The River Burns (5 page)

7

A
late lunch. Beans bubbled in a pot. A visit was in the offing.

Alex O'Farrell smiled when he spotted the squad car pull into his drive. He withdrew a second beer from the fridge, uncapped it, and at the sound of the knock turned the heat down and took the bottle out front with him. Opening the door, he proffered the beer.

“Beans on the stovetop. I'll bring out a plate.”

“I can eat,” the officer said, and accepted the beer. Collapsed down onto the porch bench, he exhaled in appreciation of this refuge from the sun. Under the line of his cap he mopped his damp brow, then tossed the cap on the bench and relaxed his gun belt, letting it slip lower on his hips. His crotch felt damp and he sat with his knees wide apart. Alex returned with two plates of brown beans and chunks of bread twisted off the loaf.

“Hot one.”

“Say that again.”

“Hot food on a hot day, your momma used to say.”

“She was wrong then, she'd be wrong today.”

Alex grinned, sat down, and began to eat. “So,” he sighed, after his first mouthful.

“It's like this, Dad,” Ryan Alexander O'Farrell commenced.

“Oh, don't tell me,” Alex advised him.

“You can't answer your door to salesmen with a shotgun in your hands.”

“What if he'd been a thief? Or one of those goddamn psychopaths who drive across the countryside on killing sprees? The reckless ones.”

“Don't play the old-woman act on me,” Ryan O'Farrell dismissed him. “Not a psychopath on earth is dumb enough to take you on.”

“Ryan, I was taking what you call . . . preventative measures. If he'd gone down the road . . . what if he rang Old Gal Sally's bell? She might've used her slingshot on his eyes. You'd be up here for a different reason then. That boy, that Jake Withers, he'd be a blind man, stumbling around holding his arms up, singing ‘Show Me the Way to Go Home.'” He took a swig from his beer. “Anyway.”

Ryan waited, then said, “Anyway what?”

“It's good to see you, too. How've you been?”

“Not bad. You?”

“Hanging in.”

“The garden looks good.”

“Don't mock me, son.”

“Wouldn't dare.”

They both ate their beans and swigged beer. Ryan hoped he'd not need to interview anyone later, especially if they happened to be in close quarters.

“Don't you eat cold food ever?” he asked his dad.

“Like ice cream?”

“Like vichyssoise or gazpacho. I'm sweating bullets here.”

“Don't blame the food. It's that uniform you're wearing.”

“Salads, for instance.”

“I cook. Don't worry about me.”

“You cook. Out of a can.”

“Keep it up. I'll fetch my gun again.”

They finished and stacked their plates and Alex knew that Ryan would never accept a second beer but asked him anyway. Ryan shook his head. He wasn't in any hurry to leave, though, and leaned back against the wood bench that his father built years ago when his mother was alive. She'd wanted a porch with a smooching bench and saw to it that her husband built both for her. She was a woman easily satisfied in life. Ryan never thought about it before but it occurred to him that he was more his mother's son, in many ways, than his father's. His brother Denny, on the other hand, was so noticeably his father's son. Wild, in his way, untamed, impetuous.

“So who're you dating?” Alex asked him.

Ryan was being poked. So he poked back. “An hour ago, give or take, a pretty girl stepped off the train.” He whistled.

“That good-looking?” Alex was interested, as he hadn't actually heard his son say boo about a girl in years.

“Take your breath away. Mine anyway. Good thing it wasn't you seeing her. She'd take your life away. You'd have a heart attack.”

“So what're you doing here? Off that train, she's in town for about four hours, no?” Ryan made a gesture, and his father detected his regret, which he understood. “The uniform,” Alex figured.

“Doesn't help,” Ryan agreed. “But if you don't see me again, you'll know why. That one, a man could follow to the ends of the earth.”

Alex was flabbergasted. “For God's sake, Ryan, take the day off. I haven't seen you this smitten since high school.”

Ryan sighed heavily, released a slow gush of air. Alex interpreted that response as well.

“Don't sell yourself short.”

“I won't. I don't. But, whoa. Another level. Know what I mean?”

Instinctively, Alex wanted to buck him up, counter his perspective. Yet he murmured, “Mmm.” He knew what Ryan was talking about. Some women did seem to exist on another plane. And Ryan was a cop, which in his experience meant that the women who were attracted to him specifically because he was a cop were women he didn't particularly want around. While others were repelled, or possessed wiser instincts. As well, Ryan had endured misfortune in love. Only natural for him to hesitate.

“What about you?” Ryan asked. Time had passed since his last visit.

“What about me?” Alex was genuinely clueless, until he saw his son's slight grin. “Get off it.”

“What? You're a man. You always liked women. Even Mom knew that.”

“What do you mean even Mom knew that?” Alex picked up the plates to help him escape this situation, but as he stood his son retrieved his gun belt and followed him back into the house where he snapped the belt back on.

“Everything's about petunias and jackmanii vines now?”

“For God's sake.”

“What?”

“I'm not older than Moses but I look it.”

Ryan grinned. “Deception. That's your ploy. Always has been.”

Alex put the plates down in the sink. “Whatever you think you know, I don't want to know you know. So bite your tongue.”

“Done. But seriously. Are you going out? Staying in? What?”

“Go. Chat up your beauty queen off the train. If you want to double date, give me a holler.”

