Autumn Blue (5 page)

His heart leapt to his throat. He sprung to his elbows, his head jerking toward the alarmed female voice.

“Please, don’t move. It’s me, Sidney Walker, from across the street. Let me get help.”

“No!” he stammered, awkwardly pushing himself to his hands and knees. She dropped to her knees, her hand on his back. “I’m
fine.” He tried to stand but the blood rushed from his head and he abruptly sat back onto the shovel blade, causing the handle
to spring upward, wobbling in the air.

“Are you sure? Did you fall?” She reached out to brush something from his cheek.

“No.” Confound it. Couldn’t a man lie down on his lawn without some female assuming it was because he couldn’t stand on his
own two feet? He pushed the shovel out from under him. “I’ve got a mole,” he stated, as if that explained everything.

His neighbor seemed confused at first; then her eyes fell on the pile of dirt near Millard’s head. She sighed in relief. “Too
bad. Your yard usually looks like a picture right out of
Sunset
magazine. Makes me feel so embarrassed about mine. I keep meaning to do something about it, but it seems my days get all
used up, what with work and the kids and all.”

He suddenly remembered the sheriff standing on her porch a couple of evenings ago. He was not one to pry, but he might just
lift up a loose board and take a peek under it. “What about that boy of yours? What is he, fourteen? Fifteen?”

She averted her eyes to a pile of white clouds beyond his roof. “Fifteen.”

“Well, why don’t you get him out there on that yard? A boy that age ought to be helping his mother. A woman was never meant
to do all those outdoor chores. She’s got enough to do cleaning house, sewing, cooking, and the like.”

She smiled a little, as if he had said something amusing. “Well, I can’t say that I do much sewing.” She toyed with the zipper-tassel
on her blue cardigan. “Anyway, we don’t own a lawn mower.”

Well, that complicated things. Millard glanced across the street, but from his vantage point there on the lawn, the view of
her scraggly yard was blocked by the peonies along his fence. He still saw the hanging downspout, though. He
could
offer his lawn mower. But he had just sharpened the blades a couple of weeks ago. If the kid hit any hidden rocks or debris,
which surely lurked behind every tuft of grass, it would definitely ruin them. On the other hand, it would be nice to look
out his window without the annoyance of that tainted scene. He still couldn’t get over the fact that somebody knocked out
all the alder and vine maples (which would be going red by now) to stick a boxy old trailer-house there. “You tell him to
come on over here and borrow my mower. I’ll show him how to use it, but make sure all the sticks and rocks are picked out
of the yard first.”

Sidney dropped her head and let out a slow, steady breath. “Well, that’s very nice of you to offer, Mr. Bradbury. But the
truth is, I’m having a little trouble with Tyson right now.”

Aha. It figured. Even from a distance a guy could see the kid had rebellion written all over him. “You just send him over
here. I’ll tell him where the hogs eat corn.”

She sighed again, her angular but pretty face losing what he now realized had been a pleasant, almost cheery facade. “My son
isn’t home right now. He, uh, ran away recently.”

“So, that’s why the sheriff was there the other night?”

She clamped her lips between her teeth momentarily as she seemed to study his face. “Mr. Bradbury, I’m going to be honest
with you. You’re a nice neighbor, and living right across the street from us the way you do, it’s just a matter of time anyway
until you know the truth. You know that so-called attempted robbery at Graber’s this summer?” He nodded. “Well, that was my
Ty.” Her stunning green eyes fell away for a moment before returning to his.

He tried not to seem shocked, though he was. First the mole and now this. He had been living across the street from an armed
criminal—and to think that he rarely remembered to lock up his house when he went to bed at night. It had never seemed necessary
before. According to Red, the barber, the kid had almost shot the proprietor—would have killed a guy with a wife and two kids
over a bottle of booze if he hadn’t tripped and smashed the bottle tucked into his jacket. “But I’ve seen him around since
then, haven’t I?”

