“I can understand that.”
“But he can be very forceful, you know? But I tried to make a go of it for a very long time, and it was hard, raising a small boy, getting jobs. And I’d no sooner get a job, it seemed, and then I’d lose it. About three years ago, I met this man named Gary. Gary Wolverton. A really wonderful man, and, we, you know, we became close. The thing is, he wanted to be a writer, a newspaper reporter? Like you? He cared about the way the world was, and wanted to write about things that were wrong and what could be done about it. Well, like I said, we were close, and he seemed to really like Jeffrey, which was terrific, because I so wanted a father for him. But Daddy, it was like he thought he should be Jeffrey’s father figure. I mean, he’s his grandfather, and that’s great, but he wanted to be the main influence. Am I making any sense?”
“Sure,” I said.
“So, Daddy made it very difficult when Gary and I decided to get married. Daddy figured I’d never come back home then.”
“Well, of course not,” I said. “You’re entitled to make a life of your own.”
May Wickens paused, took another sip of coffee. “Anyway, something happened. There was this accident? Gary was crossing the street, this was a couple blocks from where I lived in the city, we weren’t actually living together yet, but he was coming to see me, and he’d stopped to get some wine, and that was when the car hit him.”
“Oh my God,” I said.
“It was one of the crazy things. A hit-and-run. He died instantly.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Did they arrest anyone?”
May shook her head. “No, they never did. They figured it was some drunk driver.” She paused at the memory. “I took it bad, but so did Jeffrey, he really loved Gary. I tried to make a go of it, alone, and my father was really pressuring me then to come back and live with them, by this time he’d hooked up with Charlene and her boys, Dougie and Wendell. My stepbrothers, I guess, sort of. Anyway, he wanted me to move in with this new family of his, this was before we moved to your dad’s farmhouse. And I really didn’t want to, but I kept losing jobs. Things would be going great, and then they’d call me in and tell me I was fired.”
“This happened a lot?”
“Like, three times in one year. I’d get accused of stealing, or they’d just fire me and wouldn’t give any reason. I have, like, the worst luck.”
“That’s really tough.”
“So I had no money, and I couldn’t make my rent, and Daddy kept telling me to come home, and finally, I really didn’t have any other choice. I don’t know, he finally wore me down. Jeffrey was nearly eight, I had to pull him out of school, and we moved in with Daddy, and he wouldn’t even let me send him to a new school. He said we could look after that ourselves, that the schools were run by these secret societies and everything that wanted to brainwash children. And I realized, having been away for so long, how much I’d forgotten about what my father was like, the things he believes, the things he thinks need to be done.”
She tried her coffee again. It had cooled down enough for her to take a sip.
“What sort of things does he think need to be done?” I asked. Even though it was warm enough in the café, I felt a brief chill at the memory of the McVeigh portrait hanging on Timmy Wickens’s wall.
“Daddy wants a revolution. All these forces of darkness, he calls them, have to be stopped. Ordinary people have to rise up and stop the corruption of our society.”
“What does that mean?”
“He doesn’t, he doesn’t talk to me as much about it. He talks to Dougie and Wendell, his little soldiers. They’re on this mission. They hang on his every word.” She looked down at the table. “And Jeffrey’s starting to, too. I see how he looks up to them.”
She linked her fingers together, entwining them so hard I thought they might snap.
“What about Morton?” I asked. “Was he on this mission, too?”
“I met Morton in the city about the time I decided to move back in with Daddy. He waited tables at this coffee place I would go to, and he’d been bouncing from job to job, he was kind of a lost puppy, you know what I mean?”