Chapter 11

Sins of the Father

Ray

Gary didn't know it was well worth mentioning that after a long and grueling restaurant shift, an irate old woman had come banging at the door looking for Ray. It wasn't until Gary experienced this exceptional wrath that his boyfriend Jason bragged of how he had snarled at this same woman from behind the peephole, twice before that. Jason never opens the door unless it is the postman, and he never finds it in his heart to be bothered with any sour hag's troubles. Still it's not until Gary's day off when now an arrogant but puckered and limp young man rings the bell, and asks for Ray Rose, that Gary thinks to call him about all of this happening.

"Alls I can figure is this must be a subpoena," Gary says, his shoulder cushioning the phone to his one good ear as he turns down the air conditioner Jason has cranked.

"I've got no fucking idea," Ray trails off with a burnt voice. Today it's just as hot in Alaska as in Florida. His throat constricts, his stomach knots, as he thrashes through the slog in his brain.

"He was wearing a nelly plaid shirt and a blazer in this heat. Gotta be a sorry little process server, whiny as can be."

"No fucking idea," Ray repeats, feeling doom like a dome over his head.

"Could it have anything to do with your motorcycle accident?"

"Nah, man, that was months and months ago, finished where it started," Ray says, now getting angry. "Asshole that she was, she admitted she ran me off the road. She got out of her car and checked on me. Wasn't a bad spill, the bike barely scratched, and we didn't even exchange numbers. How could it possibly be about that?"

"Never know. Maybe this old bitch is her mother, stirring up trouble."

"Impossible."

"Have you been paying the mortgage?"

"House is paid for. All I got are the power bills and the property taxes. You know that. How else could I afford for you to live there rent free?"

Gary looks at the phone, then puts it to his bad ear, testing it out. "Don't shoot the messenger, man."

Ray grinds his teeth.

Gary looks at Jason who is clipping his toenails. "Listen, whatever it is, if they can't serve you, they can't do shit." Waiting for a response, Gary throws up one hand.

"Ray?"

"I'm here."

Gary puts the phone back to his good ear, rakes back the impertinent strands from his forehead. "Listen, man, just stay gone and forget about it. I got your back."

"Fuck."

"Ray? I thought I should tell you. But don't worry about it. They can't do shit if they don't know where you are."

Feeling like scales are popping up on his scalp, he scratches his head so hard he cuts the skin. "Fuck!"

"Where's Ruby, man?"

"She's inside. I'm a few yards from the cabin where I can get a signal."

"So go inside, man. Calm down. Have a good day, fuhgeddabou' it. 'Kay? And by the way, your dad called.

"Great." He gnashes his teeth again.

"He thought maybe you were back by now. I didn't give him your cell number, but I told him I'd tell you he called. He didn't seem to want anything. 'Just checking in,' he said." Gary plops down on the couch next to Jason, who gathers all his toenails in the crack of a magazine.

"He has my cell number. I'll call him. Talk to you later," Ray says, hanging up before Gary can say goodbye.

Ray lights up a cigarette, walks through the endless thicket of black spruce, a mesh of mosquitoes swarming as if he were bitten fruit. The air is thick with the smell of sap, his skin glistens with sweat. If he were stuffed in upholstery, he couldn't feel any more smothered than right now.

The only thing close to this kind of fear would be the moment his father discovered him in any wrongdoing. His father always seemed so huge to him. Massive and monstrous in his anger. It was never the pain of any flailing that he dreaded, but simply the eyes of a butcher he would see in his father. He would shake with rage, and Ray would feel so very tiny. Sticky, ugly, and brief, like a boil his father could lance.

This was miles from what Ray projected on his own victim that night. Arnie Watson was far from a small, helpless animal, and nearly equal to Ray in strength. And immediately afterward, Ray felt less like a butcher than he felt centered and at one with the power of release. The power of precision. This had nothing to do with coldness and calculation. It was more like being a volcano, finally erupting. And now that he was active, he knew what he was capable of.

