Turn Left at the Cow (18 page)

His driver's window slid down as I ran up. “You think of something you wanted to tell me away from your grandma?”

I gripped the edges of his car door and leaned closer to the open window. I could hear my words falling over themselves as I tried to get everything out at once. “I know I can't make you believe I don't have the money. But you said you wanted to help me. Whether I have the money or not, it's still your job to catch whoever did this to Gram. You knew my dad—who do you think helped him rob that bank? What really happened that summer? Maybe if we can figure that stuff out, we can figure out who did this, too.”

The deputy sighed and looked away. I watched his fingers drum the top of the steering wheel. Then he looked back at me.

“I can't give you the answers to those questions, kid. I did think of him as my friend. But turns out in the end we weren't real friends after all. There were things he never told me. I didn't really know him the way I thought I did.” Deputy Dude actually looked pretty beat-up when he said that. I thought about what it would be like if, out of nowhere, I heard that Kalooky had done something as stupid as robbing a bank. Would I feel as if I'd never really known him?

The deputy continued. “As far as the money goes,here's the thing. In law enforcement, you learn that lots of times the obvious answer is the right answer. And I'm not real big on coincidences. I mean, sure, I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt, but the truth is, you and the cash turned up the exact same week. It's almost guaranteed the money's reappearance is connected to you. I'm not saying you meant to do anything wrong. Probably you just stumbled across the cash and didn't know what to do. You were afraid that you'd get into trouble. Or you felt like it was the least your old man owed you. Or you just needed a little spending money. So if there's anything like that you want to tell me, I promise to help you out. I can pull a few strings for the sake of your grandma; you won't be in trouble.”

I pressed my lips shut and stared back at him. It was clear the two of us were never going to get anywhere; he was never going to move past the idea that I had the money, that I was just as ready to hide my crimes as my father had been.

Suddenly his radio crackled and a voice said something I couldn't understand. But Deputy Dude nodded at my hands holding down his window. “Sorry. Gotta follow up on this. Like I said, town is a zoo today. But let's talk again real soon, okay?”

He rolled the window back up and accelerated out of the driveway.

I walked slowly back into Gram's house. She was sweeping the kitchen floor; the broom stopped midsweep when I walked in. My eyes locked on the huge slash the butcher knife had made in the tabletop. How many different ways, I wondered, could I find to say sorry to her? I'd thought that invisible wall between us had melted away, but it seemed to be back again, even thicker than when we had started.

“
Do
you have the money?” she suddenly said.

I was so thrown by her question that I blurted out the first thing that came into my head. “No. Do you?”

Gram gave a little bark of laughter, the kind that was more from surprise than because something was actually funny. Then she squeezed her eyes closed real tight. When she opened them again, she looked at me dead on.

“Travis, I promise you—I don't know anything about the bank money. I would never touch it if I did. It's . . . evil. Think of all the damage it's done to my family, what a very high price tag it's had. It cost me my boy. And because of it, I've had to spend the past fourteen years trying to figure out where I went wrong as a mother. Wondering if my son drowned by accident while he was covering up his crime, or if he decided in the end he couldn't live with what he'd done.”

She stopped and looked over at the wall; I finally realized she was staring at the fish key holder my father had made.

She took a deep breath and kept going. “And now it's obvious that the evil of that money has bled into another generation. Look at how it's come between the two of us.”

“I never really believed you had the money. It was more—”

“No, it's not about that. Really, putting me on the suspect list was actually logical of you. I'm upset because you didn't come to me with your questions. You snooped around the house and took that box from under my bed without talking to me about it. But I can't really blame you. A lot of this is my fault. I let my being upset over the way your father's life ended turn his whole existence into a secret. I was too ashamed to share him with anyone—even you. I apologize, Travis. You deserve better from me.”

I had that ice-cream-headache feeling behind my eyes, and I was pretty sure I was going to start bawling any second. But if I did, Gram would probably see it as proof that she really had let me down. I desperately tried to think of what I could say that would show her it was okay, that I didn't want her to blame herself. It was enough that I blamed myself.

We both jumped when somebody knocked at the door. Gram peered through the window and then turned to me. “It's for you. I'm going to go put on my work clothes so I can keep cleaning up.”

I took a deep breath and waited until I was pretty sure I had myself under control. When I finally opened the door, Iz was standing there with a worried look on her face.

“Why was the deputy here again?”

I gestured her inside, and her mouth fell open when she saw the kitchen. She looked back at me.

“You were right,” I said. “I was stupid. Somebody didn't like my note. He left the Monopoly money stuck to the table with a big knife as a way of telling me so. And he wrecked Gram's house to prove he means business.” My voice sounded wobbly; Mr. Cool had definitely left the building.

Iz didn't say anything—she just walked over and gave me this big hug. Like I said, I had pretty much given up on hugging. I'd forgotten how good it could feel, and of course this one was that much better because it was Iz.

After a while she pulled back. “I came over to see if you could come along to Kenny's grandma's house for the Fourth of July barbeque. But . . .” She looked around doubtfully at the mess in the kitchen.

“Yeah, I need to stay here and help Gram clean up.” We were both keeping our voices low.

“I could stay and help too. I don't mind. It won't be as much fun without you, anyway.”

It was tempting, but . . . “No thanks. I really think Gram and I need to talk on our own about some stuff.”

Iz nodded. “But tomorrow we're on for that trip to the dump, right?”

I guess I looked as blank as I felt because she added, “You know, to track down Carl. So you can figure out if he really does know anything.”

I had completely forgotten about going to find Crazy Carl. “Definitely. Now it's more important than ever that I talk to him again. But you really think we'll have to go to the dump?”

