I nodded.
“There was something about him, I don’t know. He was looking for something in his life, anything, to care about, to believe in, to belong to, and I wanted to be that for him, but it was hard, when I hardly had any money, and a little boy to raise. But when I moved back, and Morton came to visit, I think he found some of those things he’d been looking for. We were like a community for him, I think. He really got to know my father, listened to what he had to say, and I think he was kind of going along with it. About how all these special interest groups were hijacking the country, you know, about the fags and the niggers and the liberal elite and the Jews and the Muslims. But lately, it’s like Morton was getting uncomfortable with it. I tried to get him to talk to me, but he was all wrapped up with himself, like he was struggling with something, like he was ashamed, or had this awful secret.”
“What kind of secret?” I asked.
May shrugged. “I don’t know. But I think he wanted my father to like him, because he loved me, and he liked Jeffrey, too. Jeffrey was warming to him, too, I could tell. Morton used to just visit every few weeks, but the last couple of months, he stayed with us, said he was going to find work up here, but Daddy said to him, don’t worry, he could work around the place, do some things for him. And now…”
“What do you think happened to Morton?” I asked.
May blinked. “What do you mean?”
“The whole bear thing.”
She wrapped her hands around the mug again, leaned in. “What are you saying?”
“I don’t know,” I said, backtracking, wondering whether to go there. “I mean, are you satisfied with the coroner’s finding, that he was killed by a bear?”
She swallowed. “I’m not sure.”
“Why?”
“Because, I don’t know, because everyone’s trying so hard to make me believe it was a bear. Dad and Charlene’s boys, after this all happened, and they found Morton, they say Morton was talking about getting this bear, that he didn’t want it going after Jeffrey, that he was going to kill it.”
“Did that seem odd to you?”
She looked down into her cup. “Morton never once mentioned any bear to me. I’ve never seen one, I don’t think anyone has ever seen one. If they have, they never talked about it until that day that they found Morton. I mean, I know there must be bears up here, but there are wolves and deer and everything else, too, but how often do you actually see them?”
“Anything else?” Lana said, appearing out of nowhere. “There’s still a piece of that coconut cream pie left if you want it. I wouldn’t breathe a word about you having two pieces in one day.”
“No, thanks, that’s everything, Lana.”
She tore a check off a pad and slapped it on the table.
“Why are you telling me all this?” I asked.
May’s eyes moistened. “For my son,” she said. “Would you want to see a boy raised this way, on a daily diet of racism and hate?”
“Why don’t you leave?” I asked. “Just get in your car with Jeffrey and keep on driving.”
May swallowed. “Because he’d find us. He and Charlene, and those boys of hers. They’d find us. And they’d make us come back. Daddy said to me once, he said, ‘Don’t you go thinking about leaving, May,’ he said, ‘unless you’re happy to leave Jeffrey behind.’ ”
I realized that my heart was pounding. “He threatened to hold your son.”
May bit her lip. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I guess, I took a chance telling you because you might have some idea.”
I had no idea whatsoever. The best idea I could come up with was to run back to the city as quickly as I could. To leave all these problems behind. Dad got himself into this mess, renting that house to the Wickenses, and he could just find a way out of it.
But looking into May Wickens’s face, I knew I couldn’t succumb to my first instinct to cut and run.
“Let me think about this,” I said, tossing a couple of bills onto the table. “Right now, I have to get Dad back—”
“Oh my God,” May said. “What time is it?”
I glanced at my watch. I told her it was nearly noon.
“I have to go,” she said, her voice laced with panic. She shifted out to the edge of the seat, and as she did her sleeve caught on a chip in the tabletop. There was a red welt on her arm, a couple of inches above her wrist.
“Did you hurt yourself?” I asked.
She quickly pulled down her sleeve. “It’s nothing,” she said. She got out of the booth and headed for the door, with me right behind. “He’ll start looking for us if we’re gone too long,” she said. “I’ve got to get Jeffrey and—”
Timmy Wickens was standing outside the café door, looking inside at us, and he was clutching the hand of young Jeffrey, who stood obediently at his side.
15