The Prodigal: A Ragamuffin Story (11 page)

The boy had dropped back, but this time, he didn’t throw the ball. He lowered it to his waist, walked across the yard, stood ten feet from the truck.

“You’re Jack Chisholm,” he said.

“I am,” he said. “And you must be Cameron. QB 1, your dad tells me. Congratulations.”

“You took Mayfield to State,” Cameron said.

“Me, your dad, a whole lot of folks did.”

Cameron looked over at the house, turned back to the truck, and shook his head. “Man, my dad. He can’t stand you. If he sees us talking, he would lose his mind.”

“Yeah.” Jack cleared his throat. “Maybe. Listen. Think about what I said. If you start off that back foot, you’ll have better balance, more distance, probably more accuracy.”

Cameron tossed the ball in the air, caught it, tossed it, caught it.
I’m QB 1
, his expression seemed to be saying.
And who are you, exactly
?

Fair enough. Jack made a move to shift into drive.

Jack saw a movement and heard a bang from the front porch as the screen door opened, closed.
Oh God
, Jack thought. Not good news no matter who it was.

It was Darla Taylor, once Darla Scroggins, once his Darla, a lifetime ago. She looked out at the street, strained for a moment to see who it was, then raised a hand in greeting.

She looked good. Beautiful, even. She was in jeans and a sweater that accentuated every curve. She didn’t look like a mother of three.

Mother of three. How was that even possible? They had broken up his senior year over—what? He couldn’t even remember now. They broke up before State, and Jack’s head was somewhere other than in the game in the first half. Finally, a hard hit from a player on the other team—and a good yelling from his coach—got him thinking not about what Darla was doing in the stands but what was happening on the field. By then, it was too late.

After the game, James took her on a date. Two weeks later they were an item. A year later they got married.

Jack still didn’t know how all of that had happened so fast, how she’d gone from loving him to loving his archenemy.

It was like Lois Lane had dropped Superman for Lex Luthor. Something was fundamentally wrong with it.

But it happened. And then they had kids. Three of them, one of whom stood here tossing a ball in the air.

The world goes round and round
, Jack thought.

That could have been my wife.

This could have been my boy.

This was not helpful, not now, not ever, especially not when he was getting ready to try to win back his own wife and child.

Darla started down the front steps, and Jack found himself being infected with something that felt like panic.

“Gotta go,” he said, looking out at Cameron. “I hope Texas offers you something. God knows they need a QB.”

He nodded at them both and drove off in a rush.

He did wish the kid well. It was a huge responsibility to be QB 1 in Mayfield, Texas.

And he had nothing but sympathy for anyone who had to live with James Taylor.

At the store, he grabbed his coat from the rack. His maroon and white knit hat was in the pocket. He looked around the store for something distinctly Texas that he might take to Alison as a gift. He couldn’t find anything that didn’t look distinctly like it came from a hardware store. They’d grab something at the airport.

Someone knocked at the front door, and Jack realized that he hadn’t written up the sign yet. “We’re closed,” he called.

The knock came again. It was Kathy Branstetter.

“Hey,” he said, opening it a crack. “Sorry. We’re closed.”

“I saw you come in,” she said. “I wanted to tell you something. I think you’ll be pleased.”

“Well,” he said. “Okay. But I’m in kind of a hurry.”

She came in, looked at him as though they shared a secret.

“Yes?” he asked.

“The
Post
ran your picture this morning.” She looked at him, her lips wavering as though she wanted to smile but wasn’t sure she ought to yet.

“The
Washington Post
,” he said.

“That’s right,” she said.

“Ran a picture of me.”

“That’s right.”

“How’d they get a picture of me?”

Again, her lips said smile, but her brain was reading the room. “I—well, I, umm, kind of sent it to them.”

He crossed his arms and frowned at her. “You what?”

“I sent them a picture of you on the roof yesterday,” she said. “They ran it today. Now they want me to do a full-blown story on you. A piece on the return of the people’s pastor.”

He felt his stomach turn over. “You sent the
Washington Post
a picture of me fixing Mrs. Calhoun’s roof?”

She nodded.

“Why would you do that?”

“Well,” she shrugged. “It’s a good picture, for one thing. For another—”

“And they know I’m here?” He was shaking his maroon and white cap at her.

“Everybody knows you’re here,” she said, stepping back. “I
ran into three print reporters and two cable news people just now at the gas station asking for directions to Mrs. Calhoun’s.”

“Yeah,” Jack said, kicking at the floor. He really wanted to be kicking her, but that was neither kind nor chivalrous. “See, Kathy, that’s not right. I didn’t go up there so people could take pictures of me. So reporters would come to town and bother Nora Calhoun.”

