Where Mercy Flows (2 page)

“Anyway, see you around.” I removed the magazine from TJ’s fingers and took his hand.

“Hey, wait a minute!” The proprietor’s voice sounded gruff and mildly annoyed. He turned his back and shuffled to an antique
Coca-Cola cooler behind him, lifted the lid, and rummaged around inside. “Tell him I need more baby crawlers. A couple dozen
cartons.”

“What?” In my confusion I glanced back at TJ’s new friend, who flashed an amused grin.

“So.” He paused long enough to push his hands into his back pockets and lean against a display case full of reels and fishing
lures. “I take it you and your father are not real close.”

He had unknowingly trodden on forbidden ground. “First of all,” I snapped, “my relationship with my father is none of your
business! And second, you guys have him mixed up with someone else.” He backed up a step and held up the palms of his hands
in defense. I immediately regretted my overreaction. My voice was more controlled when I spoke again. “My father is a justice
of the State Superior Court. If you’ve read the papers at all, you’ve probably heard of him.”

My tone must have been condescending. The tall guy adopted a moronic expression and cocked his head toward the storekeeper,
who had returned to his post. “Well, we got one o’ them city newspapers out here once . . . but none of us could read the
big words.” The old guy thought that was pretty funny. A laugh gurgled up from his belly like a big belch, which then turned
into a disgusting cough.

“Come on, TJ.” I grabbed his arm and pushed through the door, while he called weakly over his shoulder, “Bye, guys.” I accidentally
sprayed gravel on the shiny black truck on my way out of the parking lot.

The town of Carter consisted of the store, with its gas pumps and a built-in post office, Fraser’s Tavern and a Methodist
church. The nearest schools were a twenty-mile bus ride down the highway in Darlington, where one could also find a single
movie theater and a good slab of meatloaf at the Halfway Café.

My childhood surrounded me as we drove. TJ baaed at passing sheep through his open window and I was him, admiring the black
lamb who lifted his head before stepping closer to his mother and nudging her underside. Outside the fence posts, beyond the
sheep’s hungry reach, swayed bouquets of wild white lilies on slender stalks. Maple trees shone like gold-green neon in the
low afternoon sun, and the air smelled as sweet as it had each spring of my first seventeen years. Where the road forked I
caught glimpses of my river between the trees. “There it is! There’s the river, Teej.” The trees parted to reveal a long stretch,
wide and clear, rippling over smooth stones and rushing around a great chunk of rock. As it turned away from us, it narrowed
into a deep, mysterious pool. Then, teasingly, the trees closed our window.

The Duncans’ Appaloosa Ranch appeared on my right, just as I had left it, and with a pang I wondered what ever became of Donnie
Duncan, my childhood friend. Another stand of woods and finally the stretch of rail fence on my left that ended at the familiar
gravel drive, lined on the far side by a windbreak of poplars standing like giant soldiers. To my surprise, stuck in the ground
between the entrance and a roadside ditch was a cockeyed sign with
WORMS $1.00
hand-painted in red.

I nosed the Jeep into the long driveway. TJ began to chatter with delight. “We’re here! This is it! Are we here, Mom? Why
are you going so slow?”

I wanted a cigarette. Out of habit, my hand crawled toward the purse beside me but returned empty to the steering wheel when
I remembered that I had thrown them away for good, and to seal the deal with myself I had actually told TJ, who believed in
me with the unshakable faith of a child. How or why he still believed in me after all the broken promises was as much a mystery
to me as the reason for life itself. But I accepted it as one receives a gift of great sacrifice—with a certain amount of
awe and humility. So, to light up again—at least in his presence—was unthinkable.

Too late to turn back. I took a deep breath and massaged my chest. What had happened here in the past seven years? What could
possibly have driven the Judge to selling worms? What would they do when they saw us? This is for you, TJ, Ithought, but a
quiet whisper blew through my mind and I knew there was more to it than I had been willing to admit, even to myself.

The left side of the driveway was fenced pasture, now overgrown and going to hay. The barn still stood beneath the ancient
broadleaf maple whose gnarled branches cast weird shadows across the waving field. Directly in front of us was the house,
a sprawling log rambler with a deep covered porch stretched across its front and wrapping around its west side. The garage
was attached to the house by a covered walkway. If the Judge and Mom were home, their cars were concealed behind its closed
doors.