After he drove away from the swamp, he didn't feel like running. Instead, he left his fate to the higher laws of the universe. But this did not mean he could sleep at night, particularly those first few weeks. He remained in Florida, and he took the gift of the house—hard to understand as it was, and still is. Now a year and a half later, he has escaped to Alaska, found his true love, and the world is finally catching up to him.

"Ray," Ruby says, as she lightly treads the sticks, leaves, and grass. She looks like a mermaid swimming through the heat. "What's wrong, love?"

He bursts into tears. He thinks because it's the first time she has called him that. But this is not the first time he has cried in front of her. He is a boy-giant in her arms.

"You're getting bored with me, aren't you?" he sniffles, worrying that he might be getting snot in her hair.

"Ray," she says with a mother's tone.

"I promised George," he breaks off, sobbing now.

"What is wrong?"

"I promised him I'd help him finish this one last cabin, and then we'd go."

"I'm not in any hurry."

"Yes, you are. Running 'round Fairbanks with Abbie. Next thing I know you'll be off with the monk on some mountain all the way across the world."

"I took Abbie to her eye doctor. I told you that. We weren't running around anywhere. I was cooped up in the office the entire time."

"Don't leave me," he says.

Ruby coos, the sound muffled in his chest. She looks up at him, her arms around his waist. He wipes his nose with the back of his hand. He lifts her up, and carries her back through the woods.

"You pull yourself together so quickly," she giggles.

"I just decided I won't let you leave me," he says, marching like a trophy hunter returning with his prize.

She holds on tighter, buries her face again in his chest.

Around the bend, watering the blooms is George's wife, Ethel. She puts her age-spotted hand like a visor over her ice gray eyes.

"Put her down, you beast!" she calls, and laughs.

Ruby waves, her other arm tightly around his neck. Ray turns toward Ethel and nods, heads for the lovenest.

"Why don't you join us for a little coffee in the morning!" Ethel calls out again.

"Sounds good!" Ray calls back, opening the door to his cabin. He carries her over the threshold, then kicks the door closed.

The room now pungent with the smell of sex, Ruby sits naked on his chest, combs his eyebrows with her finger, traces the arc of his diving scar, which is the size of a thumbnail's indentation. His eyes are closed, he breathes easily for the first time since Gary's call.

"What was all of that about out there?" she asks. His eyes bug open. "All what?"

"All that stuff about me getting bored with you. You were just trying to sidestep. It was definitely more than that." She puts a finger up his nostril, but when he doesn't sniffle or laugh, she awkwardly takes her finger back.

Ray swallows hard, a knife pain like gas in his chest. "I was thinking about my father."

"Is that who you were on the phone with?"

"No, it was Gary." He swallows hard again.

"Are you sure it wasn't one of your ex-wives?"

"I wouldn't lie to you about something like that." A little fresh sweat breaks from his forehead. "I talk to none of them, and I can't imagine ever hearing from any one of them again."

"So why were you thinking of your father if you were just talking to Gary?"

"Gary told me he called."

"So? What's the drama in that?"

"I don't know, I just hate the harassment. He waits until the last minute to put his two cents in."

"What's he got to comment on now?"

"My having quit and 'moved' here. It's what he thinks."

"You sure you're just not telling me that you told him you're involved with a black woman?"

"What would be the big deal about that?"

"How should I know if your father's a racist or not?"

"My third wife was black. He's already dealt with it. At this point, he couldn't care less."

"Why didn't you tell me that before?" She crawls off his chest, closes her thighs together, folds her arms over her breasts.

"I told you she was Brazilian because that was the main point—her green card. The fact that she is black has been irrelevant until you brought up all this crap."

"You didn't tell me you had a type, Ray." She grits her teeth.

"I don't have a type! My first wife was tall with short brown hair and a face like Julia Roberts, so every time I see an ad for one of her movies, it makes me sick. My second wife was short and blonde and Jewish, and Sonya was model-size and much darker-skinned than you."

"Oh, so she was 'model-size.' Any other black pussy in your past?"

"Now that's foul. Any other white dick in yours?"

