CHAPTER FOUR

TOMMY

 

 

 

 

 

 

Settled into my captain’s chair, I drummed my fingers on the worn wood of the helm. Classic, big-band jazz crooned over the sound system while the passengers behind me chatted and laughed at their linen-draped tables, spoons clinking on crystal bowls. The broad windshield of the Mailboat gave me a panoramic view of the lake; on a Monday morning, the water was calm as a painting. The rambling old mansions of the North Shore gazed silently, most of the homeowners at work in Chicago for the week.

I sighed. It was too quiet around here. Our client, hosting a business outing from Racine, had requested a cruise with no tour. Otherwise, one of the kids would be sitting on the tall stool next to me to read the well-thumbed script. Those who had worked several summers barely glanced at it anymore. I hadn’t touched it in forty-odd years.

Tomorrow, a dozen kids would take their turns in the mail jumper’s chair, some for the first time. Both pedestal and podium, it would be the focus of attention while the candidates were judged for their skills in presentation. But first, the white-painted piers would serve as stage for our cast of fleet-footed actors. I never knew who I’d end up working with, though jumpers from past years were generally a shoe-in. For the newbies, I’d give my two cents on who was ready for the job and who wasn’t, but the decision was ultimately in the hands of the boss and a few honorary judges—people who had jumped mail while I was still in rompers, or so I doggedly maintained. These three or four individuals dictated who kept me company the rest of the summer and who went back to selling tickets.

By and large, I believed in letting the waves bring to shore whatever they may. The currents of life flowed too strong for those of us caught up in it to protest the details. Still, there was one kid I hoped would make the team this year…

I turned in my seat to sight down the aisle between the tables, up the short flight of stairs, and straight to the aft deck. I could just see the concessions counter. Bailey sat behind it, chin in her palm, strands of wavy brown hair escaping her pony tail as they usually did, the lake humidity playing its favorite game with her. She stared blankly at the countertop while twirling an ice cream scoop in a bowl.

The tables had all been served. The passengers were happy. And my mail jumper’s chair was empty. No point Bailey sitting back there bored.

I picked up a microphone, lying within arm’s reach on the counter beside the helm. My voice sounded over the jazz music. “Bailey, will you come fore, please?”

I waited for her to look up, but she continued twirling the ice cream scoop as if she hadn’t heard me. I was about to page her again when she jolted in her seat, as if the speed of sound had slowed considerably from what I learned in school. Her eyes, round as a kitten’s, flashed up and stared down the length of the boat. Finding me looking at her, she pointed to herself, raising her eyebrows.

I laughed. Typical of Bailey, so lost in her own world that there was a delay between her ears and her head. In confirmation to her pantomimed question, I jerked my head towards the bow.

She slid off her stool behind the snack bar, jogged down the stairs, and scurried up the aisle. “Yes?” she asked, eyes still wide. I swore, half the time she thought she was in trouble.

“Grab a seat,” I said, slapping the backrest of the mail jumper’s chair.

Obediently, she hopped onto the high stool, tucking her hands under her thighs. Her seat conveniently faced the deck where she could keep an eye on the passengers while I faced forward, reading the surface of the lake.

“Yes?” she said again, like the freshest of seaman recruits eager to be issued her orders.

Well, so long as she thought I’d brought her here for a purpose, I may as well play along. Nothing wrong with putting kids to honest work. “You practiced that script yet?” I nodded to the white ring binder on the counter, smudged black at the edges from countless fingers.

“Practiced?” she echoed. Her face hadn’t lost the look of a tarsier, eyes impossibly round.

“You’re trying out for mail jumper tomorrow, aren’t you?”

She nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“It’s Tommy,” I corrected, then bit my tongue before the mantra of every NCO in the Navy could spring to my lips: Don’t call me “sir”; I work for a living. The title sir was reserved for commissioned officers—something I had never been. The captain’s bars now perched on my shoulders were only an honorific, by my reckoning.

“Huh?” she asked.

“You can call me Tommy,” I repeated. “It’s what everybody calls me.”

She nodded her head. “Yes, sir.”

I looked out the side window and ran a hand over my mouth to smother laughter. At all times, Bailey marched a beat behind the band and I had to admit, it humored me. Yes, I’d be very disappointed if she didn’t make the team.

I’d fought hard to learn how to laugh again. I forgot how after I lost my son and my wife within a few years of each other. But even now, laughter felt forced. A barricade. If you acted all right, people thought you were all right. They never probed into the disappointments, the hurt, the anger that lay just below the mirrored surface.

But something about Bailey’s world was upside-down, inside-out. She constantly caught me off guard, surprised me. I laughed freely around her, the way I used to long ago.

“So,” I tried again, “did you practice the script?”

“Oh!” she squeaked. “I didn’t know I was supposed to.” Twisting in her seat, she grabbed the binder off the counter, plopped it into her lap, and flipped to the beginning. As she crouched over the book, her eyes flashed back and forth over the text, lips muttering, as she read to herself and not to me.

She was taut as a hawser. In her eagerness to please, she’d probably send all her chances marching right off the end of the plank—a risk I couldn’t let her take. “Sit up straight,” I coached.

