Autumn Blue (8 page)

He didn’t mention the two episodes of lying flat on the lawn though very much alive. He did tell her in detail about his mole
infestation, which seemed to concern her about as much as if he had said the sky was blue. She only looked over her shoulder
at the damage through the picture window. “Well, yes. Look at that,” she said. “It’s a regular mole Disneyland.” And then
she proceeded to tell him that Audrey Milhall was in town and how they hadn’t seen each other since their ten-year reunion
but planned to get together on Friday night. Nicole’s football game was going to be out of town that night so Rita probably
wouldn’t have gone to watch her lead cheers anyway, and Petie would be staying overnight with a friend. Dan could just fend
for himself at home.

“I haven’t seen the kids since Fourth of July,” he said.

“Oh, Dad.” She patted his knee sympathetically. “You know, they’re teenagers now. Their lives are just so busy, what with
all their practices and school events and friends. Dan says he’s thinking of installing a revolving door, the way they come
and go so quickly. But you know Nicole has her driver’s license now. I’ll tell her to come on over here and see you sometime
soon.”

He put the paper on the lamp table and stood, stretching out his legs. “You tell her to bring her brother. I’ll take them
out for root beer floats like we used to.”

Rita’s lips flattened out. “Well, if you do that, let Nicole drive.” She sighed and paused long enough that he knew this was
going to be something he didn’t want to hear. “About your car, Dad. About you driving it, I mean. I’m wondering if, at your
age, you shouldn’t just park that thing for good.”

“Confound it, Rita!”

“Hear me out, Dad. It’s just that there was this story about older drivers on a news show, and the statistics are absolutely
scary. You’d be amazed at how many of your peers are driving in imaginary lanes and running into telephone poles!”

“So you think I’ve gone senile? Or blind?”

“No! I just think your reflexes may not be all that they used to be, that’s all.”

He began pacing the floor in front of her. “What are you really afraid of? That I might die? Well, so what if I do? So what
if you come over here someday and find me in a heap on the kitchen floor because I ate corn dogs instead of shepherd’s pie
and creamed peas? What difference would it make, as long as I don’t leave you with a mess to clean up? Who on God’s green
earth really gives a hoot?”

“Dad, you’re blowing this way out of proportion. I just want you to take care of yourself, that’s all.”

“Maybe taking care of myself is not in my best interest! Did you ever think of that?” He strode to the front door and slammed
it behind him. The first thing his eyes fell on was the cockeyed downspout on the trailer-house across the road. Rita came
out and followed him all the way to the garage. He yanked his keys from his pocket.

“What are you doing? Where do you think you’re going? Dad, do
not
get in that car just to spite me!”

He ignored her, unlocking the garage door and walking past the Lincoln, then pulled the metal ladder off its hooks on the
back wall of the garage. The drawer of his red tool chest stuck at first, but gave way with a violent jerk that almost pulled
it off its track. Millard gathered nails, hammer, and screwdrivers, anything he thought he might need, stuffing them into
the leather tool belt that Molly gave him one Christmas and strapping it around him. His daughter watched silently from the
open door, hands planted on hips. When he proceeded forward, the ladder in front of him like a battering ram, she backed away.

“I’ve got some work to do,” he said.

He felt her watching as he strode across the street. Though the ladder was somewhat heavy, he deliberately held it high, back
straight, chin up. He might be pushing his mid-seventies, but he was
not
pushing up daisies. Give up his car! He’d sooner give up Sundays. Move to Haywood House! Pull a wheelchair up to the window
and watch for Jesus to come again on the clouds. Wouldn’t that just sew everything up neatly for Rita and Dan? Dan, her real
estate agent husband who kept getting market appraisals on Millard’s house, practically salivating as he told Millard that
the value would go up now that the new supermarket and strip mall were going in down on Highway 12. Rita, no longer looking
up to him, not so much as a glint of admiration in her eyes. He remembered how she used to beg him to twirl her in his arms,
how proud she was of her daddy when he came to her school on career day. At her wedding she hugged him so tightly that he
knew she had a hard time letting go. At what point had he become nothing but a worry and a burden to her?

