Evans City, Pennsylvania
Sunday, September 12, 2004
Mom Jo’s wolf dogs were in full chorus as he made the last turn into his moms’ driveway. The storm had rained itself out, and the night skies were clearing. Ukiah had the Hummer’s windows down, letting in the chilly autumn air. He was home, and enjoying the familiar scents. The rain had dampened the cut fields of hay and corn. The road shone slick black in his headlights, the leaves drifting down in whirls of brilliant gold and crimson to vanish into the darkness beyond the twin pools of light.
Had the wolf dogs heard and recognized the Hummer’s engines? It was unlikely—he rarely drove the big sports vehicle. Still he liked to imagine that they were singing him home. He went slow, savoring the small changes he noticed on the way. Mom Lara had pumpkins and cornstalks out already at the end of the drive by the mailbox. Yellow mums were planted at the bottom of the hill. When he topped the hill, his headlights cut through the kennel, and the wolf dogs showed as dark forms and glowing eyes, eight pairs in all.
As he stepped out of the Hummer, a dark form detached itself from the shadows and moved toward him. The wind changed, bringing him the scent of his Mom Jo just before she called to him. She smelled of herself, wolves, and an exotic blend of animals she worked with at the zoo.
“Did you find the little boy?” She was still just a shadow with a familiar voice.
“Yes.” The gravel crunched under his feet as he moved to join his adopted mother in the darkness. She reached out a hand and touched his arm, and used it to guide herself to him.
She hugged him fiercely, typical of the rough affection with which she raised him. “Good boy.” Mom Jo was a lean, dark-haired woman, a shade under average height. When she first trapped him in a humane wolf trap years earlier, he tucked under her chin. He had grown in odd fits and starts over the years, and she now had to cant her head back to look up into his eyes. “You’ve grown again. It must have been a rough trip.” She meant the trip to Oregon, and it had been. “I wish Max wouldn’t drag you into these things. One of these times—maybe we should find you something else to do.”
“Mom!”
“You’re good with animals. We could expand the kennels and board pets. It would give you lots of time with Kittanning, and you could even go to school, maybe get a degree.”
“I like my work. I’m good at it.”
“It got you killed in June.” She hugged him tight. “And it got you killed again in Oregon. One of these times you’re not going to come back to us.”
“I’ll always come back.” He was glad now that he didn’t mention the flooding storm drain. “Look, I’m tired. It’s been a long day.”
“I’m glad you’re home in one piece, this time.” Then, as if speaking of pieces, she said, “Kittanning has missed you horribly. He’s been trying to talk; it sounds like ‘Dada.’ He says it over and over again, as if he’s calling for you.”
“Is he still awake?” He mentally reached for Kittanning. “Ah, no.” He found only warm cottony thoughts. “He’s sleeping.”
“You should look in on him before you turn in.” Her tone indicated that it was a command.
“I will.”
“And you need to clean your room; it looks like a tornado hit it.”
Oh, God, she went up to his room? He winced, flashing over his last seconds of frantic packing. To him, it was obvious that Indigo slept over one night while his moms were at Kitty Hawk, but would his moms notice? Could they smell the sex? Had they changed his sheets? Did they find Indigo’s forgotten socks and panties in his laundry basket? Had they emptied the waste can?
Not that Indigo and he planned the one night—they had fallen asleep after making love. Nor did his moms actually forbid her staying over, but during a frank conversation about birth control, they also let him know that they thought he was too young, emotionally, to handle a sexual relationship. Since then, they continued, in looks and silences, to express this belief, but not once had they tried to prohibit it either.
On the heels of his panic came a surprising flash of anger. Why had she gone up to his attic bedroom? His parents’ bedroom had always been off-limits to him; after his first big jump in maturity, he’d asked for the same respect. Laundry proved to be a minor stumbling point, since Mom Lara still washed his sheets, towels, and dress shirts for him. He took over those responsibilities to gain privacy and independence. There should have been no reason for her to go into the attic.
“What were you doing in my room?”
“I’m sorry, but Cally was playing private investigator with your stuff,” Mom Jo said. “I went up to get her out of your bedroom and was surprised at how messy it was.”
“I was in a hurry. We only had a few hours to get ready before flying out to Oregon.”
“It still needs to be cleaned.” Mom Jo stopped them even with the Hummer. “Where’s your bike?”
