After Uncle Roger ducked into the courthouse using the side entrance, I headed up the two blocks toward Nelson’s. Though I’d hoped to at least get a glance at Joseph as he chopped and stirred and smelled broccoli (or whatever he’d been hired to do) and maybe kill my ten minutes sampling Chef’s specialties, the woman who met me at the door said Joseph and the chef were too busy with dinner and Potato Blossom Fest prep to be bothered. I left the broccoli with her and walked back onto the sidewalk.
Our normally bustling small town felt deserted. I wondered a moment where everyone could be. But then remembered. The same thing that kept Joseph and Chef tied to the kitchen kept the people of Watsonville tied to their homes. The Potato Blossom Festival started tomorrow. Though we wouldn’t leave for the festival until the morning, and though we would only stay one night, many families spent more days, some even stretching their trip into one that spanned the festival and the next week’s Northern Maine Fair. The idea of summer vacations to the Great Wild West or even Maine’s coast or Vermont’s Green Mountains were beyond the reach of most Northwoods families. So going to the festival and the fair became the summer travel destination of choice. Even Old Man Stringer usually managed to hitch a ride for the day.
Old Man.
At the thought of him rambling around Potato Blossom Festival, mooching food and drinks and cigarettes from festival-goers the way he’d mooched a ride up there, I turned tail on the sidewalk, double-timing my step once I realized how I needed to spend my remaining free minutes.
I was more than a little ashamed that I hadn’t planned on this in the first place. And more than a little surprised that neither Mother nor Mr. Pop had suggested that a visit to Old Man might be in order. I wondered, actually, if anyone had been to see him.
But as I stepped into our town’s tiny hospital, I was once again stopped by a woman at the front.
“I’m here to see Mr. Stringer, please,” I said.
“I’m sorry, miss. Mr. Stringer cannot have any visitors. Only family.”
“But he doesn’t have any family,” I said. “He lives near mine and takes most of his lunches with us. We’re close as family.”
The woman behind the front desk fixed the pin in her scarf and said, “If you’re that close, then you would know that he does have family. His sister drove down from Caribou just yesterday.”
“Old Man has a sister?”
The woman nodded.
“And she’s here?”
The woman nodded again.
“Then, may I see her?”
The woman sighed and checked a clipboard. “Wait here a moment, please.”
She returned with a woman who looked too young to be Old Man’s sister.
“Miss?”
“Mercy. Mercy Millar.”
“Miss Millar, meet Mrs. Calloway. This is Mr. Stringer’s sister.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said as we shook hands.
Mrs. Calloway motioned to the pair of tapestry wing-back chairs by the window.
“I only have a minute,” she said. “I don’t want to leave Squeak in case he wakes up.”
“Squeak?”
“Well, that’s his nickname. Arthur’s his real name. Don’t folks here call him Squeak? They have everywhere else he’s lived.”
I shook my head. “We call him Old Man Stringer,” I said, suddenly embarrassed as I looked into her face.
“Old Man!” she said. “Not sure how to take hearing my baby brother being referred to as an old man!”
“Ma’am? Your baby brother?”
“He’s two years younger. But those two years made a lifetime of difference, as you can see. Mama died having him. At least I had two years with her. He never had much of a chance. Not being raised by our father—and that woman he married just to take care of us. You don’t grow up well without anyone to love you right. That was Squeak’s trouble.”
Mrs. Calloway was a woman of slight frame, so in that way she looked like Old Man Stringer, but that’s where the resemblance stopped. She had reddish, shoulder-length hair, Old Man was almost bald with a few stray strands of brown hair. She looked to be around fifty, so Old Man had to be in his late forties even though he looked like he could be at least sixty. Mrs. Calloway was clearly a productive citizen and Old Man, well, he was a drunk.
I had no idea what to say to her. So I did what Mother had taught me to do when no words came. I leaned a bit closer and listened. “Sometimes people just need an ear,” Mother would say. “So just be that ear.”
“Of course,” Mrs. Calloway said, “I loved him. But sister-love isn’t the same as mama-love. Or even love from your daddy. And I was only a little girl myself when our father married that woman. I tried to protect him, but I had to fend off the meanness from our stepmother myself. She just seemed to be worse on the boys than she was on the girls. Even her own she had from her first marriage.”
“How horrible,” I managed. I wasn’t used to people I knew airing their dirty laundry, let alone strangers.
“I suppose I cannot even imagine what folks in this town must think of him.”
“People like him plenty,” I said. “He works for my dad nearly every day.”
“But does your father understand why he drinks?”