"Fuck you, Ray."

"Well don't speak to me like that. I don't deserve it."

"Why'd you hide Sonya's race from me?"

"I didn't hide it!" He sits up, his face a hot pink.

Ruby grabs her panties on the floor, gets up to find her bra thrown near the bathroom doorway.

"Ever so coy, aren't you Ray? Just keep me guessing, right?" She shakes her head.

Baffled, he looks up at her.

"I need a drink. I need to get out of here," she says, her navy baggy skate pants on now, and Ray's dirty white tank T His frown uncurls, thinking she meant to wear it, but she doesn't notice it isn't hers, which lies like a kitten with the dust balls under the bed.

She slams the door behind her, waits for him in the car, since he always takes twice as long as her to get ready.

When they get to the bar, it's a little past ten. Ray is exhausted from working all week, Ruby's racial trip, but above all, Gary's news. He is relieved to see that Abbie is sitting with Charlie, though the Argentinean friend, Luis, is also there. Abbie's blunt black hair is caught up high in a ponytail, a light blue ribbon around it. She wears a skimpy pink camisole and walking shorts, like a sexy teenage girl. She has a new medic alert bracelet that Ruby insisted upon. Charlie looks as if he's on his third or fourth beer, his face flushed with a stupid grin. Luis doesn't seem to have been there long. He nods to Ray and Ruby, who kisses Abbie on the cheek.

"Hey, hey," Charlie says, pulling out a chair for Ruby. She smiles and returns the hello. "My long ago kayaking partner, how you be?" He pulls another chair out for Ray.

"A little tired, man, but fine," he says in a tense voice.

"You remember Luis," Charlie puts his hand on Luis' shoulder.

"What's up, man," Ray says. Ruby says hi at the same time.

"It's all good," Luis says, nods to Ruby.

"So I just found out you work on Rootown, that's amazing, I love those guys!" Charlie says.

"You don't have a TV, man," Ray says, in a short tone. He turns around to order three beers from the waiter. Ruby looks at him.

"Yeah, but I watch it at Mindy's on Saturday mornings. I used to have a TV before that. I sold it for some cash, got myself off the couch habit, you know." He lifts his chin in the air like a toast.

Abbie lights a cigarette, Ray bums one off her. "This guy never has his own," Abbie says, lighting it for him.

"Tell me 'bout it," Charlie says. "So what's it like, Ruby? To be the proud creator of Hyena Harry and Pickled Pete," his eyes like slits from the beer and weed.

"I didn't create either of them," Ruby clears her throat. "My boss did. I design the incidental characters."

"Like who?"

"Like a lot of the kangaroos, you know, Bobby Roo, Sue Roo . . . " Abbie laughs, Luis does too, Ruby clears her throat again. "And a lot of the guest enemies of the week."

"Funny how Harry and Pete—everyone's favorite—are really the enemies themselves. I mean they came there to take over and rule the kangaroos who just accepted them with open arms. Isn't that something?" Charlie asks, shaking his head with a stupid smile on his face.

"It is a trip. But isn't it always like that?" Ruby says, touching a grain of sugar or salt on the table, and pushing it in a small trail in front of her.

Charlie grins at her, wrinkling his nose with enthusiasm as he shakes his head again. "But you know, wow, that's really great. It's really great you have a job like that. I'd love to be able to say I did something as cool as that," he says.

"You and my brother both," Abbie says.

"I didn't know you had a brother," Ray says.

"Yeah well, I rarely talk about him. Maybe it's 'cause he spent most of our childhood trying to think of ways to kill me." Abbie takes a fleck of tobacco from her tongue.

"What?" Ruby asks.

"I never told you that?" Abbie raises her brows; Ruby shakes her head. "I'm surprised I never told you."

"What did he do?" Ray asks.

"We had a brother who died before I was born. He died when he was two, and my brother was six, and by the time I came along—I guess he was almost eight at the time—he couldn't stand the idea of another one."

"What did he do?" Rays asks again.

