Free No Way Home by Andrew Coburn Page B

drive and came to a rest beside Papa’s battered pickup. The air rang with insects. The sun struck the pines and seemed to give each needle individuality. Climbing out, Morgan looked toward the house, but Papa’s voice echoed from another direction.
    “You want somethin’?”
    Papa was working beside the shed on an old three-speed bicycle, his tools scattered near his feet. The bicycle was upside down. He spun a wheel. Approaching him, Morgan said, “I brought your mail.”
    Papa’s arms hung short, and his face went small, to the point that he looked like a bird of prey. “Against the law to go into the box.”
    “Thought I was doing you a favor.”
    “You ain’t never done my family no favors and ain’t likely you will.” He took the mail without looking at it and jammed it into a back pocket of his rumpled pants, which once may have been part of a suit, though Morgan could not remember ever seeing him in one, not even at Eunice Rayball’s funeral long ago. “You here about the old thing, or is it somethin’ new?”
    “The old thing is history,” Morgan said.
    “But it’s still on your mind, ain’t it? All these years nosin’ ‘round ain’t got you nothin’.” The tone of voice was pugnacious, and the small eyes, blue like the flame of a welder’s torch, were shrewd and arrogant. “You and the old chief smirched my reputation.”
    “We were doing our jobs.”
    “If I believed in lawyers I’d’ve sued and be sittin’ pretty now.”
    Summer sounds from the swamp competed in intensity. Cicadas were the loudest. Morgan said, “Where’s Junior?”
    “Don’t know, off somewhere.” Papa spun the wheel again. “You here about what he did that time at the school? MacGregor had no call treatin’ him like he did.”
    “Officer MacGregor could’ve arrested him, probably should’ve.”
    “What good would that’ve done? Boy Junior’s age got no authority over his pecker.”
    “He’s no boy, he’s in his twenties.”
    “But he ain’t bright, so why make more of a fool of him? I know why MacGregor did it. He thinks he’s you.”
    High in the pines the sudden squawk of a crow sounded like the dissonant hooting of a toy horn. On the ground a dry leaf flipped itself over like a live thing. “Tell Junior I need to talk to him soon as possible.”
    “What are you blamin’ him for now?” Papa snatched up a small socket wrench and looked for nuts to tighten. Swiveling the rod of the kickstand, he wrenched one that did not need it. “He ain’t competent to be questioned. He could say anything, think it’s true.”
    “Straight answers won’t hurt him.”
    “You ain’t told me what it’s about yet.”
    Morgan turned and, treading over flat weeds, returned to his car, where black flies sketched the air. A breeze brought him the smell of fern and a taste of the swamp. With a deliberate turn, he looked back at Papa. “Can he handle a rifle?”
    “You know well as anybody I learned both my boys young. Clement, time he was ten, could shoot the eye out of a squirrel.”
    “How about Junior?”
    Papa’s gnarled face twitched, then was still. “You’re trying to put things in my mind don’t belong there.”
    “You got a rifle in the house?”
    “Old one that won’t work. You wanna look at it?”
    Morgan climbed into the car and peered out the open window. “That’s not the one I want.”
    “You wanna look up my ass?” Papa shouted. “Maybe you’ll find it there.”
    Averting his head, Morgan radioed Meg O’Brien and asked what was doing. Nothing much. Selectman Jackson had phoned, no message. Her voice clawed through static. She was worried about Matt MacGregor. “You don’t have to be,” he told her. She was alone in the station, she said. Bertha Skagg, her relief, whose ankles tended to swell, had called in sick. “I’ll be there shortly,” he said.
    “Where are you?” she asked with an edge.
    “In the woods,” he replied and switched off, for Papa had come to the car