Wild Man Creek

Five




Denny peeled the cap off his head as he walked into Jack’s Bar.

“Well now,” Jack said brightly. “How goes the chasing of fame and fortune?”

“Fame?” Denny asked with a laugh. “I hope not!”

“The job search? Didn’t you have interviews today?” Without being asked, Jack served him up a beer.

“Two. Stocking and loading dock for a big grocer and some ranch work clear on the other side of the valley— Ferndale—where they have six hundred people and sixty thousand cows.”

Jack laughed. “See any potential in either one?”

“Oh, the grocer is going to make me president of the company pretty quick if I just jump on board and work my tail off for minimum.” He sipped his beer. “When have I heard that before? I’m just as glad.”

“Glad?”

Denny shrugged. “I know it’s only temporary, but I like what I’m doing for Jillian. I’m busy every minute, the pay is good and did you know she talks all the time?”

Jack laughed. “Why does that not surprise me?”

“It’s not chatter, exactly—she talks about growing, about the interesting varieties of fruits and vegetables you hardly ever see that her great-grandmother used to grow, that she brought from the old country. Plus I do so many different things—sometimes I chop trees or build greenhouses and sometimes I poke little tiny seeds into little cups of dirt. And then Jillian describes what will happen to those seeds, step by step, talking about the acidity of the soil, the ground temperature, the altitude, how everything plays together…and I’d kinda hate to miss it.”

“How long do you think she’ll keep you on?” Jack asked him.

“No telling,” he said with a shrug. “We’re almost caught up with work for now. But she’s got a lot of growing going on and, if I know her, she’s going to put up a couple more greenhouses. She’s talking about it. There’s room in that meadow. She’ll have to heat ’em, irrigate ’em, and once the fall and winter come…who knows what will be involved. She’s been talking about seeing some grow lights in her future.” He took another swallow of his beer. “Sounds like she might be renting awhile. You okay with that?”

Jack shrugged. “I’m not going to find a buyer next winter unless things change in this economy by a lot. And she’s keeping the place nice and paying the bills.”

“Good,” Denny said. “I’m kind of getting into this….”

“Have you told her that, son?” Jack asked.

Denny got a startled look on his face. Then he answered, simply, “No.”

“You should let her in on the secret. Tell her you’re enjoying the work. Can’t hurt. Might help.”

“Yeah… Might…” He cleared his throat. “I did get some good news today. The Sheriff’s Department will be hiring in three to six months. I have my app in at all the law enforcement and fire departments.”

“Good for you!”

“Oh, by the way, I didn’t have to go to Jillian’s at all today so I drove out to your place and did a few things around the yard—picked up the dog doo and ran the lawnmower around the grassy area. I cut under the play set, edged around the slide and legs and under the jungle gym.”

Jack whistled. “That must’ve taken forever.”

“Slow and steady,” Denny said.

Jack gave the bar a wipe. “You know you don’t have to do that, Denny. I really appreciate it, but I don’t expect it.”

“You let me stay there rent-free for two months, right up to Christmas! I’ll be a long time paying that back.”

“There’s no debt,” Jack said. “Apparently it’s the smartest thing I’ve ever done—there’s been a lot of free labor. How are things going down at the Fitch house?”

“Great. That room over the garage is perfect, all the privacy I want, no one to clock in with, nice folks. Mrs. Fitch is trying to replace all the girlie, flowery stuff in the room with manly stuff,” he said with a grin. “I told her that doesn’t matter. She must be worried about my sexual preference.”

“I think I’m worried about it,” Jack joked. “You getting out much at all?”

“I took out a girl named Mindy a few times. She’s a waitress at a restaurant up in Arcata—nice girl. We had fun, then her ex-boyfriend turned up. I should’a just killed him. I’m on the hunt again.”

“Be careful, buddy,” Jack said. Jack looked around to be sure they weren’t overheard. “And what about that other matter? The one that brought you up here? The search for your biological father?”

“Hmm,” Denny said. “I’m pretty sure I found him. I’m just moving real slow. It shouldn’t come as any surprise—he’s married with a family. I don’t want to mess up his situation.”

“Is he a good guy? I know that was high on your list of concerns.”