"He held me under water, tried to lure me off the roof, led my tricycle into traffic . . . Let's see. How did he love me, let me count the ways." She shifts her weight so the waiter can put down Ray and Ruby's beers.

"What did your parents do?"

"My father didn't take it very seriously until some years later when an insurance agent came to the door looking for my brother, who at the age of fourteen, had taken out a policy on my life."

"No way!" Ruby says. Luis smirks, looking mildly amused. Ray assumes she is exaggerating, but he's wrong.

"So did he kick his ass?" Ray asks.

"He shook him a little. Pressed him against the wall. It was drama enough for my father's lifetime."

"What do you mean?" Ruby asks.

"I mean my father wrote the book of the stoic." She takes a swig of Ruby's beer, since her club soda is finished. Ray looks at her.

"My father would have tore him up," Ray says, forgetting about Charlie who is looking uncomfortably buzzed and ready to go home. "Anything my sisters did, he'd beat the living shit out of me for it. He saw it as my job to keep tabs on them."

"I hear ya, man," Luis says.

"Though I was the youngest, I was sure protective over them. But if Sadie got caught with the joint, or Sonya fucked up the car, it was me who would pay," Ray says, putting out his cigarette.

"You never told me that," Ruby says. Ray nods, and grabs her hand. She finishes off her beer, and burps. She puts her fist over her mouth as if she'd coughed. Ray laughs, squeezes her hand.

"You ever catch your parents having sex, man?" Luis asks, leaning into the table, Charlie blinking slowly, swallowing hard with dry mouth.

"Yes," Ray says, finishing the first beer, starting his second.

"I ask 'cause your father sounds like mine, man. He expected me to watch out for the girls and my mother and all that. Which I did. But one time I came in on them"—he humps his hands together—"and I was as freaked as they were. My mother screamed, but my father froze, like a lizard or something, man, trying to blend in with the bed. He never hit me again after that."

"Oh man," Ray says, really looking at him for the first time. "I didn't actually see them, I just came to the door, and my father came rushing out, shaking, and I mean he was huge, his whole body shivering in rage, you know, I'm this little boy of four. He didn't hit me, but if I'd made one wrong move, he sure would have."

"Jesus," Ruby says.

"Same thing happened when he found me and my sister in the tub—we always took baths together up until the time I was five or six—but we were in there playing with her dolls, and I guess I had a hard-on, you know I had no idea what it was, just one of those things, it's not like I was excited, but my father came in and hit the roof."

"Wow, Ray, it's a miracle your head is together," Abbie says, half teasing.

"I can say the same for you," Ray says.

"I'll drink to that." Abbie grabs Charlie's beer now. He turns his back to the table, looks around the room.

"Where's Mindy, man?" Ray asks.

Charlie spins back around. "Work." He licks his lips, looks at the floor.

"Can we take you home?"

"I'm fine," he says, looking up at Ray with red eyes. "I was going to take Abbie home."

"I'll take 'em both home," Luis says.

"You sure?" Abbie asks, looking at Luis over the black rim of her glasses, making it clear she'd rather go in his car.

"Yeah," Luis says.

Abbie pulls money out of her purse, Luis stops her hand, pulls his wallet out with the other. She smiles.

"Fuck, man, the light is getting to me all of a sudden, like I haven't lived here for years," Charlie says. Luis gathers the money that he, Ray, and Charlie have put on the table, and gets up to pay the waiter.

"It's Sunday tomorrow. Sleep it off all day, right?" Abbie chuckles.

"Sunday is sweet," Ray says, caressing Ruby's hand lying limp in his.

"Sunday's a cool blue," Ruby says.

"It's that freshwater snorkeling blue. Almost turquoise," Ray says.

"Nah, I see it colder than that," Ruby says.

"You guys must be synesthetics," Abbie says, lighting up another cigarette.

"Sin-us-what?" Ray asks.

"You're perfect for each other." Abbie winks at Ruby, who looks at her with distrust.

