Two If by Sea (19 page)

When they swung into the long driveway, it was not quite dark, and Frank felt it right away.

There was no sound, but somehow, a disturbance: then he heard Sally, or another dog, barking, far off. He put the truck in park and opened the door, slowly. “Stay here for a moment,” he told Claudia. “I think someone's messing around up there. My grandfather is ninety-six, and he and the day helper are there. She's a young girl, Filipino, and she doesn't know much English. She probably has the TV on loud.”

Frank began walking away from the house, out toward the big pasture, so that he could walk down toward the barn unseen. Then he turned back and spun the lock on the box behind the cab. “Paranoid farmers,” he said as he lifted out his old service shotgun, the Remington pump-action twelve-gauge he'd kitted out for himself more than twenty years ago. Although he'd never fired it except in practice, he believed that the simple sound of that gun loading, and the sight of his big horse, Tarmac, bearing down on a punk with steam streaming from his nostrils like a preview of the Apocalypse, were more effective than any dozen warning shots from his Glock. Limping by then, Frank covered the half mile down the road up onto the slight ridge in a few minutes. He could see the unfamiliar double trailer parked at the barn's open door. Then he stood amazed as he saw the kid from down the road, who'd given them the dog Patrick called Sally, coming out of the barn holding one end of a long rope. And then Frank heard mayhem. He began to run, as best he could.

Somehow, the kid had managed to get a halter on Glory Bee, but she was straining and cantering in place, pawing at him with one hoof, hauling him along at the end of the snap rope. The guy was holding on as if the horse was a rogue sail in a storm.

“Stop!” Frank yelled. The kid looked straight at him. Dropping the rope, he let Glory Bee take off at a dead run, and fumbled in his pocket for what Frank could vaguely see was some kind of shitty little no-name automatic the kid would use to blow an ugly hole in Frank and in his own already fucked-up life. Frank loaded his shotgun, that deadly cash-register sound, and prepared to walk down the hill toward the kid. How old was he? Twenty-one? Twenty? He was shaking so hard he had to grip one hand with the other in the parody of a military crouch. Unbelievably, he took aim at Frank. “Put it down!” Frank yelled again.

“No, you! You put yours down! Get out of my way! I'll kill you! All I want is the horse! Move now!” The guy was screaming. He kept looking down at the gun and shaking it, poking at it, and then, in the next moment, remembering his life-and-death confrontation, furrowing his brow and turning back to Frank. When he looked away, his absorption in the gun was so complete, reminding Frank of the way Ian concentrated on his Legos, that Frank was sure that if he rushed him, he could knock him off balance.

Frank was about to move, when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw something that trapped his breath. Holding the rope, Glory Bee following him, Ian was making his way back to the barn. In the shrieking silence, the kid turned the gun on Ian. “Stop!” the young man yelled. “I'll shoot you.”

The kid went into his stupid crouch again. Ian kept walking. Then he stopped, dropped the rope, and, so quickly Frank wasn't sure he saw it, swung his two hands, left, right. He said, “Be
nice
. Please.”

The kid with the gun seemed to glower, and to somehow grow bigger. Frank didn't want to fire the first kill shot of his life, but before he could, the kid threw his gun down and sank to the ground, sobbing. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I'm sorry.”

One shoe off, Claudia came stumbling into the drive.

“I couldn't catch him,” she said. “I was standing on the running board, trying to see you, trying to get service on my phone to call 911, and he just slipped out.”

“It's okay,” Frank said. Frank jerked the big kid to his feet. “Do you have shit for brains? You pointed a gun at a little boy?”

“It's not loaded,” the kid said. “It's just some gun a guy gave me in Milwaukee. I don't even know what size bullets go in it.” He was a pale, soft-looking kid, his hair-sprouted belly lapping over a cinched belt and jeans. His faded blue tee shirt read
I Live in My Own World. They Like Me Here.
Frank picked up the gun. Not only was it not loaded, it didn't have any kind of trigger.

“So you have a death wish, too. You pointed a fucking
broken
gun with no bullets at a guy with a loaded shotgun and at a three-year-old kid.”