“Really?” she said. “All those pictures and tweets and YouTube videos you used to release, and the books you wrote where you went on and on about doing good in the world—”

“That’s not me,” he said. “I mean it was. But that was for show.” He stopped worrying his hat and stuffed it in his pocket. “I climbed on that roof yesterday to help my friend. That’s it. You shouldn’t have been taking my picture. And you certainly shouldn’t have sent it off to the national news.”

“You
are
national news,” she said defensively, her hands on her hips. “You know that full well—”

“I
was
news,” he said. “Now I just want to be left alone.”

She snorted. “Sure. Left alone. Listen, Jack, I can help you manage—”

“You’re not hearing me,” he said.

“I can help—”

“I think you’ve done enough,” Jack said.

“If we could just talk—” She started to open her pad.

“I’m on my way out of town.”

“You’re leaving?” She blinked at him rapidly.

“I’ll be sure to issue a press release when I return,” he said. “You can hang out and play reporter with your friends until I get back. Be sure and give them some pictures. I think my right profile is stronger.”

“You’re mad. Why would you be mad?” She turned her head slightly to one side, looked at him as though she were seeking a new angle. “This isn’t about a reboot?”

“A what?” He shook his head. “What are you even talking about?”

“Jack,” she said. “I told you. I followed you. Was there ever a time in the last ten years when you did a good deed without a camera rolling? Ever?”

It was as though a chasm had yawned open in his chest and he was toppling into it.

She was right.

She was absolutely, 100 percent right.

“That’s not me,” he said again, quietly, hoping it was true.

“Jack, if I can just file a story—”

He looked pointedly at her. “We’re closed,” he said. “And I’m not in Mayfield for a reboot, or whatever it was you said. I’m here trying to get my act together, figure some things out, and I do not want to be bothered while I try and do that.”

“Wow,” she said. She was looking at him sideways again, and then she raised a hand and rubbed her chin. “I think—umm—I think I may have misread the situation.”

He indicated the door again with a twitch of his head. “Well, I don’t think I misread you, Kathy. I hope this gets you in good with the
Post.
Maybe you can go back and start up your old life.” He ushered her toward the door now with his hand. “I don’t think I have that luxury.”

“I’m sorry, Jack,” she said. “I completely misunderstood—”

He opened the front door, scooted her onto the sidewalk, and locked the door behind her.

She stood there for a moment, as though she had more to say, but he didn’t look up at her.

When he did look up again, she was gone.

He scrawled and posted a sign: Closed until Jan. 3.

Then he crept out the back door, looking up and down the street as he emerged. A big white van with electronics on top was headed slowly his direction, as though it were checking street addresses.

He was in the truck and gone by the time it parked in front of the store.

But two cars and a couple of vans stood in front of his house, and a good dozen people were milling about his driveway and in the street.

“Wow,” Jack said to himself. “Slow news day.”

“Reverend Chisholm,” one woman called as he got out of the truck.

“Jack,” a photographer yelled out, and when he looked that direction, the man snapped a string of photos,
click click click.

They crowded, jostled, and he let them get in, let them pull in close. He was surrounded by photographers, two TV cameras, several recorders, and a couple of microphones.

“I’d like to make a statement,” Jack said.

“Finally,” one reporter muttered. They leaned in a bit.

“Please leave me alone,” Jack said, slowly and distinctly. “Please leave my family alone.” There were murmurs of demurral. “Please leave the good people of Mayfield, Texas, alone. Go and cover some real news.”

“You are real news, Jack,” a female reporter said into her mic before holding it back his way.

“Please,” he said. “I’m saying please. I’m trying to put my life back together. And all any of us are asking is to be left alone.”

“Jack,” another reporter said into his mic, “have you spoken with Sally Ramirez?”

“Have you launched your comeback here in Mayfield?” another asked.

“Is this roofing thing a way to rehabilitate your public image?”

“When are you going to preach again?”

“What’s your next book gonna be called?”

Jack held up his hand. “These are important questions.” He sighed. “But I’m in a big hurry, and I only have time to answer one. So. My next book,” he said, beginning to push his way through them, “is going to be entitled:
If the Media Don’t Get Off My Lawn, I’m Going to Be Forced to Call the Police
.”

One of them actually started writing it down. Then they all got it and began grumbling.

“Have a lovely day,” he said, and he opened the front door and closed it firmly behind him.

“They’re back,” his dad called from the kitchen.

“Yeah,” Jack said. “I … umm, I saw that. Sorry.”