I stopped the car and waited for who knows what. Maybe for my mother to come running out in her apron and slippers and hug
me like I’d been gone for a long weekend and invite us in for pie. Instead, we were greeted by a silently staring house and
a breeze that sent a shiver through my bones. TJ jumped out, his footsteps making loud crunching sounds in the gravel. I imagined
my parents peering through the blinds, asking themselves who these strangers were who had just arrived in a dusty Jeep loaded
to the tops of its back windows. Even if they hadn’t heard the rumble of the long-neglected engine or the tires on the noisy
gravel, our presence was certainly announced now by TJ’s excited babbling. He ran toward the barn and then wheeled back to
the house, charged up the front steps and knocked on the heavy door. I was still safely belted to the seat of the car.

When no one answered the door, I got brave. I stepped out and joined TJ on the long shaded porch. We peeked through the window
into the spacious living room with its vaulted ceiling and log beams. I didn’t recognize the leather furniture or the Oriental
rug on the polished hardwood floor, and fleetingly I worried that my parents had moved. But there above the stone fireplace
hung the familiar painting of a trout bursting from the water in a defiant spray, a dry fly hooked neatly in its upper lip.

TJ sighed. “You should have told them we were coming, Mom.” He stomped around the corner to the side of the house. I followed.
At the kitchen window I lifted him to see for himself that Grandma was not there. Everything was spotless and in its place,
and it occurred to me for the first time that they might be sipping tall lemonades somewhere off the coast of Aruba. The porch
turned another corner, opening to an uncovered deck complete with deck chairs and tables and big pots of spring flowers. My
son was not impressed. He had heard the river and now he could see it through the young alders at the edge of the lawn. Someone
with a good arm could throw a stone from the deck and hit the water. TJ jumped off the steps and headed for the river without
looking back.

“Hey! Where do you think you’re going?”

“I’m not going
to
the river,” he said with an air of authority. “I’m going
by
the river.”

“Oh.” I sat on a wood step leading down to the lawn. TJ stared at me for a moment, rocking indecisively from foot to foot,
and then came back and put his hands on my knees. “Do you don’t feel good again, Mom?”

I kissed his forehead. “No. I don’t feel very good.”

“Do you want me to wait for you?”

I smiled and shook my head. “Do you see that picnic table there?” He nodded. “See how long it is? That’s how far you need
to stay from the river.” Like a good mother, I made him pace it out and then he was gone.

I watched him hurl rocks toward the swirling water for some time before dropping my head to my knees. It had been a long,
tiring day. The miles of Oregon and Washington freeway replayed swiftly in my mind, along with numerous pop and potty stops
and the incessant mind-tangling questions of a five-year-old. I wanted to be home. I longed to take a nap in my own bed, which
I no longer had, and even if I did I didn’t have the money to get back there. When I lifted my head, seemingly only seconds
later, TJ was not in sight. My heart fluttered uncomfortably and I pushed myself up from the step.

Low shrubs and alder saplings obstructed my view of the river. I strode quickly across the yard to the scrubby strip between
the lawn and the surging stream. My son’s dark hair appeared momentarily behind a salmonberry bush about twenty yards upstream.
I called to him, but the rushing river drowned my voice. A dirt trail, muddy enough in spots to capture the geometric design
from the bottoms of his shoes, followed the course of the river, in some places veering dangerously close to the edge of the
bank. I knew I was a fool and a poor excuse for a mother and flogged myself as I stumbled along the bumpy terrain. How could
a five-year-old with a two-inch attention span be expected to carry around the mental measurement of a picnic table?

The trees that gathered by the river now were taller and thicker. I came around a cedar stump and saw TJ on a spit of sand
and smooth rocks and a fly fisherman just beyond him standing knee-deep in a quiet stretch of water. TJ seemed planted where
he was, watching for the first time with obvious wonder the graceful flight of a dry fly on the end of a tapered line. The
sun had dropped below the treetops, leaving that whole stretch of river in evening shadow. I hugged myself against the chill
and leaned on a ragged cedar as my eyes adjusted. The fisherman had not noticed TJ. He cast into an upstream eddy, poised
and ready as his fly drifted across its intended path. No takers. The feathered bug took off again, swooping like a tiny remote-controlled
plane above his head. My heart suddenly burst into flight like a startled bird.