“I had too much luggage to bring home on the bike.” He illustrated by taking said luggage out of the back. Actually, between the troubles of the Oregon trip and the federal agent checking into them, Max was jumpy and wanted Ukiah in something that afforded more protection than his motorcycle. If he told his mother that Max insisted on the heavier vehicle, though, she would worry.
“You should have taken the Cherokee or the Buick.” Mom Jo picked up his carry-on. “You don’t realize how expensive Hummers are to repair. You did ask before you took it?”
“Max said it was okay.”
“I don’t know what that man thinks of sometimes,” she said, meaning Max. “Letting you drive off with a hundred-thousand-dollar vehicle. I hope you thanked him for letting you take it.”
“Mom, it’s a company car; insurance will cover any damage, and Max values me more than the Hummer.” He slammed shut the hatch, pressed the lock button on the key fob, and picked up his other bag. “The Cherokee still had all of Max’s luggage in it, and Max is trading in the Buick tomorrow morning.”
She took a deep breath and sighed it out. “I’m sorry, honey. I shouldn’t snap at you.” She started for the kitchen door, and he followed. “Kittanning has been desperately unhappy since you left and he has stopped sleeping through the night. Cally started kindergarten and has gotten very clingy. It’s been bitter cold and dry—between the two we lost all our late harvest crops. Oh, good news, Lara got a surprise part-time job at Pitt, but her Neon is dying, and we’ve got a depressing lack of money for everything. We shouldn’t have gone to Kitty Hawk; even with staying at Aunt Kat’s place, we spent too much money.”
“Mom got a job?” He had heard about Kittanning, Cally, and the weather when he called home last week and talked with Mom Lara. The early onslaught of fall spelled a possibly hard winter for his moms with higher heating bills and less homegrown food stockpiled. The job was news—as was the Neon dying, but that was to be expected, considering its age.
“She’s going to be teaching one class a week at Pitt starting Tuesday,” Mom Jo said. “But her first paycheck won’t be until October. We’re going to have fun juggling things until then.”
“Still, that’s great!”
“I know.” She sighed tiredly. “But the timing sucks; we’re having a fund-raiser here on Saturday, the twenty-fifth, to mesh with the Octoberfest down in Evans City.”
All of Mom Jo’s wolf dogs had been rescued from humane shelters over the years. There was a small thriving group of breeders selling the mix-breed dogs, although almost none had access to purebred wolves. Large, frequently unpredictable, often destructive, rarely trainable, and very adept at escaping, the animals made poor pets. New owners were often unable or unwilling to deal with the difficulties of raising wolf dogs. Many humane societies and animal control agencies, however, had policies against placing any problem wolf dog up for adoption. Mom Jo took in animals from western Pennsylvania that couldn’t be placed, saving them from being destroyed.
The big dogs needed room and lots of food. On the farm, they had the room. Dog food companies sometimes donated food as a tax write-off, requiring the shelter to pay only for the shipping. Even so, his moms were always short of money. Fund-raising was a common family activity, but it was Mom Lara who did the lion’s share of the work.
“I’ll take Kittanning in to work with me tomorrow.” Ukiah set his bag down in the mudroom, and pulled out his wallet. Prior to leaving for Oregon, he had pulled out two hundred in cash, but Max had covered most of his expenses. He left himself a ten, and handed the rest of the bills to his mom. “Here, take this.”
She eyed the money with dismay. “Honey, you pay rent already, and you’re paying for Lara’s health insurance.”
“But there’s Kittanning now.” Ukiah pushed the money into her hands. “Between the formula and diapers, he’s not cheap.”
Things had to be bad for her to tuck the money away with no more protest; his mothers were still struggling with medical bills left over from Mom Lara’s illness, several years ago.
“Maybe we should talk to Max,” Ukiah suggested. “He’s very good with money.”
“No!” Jo snapped, and then gave a wry smile to soften the word. “Honey, I like Max, even though he occasionally drives me nuts, and I know you trust him, but I’m not about to turn my life over to a man.”
“As I get older, am I going to increasingly become the enemy, one of them?”
“No!” She swatted him on the shoulder. “It’s just—it would feel like an invasion of privacy. Like undressing in front of him. And then him telling me what I’ve done wrong and how to fix it.” She shuddered a little. “I’ve got a PhD, for pity’s sake.”