“I was going to take her to the auction in Des Moines. The horse. I owe a guy money. I don't have anything left to sell. I can't rob my grandpa. He's old . . .”

“Jesus Christ,” said Frank. “How decent of you. What's your name?”

“Clay. Clay Bannock.”

“Your dad is Cal Bannock.”

“My grandfather.”

To Claudia, then, Frank said, “Do you mind just helping me for a moment? Please help Ian put Glory Bee out in the pasture. Can you? I don't think he can close the latch by himself. She'll go with him, but I don't know if she'll go with you . . .”

“She'll go with me,” Claudia said, and reached for Glory Bee. Already overexcited, the horse began to strain backward, then went up. Claudia cried, “Ian, no!”

The child simply moved back until Glory Bee came down, and then approached her, with a whisper and a touch. As if a sedative had poured through her, Glory Bee dropped her head for a mouthful of May sweet grass before obediently following Ian into the paddock.

“I'm sorry?” Claudia, confused, said to Frank. “What . . . ?”

“No, it's nothing you did. She's probably scared and she's always way too high-strung.” Claudia followed Ian to the pasture, where the child unclipped the lead from her bridle and handed it to Claudia, who looped it around her elbow and hand. Frank depressed a button on his phone and said harshly to Patrick, “This is urgent. Get here fast.” He tied the big kid's feet with the halter rope and his hands with some baling twine, then pushed him down so he was sitting on a square bale.

While Claudia washed up in the first-floor bath, Frank found his painkillers, took two, and helped Ian change out of his tuxedo into jeans and a fresh shirt.

“I don't want to leave my horses,” Ian said. Frank was confused for a moment, and then watched as Ian carefully removed twenty sticky rubber racers from the pockets of the defunct formal wear. “He had a gun.”

“He did.”

“He didn't want to shoot people.”

“Maybe not.”

“Were you going to kill him?”

“Of course not.”

“Were you really going to kill him, Dad?”

Frank's arms prickled. He had not misheard Ian. Dad. He wanted to take off his own clothes and put on his oldest clean sweats and lie down in the dark.

Dad.

Instead he said, “If he tried to hurt you, yes, Ian.”

Who was Ian's real father, that he could call Frank
Dad
? On the first day he could talk?

The aide taking care of Frank's grandfather hadn't noticed anything. Jack was already asleep, and she was hunched over a deep bowl of french fries, so engrossed in a consummately violent war film that she wouldn't have noticed if a real war broke out in the kitchen. She waved to Frank and Ian.

Then Patrick burst through the door, one of his small, potent fists clasped around the fat kid's bicep. The kid's feet were still hobbled and his face was smeared with snot and blood.

“I swear on my mother, Frank,” Patrick said.

“I know that. Did you tell him about Glory Bee?”

“I told him about Glory Bee and that she was worth a lot. He hung about, Frank. We had a drink. But I swear to you . . .” The big kid's nose was broken. Ian held up a dishtowel, which the Bannock kid, for some reason, took and pressed against his nose and jaw.

“It's just the same legally as if he tried to shoot my . . . son. He could be dead now, your friend. He could be dead, easy.” He turned to the kid. “How old are you?”

“Eighteen,” said the kid. He looked older, stuffed and bloated with drinking.

“He's even an underage drunk, Patrick. Well played.”

Patrick looked away. As the pain of his headache began to recede, Frank's vision cleared, and he appreciated Patrick's laconic manner. One more word, and he would forget whatever instinct was propelling him toward an impulse of charity.

“Don't blame Pat. He's a nice guy,” the kid said. “I got to know Pat because of the pictures I was supposed to take.”

Frank said, “Pictures?”

“I met the girl on Twitter. His daughter? The guy from New York who's buying the farm?”

“No one's buying this farm.”

“Her father paid me to take pictures. Five hundred bucks. I just really thought I would come over when you guys weren't here because I wouldn't get in the way. I was just going to take the pictures because she said her father was trying to figure out if they were going to knock this house down or fix it up and try to sell it—”

“What in the hell are you talking about? You don't even have the right farm. This farm isn't even for sale,” Frank said.