It was that perfect stance, arm moving just so. That slight tip of his head. Despite the unfamiliar cap, I knew. TJ stepped
closer. Upon hearing the crunch of the boy’s shoes in the river rocks, the Judge turned to face him. I gasped and ducked behind
the stump.

M
Y FIRST IMPULSE was to retreat up the trail. Then I remembered that I was a grown-up now. I dug my fingernails into the ragged
cedar and watched. The Judge glanced upstream and down. His voice was deep and rumbly like the river, so I could only guess
that he was questioning the little stranger as to the whereabouts of his parents.

A shrill childish voice pierced the air. “Up there!” I heard the slosh of my father wading to shore and then the rocks displaced
by heavy hip boots. I peered around the stump. The Judge placed his hand on TJ’s shoulder and pointed his rod tip up toward
the trail. They hiked toward my asylum in silence. What was it about this man, I wondered, that caused even TJ to fall dumb
and obey without question?

When they were almost upon me, I stepped onto the trail.

The Judge stopped short, incredulous. TJ ran to me. “Mom!”

I pulled him in front of me like a shield. “Hi.” I tried to make my voice sound strong. “Remember me?”

“Samantha.” He breathed my name as if I had been dead and buried for seven years.

Thank God for TJ. Oblivious to the chasm between my father and me, he became a sort of bridge. “This is my son, TJ.”

The Judge’s eyes stayed fixed on mine for several long seconds before he dropped to one knee before my son. “Hello, TJ.” He
laid down the rod and held out his massive hand. “I’m . . . your grandpa.”

TJ returned the handshake but seemed puzzled. He cocked his head. “You don’t look very old like a grandpa.” It was true. I
felt like I had aged a decade beyond my actual twenty-four years, but my father looked the same. TJ stretched his small hand
to the Judge’s face and traced a shallow line at the corner of one eye. “But there’s a wrinkle.”

“I’ll get more.” A hint of a smile washed across the Judge’s face. “I promise.”

Suddenly TJ had a revelation. He really did have a grandpa and here he was in the flesh. His awe turned to unbridled excitement.
“Grandpa”—one pudgy hand patted the Judge’s thigh—“I came to see you! I came to go fishing with you!”

At that the Judge melted. TJ could do that to anybody. He scooped my son up and waltzed around that muddy trail like TJ was
his long-lost lamb. The two of them laughed and chattered, weaving some almost visible cord between them, while I grabbed
the fly rod from the grassy edge of the trail and led them back to the house. Their banter relieved the tension. My son did
the talking and I only had to fill in the technical details, like
Wednesday
and
Reno.
Still, I felt the Judge’s eyes on me and his unspoken questions circling like vultures in the air.

My mother saw us from the porch. She looked tentative at first, as if she couldn’t trust her eyes. I took bigger strides across
the yard, and Mom swooped down the steps, a dove in her gray silk skirt. I felt her cool damp cheek against mine, and when
she eventually pulled away there were tears in her eyes.

“Samantha Jean. Where have you been?” She pushed the bangs off my face and studied me. I knew I was being read like the morning
news.

“Reno.”

Mom’s forehead drew together and her face took on a concerned frown. I expected her to point out how sallow I looked. “Red
hair is nice on you,” she finally said. “You look real nice.”

“It’s auburn.” In my mind, apples and fire engines were red and the box with the shimmering model on its front had clearly
said
auburn.

Her gaze turned to TJ as the Judge slid him gently to the ground. “Sam”—she looked from his round face to mine as if searching
for some resemblance—“is this my grandson?” I had never mentioned in my sparse letters that TJ had the smooth pecan-colored
skin and black eyes of his Mexican sire. Mom gently cupped his face between her hands as if it was the last papaya on a desert
island.

For that moment I was happy. If my parents were shocked at the color of TJ’s skin, they hid it well. In fact, they seemed
to embrace him and their role as grandparents instantly.