“Very good guy as far as I can tell. I’ve gotten to know him some. He has no idea who I might be, so there’s no pressure there. There is one thing I hadn’t counted on—I’m kind of committed to this place now. No matter how the guy reacts to me, I feel like staying here.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem, son. There’s plenty of room here for everyone. So maybe you and the old man won’t ever be best buddies, but isn’t it enough if you at least know about each other, accept each other, get along? Hell, what if you need a kidney someday?”

Denny laughed. “You sure do have a practical side, Jack. I hope he doesn’t ask me for an organ right after I break it to him.”

Jack grinned. “You never know. Maybe he’s been patiently waiting for the day! You want dinner?”

“Not tonight. I’m headed over to Fortuna to meet Mindy’s possible replacement for a fish dinner.” He lifted a brow. “My first question will be whether there’s a boyfriend in her recent past.”

“Good luck with that.”

Denny drained his beer, headed out the door and left Jack thinking, What a good kid. And, not for the first time, he thought how glad he was Denny happened into his bar. They’d become pretty good friends. Since his young protégé, Rick, was now married to his teenage sweetheart, Liz, and in college full-time in Oregon Jack didn’t see him too often, just when he had enough time to come back to town to check on his elderly grandmother. They emailed and talked on the phone regularly, but Jack had been missing the presence of a good-natured young man. After having taken on so many young Marines in his career, it was natural for Jack. In fact, Denny was only a couple of years older than Rick and he reminded Jack of him in many ways.

The bar was very busy for a late-March evening; it seemed like a lot of his friends had chosen this night to have dinner together and most of the neighborhood stopped by. Jack was able to have dinner with Mel and the kids as long as he ate in short shifts between serving tables and bussing them. His brother-in-law, Mike, spent a little time behind the bar, pouring drafts and drinks; Mike was a more than adequate stand-in bartender and the cost of his labor was right—totally free. Being a small farming and ranching town that kept early hours, by eight-thirty there were only a few stragglers left and Jack helped out in the kitchen a little bit. By nine he was starting to envision his house, quiet with the kids in bed, his wife relaxed and sitting up with her laptop, writing emails or surfing the Net, researching, reading medical blogs. He loved going home to his family at night.

The door opened and Denny walked in, scrubbing that ball cap off his head. “Oh-oh,” Jack said. “Does this mean Mindy’s potential replacement didn’t answer the question right? The recent-boyfriend question?”

“Nah, that went fine. Her name is Crystal, by the way.” He shrugged. “Nice enough girl. No bells went off, though.”

“I was just about to pour that end-of-day shot,” Jack said. “Can I get you something?”

“Maybe I’ll join you,” Denny said. “I know you’re a Scotch man. Make mine Canadian, will you?”

Jack got the glasses ready. “You act like maybe the date didn’t go so well.” He reached for a bottle and because it was Denny, made it a good Canadian.

“Date was fine. I just had something on my mind so if it wasn’t perfect, I have no one to blame but myself.”

“What’s up?” Jack asked.

Denny took a breath. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this. Some of it I told you when I came up here last fall—about looking for my father. And—that my mom’s boyfriend’s name is on my birth certificate, but he took off when I was about seven or ten or something. He came and went a few times before he went for good and after that last time, I only talked to him if I made the contact. Me and my mom…we weren’t sorry to see him go. You know all that….”

“What’s wrong, son?”

Another deep breath. “My mom’s name was Susan Cutler. Ring any bells with you, Jack?”

“Did I know her?” he asked.

“For just a little while. You dated her for a couple of months back when you were at Fort Pendleton. I guess you were about twenty.”

“If I was twenty and at Fort Pendleton and dated your mother, I didn’t see much of her,” Jack said. “I imagine I’d have been in training there.”

“Sounds about right. You were just a couple of kids, younger than me.” He pulled an old and worn envelope out of the inside of his jacket pocket. “She had a hard time talking about when she was young. She always felt like she let me down. She never married, exposed me to a father figure who was a pure jackass, ended up raising me alone. She didn’t let me down—my mom was awesome. But, since she had trouble looking me in the eye and talking about it, she wrote me this letter. Then we talked about it. Would you read it?”

Jack lifted a brow. “You really want me to?”

“It’s not very long. Yeah, I’d like you to read it.” He put it on the bar and pushed it toward him.

Jack locked eyes with him as he pulled the envelope over. He wasn’t sure he liked where this was going. He opened it and read,

Denny, my dearest,

We both know this cancer is not going away, that it’s only a matter of time, and there’s something I have to tell you, but it’s so hard for me I’m putting the facts in a letter and then, if you want to, we can talk about it.