Since financial counseling was out, he tried another route of helping. “I can go food shopping too, since I’ll have a reliable car.”
“Are you sure? You’ve never gone shopping by yourself before.”
“Mom, I stop almost every night for milk, or bread, or diapers, or something.”
Mom Jo swallowed whatever argument she was going to make, and messed his hair. “All right. Mom Lara can give you a list. What would really help would be for you to take Kittanning on Tuesday, so we don’t need to pay a sitter.”
“I’ll take him tomorrow and Tuesday,” he promised, though the agency was extremely behind in its cases; he’d make it work somehow. “It will give us time together. What about Cally?”
“My cousin Steve’s little boy is in Cally’s kindergarten class.” Mom Jo’s family had lived in Evans City for several generations, and she had a huge extended family in the area as a result. Each person had a different level of willingness to deal with Jo’s “wife,” wolf boy son, fatherless daughter, and wolf dog hobby. “We’ve worked it out so his wife takes Cally home on Tuesday and Lara takes both kids on Friday.”
He remembered the woman to be laid-back and friendly so this news surprised him. “She won’t take Kittanning?”
“She says that she’s done changing diapers.”
The kitchen smelled of lasagna and chocolate chip cookies, evidence that Mom Lara was already in pre-party cooking blitz mode. The kitchen timer started chiming as Ukiah and Mom Jo entered, and Mom Lara shouted from the back porch, “Can you get those?”
“Okay!” Mom Jo called back, opening the oven to a blast of chocolate heat. “Go see your mom.”
The tiny changes to the house since he left struck him like spots of color on black and white photos, grabbing his attention. While the lighthouse beside the overflowing bills-to-be-paid bin was quite nice, the seashells scattered along his path through the dark house reeked of sea salt and dead shellfish.
Mom Lara sat on the railing of the back porch, staring at the northern night sky. A stiff wind was pushing the last of the rain clouds out, and stars gleamed brilliant in the moonless sky.
“Welcome home, honey.” Mom Lara hugged him. “I was afraid it wouldn’t stop raining in time! Look!”
“At what?” he asked.
She pushed him to sit on the railing and then stood behind him, pointing out the northern edge of the sky where ribbons of color waved. “It’s the aurora borealis. They had some terrific sunspot activity a few days ago, and they were predicting we’d be able to see them this far south. Aren’t they beautiful? The charged particles from the sun are spiraling down the Earth’s magnetic field. That’s why they look like blankets, they’re actually falling in sheets.”
It was so like her and Mom Jo, filling him with odd bits of scientific information. He had a patchwork education, stitched together with a perfect memory.
While in Oregon, Ukiah found memories of his childhood as Magic Boy. Dismembered with an ax early in the previous century, Magic Boy’s various body parts fled his murder site. Some unknown amount went on to form Ukiah, a child running feral with the wolves. Magic Boy’s hand or foot transformed into the turtle Little Slow Magic, who made his way back to his mother’s people. A quirk in his alien genetics meant that the turtle retained much of the memories that the child had lost completely.
Absorbing Little Slow Magic and the memories the turtle held, Ukiah added to his quilt work of knowledge, a heritage only half-remembered. “My people believe they are ghosts dancing.”
Mom Lara turned to look at him, the star shine pale on her blond hair. “That’s so poetic. I’m so happy you finally managed to find yourself.”
Yes, he had found parts of his ancient past, but only at the cost of contaminating his present self. Magic Boy lived for nearly two hundred years, several lifetimes of joy and sorrow, rewards and frustrations. Ukiah felt like a child that put on his father’s clothing and stood before the mirror, lost in the skin he one day would grow into. Even though Ukiah had completely forgotten his childhood with his mother’s people, much of Magic Boy’s personality remained, seemingly a rock-solid base that could not be erased. In the overlarge memories, Ukiah could now see the roots of his own personality. Much of what he thought Mom Jo and Mom Lara taught him were only reinforcements of what his mother, Kicking Deer, laid down.
“But you really should have called instead of leaving Kittanning with Indigo,” Mom Lara said, continuing blithely, unaware of his turmoil. “I could have flown home and been here before you left.”
Unfortunately, all the similarities between Ukiah and Magic Boy only made judging the differences harder. Was it him or Magic Boy who bristled at Mom Lara’s comment? “Indigo was happy to do it.”