I shrugged. “We’ve never talked about it. My dad calls drinking like this ‘wrestling demons.’”
Mrs. Calloway nodded before letting her eyes stare out the window beyond where we sat. “Maybe your dad does understand, then,” she said. “When our older stepsister, Penny, got married, she actually sent for us kids to live with her. Penny knew how bad it was for me and Squeak. After all, she’d heard all the squeakin’ Squeak did when our stepmother would be chasing him with that belt of hers. So Penny sent for kids she barely even knew, who weren’t even blood. Can you imagine? That was love. But by then Squeak was maybe just seven but already so broken. He first ran off by the time he was ten or so. The Maliseet took him in. You know that?”
I shook my head. I realized I knew nothing about this man. Apparently Joseph was right. I didn’t know anything about anything.
“The Maliseet were good to him. They gave him a place to live, food to eat, friends to talk to. Of course, they also gave him whiskey. He’s been hitting the bottle since he was twelve. At least, that’s what he says.”
“Old Man—I mean, Mr. Squeak—lived here with the Maliseet?”
“Yes.”
“In the Flats?”
“What?”
“The Flats. What we call where the Maliseet live. Over at the dump.”
“They live at the dump?”
I nodded.
“When Squeak lived with them, it was in a little group of houses, down country near the base of Katahdin. Some of them lived here in town, however. I seem to remember his friend, um … Anton? Ashley?”
“Yes, Ansley. I seem to remember Ansley lived in an attic apartment with his family. Nice enough that Squeak was quite jealous. The stairs to that apartment had a fancy railing that led right up from the second story of the house.”
“Ansley lived here in town? In a house? With white people living downstairs?”
“Yes. That’s how they live in Caribou as well. This bit of living at the dump sounds peculiar. Most definitely un-Christian, don’t you think?”
“I do think,” I said, just as I noticed the clock on the wall. My remaining ten minutes were more than up.
“Mrs. Calloway, I’m sorry, but my uncle is going to be waiting for me. I just wanted to know how Old—how your brother was doing.”
Mrs. Calloway sighed. “Still the same. The doctors aren’t hopeful. They say the years of drinking have taken a bigger toll on him than cracking his head on the cement. But Squeak’s survived so much. Hard to believe a punch from a scoundrel would do him in.”
“You know, that ‘scoundrel’ is Mr. Squeak’s friend, Ansley’s boy. Hard to believe he would punch him at all.”
Mrs. Calloway knit her eyebrows. “That Mick boy is Ansley’s son?” she asked. “Squeak knows him?”
“Of course.”
“No one told me. I assumed it was an attempted robbery.”
“Lots of people have assumed lots of things in this.” I stood up and reached out my hand. “Very nice to have met you, Mrs. Calloway. I hope Mr. Squeak gets better soon.”
Mrs. Calloway smiled and thanked me for coming. “You can come back any time. I hadn’t heard from Squeak in a few years. I’d love to know more about what he’s been up to down here.”
I smiled and nodded, then left to head back toward the jail.
Uncle Roger had been waiting next to his car for me. I thought he’d be annoyed. Though Uncle Roger was bighearted, his years of deferential treatment as one of Maine’s top lawyers had turned him into the sort of man who didn’t believe he should lean against a car waiting for others. Certainly not for a girl who should have been the one leaning against the car waiting for him. But as Uncle Roger walked around and reached his tweed-jacketed arm toward my door handle, he offered no reprimand. I was desperate to ask about his visit and to tell him about mine. Yet somehow I sensed that it was a time for quiet. Uncle Roger was lost in his thoughts. He didn’t speak until the road wound and curved us out of town. I was too terrified to interrupt.
“Mick wants you to know that he’s doing okay. Pastor Buell from Second Baptist has been by and so has Father McMahon from St. Mary’s. Clergy get visiting rights like lawyers do.”
“How did he look?” I asked.
Uncle Roger laughed. “Handsome as ever? Is that what you want to hear?”
“No. I mean, was he, I don’t know. Did he look peaceful?”
“Ah, well, no. I’ve visited plenty of men in jail before, and I’ve not yet seen one of them full of peace. But he looked well. He looks like he’s been able to get rest and that his anxiety over being charged with attempted murder isn’t getting the best of him.”
“Attempted murder?” I asked. “So it’s official then?”
Uncle Roger nodded. “Yes, bail’s been set. Too high for his family to pay, of course. So he’s got to stay put. But Mick swore he was okay. He said he’s been ‘getting out’ by going someplace in his mind. To a fort in the woods, he said? Is that a place where he played as a boy?”
I fought my own anxiety and smiled before fibbing: “Must be.”