When I was twenty, I fell in love. Oh, I truly did, but I made the mistake of falling in love with a twenty-year-old Marine who was shipping out in a couple of months and didn’t want any commitments. He was good to me, a wonderful young man with a nice family, and we had a real good time together. We laughed so much! He was so kind and tender, but also strong and fearless. And as I was warned, he left. He told me from the first time he held my hand—there was an expiration date on our romance.

I was pretty brokenhearted, but I started dating Bob, also a Marine at the time, but not the best man in the world. I realized after a few weeks that I was pregnant and I knew Bob wasn’t the father. I’m sorry, Denny—I lied to you all these years because I was ashamed and sorry; also because I was afraid of what Bob would do to us if he knew I lied to him. The finest man I ever knew left, I never tried to find him because we had an agreement—no commitments. I let Bob and you think that Bob was your father. So… We know how Bob turned out—not only a bad example, but a poor excuse for a man—abusive, mean, unfaithful. The day he left for good was probably our best day. And now I feel like I’m failing you with this awful cancer. Denny, I’m not afraid to die, I’m just afraid to leave you with questions, and thinking you have a father with scary DNA you can’t be proud of! The truth is, Bob was not your father. Your father’s name is Jack Sheridan. I don’t know where he ended up or what became of him, but you can believe you did have a father you could be proud of.



There was more to the letter, but Jack let his hand drop to the bar while he stared, wide-eyed and openmouthed at Denny. He looked him straight on and said, in his Jack way, “Are you shitting me?”

Denny paled. “No, sir. You’re the guy I came to find.”

“Are we sure?” he asked.

“After the letter,” Denny said, “we talked about it. She was a young girl, but girls that age think they know everything—her words, not mine. She worked at Camp Pendleton. She got that job to meet guys, she said, but ended up working there for about ten years, a civilian employee. But she said she didn’t screw around. She liked to go out, go dancing, go to movies, parties, that kind of thing. I have some pictures,” he said, going back into that pocket. “She was so pretty.” He passed the pictures across the bar.

Jack frowned. She didn’t look twenty in the pictures, but older than that. He said nothing, just waited for Denny.

“She said when she met you, she just lost it. Totally fell for you, but you had some orders pending and said you could only date if it was understood…”

Jack shook his head sadly. “That sure sounds like Jack Sheridan….” He looked at the photos. Both of them were studio portraits taken with a much younger Denny. She was an attractive brunette with a sweet smile and a handsome little son. He wanted to bang his head on the bar. She looked vaguely familiar but he couldn’t remember her. He wanted to remember her so much he ached inside.

“She told me about your parents—your dad was some kind of stock broker or something. And your four sisters—two older, two younger and the little one still in grade school. But the part that embarrassed her and kept her from being honest with me—she started dating Bob right away after you left because she was so lonely and so heartbroken with you gone. And she realized she was pregnant and Bob couldn’t be the father by a month.” He shook his head. “She said there was no one else, Jack. And I know she was my mom, but I believe her anyway.”

“Denny, when I was twenty, I was at Pendleton for a few months. I remember dating a girl named Ginger for a while, but I was all caught up in the Corps. Ginger broke it off with me because I wouldn’t think serious.” He shrugged. “There might’ve been a couple of girls here and there, but I don’t remember any who could’ve been in love….”

“I know what being twenty in the Marines is like, Jack.”

Jack didn’t read the rest of the letter. He slid it across the bar toward Denny. “You’ve been up here for months,” Jack said.

“Yeah. It took me a while to get to know you, then I had to be sure the truth wouldn’t make your life harder, then… Then there was the time it took to get up the courage. Because once I let it out, I couldn’t take it back. You know?”

Jack lifted his shot and threw it back. With shot glass in hand, he pointed at Denny’s drink. “You’d better drink that, son.”

Denny lifted the drink, but paused. “Look, I get it if you say this isn’t the happiest day of your life.”

Jack scowled. “Drink,” he said. When Denny put down the glass Jack said, “Any man would be proud to have you for a son. Any man, me included. I’m just having a real hard time with the facts, with knowing what kind of man I was, that I’d scare a woman off telling me she’s pregnant because I can’t be bothered with the responsibility. And I’m having a real goddamn hard time thinking I had the kind of relationship that would bring me a son and… And I can’t remember her.”