“It wasn’t fair to her,” Mom Lara said. “Letting her play mommy and then taking it all away from her.”
Indigo was listed as Kittanning’s mother on his birth certificate, and Ukiah had every intention of marrying her, making her Kitt’s mother in truth. Why couldn’t his mothers accept that he knew what he wanted? If he was man enough to drive, drink, and carry a gun, surely he could marry a woman as good and strong as Indigo. Were their objections to Indigo based on the fact that she was only six years younger than they were? Or that she was part Hawaiian-Chinese?
Ukiah snapped his mouth shut on words that would have just led to more trouble, and instantly wondered. Was it truly him that was angry—or Magic Boy—and which part of him had the wisdom to keep silent? Certainly before he left for Oregon, they’d fought over Indigo; but now he saw his moms’ actions in a more hostile light. It never occurred to him before that they might be bigoted or saw Indigo as an age-equal to themselves.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” he said instead of all the uncomfortable truths he could have spoken. “It’s been a rough day. I’m going to pop into Kittanning’s room, and then crash.”
“All right, honey,” Mom Lara accepted his tactical retreat.
“I told Mom Jo that I’ll go shopping for you tomorrow if you give me a list of what you need.”
Even his moms didn’t realize how well he saw in the dark once his eyes adjusted. She winced at his offer, but said brightly, “That will be a great help, honey. I’ll work up a list and give it to you tomorrow morning. Good night, honey.”
He climbed the stairs wondering. His perfect memory told him that nothing had changed between his mothers and him, except his own point of view—or more correctly—the addition of Magic Boy to his point of view. What had been comforting now seemed restrictive.
A memory fragment from Magic Boy rose in Ukiah’s mind.
He stood on the cliff edge, overlooking the Umatilla River, the wind coming off the prairie roaring in his ears, stinging his eyes nearly as much as the burning tears. He raised his arms up, wondering, What if all I need is faith? Maybe if I leapt now, would I turn into something more than just a little boy?
He leaned against the wind, closing his eyes, trying to summon the courage to believe.
“Magic Boy,” his mother, Kicking Deer, said behind him. “What are you doing?”
He didn’t turn to face her, see how old she had grown while he stayed the same. All his younger half brothers were men now, with wives and children of their own. Only he stayed the same. “I’m thinking about flying.”
“You have no wings, Magic Boy.”
“Perhaps while my feet are firmly on the ground, I need no wings. Maybe I need to be in the air to have wings.”
“Don’t be foolish. You’re too old for it.”
“Tell that to the old men of the tribe! Tell them I am too old to still be considered a child. Tell them that the baby at your breast when I went out the last time for my manhood rite had a son of his own today.”
“My son,” Kicking Deer said softly. “Every full moon I take a string out and measure you as you sleep. Years I have measured you from the top of your head to the back of your heels, and always you are the same. There is no gray in your hair and no lines on your face. Like the stone Coyote gave me to swallow, you are unchanging.”
“So I am unchanging! They made Five Crows a man yesterday. He has only seen eleven summers to my thirty, and tomorrow he might die if a bear struck him or a snake bit him. Am I, who is unchanging, any less a man than Five Crows, who might die without changing? He is shorter, and slower, and weaker than I, but they made him a man.”
Years of injustices fueled his anger, and he raged on bitterly. “And you know why? If I were a man, I would overshadow them even as I am. I am faster and stronger than all of them. So they keep me a child and order me about whenever they can.”
“Aiieee. My son. It is the spirits that keep you a child.”
“I am sick of being a child. I am sick of babies swaggering about the dance grounds, thinking they can tell me what to do because . . .”
“Because the spirits chose a different path for you. A longer path. Five Crows’s journey is already half over, and yours has barely begun. Do not be angry because you do not see the same things along the path that he does; you are bound for different places.”
He sighed, turning away from the cliff. “Why is it that you are always so much wiser than me? You are not really that much older than I am.”
She tweaked his nose. “Because I’m always running to stay ahead of you.”
Magic Boy hadn’t flung himself from that cliff face that day. Ironically, if he had, he would have aged. But his mother had been right, he had taken a long, twisting path before seeing his totem animal and becoming a man. A small niggling part of Ukiah pointed out that he still lived as a child in his mothers’ house, but he had, for the most part, all that Magic Boy desired: a position in society as an adult, a woman, and a child.
