Thing With Feathers (9781616634704) (30 page)

“Okay. On the count of three…Wait. What if just one of them is home?” Victor asked.

“We’ll be in before he can get to a phone and call the cops. Got it?”

“Yeah. Count.”

“One, two, three!” Tiny mouthed while counting down on his fingers.

They ran to the doorstep and leaped up the steps, and both boys struck the thick-paned glass simultaneously. The high-pitched shatter sounded almost soft. Tiny stepped through the opening and moved aside. Then Victor stepped through, lifting his head once safely inside, to see the same thing Tiny was staring at: the unfortunate end of a shotgun.

“Uh-oh.”

“Victor, I’m surprised at you.” Sean looked over at Tiny. “Not too surprised to see you, Lytle Welby. Let’s see. You come here tonight to rob me or just vandalize my doorstep?”

“We come to kill you, man.” Tiny tilted his fat chin up indignantly.

“Really? Then if I shoot you, Welby, in my vandalized parlor, it’d be self-defense, wouldn’t it?”

Tiny backed up a baby step and zipped his mouth shut.

“Yes, Victor, what is this all about?” Will had left the mill late on that day because he had stayed to swap out grinding stones for a special order. So focused were the boys on Sean Marshall’s shotgun, they never heard Will climb up the porch steps behind them. Will grabbed the ball bats out of the boys’ hands as he passed between them to join his brother. “You plan on using the bat Sean bought you for your birthday last year to beat him up?”

Victor’s eyes were downcast in his disgrace, but he said, “I told you I needed money. Those guys are coming for me tomorrow, and if I don’t have it, they’re gonna kill me.”

“They’re gonna nail his knees to the floor and set him on fire!” Tiny piped in.

Sean looked Victor in the eyes. He honestly couldn’t recognize anything of the little boy he once loved more than life itself.
Is there not even a shred of decency left in him?
“You were going to kill me for the money, Victor?” His eyes went to the baseball bats resting against his brother’s shoulder.

“I wouldn’t have.” Victor looked down in what appeared to be shame. “Tiny might have.”

Maybe just a shred of genuine shame,
Sean thought.
This boy is not my son. My son died the day the preacher took him.
Sean realized in that moment, he’d been grieving over the loss of his Victory for nearly a decade. That was long enough. Sean used the shotgun’s barrel to lift Victor’s face up. “Those men you owe, they do all that to your face, son?”

Victor turned his head angrily away from the weapon and the man who wielded it.

Sean sighed. “How much do you owe?”

“Two hundred and forty-six dollars and twenty-five cents,” Tiny said almost merrily.

Victor said nothing but nodded.

“What?” Will exclaimed. “How does a youngster your age get into so much trouble?”

“Wait here.” Sean said, and left the boys with Will.

Victor wandered a few steps farther into the room. The place was vaguely familiar. He looked up to see a large portrait of a woman hanging on the wall over Mavis Marshall’s piano, and he was mesmerized by it. She was beautiful. Sean returned with a wad of bills in his hand, the shotgun still cradled in his right arm. He followed Victor’s eyes to the portrait.

“Your mother. Painted just after you were born. Recognize her?”

“Naw. Maybe a little. She’s pretty.”

“No. She’s beautiful. And she was so proud of you.” He shook his head miserably. His eyes glistened. “Here. Take it. It’s what you came for. Now hear me, Victor Bowman. Don’t ever come here again. Don’t phone, and don’t radio. I don’t know who you are anymore. And I guess what I’m saying is, I don’t want to be your friend.”

Victor’s reaction was puzzling, to Victor most of all. He cried. But he pocketed the money and left without another word.

Chapter 65

“Y
ou alright, brother?” Will asked. Sean nodded, downcast. Will set his jaw. “You go on to bed, Sean. Lorette and I will get this glass cleaned up.” He waited for Sean to close his bedroom door, and then he darted out the open door after Victor.

He caught up with the youngster at the south end of their acreage by the old carriage house, and grabbed him by the collar at the scruff of his neck. With a single, powerful arm, Will turned the teen around to face him. “Did you think we were done here? I hope you got another think coming.”

“Leave me alone,” Victor tried to twist away. Will wouldn’t have it.

“You really dropped a plunker back there, and you are going to tell me why, Victor Bowman.”

“Why what?” Victor snapped.