Jack leaned on the bar. “Accidents happen all the time, Denny, but I gotta be honest with you—I was careful. Not stupid careful—I was always armed with protection. When you talked to your mother, did she say anything like that we knew there was a problem? Like a blowout or something?”

“I couldn’t get into that with her, Jack. She was my mother. And she was sick.”

Jack felt his chest go tight. Here he was thinking about himself when this kid had discovered one man was not his father and another was—all when his mother was dying! And he was thinking about whether his condom had a hole in it? “What kind of cancer, Denny?”

“Breast, then it spread. She was so young, she didn’t get checked, didn’t get good medical care. It was an aggressive cancer. We spent five years beating it back then it would pop up somewhere else, then more chemo, then a few good months that looked promising, then— Thing is, she couldn’t beat it. And she wanted me to have the truth before she died.” Denny swallowed. “We don’t have to tell anyone, Jack.”

Jack just shook his head. “That’s not the important thing, Denny. It’s not about keeping it a secret….” He shook his head. “There are some truths about me, son—one of ’em is that until I met Mel, I hadn’t met a woman I was tempted to settle down with, to start a family with, but I never thought of myself as cruel. Maybe I’ve just been lying to myself about that. There must have been a reason your mom wasn’t brave enough to look for me, to tell me about you….”

“Lots of reasons,” Denny said. “She never blamed you. She was with a guy who thought I was his and he wasn’t a nice guy. He never even married her. I can’t think of a thing my mom ever did that was bad or wrong, but he slapped her around anyway. She was too scared of him to tell the truth, to break free and try to find you. By the time he was out of the picture, too many years had passed.”

“It never once occurred to me to tell a woman that even if I didn’t feel like being married, I could be responsible…” Jack’s voice faded out.

“Soldiers, Marines, they do things like that,” Denny said. “I did that. I was with a girl right before Afghanistan and I told her I didn’t want to be worrying about attachments while I was—”

Jack put a hand over his forearm. “Denny, even if I couldn’t have been a husband, I could have been a father. I should have been supporting you, knowing you, teaching you. Not easy for a Marine, a single Marine at that, but I would have liked to have tried. At the least, I could have been there for you when you were losing your mother. I could have been waiting for you to come home from war.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, son. I’m sorry I didn’t know. But I know now.”

Denny smiled. “Hey. I don’t expect anything. I just wanted to know you, that’s all. Really, I didn’t think I’d be this lucky, to find out you’re a guy I actually like, a guy I’d want for a friend even if there wasn’t any other connection. But Jack, you don’t have to do anything. I like things the way they are.” He grinned boyishly. “I don’t need a kidney or anything. I can support myself just fine.”

Jack poured another couple of shots. “I usually limit myself to one, but it’s a big night. You should move back out to the guesthouse if you want. Rent free, of course.”

“What I want is to take care of myself. It’s what I’d want to do even if you’d been around the past twenty-four years. In fact, from what I know of you so far, I bet it’s what you would have raised me to do.”

Jack lifted his glass. “You’re probably right about that.”

Right at that moment Preacher came into the bar from the kitchen. “I’m gonna have to learn to wash up faster if I want company for that shot,” he said. “You’re getting ahead of me.”

“Let me pour you one,” Jack said. “Wait till you hear the news. Uncle Preacher.”



Mel sat cross-legged on the king-size bed, her laptop pushed to the side, while Jack paced and talked, telling her the story Denny had told him. He would periodically stop pacing, bend at the waist and lean both hands on the bed and add something emphatic. Dramatic. Then he’d pace again.

“Unbelievable,” she finally said. “Then again, not. There’s even a slight resemblance. But then, I took Rick for your son when I first met him. How many more of them do you think are out there?” she asked.

“Do you think you’re being funny?”

“Um, not really,” she said. “I thought I was being a little concerned.”

“Listen, I’m telling you the absolute truth when I say that this is the last thing I expected to hear. I was seriously very, very cautious. I got an A in biology. I didn’t take chances.”

“Till you got to me?” she asked.

“Frankly, yes! You were entirely different! I was completely in love with you! I wanted to be with you forever! I totally lost my mind!”

“Could you please not raise your voice? First of all, I didn’t do this to you and second, the kids are sleeping.”

He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Sorry. Sorry.”

“Jack, condoms aren’t a hundred percent. Sometimes there’s a malfunction—a little hole, a leak, a tear. And, as we’ve proven, you’re pretty potent. Are you worried you’re going to be getting more news like this?”

