Dinner tonight was one of the few grown-up dishes Cassidy actually liked, so he was not engaged in his usual squirmy charade of pushing food around his plate until enough time had passed so he could politely abscond.
The timing was crucial. If his escape bid was premature, some mysterious grown-up sense of propriety would be offended and he’d be told: For goodness’ sake, we just sat down. At least eat some of your squash casserole.
This was the most dangerous kind of injunction, focusing attention on a single undesirable item, which might then take on a significance wholly out of proportion to its ostensible nutritional value. The situation could escalate into a regular casus belli, with an outcome much worse than a shortened play session. Tears, confinement to quarters, even corporal punishment were all in the offing. In such a case it would be impossible to neutralize the item in question by the usual mangling, clever plate distribution, or sleight of hand.
“You might as well just eat the damn stuff,” his uncle Henry once advised. “The collard greens probably won’t kill you, though come to think of it, the turtle patties might.”
But Cassidy considered pot roast perfectly edible, in part due to his mother’s singular obsession with her pressure cooker. He couldn’t imagine what strange alchemy was going on inside that hissing, rattling contraption, which seemed to dominate the kitchen all afternoon with its implied threat of detonation. But he certainly couldn’t argue with the results. The succulent cubes of beef parted at the touch of a fork, the potatoes and carrots emerged tender and tasty in the plentiful gravy, and the occasional half-moon of limp celery was easily separated out and pushed to the edge of the plate to wither and molder until the expiration of the known universe.
His father had no such scruples when it came to icky items. Himself a big proponent of pot roast, he had come to the table still in his Air Force khakis, incongruously stiff with starch in those places where rings of perspiration hadn’t soaked through. The master sergeant’s stripes and the metal insignia over the breast pocket always fascinated Cassidy, triggering some deep patriotic impulse.
The old man simply wolfed it all down, never bothering to separate out clearly objectionable items. Celery was no problem for him whatsoever. A chunk of turnip from some strange stew would go right down the hatch. Even those rare and possibly toxic bits of flotsam and jetsam—bay leaves, cloves, parsley sprigs—were blithely countenanced by his father. But when Cassidy found such an item, he would disgustedly and accusingly hold it up on the end of his fork. Stop making that face, his mother would say, it’s just for flavor, for heaven’s sake. No, you don’t have to eat it, just put it under the edge of your plate. Don’t look at me like that, it wouldn’t have killed you!
Cassidy had pretty much cleaned his plate save for the celery and a large and disgusting bay leaf and was preparing to make his break when his father suddenly became interested in conversation. Cassidy’s heart sank.
The sun had dropped low enough in the western sky that it now penetrated the thin cotton print curtains of the jalousied side door, filling the tiny kitchen with a harsh glare and almost unbreathably hot afternoon air. In such circumstances Cassidy couldn’t help squirming like a defendant without an alibi.
“I hear you met Vince down at the river yesterday,” the old man said.
Cassidy looked puzzled.
“That’s Trapper Nelson’s real name, honey,” said his mother. “Vincent Natulkiewicz. He made up the name Trapper Nelson because when he first showed up here, no one could pronounce his real name.”
Cassidy was amazed. “Where did he come from?” he said.
“Originally from New Jersey. He came down during the Depression. He and his brother Charlie and a friend were riding the rails down to Key West. They just hopped off here to take a break, see if they could find some work. They set up a beach camp down at Jupiter, and he just never got around to leaving.”
His father was spooning blackstrap molasses onto his plate, mashed a pat of butter into it, and spread it onto a slice of Merita white bread. Cassidy had seen this humble dessert so many times it no longer disgusted him.
“The trapping and fishing were pretty good in those days. That was back in the thirties, and it was still pretty wild around here. Those boys were making a pretty good go of it. It was a real shame—”
His mother shot his father a look.
“John,” she said. Cassidy knew this signal, and his ears perked up.
“What happened?” he said.
His father was looking at his mother, who steadily held his gaze. His father looked as if he was actually thinking of ignoring the signal.
“Oh,” he said, looking back to Cassidy, “there was a disagreement. It got out of hand. There was—”
“John.”
His father fell silent.
“It was a long time ago,” he said. “Vincent . . . Trapper was hardly even involved. It was between the other two, Charlie and this John Dykas fellow.”
“Who?”
His father looked over at his mother, who sighed and looked away.
“Fella they knew from New Jersey. They’d been bummin’ around together for years. Spent some time in Michigan, then out west, hunting and trapping. They’d get odd jobs when they could, but there wasn’t much work in those days. Eventually they caught a freight out of Jacksonville and headed down this way, the three of them.”
“What was the argument?”
“Charlie said it was about how to divide up the money they had made. Vincent supposedly was out trapping, not even there when it happened. But there are still some folks around here who won’t have anything to do with Trapper because of it. Think he got away with something,” he said.
“I didn’t know Trapper had a brother,” said Cassidy.
“Sure did. Older stepbrother, Charlie. Not as big as Trapper but three times as crazy.”
“What happened to him?”
“Judge Chillingworth sent him to Raiford for a long long time,” his father said, gazing out the back window at the royal palm tree blowing in the afternoon sea breeze. He fell silent.
“And the other one, the friend . . .”
His mother got up suddenly and began to clear the table. Cassidy could see that she wasn’t happy, but she didn’t say anything. His father leaned over. Cassidy could see the nearly skinned oval in the center of his military flattop.
“Dykas. John Dykas. He’s down there at Roselawn to this day, deader than Kelsey’s nuts.”