She sprang to attention without pausing for breath or taking her eyes from the book.

“Slow down. Breathe a little.”

She closed her lips and breathed in deeply through her nose. Then she began to read out loud in a steady, clear voice. “‘The Prairie-style building behind the park is the Lake Geneva Public Library, designed by James Dresser, a student of Frank Lloyd Wright.’”

I grinned, proud of how quickly she’d improved. “Good,” I said. “Look at the passengers now and again.”

She paused, mouth open, and flashed her eyes toward the tables. The chatter didn’t abate, and without the use of the microphone it was safe to assume the men and women in business suits hadn’t so much as noticed her. Still, as if intimidated by what she saw, she dropped her eyes immediately to the page. Her voice lost volume and wavered. “‘The land and the original building were donated by—’”

“You’re not worried, are you?” I asked.

Bailey’s shoulders slouched as if she were visibly curling up inside herself. She nodded.

Something in my chest twinged for her. The way it had when my son had worried about making the high school football team. He’d turned out to be a darn good running back, despite my hopes he’d sign up for baseball. I never did understand the brutish sport of chasing the pigskin, but it had been a passion of his so I let him have his way in the end. I hadn’t attended a lot of games, though.

I looked away and licked my lips. “You’ll do fine,” I said, remembering now that I’d never said those words to my son. His worries had been my worries—but he never knew it. I didn’t let it show. I was a stubborn old curmudgeon back then. I still was. I watched the shore again, hoping Bailey wouldn’t see me lost in memories—the kind submerged for years, covered in barnacles, razor-sharp.

She placed her finger in her page and closed the binder. “Tommy?” she asked. “How did they break in?”

I leaned closer, straining my ears. “What’s that?” As usual, she was leaping from one bar of music to the next and I couldn’t keep up.

“The police station,” she said, her voice so low I could barely hear. She turned large brown eyes on me. “How’d they break in?”

For being so busy spinning her own tune, she apparently took in more of mine than I thought. She must have overheard my conversation this morning with Wade Erickson, the police chief and an old friend of mine. I’d promised to pass along any info the kids knew—but I had to admit, Bailey was the last person I’d thought would have any connection.

“I don’t know how they broke in,” I said. “I imagine that information’s classified.”

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “Classified?”

Well, that did make it sound like a spy thriller. “There’s always something the police hold back from public knowledge,” I said, a fact I’d learned from Wade. “That way, they can confirm whether they’ve got the right person once they take in a suspect.”

“Oh.” She scrunched her nose in contemplation. “So… what happens when someone—you know, like a member of the public—thinks they know something?”

I slid my eyes her direction. Shoulders rounded, she frowned down at the binder. There was only one reason she’d ask such a question. “You should call the police station,” I said pointedly.

She morphed back into the tarsier, as if the thought of calling the police frightened her more than addressing the passengers while reading the script.

I shifted in my seat to face her and studied the side of her face. Wisps of mousy brown hair framed her cheeks like a curtain. “Bailey, what do you know?”

“Nothing, really.” I was about to mark it as a lie, but then she lifted her head and looked at me. There was no deceit. Just worry and confusion. “What if I’m wrong? What if I get someone in trouble?”

Well, that was a fair enough concern for a teenage girl. I thought back to my own teen years. No doubt calling the police would feel like tattling. Like watching a sibling get grounded because you said something. I wondered if she knew just how serious this thing was—that Steph Buchanan spent her morning in the hospital, but could just as easily have been killed. I sighed and cast my gaze over the rolling blue waves. “The police will want to know anyway. They can sort out whether the information is relevant or not.”

She dropped her gaze into her lap and nodded.

I cast a glance her way. How could Bailey of all people have gotten dragged into this? “Who are you afraid of getting into trouble?” I asked.

She only bit her lips together and shook her head.

“You won’t tell me?”

She studied the warped edges of the binder in silence. Shook her head again.

I sighed and grabbed a worn old envelope off the counter and wrote on it. “Here,” I said. “That’s the number to the police station.” I’d known Chief Wade Erickson since he was a rookie—longer. As such, I’d memorized the number to the station long before there were smart phones. I inserted the paper between Bailey’s thumb and the binder. “Call them.” It wasn’t a suggestion.

Bailey nodded.

I studied her downcast face. She was too young to worry about things like break-ins, assaults, police investigations. Her mind should be filled with the future, with possibility, with opportunity. What she wanted to study next fall. What she wanted to study in college. What career she wanted to go into. And yes, whether she’d make the mail jumping team tomorrow. But the question now stuck in her head seemed to weigh her down like an anchor on a line too short to reach the bottom. I couldn’t stand to see her this way.

“Go on,” I said, nodding at the binder. “‘The land and the original building for the library were donated by…?’”

Bailey straightened her back and flipped open the book. She resumed her clear, steady voice. “‘The land and the original building were donated by Mary Sturges, with the understanding that they would remain a public park and library forever…’”

I let the well-known words sink into my soul, shaded in the tones of a new young voice. I’d weathered storms, losses, nightmares. I’d learned to let the waves wash ashore whatever they may, to watch with disinterest, to pretend to laugh.

I couldn’t pretend I didn’t care whether Bailey made the team.