“Not so much that.” He sat down on the bed. “Mel, I can admit to playing it kind of loose when I was young and there was the occasional real short-term relationship…. Not as many as you might think. But either I’m getting old and losing my memory or I was only with Denny’s mom once or maybe twice. Mel, my girlfriends, such as they were, might not have always been memorable, but I don’t remember Denny’s mom at all. She looks kind of familiar, but I can’t tie her to a single date, event, conversation, anything. And yet, she told Denny all about my family! Not the kind of stuff I share with a girl I’ve been out with once or twice.”

“Denny was around over the holidays, Jack. I’m sure you talked about your family all the time.”

He shook his head. “She told him I had a little sister still in grade school. We must have been close—when I was twenty, Brie was only ten. And she took me being in the Marines real hard.”

“Maybe you were drunk,” Mel said with a shrug.

He straightened. “As a well-known fact, personally and across the board, I didn’t have much sexual success when drunk. I did, however, have blissful memory loss.”

“Maybe it’ll all come back to you. But Jack, are you sure this information is accurate? I mean, maybe the person who’s not remembering real well was Denny’s mom. Although…”

“Although…?” he prompted.

“I have to say, my experience is that women generally know who got them pregnant, unless there were multiple partners in a very tight period of time. Men seem to be more prone to blow off the average encounter while most women take these things very seriously.”

“I know this,” he said. “I know men and women look at things like sex differently and, I admit, I can’t remember the phone number of every woman I slept with, but that letter said she was in love with me. That she fell hard. It happened a time or two—that a woman’s feelings for me were stronger than mine for her, and when that happened, I had to move along before someone got hurt real bad. I have four sisters. I listened to them wail and cry over some dipshit boy who led them on then disappeared, just took what he could get and didn’t call again. I wasn’t going to do that to a girl, so I bit the bullet and broke it off. And when I had to do that it wasn’t easy and I remember every one.”

Mel pulled a face. “I have to give you credit for that, Jack. It’s rare. Most guys would rather leave the country than have an honest conversation about their feelings.”

“Don’t overpraise me. I’m not sure I did a good job of it, but I did fess up that I wouldn’t turn out to be a good boyfriend, that there was no future in me. Hell, I loved the Marines—there really wasn’t room for one other woman in my life.”

“Except your sisters,” she pointed out.

“Yeah, well I was stuck with them,” he said. “Do you have any idea how much I don’t want to tell my dad about this?” He covered his face with his hands, leaning elbows on his knees.

“Well, Jack, given the fact you don’t remember Denny’s mom or the period of time he was conceived, before you tell the whole family and the whole town, I recommend you get a little evidence more concrete than a posthumous letter. You two need to do a little blood test. Make sure you’re related.”

Jack looked devastated. “Aw, Mel, I can’t do that to the kid. Think of all he’s been through. And I’ve known him coming up on six months now and he’s a good young man. Can I really question his dying mother’s confession without hurting him?”

“If you’d gotten this letter a year after he was conceived asking for your involvement and support and didn’t remember being with the mother, wouldn’t you, in the kindest possible way, say you were completely willing, but a blood test would be in the best interest of everyone involved?”

“That would be obvious after only a year,” he said. “The man is twenty-four. He’s lived for this moment. I’ve already disappointed him for a couple of decades. I don’t want to question him even more.”

“I appreciate that and I like him very much. But, Jack, it’s not all about Denny. There’s you, too. And then there’s David and Emma….”

“David and Emma don’t care whether there’s a blood test….”

“They might if they ever need a bone marrow transplant.”

“If there’s ever a medical situation, believe me we’ll jump right on that blood work.”

“Well, this is your situation,” Mel said. “I’m just along for the ride and I have no trouble accepting Denny as your son. Honestly, I have no trouble accepting Rick as your son, though you don’t share a single chromosome—I think of him as a son, too. I was ready to adopt a baby that wouldn’t be ours biologically and I never doubted for a second that we’d love him as much as our own biological children. Jack—keep an open mind. Your relationship with Denny doesn’t have to change. Even though you didn’t bring him up it’s obvious you care about him—no blood test would change that. But it would lend evidence to the claim.” She shrugged. “Could give you both enormous peace of mind.”

Jack was quiet for a long time. Finally he said, “I’ll keep it in mind. But I know now is not the time.”