his grief to emerge. Montaro wished he could do something to wake his father up, make him breathe again, but he understood that he had lost him forever, that Robert Caine had passed from this world into another.

Now that he was no longer quite so afraid, Montaro became ashamed of the fear he had felt. He hoped that wherever his dad was, he would never know how frightened he had been. He made a silent vow to himself that he would never feel such fear again, that from now on, he would face every challenge life presented him like the man Robert Caine had wanted him to grow up to be, like the man his grandfather knew he was already becoming. “The difficulties of life can lick a man or they can strengthen him,” his grandfather had told him, and no, Montaro Caine would not let himself be licked.

Three weeks later, at his grandfather’s insistence, Montaro found himself with his mother and grandfather seated around the desk in his father’s study. On top of the desk was his father’s black leather briefcase. It had survived the plane crash intact, with only telltale scars from the impact. Montaro’s mother, who had wanted to wait until more time had passed before dealing with such matters, had raised a timid objection to her father-in-law, but the man had forcefully overruled her. He knew that the locked briefcase might well hold substantial evidence as to how his only son had spent his last three days of life, and he said further that he didn’t want to open the briefcase alone.

Montaro watched his grandfather unsuccessfully attempt to crack the lock, first with a screwdriver and then with pliers, while Sarah Caine began to cry softly. Hearing his mother’s stifled sobs caused Montaro’s eyes to cloud up in spite of his effort to tough it out. Montaro held his mother close—he felt that comforting her had now become
his responsibility. Finally, using the screwdriver as one would a crowbar, P. L. Caine popped the latches on the battered case.

Inside the case, along with other personal effects, was Robert Caine’s Dictaphone and two medium-size leather-bound journals containing the notes that Robert had written while he was in New York. There were comments on his trip, mathematical equations, calculations, projections, conclusions he had reached, and drafts of paragraphs for the paper he planned to write. There were also extensive notes about both Tom Lund and Luther John Doe. Sarah Caine took one of the notebooks, and, frequently interrupted by her own sobs, read some of her husband’s notes aloud to her son and his grandfather. Through it all, P. L. Caine sat quietly, his face a wrinkled mask of sadness.

After Sarah had finished reading, the three of them began to listen to the tapes. Sarah wept openly while hearing her husband’s voice, but Montaro was already learning to control such outward expressions of emotion the same way his father had and the way his grandfather still did, even at this very moment.

As Montaro listened to the recordings, he saw images in his mind of the way his father had spent his last day less than a month earlier. He could hear the urgent footsteps of his father and Dr. Andrew Banks pacing briskly along the corridor of the hospital in New York City. And he could hear the voices on the tape, speaking to him now, almost as if they were coming from another world.

“You do have a son, don’t you?” he heard Dr. Banks say.

“Oh yes.” His father’s voice sounded distant, as if speaking from a faraway past. “I do have a son, and this is for him? That’s very nice of you. And this is very nice, too. What is it?”

And then, Montaro heard the voice of a young man. The voice sounded slightly garbled, and yet he had little difficulty making out what it was saying.

“It’s a ship,” Montaro heard Luther John Doe say.

Montaro’s mother couldn’t bear to hear any more of the tape. She asked her father-in-law to turn it off and to dispose of the briefcase and send the relevant contents to Dr. Banks. A look at his brokenhearted
daughter-in-law evoked a tender promise from P. L. Caine. “I will take care of it, don’t worry,” he said, then shut off the tape.

But P.L. would not return the tapes and notebooks to Dr. Banks. He would keep them; after all, he thought, his son’s professional notes and personal diary might one day be of value to his grandson, particularly if the boy decided to follow in his father’s footsteps. The boy was already showing signs of having a fine scientific mind.

Now P. L. Caine carefully lifted from the battered briefcase the carving mentioned in his dead son’s notes, a present that had apparently been sent to his grandson by a little black boy whose name was Luther John Doe. The boy had spoken of a gift for Montaro; apparently, this was it.