Millard lowered the ladder to the weedy flower bed at the far corner of Sidney Walker’s house and leaned it up against dirty,
gray siding. He could see that it was a simple fix. All he had to do was reattach an aluminum strap meant to hold the downspout
in place. With each step up the metal rungs, he relished the knowledge that Rita was still standing over there, holding herself
back, biting her tongue. He would show her. He was still useful for something.

It was not until he found himself staring through a bedroom window that he began to feel like a Peeping Tom. Was anyone home?
His being there was really as much a surprise to him as it would be to anyone. It had not even occurred to him prior to that
moment of frustration to fix the neighbor’s downspout, but here he was, peering into the window of a pink bedroom with two
unmade twin beds. It was too early for the little girls to come home from school, and their mother was usually at work during
the day. He glanced across the yard, dismayed to see that for once her oxidized red car was actually parked at the end of
the gravel drive. Perhaps he should have knocked first.

He would just get the job done and be gone. He knew Rita was still watching, whether from his driveway or in the house he
didn’t know, but as sure as fleas on a stray dog she was fretting and fuming right now because he wasn’t sitting safely in
his recliner, where he belonged. He placed a couple of nails between his lips and grasped the metal tube, hoisting it up toward
the gutter. It was heavier than he’d thought. This was a bit difficult with only his left hand. He leaned to the left, his
knees braced against the ladder. Stretching his right arm across his body, he pushed upward with both hands, his head tipped
back awkwardly. At first the aluminum spout refused to match up with the mouth of the gutter. He grunted and adjusted his
aim, blood draining from his head. There. Got it! He held it firmly with his left hand, fumbling for his hammer with the right,
wishing for a third hand to pull a nail from his clamped lips.

A shrill scream sliced the air. Millard jerked backward as if stabbed in the chest. The downspout fell from his grip, clattering
against the side of the house. He grabbed for the ladder, fighting an immediate case of vertigo.

The bedroom window slid open. “Oh, Mr. Bradbury! It’s you. What are you doing? You nearly scared me to death!”

Sidney Walker had no idea who was nearly scared to death. His fingers clenched the ladder as if rigor mortis had already set
in. Millard forced one hand loose and held his palpitating chest. “I didn’t mean to . . . I mean I wasn’t . . . your downspout.
I was fixing your downspout.”

“Oh.” She cocked her head. “Well, God bless you. I’ve been wanting to fix that, but I didn’t have a ladder. Just a minute.”
The window slammed shut, and seconds later she came out the front door and down the steps. “Let me help you with that.”

There were some advantages to being old, he guessed. If he were a younger man hovering outside her daughters’ window, Sidney
would surely have called the sheriff. The sirens would be howling their way up Boulder Road from town right now. She helped
him push the downspout onto the funnel of the gutter and held it in place while he nailed the strap to the siding.

“I thought you would be at work,” he said. “Didn’t notice your car there until I was already up on the ladder.” He backed
down the rungs and lowered the ladder to the ground.

“Well,” she said with a sigh, “something came up today. I had to make a bunch of phone calls. Would you like to come in for
some iced tea, Mr. Bradbury?”

He should be tending to his mole problem. He had a new plan of attack and was sure it would get better results than the Juicy
Fruit gum. He glanced over his shoulder toward his neat, white ranch-style house. Rita’s car was still in the drive. She didn’t
normally stay this long. What was she waiting for? To give him a good scolding, that’s what. “I think I’d like some tea,”
he said.

Millard followed Sidney into her house. The place looked surprisingly cheery and a lot cleaner than one would suspect, judging
by the outside. Quite tidy, really, with matching curtains tied back with fancy rope braids, an elegant cloth on the dining
room table, and a huge bouquet of dahlias and daisies (which she certainly didn’t cut from her own yard). A painted coffee
table held stacks of neatly folded clothes. He wandered to a wall of framed photos while Sidney commented from the kitchen
on the nice Indian summer they were having and how she hoped it would last. The pictures were of her children from newborn
to missing teeth to the awkward school photos where their front teeth looked too big for their faces. There was a mustached
man in the family shots up until the boy looked to be maybe six or seven and the girls were still babies. Sidney cradled an
infant or toddler in each of the poses, her thick, dark blond hair and big eyes almost too intense for her slight frame. The
next portrait in line showed the father conspicuously missing, a blank spot where he belonged, almost as if they were expecting
him to show up any second and breathlessly take his spot next to their mother, his hand resting as it had before on the shoulder
of the dark-haired boy. A normal-looking boy he was—actually quite handsome, with wide brown eyes and long, dark lashes.