“We need to leave shortly.”

“I’ll be ready,” Jack said. He paused in the hallway, looked at himself in the mirror. He looked different without his soul patch, different in Wranglers and a T-shirt that didn’t have ironic sayings emblazoned on it.

He almost passed for a decent human being.

Almost.

“Dad,” he said, “have I ever done anything good in my life without wanting people to know about it?”

He heard a chair pull back from the table, heard his father shuffle into the hallway and look over Jack’s shoulder into the mirror.

He felt, then saw, the hand on his shoulder.

“I’m not going to listen to that kind of talk about my son,” he said. “Come on. Pack and let’s go to Boston.”

J
ack picked up a
Post
and a
New York Times
in the Austin airport. He was in both, not front page, of course, but still, a whole lot closer to the front than he expected to be. The pictures showed him using the nail gun, Mr. Rodriguez by his side.

Mr. Rodriguez wasn’t named. His good work was not, apparently, newsworthy.

“Someday,” Jack murmured, once they were airborne. Jack had always been a nervous flyer, couldn’t talk until after they’d taken off and clearly weren’t going to crash back to earth. A part of him could never quite believe that something so big could take to the air.

“What?” Tom asked. He was opening the in-flight magazine.

“Someday nobody will care about any of this anymore. Right? I’ll be able to live my life. Whatever my life is. Without a camera on me.”

“And that will be a good thing?” Tom turned the page.

Jack nodded. “I’ve been in front of too many cameras, and for all the wrong reasons.”

“You look good on camera,” Tom said, reading. “You’ve got
those chiseled good looks. Like Grampa Joe. He was a handsome man.”

“Not the point, Dad,” Jack said. He discovered that he was already getting nervous, although they still had to land and go to a hotel and try to sleep before meeting with Tracy and Alison.

If they landed safely.

If Tracy came to meet them.

“I don’t want to be handsome,” he said, trying to shrug off those thoughts. “I want to live my life and love my family and try and be helpful to somebody.”

“Good things,” his father said, not raising a nose from his magazine. “But you do look good on camera.”

The detective said he would meet them at the hotel. They took the subway to a Best Western that was not too far from the Back Bay, the section of Boston where Tracy was reportedly living.

“Fenway Park is only a mile away,” his father said with wonder when they got into their room and looked at the tourist info.

His phone rang. Tom answered, said, “We’ll be right down,” and smiled at Jack.

“The detective is here,” he said, as though he were announcing royalty.

“You’ve been waiting your whole life to utter that sentence, haven’t you?”

They took the stairs down, and there they met Ronnie Romano, who was sitting outside in the driver’s seat of his Cadillac Escalade.

“How you doin’?” Ronnie asked Jack as they climbed in the car. “Good to see you.”

“I’m all right,” Jack said.

“Mr. Chisholm,” Ronnie said to Tom. “You feelin’ all right?”

“Tired, Ronnie,” Tom said. “And I feel a little sick. But I’ll feel better in the morning.”

“Your dad asked me to give you some of the rundown tonight,” Ronnie said. “And take you by the place they’re at, but that ain’t where you’re gonna meet them tomorrow.”

“Where are we meeting them?”

“Prudential Center,” Ronnie said. “The Shops at Prudential Center,” he corrected himself. “So, you like Japanese?”

“People or food?” Jack asked.

“Ha!” Ronnie said. “You’re all right. Well, your wife—Mrs. Chisholm—she said that Alison likes this place Wagamama. Japanese food. You can sit at a big table, have a little privacy to talk, you all meet in a public space.” Ronnie looked over from his driving. They were getting ready to pass the Citgo sign that Jack had seen outside of Fenway in a hundred baseball broadcasts. “One thing. And this was absolutely a deal breaker for her. She said no press.”

“No press?” Jack asked.

“She sees one TV camera, one reporter, and she heads for the door.”

“No press,” Tom agreed.

“It’s just,” Ronnie said, “forgive me for pushing on, I saw your picture in the
Globe
this morning.”

Jack groaned, shook his head.

“And if a photographer shows up to, you know, chronicle the happy reunion—” He paused, shrugged. “You see my point.”

“I haven’t told anyone I was coming,” Jack said. “And if I see a TV camera, I’m out of there too.”

“Okay,” Ronnie said. “That’ll work. I’ll tell her. Ease her mind a little. She seems real nervous. Funny.” He gave Jack another quick glance, looked back to the road. “You don’t seem like such a bad guy.”

“I used to think that myself,” Jack said.

“Jack,” his father said from the backseat. “He’s a good boy,” he told Ronnie in the rearview.