"Ready?" Luis asks, holding his hand out to Abbie, who gets up, but trips over one of the chair legs. Luis catches her. Charlie gets up too, leaving Ray to stare at Ruby. He doesn't know at this moment what heavily pulls him, but it's dawning on her—the full weight of the responsibility of living one's life. He leans over to kiss her, and her eyes are wide open as he draws near. So while tasting her beer-stale lips and tongue, he bores into her the look of utter soul commitment.

A week later, Ray and Ruby take that coffee with George and Ethel at their breakfast table. Ray knew that George had been a sociology professor in Vancouver, but he didn't know about the young student wife and the two kids she had for him, and how George had run away from it all for a stint at a college in Minnesota.

There he met Ethel, and broke all ties, deciding to lead the kind of life he'd always wanted here in Healy. Ethel wears a noncommittal smile throughout his recounting of the history, but she is cheery enough for her.

"When we got here, ah! It was land of the midnight sun. We were true homesteaders, using the 'honey bucket' before we had plumbing." George winks, Ruby looks at his stained teeth.

"But think of your ass on the honey bucket in winter! Blistering cold, Minnesota was nothing compared to this. Night for day, all day, every day."

"Now that's an exaggeration. Farther north is where they get the total darkness," George says, looking at Ethel as if she were a naughty child.

"I'd love to see that," Ruby says, smiling. Ethel shakes her head, puts both hands on her mug like a child saying "mine."

They hear a car climbing the steep graveled road.

"Ah, maybe it's a renter!" George says, standing to peek out the window. An old gold station wagon pulls in near their door. "Do you have a brother, Ruby?" George asks with alarm, as he knees his chair into the table. Ruby shakes her head no in short jerks, looking at George with a face like she smells something stink. Ray takes her wrist, and mirrors his disgust with a bit too much gusto.

George has forgotten that the sign says OFFICE just beneath the window he peeps through, so he is taken aback as the tall young man—who looks nothing like Ruby, but is close enough in skin tone, true enough—proceeds to knock at the door.

"Let him in, for Chrissakes!" Ethel snaps.

"Good morning," he says. His nice summer vest wildly out of place. He glances at Ruby with the slightest tinge of embarrassment. "Is Ray Rose here?"

"That's him," George says. Ray frozen in place.

"Ray Rose?" the gentleman asks, looking him straight in the eye.

"Yes," Ray says, clearing his throat, his chest beginning to pound.

"This is for you," the gentleman says, nods his head to each of them, then turns around to walk out the door.

"Well, I'll be damned," George says slowly and as if to people who don't speak English. "That bastard got you. What did you do?"

Ray swallows, and with glassy eyes stares at Ruby. Sweat rains down his forehead. Because the tension is stifling, Ruby can't stand it; she risks it all and yanks the envelope from him. When she reads that he's been served notice of the hearing contesting the will over the property on Indian River Drive, she takes Ray's hand, thanks George and Ethel for the coffee, and assures them Ray will be back after this all sinks in.

"I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry," Ray bursts into sobs when they are a few yards from George and Ethel's door.

"Don't worry about it, love. We'll figure this all out. There's nothing to be sorry about," she says, her arm around his waist, the other holding the envelope and document.

"Just let me explain, just let me . . . " he can't stop sobbing.

"Explain what? What's the deal with your property? You're being evicted? Or you got this property illegally? What could be so bad? We'll fight this Rachel Sichterman, whoever the fuck she is."

"Rachel Sichterman?" Ray says, now looking like a boy who's been told he can go to the fair after all. He grabs the document to read.

"Who is she?" Ruby asks.

"I don't know! But she must be related to the old man who left me this property."

"Who left it to you?"

"This guy Sichterman," he says now with glee. "I found his name on the county records, but the property was left to me anonymously. All I knew was the lawyer's name who handled it."

"You're kidding me, right?" Ruby says, hand on hip. Ray doesn't know she is stunned by the ease she imagines white people to inherit property. He is overjoyed to know this has nothing to do with the murder. He can't jump up and down, and take the chance of further confusing her, but at least he knows now that his confession to her is not so imminent.