“It is. They sent me a picture of the farm. 'Course I knew it. This guy is some big deal in real estate. He's going to build a hundred houses here. But the girl. We got to talking . . .” Cal said, and blushed. “She liked me. I told her about my music. I play guitar. She sent me pictures . . . you know . . . of her. And they wired me the money. It was a lot of money.”

“For these . . . pictures?” Claudia said. “That you didn't even take yet? Didn't you think that was strange?”

“No . . . because the girl and I had a relationship. We've been talking a long time. Two weeks. Three weeks.” Snuffling, the Bannock kid went on, “Then I got here and I remembered the horse, and I just went back for our trailer. I'm really sorry, man.” Without prompting, he fished in the back pocket of his half-staff jeans and pulled out a disposable camera. He threw it to Frank. “You can have the pictures. That's the only roll.”

Simultaneous wires of information told Frank that the fat kid wasn't lying, but that what he was saying was also not the truth. Clay Bannock didn't know the truth.

“What did she tell you about her father? The guy who's supposedly buying my farm?”

“The builder. He wanted to see where all the bedrooms and bathrooms were, and how the barns were set up—”

“You went into our house?”

The kid cringed. “I didn't touch anything. I swear to God. Nobody locks their doors around here . . .”

“Patrick, do you know anything about this?”

Patrick murmured in the negative.

If wishing could make it so, Frank would have stood alone in the graveled circle in front of the farmhouse, seining the summer light through the lens of memory. He would never have gone to Brisbane. He would never have met Natalie. He would never have put on his rescue coat and set in motion this tumbrel that never stopped, only changed course, and rolled forward.

“Take your truck and get out of here,” Frank said. “I'll speak to your grandfather tomorrow. If I don't turn you in tomorrow and get you charged as an adult with felony assault and armed robbery, it will be because your grandfather knew my dad and he tells me you're in an inpatient program for alcoholism, starting Monday. Otherwise, you'll spend the next ten years with people who'll see your ass as a pillow park. Do you understand me?” The kid nodded. “Put your grandfather's number in my phone and label it.” The kid did. “Go on. Now. Get off my farm.”

When the room was quiet, Patrick said, “I'll see to packing my things.”

“That's foolish, Patrick. It's not anything you did. Just find Sally . . .”

“She's under the porch. I guess she was scared.”

“Some watchdog. I have to get back to my sister's wedding. This is over now. Let's forget it.” Frank peered at the disappearing flash of the trailer rounding the bend on Sun Valley Road. “What do you think he meant?”

“I think some guys think everything is for sale. I knew a guy who lived like that. His cars. His house. He would say, everything is for sale,” Patrick said. “I think maybe some fellow got the wrong impression.”

“I think someone is after Ian.”

“Too right, guv. I do as well,” Patrick said miserably. Claudia said nothing until she and Frank were back in the truck, Ian in his car seat. “And here I was worried that you'd fall asleep at the wheel. I had no idea it was going to be the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.”

“I can't believe this. It's a nightmare I can't wake up from.”

“You handled it well.”

“I don't know that I did. It was a mess. And I know better. I was in law enforcement for twenty years,” Frank said. “It's like I have combat fatigue. I can't think straight.”

“Marty said you'd been in an accident in the line of duty.”

Frank shrugged. “Not hardly. I got hit by a car.”

“You saved lives other times.”

“I doubt that, unless it was sending some idiot to prison for ten years of his life so he would have to wait longer to breed little criminals. I do know I thought that this was Disney Farm, USA, though. It's been a long time since I lived here. Patrick said we needed to get motion sensors. I was thinking, crazy. Now maybe we need razor wire.”

He glanced over at Claudia and saw how fixedly she was looking at the little boy, and, with an electric surge along his forearms, he knew what she was thinking. After quieting a colossal plunging, high-kicking horse, a forty-pound child had quietly told an adrenaline-pumped adolescent with nothing to lose to “Be nice,” and put down his fake gun—a gun Ian didn't know was fake. “So, you saw what Ian did. I think he just assumes most people want to do the right thing. And he's, well, he's good with animals.”