“Why you go out of your way to hurt the feelings of the only man who has ever gone out of his way for you. Why you have to talk cold and cruel to the man who has bailed you out of every tight spot you’ve ever gotten yourself into—and there have been plenty of those. You’re going to tell me how you can hate the man who has loved you so much all of these years, and has given so much of himself to you.” Will shook the boy for emphasis. “Start talking.” He released the boy’s collar.

“Gone out of his way for me? Ha! Loved me? Given so much to me? Don’t make me laugh.” Victor spat on the ground. “He thought he could show up once a year with a birthday present and that was gonna make everything okay?”

“You think he didn’t want to give you more? You think he didn’t want to share his life with you, share his home and his love? How can you think that? He tried to get you out of that cottage—”

“He left me there!” Victor screamed. And then the tears pent up from nine miserable years fell like rain.

Will was stunned by the intensity of the boy’s emotions.
Victor didn’t know all that Sean had done to try and win the boy back. Good Lord.
Will ran a hand through his hair.

“Victor, you know your pa took the preacher to court to try and get you back. You knew that, right?”

Victor looked up at Will, seeming to distrust him.

“When he lost the case, he was devastated. We tried to come and see you after that, and the preacher pulled a shotgun on us. He threatened to kill us. You were watching the whole thing out the front window. Honest, boy? You don’t have any recollections?”

Victor shrugged, but said nothing. Some of what Will Marshall was saying was triggering small memories, but memories were painful.

“When it was clear to us the preacher wasn’t going to let Sean visit you, and he couldn’t get custody unless your ma came back, we traveled all the way to Chicago, Illinois to try and find her and bring her home. Geez, Victor, all this time, how could you believe Sean didn’t want you back? You were everything to him. Losing you and your ma…that’s killing him faster than any injuries he received in The Burn. Don’t you remember anything about your life here at all?” Will had never lost control of his emotions before, but his waterworks were turned on full-blast in confronting Victor.

Victor wiped tears from his face, too, then ran his sleeve under his nose to stop the running. He shrugged because he wasn’t sure he would find his voice. Finally Victor said, “It doesn’t matter anymore. He just got through telling me he didn’t want to know me.” His voice broke off and he shook his head sadly. “Doesn’t matter anymore.”

“You hurt him, Victor. You just hurt him one too many times and he’s not strong enough to weather much more pain. The man’s got a bad heart, among other problems. Doesn’t help that you keep breaking it…Victor, do you really think after all the years he’s been reaching out to you, that he could wash his hands of you? I can promise you, he wouldn’t. If you just made the smallest effort…”

Victor’s head hurt, and he was so sore and emotionally-drained he could have lay down where he was standing, and slept for a hundred years like Rip Van Winkle. He had chosen to believe the preacher over Sean Marshall, and now suspicion was marching up Victor’s bruised spine. “I gotta go,” he told Will. Without another word, Victor turned and walked away, leaving Will standing in the south forty with his heart in his mouth.

“He loves you Victor! He always has and he always will,” he hollered softly to the darkness.

Chapter 66

T
he preacher was tooling around the kitchen preparing breakfast and making plenty of racket. He’d come home late the night before to find Victor asleep on the couch, trying to use a sheet to hide his blackened eye. Bowman wondered how much longer the boy was going to feign sleep before getting it over with and coming clean.

“Morning, grandfather.” Victor shuffled over to the table.

“Yes, good morning, son.” The preacher did not bother to turn himself around. “The church in Tillamook has sent us money. I visited a German bakery and brought us some bagel breads, and I have more of that creamed cheese and some Walla Wallas, and…” He turned with a rare smile. One look at Victor and his smile fell. That was a good deal more than a teenage workaday black eye. Victor had taken a severe beating. “What happened to your face, boy?”

Victor plopped himself down in a kitchen chair. “I got beat up.”

“I can see that. What happened?”

“I owed some guys some money…”

“You were playing cards, weren’t you, boy?” The preacher’s face began turning that familiar corn-fed red.

“Yeah, I played cards. I played cards and I drank beer and the guys I set out to hustle hustled me instead. An’ I couldn’t come up with the money, so they beat me up. You might as well know, they’re coming back today for their money.”

“How much?” he asked cautiously.

“Over two hundred and forty.”

An audible gasp escaped the preacher.

“You don’t gotta worry. Tiny and me got the money already.” Victor fiddled with his hands nervously.