Kittanning lay in his crib bed, a mobile of Mickey Mouse dancing over his head, dreaming of the day’s anxiety.
Although Kittanning started as a stolen blood mouse, and had been all of three days old when Ukiah finally won him back, Ukiah hadn’t been able to take Kittanning back. Not in the physical sense—no, Ukiah probably could have forced the merger. But Kittanning was now a human infant. Whereas Ukiah’s mice felt like lost pieces of the greater whole, always joyful at the prospect of returning, Kittanning had a sense of self, wholly separate of Ukiah. Perhaps Kittanning’s individuality came from resisting Hex’s will, perhaps it came automatic with the conscious mind of the human form, or maybe it was something more metaphysical, being gifted with a soul at the moment of his human transformation. Whatever it was, Ukiah had held the baby and known that Kittanning was no longer his as in the manner of fingers and toes, but his as in the manner of a son.
Prior to Ukiah’s trip to Oregon, though, he had wondered at the truth of this, worried that he was mistaken. He had been ignorant of his mice nearly up to the day of Kittanning’s “birth.” What if the personality he felt in Kittanning was merely a projection of his own?
Now, knowing he wasn’t the child born to his mother, but a blood animal transformed himself, Ukiah recognized that Kittanning was also a true individual. The knowledge, as he gazed down at the sleeping baby, banished all of Ukiah’s worries and left him with only love for his son.
Lifting Kittanning out of his crib, Ukiah cuddled his son to him, waking him.
Daddy! Joy shimmered through Kittanning, and the tiny fists clutched tight at Ukiah. Between them, there was no need for words of love, it poured out unreserved. Tempered into the flow, though, was a sense of terrible sorrow as the weeks had passed with glacial slowness for the infant, and a faint terror that Kittanning would grow to forget his father.
“I’m home to stay,” Ukiah promised and kissed the soft black hair.
Evans City, Pennsylvania
Monday, September 13, 2004
“It’s just I feel funny not telling anyone,” Mom Lara complained during the normal morning confusion, complicated by the addition of baby Kittanning to their family, and the recent start of school for Ukiah’s sister, Cally. Lunch bags stood half-filled on the counter, morning coffee scented the kitchen, and a baby bottle shimmered on the cooktop. “I have a doctorate in astronomy. I’ve written papers on all of my tiny, almost insignificant discoveries. Now, I know everything about the most important discovery of mankind since—since the invention of written language, and I can’t say anything!”
“I’m sorry, Mom.” Ukiah rocked back and forth, patting Kittanning on the back. He still found it disorienting to cradle the infant to him. They were so identical that his senses could barely determine where his body stopped and his son’s started. Ukiah could feel Kittanning’s hunger as if it was his own.
“I’m hungry,” Kittanning whimpered into his mind.
“I know, pumpkin.” Ukiah yawned. Kittanning’s hunger had woken them up in the middle of the night. With typical baby self-centeredness, Kittanning had shown very little patience with Ukiah’s late-night fumbling and needed a great deal of rocking to settle back to bed. In all, an hour had been stolen out of the heart of Ukiah’s sleep. Normally this wouldn’t leave Ukiah yawning; that it did was proof he hadn’t recovered fully from the battering he took in Oregon. “Your bottle is almost ready.”
“Actually, it’s not the scientific community that bothers me. Who would believe that ugly thing sat up there for two hundreds years or more, while a war between alien factions took place here on Earth, right under our noses? Only thirty-two percent of scientists polled believed that the ship posed a possible threat. Fourteen percent actually went so far as to say that interstellar conquest is an impossibility. No one is going to believe me if I try to claim that the alien ship was going to wipe out all life as we know it. I have no hard evidence.”
“You have me and Kittanning,” Ukiah murmured.
“Ukiah!” Mom Lara’s hard look forbade him to even joke about the subject.
“Is his bottle ready?” Ukiah changed the subject.
“It should be.” Mom Lara lifted the bottle out of the water, and tested it on her wrist. Satisfied with the temperature, she handed it to Ukiah. “What bothers me are the kids at Cally’s school.” Mom Lara did volunteer work at his five-year-old sister’s elementary school, teaching astronomy and running science fairs. “They’re scared silly that an alien fleet will be invading tomorrow. I could reassure them that there’s no danger, that there was only that one damaged ship, and that the Pack forced it to self-destruct. But I can’t. I can’t even tell Cally, at least until she’s older. It wouldn’t be fair to ask her to keep a secret of that importance.”