“That’s Tyson,” she said, noting the photo that held his gaze. She passed Millard a tall, cold glass. “My precious jailbird.”
She went to one of the chairs, motioning him to do the same. “Please sit.”

“He’s still doing his time, eh?” Sidney had given him a brief update on her son’s situation when they had met at the mailbox
on Saturday. He lowered himself into a chair.

She nodded grimly. “His sentencing hearing is tomorrow. That’s why I didn’t go to work today. I’ve been talking to his attorney.
She says the judge could try him as an adult, because the charge is a felony, and he could get up to five years.” At that
she teared up. “Tyson is like a wild creature. He just can’t stand to be indoors for any length of time. He likes to take
his sleeping bag and sleep out in the woods sometimes, all by himself.” She sighed. “I can’t bear the thought of him in that
cage one more day.”

“Have they let you talk to him?”

“Yes. He’s terrified of jail. That’s why Ty bolted from the school counselor’s office the minute he reached for the phone
to call the sheriff. He’d been camping out down by Sparrow Creek the whole time he was runaway. The day he was arrested, he
had sneaked up to the window of my office through the back alley just to let me know he was all right. He said he missed me,”
she said with a half smile. “But someone thought he looked suspicious and called the sheriff. A deputy apparently got there
in about two seconds flat.”

She hadn’t touched her glass to her lips, but twirled the liquid gently, watching the ice cubes go around and around. Neither
of them spoke for what seemed like a long time. Millard thought he should say something but couldn’t come up with anything
appropriate.

“He’s so angry,” she said. “It’s like he’s got a fire smoldering inside him, and it doesn’t take much to fan it to flame.”
She shook her head slowly. “I don’t know what I’ve done wrong. Well, I do know I’m at work a lot. I wish I could be home when
my kids get out of school.” She glanced up at her son’s childhood photo, the one where he held a caramel-colored puppy on
his lap, boy gazing at dog and dog at boy in mutual admiration. She shivered, pulling her sweater around her, though it was
a mild September day. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.” She sighed. “I’ll find out tomorrow morning at his hearing, I
guess.”

Millard glanced nervously out the window just in time to see Rita’s car pull out of his driveway across the street. The blue
Chevy cruised slowly past, his daughter no doubt straining her eyes to see what he was up to, wrinkling her forehead the way
she did whenever she disapproved. The coast was clear now. He gulped down the last of his tea and set his glass on the coffee
table next to a folded pile of washcloths. “Well, it probably won’t be as bad as all that,” he said, searching his mind for
a
Perry Mason
episode to justify his statement but coming up blank. “You just get a good night’s sleep tonight. Things have a way of looking
better in the morning.”

He stood slowly, thanking her for the iced tea.

“Here I’ve gone and spilled my guts to you again.” She smiled through teary eyes. “I guess you remind me a little of my dad.
I used to confide in him about everything, but I don’t have him anymore. He passed on a few years ago. Anyway, I haven’t even
asked. Did you solve your mole problem?”

“I’m about to. I’m going to flood that sucker out. Mole soup, that’s what I have in mind.”

She laughed and walked him toward the door. “Sounds delicious!” She placed her hand on his arm. “It was so kind of you to
fix my downspout, Mr. Bradbury. I’m sure you have more important things to do. You let me know if there’s anything I can do
for you.” She leaned forward, kissing him on the cheek. “I mean it.”

He nodded a smile and stepped gingerly down the wooden steps, remembering his morning dive.

More important things to do.
Did she really believe that? Her words echoed tauntingly in his mind as he crossed the street toward home.

I
F HIS YARD
was a regular mole Disneyland, as Rita had put it, Millard’s furry friend had just had the ride of his life. Millard chuckled
as he wound up the hose and hung it on a bracket against the house.
Pirates of the Caribbean
gone wild. He had shoved the nozzle into the main tunnel and let it run full blast all night—to hell with the water bill.
Lo and behold, this morning there were no new tunnels, no piles of freshly dug earth, but surely somewhere in the underground
labyrinth was the bloated corpse of one dearly departed rodent who had dug his own grave.