Iz shrugged. “Carl turns up in all sorts of crazy places; it's a town joke that you can't keep anything a secret because he's likely to pop up at any time. But the dump is kind of his home now, I guess. I think he goes through the junk as it comes in and sells what he can.” She dropped her voice even lower. “Aunt Jen is pretty convinced that your grandma pays Mr. Murphy rent every month so Carl can sleep in that old trailer they use as the dump office. Mr. Murphy pretends that Carl is his official ‘security force,' but you know that's not really true.”

Even all these years later, was Gram carrying on where my father had left off, helping to take care of Carl?

Now that Iz had mentioned Carl, I was remembering some of the other details from the parade. “Did Kenny really beat up Cody Svengrud?”

“I think Kenny broke Cody's nose. Kenny's in
so
much trouble.” Just for a second this huge smile took over Iz's face, and then she put it away. I wasn't completely clear if she was happy over the broken nose or the thought of Kenny in the doghouse. Maybe both.

“I better go. We won't get home until late because Kenny says his uncle Butch is bringing a bunch of his own fireworks to set off after the official ones are over. But I'll call you on your cell. Have it turned down low so it doesn't wake your grandma, okay? We can figure out what time you want to head out in the morning or maybe even meet down on the dock tonight and . . . say good night.”

At least I had one thing to look forward to.

After I closed the door behind Iz, I started tackling the mess in the kitchen, thinking the whole time about what I needed to say to Gram. It was obvious the two of us had a lot of clearing up to do.

“Was he really off-the-charts wild?” I asked. Gram and I were working our way through each room, cleaning as we went. It was clear she'd made a decision to tell me the whole truth about my dad; I definitely wasn't getting the children's-chewable version of his story, and some of it was a pretty big pill to gulp down. But I think it helped that we had something else to do with our hands and our eyes; we were both still on a learning curve as far as communicating with one another.

Gram sighed. “I know a lot of people thought of him that way. To me it seemed more like . . . some kind of hunger in him I could never fully feed. From the time he was a tiny boy he charged after life; he was never satisfied waiting for it to come to him.”

“Which probably means robbing a bank wasn't the first stupid thing he did.”

“No.” Gram finished picking up pieces of glass from a broken mirror in her bedroom. “When he was seven, he took the boat out by himself and nearly drowned. When he was fifteen, he was suspended from school for a dangerous prank. The army kicked him out, eventually, although he wouldn't talk to me about that. And in the months before the bank robbery, he made a lot of bad choices. Your mother left after he was arrested for reckless driving.”

“So he gave everybody a hard time his whole life.” I could hear a note of anger in my voice. “And then he did this final rotten thing and disappeared and left you to answer for him when the FBI showed up.”

Gram turned away from folding clothes and looked at me. “Yes. He made some terrible choices. But I made mistakes too, as his mother. To be able to forgive myself, I first had to forgive him.”

She stopped talking for a moment and stood staring at a large gash in her mattress.

“I'll flip it over,” I said. “I think that way you can still sleep on it for now.”

It was a bit of a struggle, but I got it turned over and Gram kept talking.

“But, Travis, your father had some wonderful qualities too. He could be warm and loving and
fun;
no one could stay somber with John in the room.”

She pulled out a set of sheets and we started making up the bed. “I don't know if you're old enough to understand how seldom a person is purely good or bad. For instance, I've always believed that the reason John broke into that bank at night was because there was still enough good in him that he couldn't stomach doing it during the day when someone might get hurt. But maybe that's an old woman's way of comforting herself . . .”

Her voice trailed off and she looked out the window at the lake for a moment. “People are like daytime and nighttime, rotating around the clock—at different times a person's light can turn into his greatest darkness. Your father was full of fearlessness, and zest, and had an amazing ability to live fully in the moment. But he never learned to channel the qualities that could have become his greatest assets—instead they turned into impatience, and recklessness, and thoughtlessness about how his actions were going to affect the people around him.”

“But you always stuck by him.”

“Yes, I was usually there afterward to hear his confession and help him clean up the mess. Now I think it might have done him more good if I hadn't been. But I'll never know the answer to that.”

She stuffed a ripped-up pillow into a garbage bag. “There's no halfway about love, Travis. When you love people, you give them the power to hurt you. And there are times they will. I want you to remember something important: it's not a betrayal of love to make it clear to someone that you've reached your limit—that you can't accept any more hurtful behavior.”

I turned away and picked up a pile of clothes off the floor of her closet. “So I guess that's what Ma did, right? She reached her limit, so she left?”

“I can't speak for your mother, Travis. But yes, I believe that when she knew you were coming along and she really understood where things were headed for John, she did what she thought was best. I've always respected her for that.”

“But maybe if she'd stayed, he would have finally settled down. People do, when they become parents, right? Maybe if she hadn't taken off, it all would have worked out differently. I would have actually gotten to know him.”

“Maybe. But you can't blame your mother for trying to protect the two of you. It wasn't her choices that kept you from meeting your father; it was his.”

“So Ma left and he figured he might as well rob a bank as the next step up the thrill ladder? No point in trying to become a better person just because he had a kid on the way.” That wobble from earlier had come back into my voice; it wasn't turning out to be my most macho day.

Gram stopped straightening the curtains and walked over to put her hands on my shoulders. “Travis, I hope it's not a mistake for me to tell you this—and I might be wrong—but I believe your father robbed that bank because he
did
want a life with you. Stealing that money was idiotic and reckless and it cost him everything, but I think he foolishly let himself believe that if he showed up in California with a way to support a family, he could somehow convince your mother to take him back and let him truly be your father. He made the biggest mistake of his life for the best possible reason.”