“And he’s eating well. He says the jailhouse food is better than he’s ever had. On top of that, somehow the new chef at Nelson’s heard about Mick and brought over a plate of spaghetti Bolognese and freshly baked bread.”
“The chef was allowed to visit?”
“No. But the main guard, Fritz Herbert, is a decent man. He allowed the delivery and is letting Nelson’s bring Mick supper every day. Wonder why he’s doing that.”
“Mick’s brother works for the chef, Chef Barone. We met him at the farm stand two days ago.”
“And the chef just hired the boy?”
“After he heard that Joseph smelled the broccoli, he did.”
Uncle Roger scrunched his nose and shook his head. “I’ll be. Interesting turn of events there.”
To keep my mind off of the charge against Mick and my worries for him, I started talking. I told Uncle Roger about the other interesting turn of events, about Old Man not being old and having a sister and that the Maliseet took him in when he ran away.
Uncle Roger listened and at the end simply said, “I remember.”
“You remember?”
“Surely your father has told you that Ansley and Squeak and Frankie Carmichael and us were boys together? Running around fields with baseballs and bats? Splashing in the Meduxnekeag, hunting rabbits and beavers in the woods by the water?”
Mr. Pop hadn’t told me any of this. Well, he’d told me plenty of stories from his boyhood and referred to his buddies and their wild romps, but I’d never imagined that Ansley and Old Man were among them.
“So why then does Mr. Carmichael hate Ansley and all of them so much? Is it just because of Marjorie running off with Glenn?”
Uncle Roger shook his head. “Not sure what I can tell you about this. Not sure I understand it all myself. Well, I understand some of it. Let’s just say Marjorie isn’t the first woman in that family to want to run off with a Maliseet boy.”
My mouth gaped open. “What?”
“This is all I’ll say: Mrs. Carmichael, back when she was Muriel Fulton, I guess, had quite the thing for Ansley. Of course, it couldn’t happen. So she married Frankie. With him fully knowing that he was the also-ran. And Frankie Carmichael has spent his married life trying to convince her and himself and everyone in town what filth the Maliseet are.”
“So all this because Mr. Carmichael wasn’t Mrs. Carmichael’s first love? This is all about jealousy?”
“Well, it started out that way. But it’s bloomed into something much more. What does the Good Book say about envy? It rots the bones. His bones are rotten with the stuff.”
“But Mr. Carmichael is a Christian man. How could this happen?”
“Only God can judge his heart, Mercy. So I’m going to step carefully here. But I’m comfortable saying that Frankie Carmichael is a churchgoing man, but I’m not sure he’s all that great a Christian one. There’s a difference. Your Mr. Pop would have my hide for repeating this, but not long after Frankie and Muriel married, Mr. Pop remarked on what a mistake Mr. Fulton had made, thinking he was preventing his daughter from marrying a pagan.”
“A pagan! But Mr. Carmichael has been baptized and confirmed. He professes Jesus and takes communion like the rest of us.”
“And again I quote from the Good Book. I’m on a roll! Your father would be impressed. Jesus Himself said, ‘Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.’ But who will, Mercy? Finish the verse.”
“‘He that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven,’” I said.
“That’s right. Just before this, Jesus talks about the false prophets who are ravening wolves underneath. How do we know people’s hearts?”
“By their fruits,” I said, hiding a smirk.
Uncle Roger raised an eyebrow as we turned into our drive. “It’s funny?” I wasn’t sure how he knew.
“Well, Ellery says if Jesus were in Maine, He’d’ve told us we’d know them by their potatoes. That’s all.”
“Glad you’re able to laugh a bit through this, Mercy. It’s going to be a tough stretch. School starts in, what? Two or three weeks?”
“Yes, sir. Two weeks. Just after the state fair. It’ll feel different this year.”
Uncle Roger stopped the car and nodded.
“When will you be back?” I asked. I already knew that he’d stay for supper that night, get to bed early, and then head out first thing in the morning.
“It’ll depend on the judge. And on if I can get any pressure from the state. But it could be a few weeks. A month even.”
“A month! Mick might be in jail that long?”
“Might be. I hope not. But he might be.”
We both looked up at the squeal of the front door. Mother waved hello and then shook her head. I realized only then that I’d not put my scarf on for the ride back.
“My hair,” I said to Uncle Roger. “You should’ve reminded me about the scarf.”
He laughed. “It’s lovely. You could be a real contender for Miss Potato Blossom.”
I pulled the scarf from under his front seat and swatted him with it. It was nice to have something to laugh about. If even for a little while.