The In-Between Hour. Barbara White Claypole
across the wrought-iron table, smashing an empty water glass to the concrete. A spill of shards spread.
Unwanted memories multiplied, images tumbled: Frederick and Cassandra in the car moments before it crashed; Will driving through the night to Hawk’s Ridge with news no grandfather should ever have to hear; his dad flailing and screaming before the security men pinned him down, before a nurse sedated him. And in the months that followed, a never-ending cycle of short-term memory loss and anger. The old man vented, forgot, repeated. Alcohol didn’t help.
“Freddie with his mama this week?”
Will ground his knuckle into his temple. “Yeah. He’s with his mama.” A half-truth that kicked him in the chest like a full lie.
Was this his dad’s new reality—living with a mind so broken that it found fault with the breakfast menu and yet erased family trauma? Would Will have to constantly torture his dad with the news that had felled them both? Certain sentences, no matter how brief, should never be repeated. Never. If his dad could forget the crash, could he, one day, forget Freddie?
“You tell Freddie’s mama to have him call his granddaddy.”
“I can’t!” Will didn’t mean to yell, really, really didn’t mean to yell, but he could hear Cassandra taunting him: So, William. You’re a father. She always called him William, pronouncing it Willi-amm, treating his name the way she treated life—with a wild exaggeration that had led only to tragedy. A scene flashed—an illusion. A little boy and his mother caught between realms of life and death. Traveling from the plane of existence to a blank page of nothing. “I can’t because...they’re traveling.”
Shallow, jagged breaths stabbed his throat. Blood thundered around his skull; a frenzy of lights exploded across his vision. Airway closing; heart fluttering; pulse yo-yoing.
Will sucked in oxygen with a whooshing sound, then exhaled quietly. He would reduce everything to the skills that enabled him to scale a rock face with his hands and his feet and his mind. He would focus on nothing but finding balance in this moment in time, on finding a good, solid hold.
“I...I don’t remember, Willie. I...I can’t remember stuff.”
This, too, was part of the daily roller coaster. The realization that his grizzly bear of a dad had become a featherless fledgling fallen from the nest. Will could end the conversation right now. Make some excuse and get off the phone. But what was the chance his dad would remember any of this? Zero. Tomorrow would bring a fresh memory wipe. Tomorrow, Will’s computer screen would still swirl with patterns, not words. Tomorrow, his five-year-old son would still be dead.
“Where, Willie? Where they travelin’?”
Will stared up at the blinking lights of a jet floating across the black sky, carrying families toward new memories. He’d never taken Freddie on a plane, but he’d planned their first trip in his mind. Europe, they were going to Europe as soon as Freddie was old enough to appreciate the art, the architecture, the history.
“Europe.” Will swallowed hard. “Listen, I’ve gotta go. Get some sleep and we’ll talk tomorrow.”
“Okay, son. Okay.”
Will whispered, “Good night, old man.”
But the line was dead.
* * *
Will scooped up his laptop and walked back into his empty apartment. Out in the hallway, the elevator dinged. A couple passed his front door, stabbing each other with words. The woman would win the fight. She was the one setting the tempo, as Cassandra had done. He’d never figured out why, eighteen months after their affair fizzled, Cass contacted him to suggest he meet the son he hadn’t known existed until that very moment. As an heiress she didn’t need child support, and the ground rules were set from the beginning: Freddie’s my son; you’re not listed on the birth certificate; you see him if and when I decide.
He should have fought for his son.
“Munchkin, I’m sorry,” Will said.
Sorry for not keeping you safe. Sorry for being a coward.
His cowardice slid out as easily as the fast and furious plots that had made him a thirty-four-year-old literary powerhouse. Corporation Will Shepard careened from success to success, despite the fact that its CEO had been writing-by-numbers for years. When fans looked at him, they saw nothing but the glitter of achievement, which was the way his staff tweeted and scripted his life. Everything was about creating the cardboard cutout.
Only fatherhood was real.
He’d been a good dad—patient, fun, firm. Although there had been a few too many online purchases from FAO Schwarz. Not that he was trying to buy Freddie’s love. He’d just wanted Freddie to have everything Will himself had never had. But not in the material sense. A young kid should believe that he was the center of his dad’s universe. Because once you realized your happiness mattered to no one but you, life was a slalom ride through loblolly pines—until you crashed into the revelation that all your relationships were severely messed up. Except for fatherhood. From day one, he’d cleared out space physically and psychologically for his son.
Freddie looked at Will—all five feet seven inches of him—and saw a dragon slayer! The invincible hero! A storyteller who could answer the only question that mattered: “What happened next, Daddy?”
Will placed his laptop in the middle of his desk and stared at the drawing on the wall. Two colorful stickmen—one big, one small—were holding hands and celebrating the day they met. March 30. “Happy Our Day,” Freddie had said, jumping up and down. “Mommy helped me pick out the frame in a huge store. Huuuuuge!”
Not so long ago, Will had believed that if his apartment were on fire, he would risk everything to save his laptop. But now it contained nothing more than a stalled-out, unnamed manuscript, and his only possession worth saving was Freddie’s drawing.
Will flopped onto his leather sofa and covered his eyes with his right arm. Storytelling had always been his escape and his shield. His last line of defense against the truth. And for the first time in his life, he was without a story.
* * *
Jacob twisted his hands around the phone. Some thought—just out of reach.
Where you hidin’, thought?
It were warm in his room, too warm. All summer, it been too cold. Most non-Carolina folk didn’t understand how to live, wanted to be sealed up all nice and tight with air-conditionin’. He and Angeline never had no air-conditionin’. No sir. And now it were too hot. Couldn’t even manage his own goddamn heat. But them dickheads, they couldn’t control him. They could take away his bird call and try to take away his Wild Turkey—if they could find it. But they didn’t know what they was in for, ’cos Jacob Shepard, Jr., eighty years old with a mind shot to shit, were gonna fight.
“Ha,” he said, liked the way it sounded and repeated it. “Ha!”
If only he were outside sittin’ by a fire, punchin’ it with a stick. He’d use hickory on that thing, make it nice and toasty. That were his kind of heat.
Jacob threw the phone on his bed, his narrow only-for-one bed, and heaved open his window. No moonlight tonight, no stars. No owl to call to. No trains. When Angeline disappeared into one of her spells, he would listen for the rumblin’ and the whistlin’ of the trains—sounds as soothin’ as real heavy rain on a tin roof.
He inhaled the night. Couldn’t see the forest, but it were out there, waitin’. He could smell cedar. Sweetest smell in the world. You burn that stuff and mmm-hmm, fannnntastic. He made a smudge once that were just plum cedar dust. Willie used to love that. Said it were like Christmas all over again.
A man could suffocate in this shithole of a hotel. Stank of bleach and death. ’Course that could be part of the plan to hurry the inmates along their journey to the spirit world. Death were comin’ faster than it should, thanks to them dickheads.
Freddie