“The judge let him out to await his trial. Being a juvenile and the fact that it was his first offense, plus that he turned
himself in, he let Ty come home until his hearing. But he had a curfew and was supposed to be in school every day and no place
but home after that.” She looked away. “Now he’s messed that all up. Got in a fight at school and ran away. I guess he thought
they’d slap him right in jail for getting suspended.” Her eyes watered up. “He’s really not such a bad boy, Mr. Bradbury.
It’s just that something’s got him by the heart and it’s squeezing the life out of him. I see this dull pain in his eyes but
I don’t know what it is. I don’t know how to fix his hurts anymore.”

A mole, a criminal for a neighbor, and now a crying woman. If this wasn’t a day to beat all. It was half-past nine and he
hadn’t even touched the newspaper yet. His whole neat world, it seemed, was being cracked open like a walnut. He should do
something but he didn’t know what. His hand reached out to pat her knee, but he thought better of it and grabbed the shovel,
using it as a crutch to stand to his feet, leaning heavily on it as he stretched his stiff knees.

Sidney stood also, dabbing her face with the underside of her sleeve. That was the way Molly did when she cried over old movies
or sad telephone conversations so as not to smear her makeup. Molly wore rouge and a little mascara right up until she took
sick and even then sometimes pinked up her cheeks when someone came to call. “Sorry to lay my troubles on you, Mr. Bradbury.”
She chuckled through her tears. “I don’t know why I did that.” She glanced at her watch. “Well, it looks like I’ll be working
past five tonight to make up for it.” She offered a brave smile. “Anyway, I’m glad you were just hunting down a mole and not
having an aneurysm or something.”

“You lay your troubles on me anytime you need an ear,” he heard himself say, immediately wondering where that came from. If
he could have sucked the words back, he would have. But the thing about words: once spoken, they’re poker chips on a table,
there for the taking. Odds are somebody’s going to cash them in.

She tipped her head, smiling softly. “Thank you, Mr. Bradbury.” She reached out and hugged him, just like that, letting her
cheek brush against his, then turned and strode quickly back down his driveway and across the road. He stood there while she
tried to start her banged-up little Ford, which finally kicked in with a rattle-roar on the third try. Feebly returning her
wave, he watched as the car chugged away.

S
IDNEY’S BOSS
leaned over her shoulder, perusing one of her files for some information he needed before returning a client’s phone call.
Leon Schuman was an intensely serious man, no good at small talk, with a deeply lined face that was hard to read. She prayed
he wouldn’t notice the stack of insurance quote requests piled to the left of her computer as she casually covered it with
a notebook, breathing a sigh of relief when he closed the file and returned to his glassed-in office. Pushing the notebook
aside, she covered a yawn and began to enter data into her computer. Her eyes watered from the yawn. It had been a long and
sleepless night.

As far as she knew, Micki was the only other employee at the Leon Schuman Insurance office that knew Sidney’s son was on the
run. Sure, the others knew about Ty’s initial arrest, even though the paper had not stated his name because he was a juvenile.
Word, distorted as it was, got around in Ham Bone, long before the weekly paper hit the porch steps. But her coworkers seemed
to assume that Ty was either still at home or at school per the judge’s mandate, awaiting his fact-finding hearing. Most of
them politely avoided the topic, sensing that Sidney was a little sensitive about it, though surely her private family business
was being discussed in whispers between donuts and sips of coffee in the break room when she wasn’t there.

She remembered ruefully how Ty’s court-appointed attorney, a pale, pregnant woman in her early thirties, had warned him of
the absolute urgency of adhering to every rule set by the judge who had mercifully released him into his mother’s custody
after the incident—without bail. She warned him that the consequences of breaking the court orders would be severe. Ty had
nodded gravely without taking his eyes off her face.

Sidney contemplated the framed photo on her desk, one that Jack Mellon had taken of a twelve-year-old Ty holding a remote
control and gazing with wonder into the sky. The red model biplane, which Jack had painstakingly built and painted, was out
of the picture. The very fact that the man had focused the camera on Tyson rather than on his masterpiece should have been
a sign to her. Where had her head been back then? Where would Ty be today if she had married Jack? Certainly not on the streets
or in the tangled woods living on blackberries and tree roots. She pictured Ty the way he could have been if he had a strong
man to guide him—safe and content, flourishing in school, proudly displaying his own model airplane at the science fair. She
forced her eyes back to the computer screen.