A clatter of little feet on the stairs announced the arrival of Cally, and they fell quiet. While born to Mom Lara, Cally had Mom Jo’s dark curls and stormy nature, a result of in vitro fertilization. She paused at the doorway, frowning slightly at the feeding Kittanning. “Is he still here?”
“Honey.” Mom Lara sighed, tugging on Cally’s dark curls. “We’ve told you, Indigo only took him for a little while.”
So things quickly turned to the second concern to the family: Cally was not taking well being suddenly supplanted as the baby. She pressed tight against Ukiah, frowning slightly at the feeding Kittanning.
“Why can’t she keep him?”
“She might,” Ukiah said carefully, getting a surprised look from Mom Lara. “If Indigo and I get married, Kittanning and I will go live with her.”
“I don’t want you to leave.”
“He’s not,” Mom Lara said, setting out a cereal bowl for Cally. “He’s too young to get married.”
“You know that I’m not,” Ukiah said.
Mom Lara pressed her mouth tight to keep from frowning. “You two barely know each other. Your Mom Jo and I dated all through college before deciding that we wanted to be together the rest of our lives.”
“That’s different,” Ukiah protested. His mothers had been young when they first met, and by their own account, not even sure if they were homosexual or just horny. In the end, they decided that they were simply in love, and nothing else mattered.
“Not by much,” Mom Lara said. “We had to decide whether to marry someone that our families might like, but would never fully approve of. We had to decide that we could take the pressure to find a ‘more acceptable mate,’ one that conformed to society’s mores of what is proper. We had to come to terms with the possibility of being ostracized by friends, family, and neighbors. It takes courage to fly into the face of normal. You’re asking a lot of Indigo. You’re not the same race, age, or religion.” With Cally listening intently, Mom Lara probably intentionally left out “species.” “Give her time. There’s no reason to rush.”
“I’m afraid that if I give her time to think about all that, she’ll say no.”
Mom Lara came to wrap her arms around him, as if to shield him from harm. “If it’s right, all the time in the world won’t make her say no. But if it’s wrong, it’s better to figure it out before you get too deep and get hurt.”
The problem was, Ukiah suspected that he was already too deep.
The wheeled garbage can sat empty at the curb when Ukiah pulled up to the office. He walked down the driveway and pushed it back to the garage. It took both hands and his teeth to carry Kittanning and his assorted baby accessories into the kitchen. Max stood washing dishes, by the smell, mostly containers of various refrigerated leftovers that had gone bad while they were gone. Max wore only his sweatpants, his lean muscled frame damp from his morning workout.
“Morning, kid,” Max called without looking up. “I heard you bring up the can. Thanks. I was in the middle of my last set when I realized if I didn’t get this stuff out this morning, it would sit here all week, driving you nuts with the stench.”
“Thanks,” Ukiah said, setting Kittanning’s car seat on the table. “But I doubt if I could smell even that over someone’s full diaper.”
Max glanced up, saw Kittanning, and grinned. “Hey! How’s my boy!”
“Stinky,” Ukiah said.
Kittanning squealed with delight. “Max!”
“He’s happy to see you,” Ukiah translated, wincing slightly as the noise seemed to approach the supersonic range.
Which made Max smile wider. Max set the last dish into the drying rack, let the soapy water out with a quiet sloshing noise, and dried his hands while Ukiah gathered supplies for a diaper-changing mission. Changing pad. Diaper wipes. Powder. Empty bread bag.
“Come here, big boy.” Max lifted Kittanning out of the seat, and grimaced as the smell attacked him. “Oh, yeah, that’s one stinky diaper! What’re your moms feeding this baby? Curry and skunk weed?”
“It comes out deep green, whatever it is,” Ukiah said, frowning as the search for a diaper was coming up empty.
“With your nose, how can you stand changing him?”
“I try not to breathe,” Ukiah said, checking the next bag. He knew that by the end of the day, everything in the bags would prove invaluable, but it still mystified him as to how someone so small needed so much stuff. “I think I’m out of diapers. Oops, no, here’s some.” He pulled three diapers out of the bottom, and then searched a little more to verify that they were the only diapers left. “Looks like I’m going to have to run to the store in a few hours.”