Ryan took a glance around the house. His father wasn't old yet, although he knew that simple tasks were physically demanding for him, that stoically he suffered his aches and pains. So he was pleased to note the state of the rooms. Tidy. The man was tidier now than when he had a wife who cleaned up after him, that was for sure. Ryan's job took him into other people's homes at the worst of times—compared to his peers in similar circumstances his dad was doing well. Hanging in there. Keeping it together. He should see him more regularly, do more things with him, yet somehow that simple notion was fraught with difficulty. As if spending time with his dad underscored that he himself remained alone in the world, not only as a bachelor but dateless, in a dry spell following a losing streak on the heels of what he referred to as a bad breakup, if he made any reference to that time at all. With most people he avoided the memory, and people knew it was his way of blunting pain. He'd been left numb by the experience, disoriented, defeated. Spending time with his dad reinforced the notion that he might inherit his circumstances, become old and awash and alone. In the main, he spent substantial time with his dad only during hunting season, and he supposed that that was not going to change.

His father came up behind him.

“So. Dad,” Ryan said. He turned. “Help me out on this. Why pull a shotgun on that poor kid?”

“He's almost as old as you are.”

“Not nearly. I'm thinking you had an ulterior motive.”

“I wanted to save his skin. Spare him from the wrath of my neighbours. I don't suppose you're going to arrest me.”

The two men faced each other just inside the dining room, the heat of the day slipping in through open windows, fluttering the curtains a touch.

“Your brother,” Alex said, “can't get over that you're a cop. I understand it, though. What else would you do with a mind like that?”

“Suspicious?”

“That's not the word. Inquisitive. Also . . . I might blush here because this makes me so proud . . . brilliant.”

Ryan knew that his father was not about to blush. He also knew that he was right in that something was on his dad's mind. He'd been lured here.

“So what's up?”

“How about a Coke? I got diet. The other stuff pisses right out of me. You can still be on the job and have a Coke, no?”

Quietly, Ryan said, “Sure.” He sat in a hardwood chair by the table. Cooler than the sofa. Whatever was stuck in his dad's craw sounded serious. He automatically hoped it wasn't health-related.

In the kitchen, Alex uncapped a beer for himself and poured the Diet Coke. He returned to the dining room. “I put it in a glass,” he said. “With ice. We can pretend we're like civilized people.”

To Alex, his son seemed to take his remark to heart, perhaps invest more in his words than he intended to say. “Out with it,” his son nudged him.

“It's all just talk, Ry.” He raised his right hand and made it vibrate. “The wild man of the river. You know my reputation.”

“Is it? With a basis in truth, no? Anyway, it's more than reputation, Dad. You're a freaking legend. Your name carries weight. I know what I'm talking about. Denny and me, we grew up with it. We were expected to score the pretty girls, the girls expected it of us. Well, that part wasn't so bad.”

“I wouldn't think so.” Alex laughed from his belly a moment, then took a swig of his beer. He wanted to say more, but it seemed that something was also on Ryan's mind.

“We fought the toughest fights. Drank more than anybody else, took the biggest risks, on and off the river.” Ryan responded to a need to run this down, as they rarely got into such territory. What they knew about each other was usually kept under wraps. “You were the river rat everybody else followed and looked up to. People took their cue from you. You got the logs downstream, but you also led the strikes when that needed to be done. You straightened people out sometimes, made them wise up. But you also settled them down when that was necessary, and then, Dad, when it was time to get them off their butts again, you riled them up. Call it mythology, okay, but I heard tales about you from enough sources, including from Mom, that they're bound to contain more than a grain of truth.”

The reminiscences did not seem to hearten Alex. “Old times,” he commented. “I have a hard time swatting a fly now. Life on the river makes you older than you are. Weathers you. Pulls a tear in every muscle you own. Mangles your bones. Are you still on me for working over that driveway salesman?”

“You know I'm not,” Ryan said.

“This is about Denny,” Alex confirmed, with a note of sadness.

They sipped their cool drinks, and Ryan caused the ice to rattle around in his glass.

Then they both went still.

Ryan broke the silence. “Big shoes, Dad. That's what you left us to fill. I get to act as the tough guy off and on when it's my job. But with Denny, some people think of him as the heir to your spirit, your legend. He's working as the modern-day equivalent of a river rat, a logging trucker. I think it's almost automatic that guys look up to him because of his surname. You know it. Is this why I'm here?”

“Denny's done a good job, for the most part. People respect him.”

“I think so, too. He gets people to do what's right, most of the time.”

“What happens if people believe that the time has come to dream up something that's more drastic? That might not be right?”

This was why he'd been lured here. “Like what?”

“There's a ton of shit in the air, Ry. You haven't heard?”

“I got my ears to the ground.”

“Denny's mixed in?”

Ryan put his glass down. He didn't want to squeal on his only sibling to a parent, but this was no trifling matter. “You know him, Dad. Do you think he'd walk away just because things get tough to handle?”

Alex contemplated the question, staring off into space awhile.

“Let me put it another way,” Ryan proposed. “If it was you, and you were a young buck again, would you be mixed in?”

Alex nodded. He understood.

“I'd be mixed in,” he agreed. “The sad thing is—me, not being a river rat anymore—if you asked me to take sides today, it wouldn't be for the loggers. Not automatically. It would be for the river. I love the river and I'm sorry it took me so long but I realize that we damn nearly killed it. I love the trees. Even though I'm willing to cut them down, I want them to grow again. I also love good clean air, now more than ever. Maybe you two think you had a hard time living with my reputation. Trust me, it's been no easier for me.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning if I talk to people about clean air, let's say, for some of them it's like I reached down inside their gizzards and pulled out their spleens.”

Alex continued to nod when Ryan said, “I'm worried, too, Dad.”