Micki finally saved her from the pandemonium in her mind. “Hey.” Her friend’s blond head appeared at the top of her cubicle.
“Let’s do lunch.”

Sidney blinked. She hadn’t accomplished a complete task all morning that she could remember. She saved the work on her computer
with a click. “Okay. Good idea.”

It had been a beautiful September so far, but today autumn hovered in a chilly fog. The usual view of evergreen-covered foothills
and the Cascade Mountains was shrouded with gray. They grabbed their jackets and walked to the little Mexican restaurant next
door to their office—like many of the businesses in town, a home remodeled into retail space when commercial zoning was extended
to the end of Center Street, the main drag through town. They sat by the window and looked out at the sidewalk and the Hair
Place salon across the street. Micki ordered chicken enchiladas; Sidney, as usual, a veggie burrito.

“I miss you,” Micki said.

“What are you talking about? You see me every day, like it or not.”

“But it’s not the real you. I miss your famous laugh.”

Sidney’s mouth spread into a heartless smile. “Got any good jokes?”

Micki took a sip of iced tea and lowered her glass to the table. “Knock, knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Interrupting cow.”

“Inter—”

“MOO!”

They both giggled. “Okay, I’ve got another one,” Micki said. “Knock, knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Interrupting starfish.”

“Interrup—”

Micki’s open hand shot across the table, spreading across Sidney’s face, her palm firmly plastered against Sidney’s mouth.
She couldn’t speak. Micki pulled her arm back, laughing at her own joke. “Get it?”

Sidney rubbed her nose. “That hurt! For Pete’s sake! Starfish move like glaciers—not torpedoes.”

“Sorry.” Micki reached for Sidney’s glass. “Water?”

She nodded. “And an ice pack.”

“I was just trying to get your mind off Tyson.”

“Well, it worked until just now. Now I’m thinking about him all over again. Here I am devouring mounds of good food and he’s
out there somewhere eating . . . I don’t know, maybe tree bark or something.” A horrible thought occurred to her. “Do we have
anything poisonous growing around here?”

Micki shook her head, causing her silver dangling earrings to swing. Her hair was cropped in the latest style, her tangerine
blouse a little trendy—something a teenager might wear, but she could pull it off. Micki had the body of an athlete. Sidney
reminded herself to work out more, put a little muscle on her slender arms. “About the worst he could do around here is cascara
bark. They make laxatives out of it.”

“Oh, great. Runs on the run.”

Micki sighed. “You’ve got to stop worrying about him. He’s Nature Boy; you know that. He’s spent more hours roaming the forests
around here than a lone wolf. And he’s smart. If anyone can survive out there, Ty can.”

“Did I mention that he didn’t have a jacket when he took off?”

“A few times.” Micki raised her eyebrows. “I’ll bet you anything he has one now.”

Sidney didn’t want to go there. She couldn’t bear to think that her son made stealing a habit. That Deputy Estrada might be
on to something by suspecting Ty as the culprit of that burglary in town. The attempted robbery at Graber’s Market may not
have been just a crazy, stupid, spontaneous, onetime event. She had found empty beer bottles in the back of his closet after
he ran away, plus a full six-pack under the bed, and there was no way that her baby-faced son could pass for twenty-one even
if he had fake ID.

“I finally called my mother last night.”

Micki’s eyebrows rose. “And?”

“I woke her up. I tried to sleep until 2:00 A.M., lying there worrying about whether that deputy was going to come back with
a search warrant, imagining Ty in every possible scenario under the moon. Finally I just reached over and punched in her number.
Good old Mom. She wasn’t even mad.

“I told her everything this time. Right down to the gory details. All about the arrest, the charges, and that Ty ran away.”
Sidney pursed her lips and sighed. “I guess I should have told her what was going on sooner, starting with those black moods
he falls into. At least then it wouldn’t have been such a shock to her. She still sees him as the sweet-faced little boy that
used to bring her jars of centipedes and potato bugs. She, of course, always oohed and aahed like he had just bestowed jewels
from Tiffany on her.”

“She didn’t freak out on you when you told her, did she?”

“No. That’s not her style. She was annoyingly calm and rational. She said Ty is going to come through this just fine. That
someday we’ll look back and thank God for the wonderful man he’s become.”