“While you’re there, could you pick me up some stuff?” Max asked, and yawned deeply. Kittanning took the opportunity to stick a hand into Max’s mouth.
The yawn served to remind Ukiah about Max’s late-night search. “Did you find anything out about Hutchinson?”
“Not as much as I hoped.” Max pretended to munch on Kittanning’s fingers, making the baby laugh. “The government frowns on people investigating their agents. I ran the standard nonintrusive background check. Credit reports. Newspaper articles. Courtroom caseloads. I printed everything out so you can scan over it.”
“What’s the condensed version?” Ukiah laid out the changing pad.
“Born and raised in New England, he attended Boston University and moved to Washington, D.C., to join the NSA. He appears to be a serious bulldog; whatever he latches on to, he drags down and nails cold. He’s paying on a Saturn, has two credit cards with modest balances, and rents an inexpensive town house in Maryland. I ran across an old engagement announcement, but no signs of a marriage. In 2002, after Homeland Security formed, he ended up under their umbrella. I’m clueless, though, what he might want with us. The Pack, as a biker gang, falls into FBI jurisdiction.”
“Ari said he had photographs of us.” Ukiah positioned the rest of the diaper-changing accessories clockwise around the pad. “Professional quality. I’m ready for Kitt now.”
“Every case you’ve been on usually has had at least one newspaper photographer covering it.” Max handed Kittanning back to Ukiah, and then tugged on Ukiah’s braid. “What’s this?”
Ukiah grabbed hold of his braid and inspected the band holding the end. “A hair tie.”
“It’s purple.”
“It’s one of Cally’s.” Ukiah tossed his braid over his shoulder. “The other choice was pink.”
“Time for you to get your hair cut.”
“Indigo likes it long.” Ukiah steeled himself and peeled the diaper tapes back. Amazingly, the smell could get worse. “Besides, Magic Boy always wore his hair long. It’s the way of my people.”
Max shook his head as the phone rang. He crossed the kitchen to pick up the phone. “Bennett Detective Agency.” Ukiah couldn’t hear the voice on the other side, but judging by the sudden full smile, it was Sam. “You’re up and about early.”
“I’m not up yet.” Sam’s voice was audible as Max glanced at the kitchen clock, visibly doing the math. In Wyoming, Sam was two hours behind them, meaning it was only six-thirty for her. “I’m just lolling around in bed, thinking about you.”
“You are?” Max all but purred as he turned his back to Ukiah.
Ukiah couldn’t hear Sam’s response, but it made Max laugh. Ukiah concentrated on the messy diaper and not on the small prick of jealousy. After his wife was killed in 1998, Max fell into a near-suicidal depression; Sam was the first woman Max showed any interest in since then. For Max’s sake, Ukiah was glad. Still, after three years of being partners, it was hard being on the outside.
Ukiah got a fresh diaper onto Kittanning, strapped him back into his car seat, and dropped the diaper into the bread bag, which he tied shut, effectively enclosing most of the foul odor.
“No, no, no,” Max said to Sam. “You don’t want to go that way. That puts you into Chicago. You should drop down to Route 70 at some point. Here, let me get a map.”
The second line rang. Carrying Kittanning to his office, Ukiah picked up the phone. “Bennett Detective Agency.”
“Is this Max Bennett?” a man’s voice asked.
“No. He’s not available at the moment. Can I help you?”
“Who am I talking to?”
“Ukiah Oregon.” He identified himself reluctantly. “Who is this?”
“You’re the boy raised by wolves?”
Ukiah looked at the caller ID display. It was Agent Hutchinson’s cell phone number. “Yes. I was a feral child, Agent Hutchinson. Is there something the Homeland Security needs help with? A tracking case?”
“How do you know who I am?”
“We had a missing persons case last night. Officer Ari Johnson was there. You gave him a business card. You’re calling from your cell phone.”
“I see.” A stylus tapped out notes on a PDA close to Hutchinson’s receiver. “And Bennett lets you answer the phone?”
“Yes,” Ukiah said simply—Max held that the less you gave out, the more you kept the upper hand. “Can you tell me why you’re calling us?”
“I want to talk to you both.” Hutchinson appeared to hold the same belief. “Face-to-face. Today.”
“Max won’t be available until later today.”
“I’ll be at your offices at four this afternoon. I’d advise both of you to be there.”