17 January 1975
Oh
Nat’s miserable little city boasted only one mall. It was a good twenty-five minutes out into the suburbs. Nat had only been there once. When he was nine, and the old lady had dragged him along to go Christmas shopping. It was the year her sister died, and left her a pittance in extra cash. Since then, Christmas shopping had been less of a production.
Nat hitchhiked out there on a Friday morning. There was a sporting goods store out at the mall, or so he had heard. And Nat wanted to have a look at their boxing gloves.
? ? ?
He was standing in a rear aisle of the store when he saw them. They were in a heavy cardboard box, but the box was open in the front. Three-sided, like a presentation box.
The exact same gloves he’d been given, and then had taken from him.
He stopped cold and just looked at them for a long time. Then he reached a hand out to touch them.
It felt something like unexpectedly bumping into someone you loved on a busy street. Someone you thought was long gone. Or at least, Nat figured it would feel something like this. If there were anyone he loved.
They could literally have been the same ones. Well, no. That’s not right, he thought. They couldn’t be. Not literally. These were brand new. But the ones he’d lost were so new. There was just no way he could ever have told the two pairs apart.
He took the box down off the shelf and read the price tag. Almost thirty dollars. Nat swallowed hard. When he’d gotten an allowance, it was two dollars a week. Now it was nothing a week.
He was just about to put them back on the shelf.
He looked both ways. He was alone in that aisle. There was no one there to see what came next.
He pulled the gloves out of the heavy cardboard box, one at a time. Slid them into his book bag. Then he put the empty box on the shelf behind two others.
He swung the bag on to his shoulder and walked out the door into the mall. Reminding himself not to hurry.
Don’t dawdle but don’t hurry. Just act natural.
Wow, he thought. That was almost too easy.
He made a beeline for the down escalator. Just before he arrived there, a uniformed man stepped in front of him. A very big man, wearing gray polyester and a self-satisfied expression.
“Mall security,” he said. “You want to open up that bag? Show me what you got in there?”
Nat’s first thought was to run. But he decided there was a better, smarter way. After all, just a couple of months ago he’d been walking around with an identical pair of gloves in his book bag. It didn’t mean he’d done anything wrong.
“Just my boxing gloves,” he said. And opened the bag and let the guard peer inside.
“Your gloves.”
“Yes, sir. They were a present from— They’re mine. I was just on my way back from the gym.”
The guy shot Nat a look he couldn’t quite read. But it was not good news. That much was clear.
“Kid. You were being watched on a security monitor the whole time.”
“Oh,” Nat said.
? ? ?
The old woman sat behind the wheel of her ancient car, staring straight ahead. Nathan wondered when — even if — she would ever start it up and drive home.
“That’s half my savings I just put up for your bail.”
“You’ll get it back. I’m not going anywhere.”
“I can’t take much more of this.”
“So you keep telling me.”
“I’m putting you on notice. Right now. If one more thing like this happens—”
Nat waited. But she never finished the sentence.
“Then what?”
“Don’t start with me. I won’t have this conversation with you.”
“No, really. Tell me. What will you do if I screw up one more time?”
No reply.
“I don’t think you’ll have much luck pitching me out in the woods by the lake. I’m older and smarter now. I’d probably find my own way out.”
She did not look at him. She looked forward, through the windshield. He waited for the slapped look to arrive. But she was far beyond the slapped look. Now she wore a look that said, “I have armored myself against you, and you will never slap me again.”
She did not reply.
“Just your luck I wouldn’t die this time, either,” he said quietly.
A pause, then she started the car, shifted it into gear and drove.
So began the first moment of a new era between them. The era when the old woman also said nothing.
In Nat’s opinion, it was a huge stride in the right direction.
In the beginnings of that silence, he knew something. Clearly. Once you throw down that gauntlet of ultimatum, the one more thing will happen. Nat figured it probably wouldn’t even matter much what it was. It would be the straw that broke her. And it had been defined. Prepared for. So it would happen.
It was only a matter of time.
Part Three
Nathan McCann
23 September 1975
He Still Feels That Same Way Now
Nathan McCann answered the knock at his door to find an older woman standing on his stoop, accompanied by a sullen teenage boy. Hair hung into the boy’s eyes; he looked away from Nathan as if he could establish the matter of his disdain just that simply. His skin was ravaged by teenage acne. He had one large fraying hole in the knee of his dirty blue jeans.
Nathan did not enjoy unannounced visits, nor did he initially connect with a memory of having seen these people before.
“Nathan McCann?” the woman asked.
“Yes.”
“Nathan McCann, this is Nathan Bates. The boy you found in the woods.”
A brief silence reigned.
Nathan looked more closely at the boy, who continued to avoid Nathan’s eyes.
Nathan felt a pang of disappointment. As though part of him had known this moment would arrive, or a moment something like it, yet that part of him had expected more. Some sense of already-established bond or instant kinship. But no such bond could be seen, not anywhere from his door stoop to the horizon. The boy was simply a stranger. A sullen, unresponsive and unkempt one, at that. And there was no purpose in Nathan’s denying it, even if it had been possible to do so.
Ertha Bates continued. “I remember at the time you were keen to have this boy for your own. Very keen. As if you had always expected it would go just that way. And maybe even as though you assumed it would be a good thing, to have this young person in your life. You might have dodged a rude awakening on that score. Unless you’re really brave enough to be wanting a second chance.
“So, tell me, Mr. McCann, do you still feel that same way now? Because I am at my wits’ end. I’ve had it, that’s all I can say. That’s all there is to it. I’ve had it. Each person has just a certain store of patience, and he has snapped mine in half. Just broken clean through it. And I will not live like this any more. This situation is completely outside my ability to cope. I raised five children on what I thought to be normal discipline, but if there’s something this boy responds to, I haven’t stumbled across it yet.
“You still want this boy, Mr. McCann? You’d be doing me a great favor. And you’d be doing him a favor as well. I figure he’d be better off here than as a ward of the state, and that’s his next stop, believe me.
“I was on my way to the police station right now to turn him over. Give up custody and let him be someone else’s problem for a change. And then partway through the drive I thought of you. And first I thought, well, if I’m going to give up custody I have to at least keep that promise I made to you fifteen years ago. To bring him around to meet you. And then a voice in my head said, ‘Ask him if he still feels that same way now.’ Even though I really couldn’t imagine why anyone would. How anyone could be that foolish. But the voice said to ask. So I’m asking. Because I’m sure he’d be better off here. That is, if you still feel that same way now.”
“Yes,” Nathan said. “I still feel that same way now.”
The boy’s eyes came up briefly when he said this, then flicked away again.
“Good. I have his things out in the car.”
“We’ll help you carry them in,” Nathan said. “Won’t we, Nathan?”
Ertha Bates didn’t linger. She did not appear to wish to discuss the issue further. There were no longing looks of regret. There was no sentimental goodbye. If she felt she would miss the boy she had raised as her own for fifteen years, she betrayed none of it.
As soon as they had unloaded the three suitcases and one laundry bag out on to the curb, she climbed back into her ancient brown sedan, accelerated with a faint screech of tires and drove away.
? ? ?