They turned off a major street and onto a side street with brownstones on either side. “Up ahead,” Ronnie said. “The corner of Newbury and Hereford.” They pulled over, double-parked.

“What,” Jack said. “That castle?”

“They must have gotten a ton of money for what you did,” Ronnie said. He reconsidered. “Sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t ought to have said it like that.”

The brownstone was turreted limestone with a green roof. All it lacked was banners from the parapets. Maybe a moat.

“This a safe neighborhood?” Jack asked.

“Two blocks from the Convention Center,” Ronnie said. “A ton of foot traffic, restaurants, stores, bars. As safe as anywhere.”

“Is there a school around here?”

“That I don’t know,” Ronnie said, raising his hands apologetically.

Jack looked up at the building. The windows were lit up, most of them. Behind one of them was his wife. His child. To be this close and not be able to see them—

“What time are we meeting them tomorrow?” he asked.

“Eleven o’clock,” Tom said softly. “Then I got tickets for an afternoon flight out.”

“So soon,” Jack said. His shoulders slumped. Ronnie shifted
uncomfortably in his seat, and they started off down the street, leaving the castle in the rearview.

“If some marvelous reconciliation happens,” Tom said, “or shows a promise of happening, of course you should stay longer.”

“She asked that we not stay,” Jack said, suddenly realizing.

“She says it’s too much, too soon,” Ronnie said. “She understands you should get to see your kid. But she says that doesn’t mean she wants to see you.” He raised his hands from the wheel, apologetic again.

“Drive,” Jack said.

Ronnie nodded and drove on.

Jack spent the night troubled. He dreamed of the Japanese restaurant, table empty, waiters raising their hands like Ronnie.
Sorry. We don’t know where they are.

But Tracy was waiting at the table with Alison at Wagamama when they arrived a little before eleven. She was dressed in a skirt and nice blouse, very professional, knee-high black boots. She looked beautiful. He saw her before she saw him. She was pushing at her hair, the way she did when she was uncomfortable.

Then they both looked up and saw him. Alison’s face broke open with a smile. Tracy’s was guarded, neutral, as Alison ran from the table to embrace Jack.

“Al,” Jack said, kneeling and breathing her in. She was still a skinny thing, small for her age. Tenth percentile in height and weight, the doctors kept telling them. Tracy was tiny herself, came from a long line of tiny people. “Al. Oh, I’ve missed you, princess.”

“I missed you too, Daddy,” she said, letting him go and leaning back to look at him. “Where have you been?”

“I’ve been staying with your grampa,” he said, and stood up. “Alison, this is your Grampa Tom.”

“I’ve seen your picture,” Alison said. “But I don’t remember you.” She shook his hand politely, returned her attention to Jack. “We’re living in a castle now,” she said. “My room is in a tower.”

“Just right for a princess,” Jack said. They had walked to Tracy’s table now, where she sat waiting. “Tracy.”

“You shaved,” she said.

She pushed at her hair, then bit her lip when she caught herself doing it. Jack didn’t know what she’d do to compensate for biting her lip. He didn’t have the tics down past that.

“Thank you for meeting us,” he said. “It’s nice—”

“Mom said you sent a detective to look for us,” Alison said. “Like in a movie.”

“Your Grampa Tom did,” Jack said. “It never occurred to me.” He looked at Tracy, tried to get her to meet his eye. “A lot of things never occurred to me. Like I was saying, I’m really glad—”

“The lawyers say we need to talk about visitation,” Tracy said. “And I understand that. But it’s such a long way to Seattle—”

“I’m not living in Seattle,” Jack said.

“I know, you’re with Tom at this moment, but—”

“I don’t know that I’m going back to Seattle,” Jack said.

“That would be a lot to live down,” Tracy said in a low voice.

Bam
. Jack didn’t know how to respond. “I—”

“There’s a direct flight from Boston to Austin,” Tom cut in. “I’d be happy to buy tickets. Maybe she could come for a few days before school starts?”

“That’s—that’s so sudden,” Tracy said, raising a hand. Her face flushed red. “I’d have to think—”

“You must have known that sooner or later I’d want to see Alison,” Jack said. He didn’t mean to, but he was pushing. Time was a factor here, whether Tracy knew it or not.

“I didn’t know that you’d want that,” she said. “I didn’t know what you’d want. I don’t even know who you are anymore.”

He looked at Alison, happily coloring on the paper tablecloth. How does one even respond? He dropped his head, looked at the tabletop.