“And how, may I inquire, did you and that street urchin, Welby, find that kind of money? And don’t think of lying to me.”

“We went to the Marshall house, broke in, and stole it.” He changed the story just a little.

“Was Marshall home when you did this?”

Victor nodded. “We had our baseball bats, and we threatened to kill him if he didn’t hand it over. It was Tiny’s idea, but I went along with it. You wanna hit me now? Go ahead. Better take your turn while you can. I’m thinking I’m gonna take the money back to Mr. Marshall today. And after that, those two guys will probably kill me.”

“You’ll do no such thing, Victor.” The preacher actually smiled.
Finally, the boy may have spurned and succeeded in shaking off the likes of Sean Marshall
. To Victor, the preacher said, “Marshall has been trying to force his fatherhood on you for all thirteen years of your life. Well, he ought to find out sometime that there’s more to being a father than buying red tricycles.”

Victor turned his head around and looked at his grandfather. “Red tricycle?” The preacher continued on. “I must admit that I am surprised to learn of such spunk in Tiny Welby.”

He could not stand Otis’s boy. The lazy loafer never worked a day in his life. Certainly, rowdy-riding in the Welby’s delivery truck with his friend, taking nips and dropping off jugs, never qualified as honest work. The boys drank most of their earnings anyway, and the remainder was lost to gambling. It was the ne’er-do-well Tiny who got Victor drinking and playing cards in the first place, and playing cards badly.

“Of course, it was Tiny’s fault you were playing cards while stinking drunk in the first place. You will never earn a dime playing cards so long as you drink. It is a handicap, a disability, in a game which involves seeking every advantage. I don’t see how you ever expected to win.” He placed the breakfast foods on the table.

The preacher sat down and really looked Victor over. He didn’t notice any bones looking odd. Even the boy’s nose survived the beating. They surely worked the boy over like a wool rug, but they’d been careful not to break anything.

“How badly was Tiny beaten? Does he look worse than you do?” He hoped so. Tit-for-tat and all. Anyway, Lytle could use a good cuffing. The boy was soft. He had taken after his mother: short, squat, dowdy, and a long-standing malingerer. Ironically, Otis Welby’s pubescent daughter took after him, tall and slender, with long blond hair and long legs. The preacher allowed himself a moment to daydream about those long legs, and where they led.

“No, he’s the hooch-supplier’s kid. They didn’t hit him once.”

“Huh?”

“They didn’t hit Tiny. Just me. Because I’m
your
son…or whatever.”

“Whatever? Is that the truth as I taught it to you, boy?” Bowman was getting red again.

Victor followed the preacher’s gaze to the banana box and his eyes narrowed. He gave a quick, forced laugh before he told the preacher unequivocally, “I’m done with the box.” Victor held the preacher’s stare. It was the preacher who broke away first.

“Well, anyhow, I’m proud of you boys—er, men. That took more moxie than I believed either of you possessed. That is, to go after what you wanted and take it.”

“Tiny’s just ornery and stupid. Guts or moxie or whatever never entered into it. We did a bad thing, Grandfather. I can’t believe you don’t see that. Don’t it bother you at all? You’re a preacher! I feel awful about what I’ve done, and I’m gonna go fix things after we eat.”

“And let those men kill you, Victor? Did you think I have that kind of money to bail you out of this jam? Think again.” The preacher tore angrily into a bagel with his bare, dirty hands, dove half of it deep into the pile of creamed cheese and shoved the entire wad into his mouth.

Victor put his head down in his crossed arms and cried. Now
that
bothered Preacher Bowman.

Chapter 67

S
ean phoned his attorney in Newport first thing in the morning. He got Mr. Reynolds’s secretary, who told him the attorney would be in around 9:30 that day. He had no appointments until 11:00 a.m. Sean asked her to put him down for the 9:30 slot. He needed to make a will.

“I can’t say I blame you, Sean. But what was it, a year ago that you wanted to fight for custody of him? Now you want to cut him out of your will? Are you sure about this?”

“Quite sure. I am not going to be outliving my brother. It wouldn’t be fair to Will, after I’m gone, if Victor, or the preacher, were to lay claim to everything Will’s worked his whole life for. For the sake of argument, if I were a sole survivor and I were to die tomorrow, what would happen to my part of the estate? Who would get it?”