At that moment their server stepped to the table, introduced himself as Jeffrey, wrote it on the tablecloth directly in front of Jack. “Can I start you off—”

“We need a second,” Tracy told him. “Iced teas, maybe.” She looked at Tom, who nodded.

“Apple juice for me,” Alison volunteered without looking up from her coloring. She was paying more attention to them than she let on.

“Are you planning on staying in Boston?” Tom asked gently.

Tracy looked at Tom, then down at the menu, then at Jack, then down again. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m taking voice at Berkley this spring. I’ve got Alison placed in a good school.” She sighed. “Nobody knows my name here. Nobody makes jokes or points fingers. And at least the church is taking good care of us.”

Jack felt each word like a knife. He put his hand on his chest, took a deep breath. “I am so sorry,” he said. “I can’t tell you—”

“No,” she said, her voice rising. The people at the adjoining table looked over, then turned quickly away. “You can’t tell me, Jack. You’ll never know what it’s like to be humiliated by the one you love.”

“I think actually I’m getting a pretty good idea,” Jack said, as the people at the next table sized him up.

“We didn’t think we’d be able to solve things today,” Tom said, holding his hands up as if to separate two fighters. “That’ll take time. I know that. We just came to ask if Jack can have Alison soon. I’m—” He paused, looked down, looked back at Tracy. “I’d love for her to visit.”

“Tom,” she said, reaching across the table to him and managing to simultaneously glare at Jack. “I am sorry that you don’t know your granddaughter. That was never my decision. I don’t know that she wants—”

“I want to go to Texas,” Alison said, again without looking up. Tracy glared at her without effect. They had apparently discussed a different strategy.

“I don’t know, Tom,” Tracy said, leaning back in her chair. “I just don’t know.”

“Can I talk to you for a second?” Jack asked her. This was no good. He needed a moment alone with her without the onlookers. He looked out at the indoor pedestrian mall. “Just for a second.”

“That wasn’t our deal,” she said. “Nobody said anything about being alone with you.”

“Wow,” he said. He looked across the table at her, watched her push at her hair, then angrily drop her hands under the table. “You hate me that much.”

“We don’t say ‘hate,’“ Alison said. “It’s not a nice word.”

“Right,” Jack said. He’d actually been the one who taught her that.

“I have some right to be angry with you, Jack,” Tracy said,
her jaw clenched. “I think even a supreme narcissist would be able to acknowledge that I have some right.”

“And that’s me?” Jack said. “That’s really what you think?”

“Don’t raise your voice in front of our daughter,” Tracy said. She put her menu on the table, made as if to stand up. “Oh, I knew it was a mistake to meet you. You’ve got everything, the power, the lawyers and detectives—”

“I’ve got nothing, Tracy,” Jack shouted. “I’ve got no money, I’ve got no friends, I’ve got no place to go—”

“You’ve got Tom,” she said, begging him with her eyes to be quieter, to not make a scene.

“Tom will be dead by this time next year,” Jack said. The words broke him open. He raised a hand to his lips as if to call them back.

Tracy’s mouth fell open. She looked at Tom. “You’re—sick?”

He nodded, solemn, uncomfortable. He clearly did not want to be used as a bargaining chip in these negotiations. “I am not going to get better,” he said, “if that is what you’re asking.”

“Tracy,” Jack said, leaning across the table toward her. “I am sorry to have embarrassed you. I was. I am. What I did—I made a mistake, I regret it, I can make it all better. With you. With Alison. If you’ll only—”

“Don’t,” she said.

“—give me a chance,” he finished.

She looked at him, shook her head.

“Don’t,” she whispered.

Jeffrey came back to the table, began parceling out iced teas and apple juice in a kid’s cup with a straw.

“Will you ever forgive me?” Jack asked.

“I will,” Alison said. She grinned up at Jack for a life-giving moment before devoting her attention to sipping her apple juice.

The server looked expectantly around the table. “Are we all ready to order?”

“We need just another minute,” Tom told him.

“Okeydoke,” he said, smiled tightly, and backed away.

“I’ll talk to the lawyers in Seattle,” she said, resignation in her voice. “I know you’ve got a right to see Alison. We’ll talk it over. Set it up. I’ll have them contact your lawyers.”

“Tom’s lawyers,” Jack said. “Actually.”

The table fell silent, broken only by Alison setting down a blue crayon and picking up a green one.

“I’m sorry, Tom,” Tracy said at last, looking across the table at him. “Sorry for everything. If I’d known, I would have done things differently. It’s not fair—”

“I’m happy to be sitting here right now,” Tom said, and he certainly seemed to be. Despite the tension, he had been smiling since the moment he sat down across from his granddaughter.