Chapter 7: A BUCKET OF WORMS
Although angry gray clouds were being propelled by a blustery wind, no rain had yet fallen. Jesse held open the doors to his mother's Captiva SUV as the womenfolk piled in to embark on their all-day shopping trip. They were to pick up Hazel along the way. Then he did the same for Miz Bee and Denise, the maid who was accompanying her as dogsbody on a grocery-shopping foray. He watched from the parking area as both vehicles receded down the drive. Retreating through the side door into the garage, he reentered the house via the west hallway, hesitating as he passed the closed door to his father's study. No... he wasn't quite ready to beard the lion in his den.
Walking on, Jesse went through the lounge and past the foot of the staircase to the east hallway, pausing at the laundry room. Beyond its closed door someone was softly singing some sort of mournful ballad. On a whim he opened the door...
Both the washer and dryer were engaged and the other maid—Violet, he recalled—was standing at the ironing board. His appearance caught her by surprise and she stopped singing, holding the iron aloft, her eyes wide as a deer caught in headlights. She was a mousy little thing with an explosion of curly blue-black hair she wore pulled back with an elastic band as she went about her duties efficiently but silently, almost invisibly. He realized they'd not had occasion to speak with each other since his arrival, also noting—not for the first time—a passing resemblance to his sister Julia, though not as pretty.
"Sorry... didn't mean to startle you. I heard you singing and just wanted to say you have a lovely voice..."
The girl gravely considered this statement before answering. "Thank you. Is there something I can do for you, sir?" Clearly she wasn't inclined to strike up a conversation.
"No... nothing at all. Sorry I interrupted." Jesse withdrew, closing the door gently and proceeding down the hall into the pool enclosure where he sat in one of the patio chairs, marshalling his thoughts. He had a mission to execute...
If only...
If only his eldest daughter'd chosen some other summer camp... if only she hadn't met that particular young man... if only she hadn't chosen that particular university... if only his wife hadn't got interested in genealogy—and… if only, forty-something years ago, his father hadn't yielded to temptation...
But Dad had... and now the piper had to be paid. Jesse'd been choreographing his approach for days and was no closer to finding an easy way to disseminate potentially catastrophic news than the day he'd first heard about it. But it had to be done… and, for the time being, the conversation he was about to have with his father required utmost privacy.
Lurching to his feet, Jesse left the pool house and surreptitiously padded back through the hall and upstairs to the gallery. He tiptoed to the end of the corridor and put his ear to the door of DoDo's suite, through which he could hear her television going at low volume. Good. That meant she was safely engrossed in one of her beloved soap operas. Judging by the immense pile of laundry awaiting attention, that Violet would be immured in the laundry room for some time to come. With only the four of them left in the house, it was eerily quiet. Back downstairs, Jesse approached with trepidation the door to his father's study, patting his shirt pocket in which reposed an eight-gig flash drive containing information which was going to alter the Ross family dynamic in ways no one could have foreseen in his or her wildest dreams.
Jesse paused to rally his wits and gather his courage. The unwritten dictum 'Never ever disturb Daddy in his study' had been thoroughly instilled in all four children. Finally, he knocked. "Dad... it's me..."
"Come."
Jesse entered to see his father sitting at his desk, almost hidden behind the twenty-seven inch monitor of the iMac Dora'd bought him for his birthday—far more computing power than he was ever likely to need or even learn how to use, but that huge screen sure made for easier reading, Steve'd admitted.
Steve smiled at his firstborn, his eldest son, remembering how overwhelmed he'd been when that yowling red scrap of humanity was first placed in his arms. He'd thought at the time that he'd never again experience that level of wonderment and joy. But he had, of course—two years later when Julia'd arrived and then the twins.
"I'm not interrupting anything, am I?" Jesse asked tentatively.
"No. Not at all. Glad of the company. Make yourself comfortable." Steve nodded toward the visitor armchair positioned alongside the desk. "What's on your mind?"
"I... um... we need to talk..."
"Oh?"
Jesse carefully closed the door behind him. Before seating himself, he extracted the flash drive and laid it down on the polished walnut surface. Steve's eyes went from the tiny cranberry-colored rectangle of plastic with its miniature lanyard back to his son, who was wearing that apprehensive face he used to bring home from school along with a notice of failing marks or bad behavior.
"You're looking very serious for this early in the day..." he commented mildly.
"It's a serious subject..." Jesse rubbed his jaw in unconscious imitation of one of his father's mannerisms. "I'm not sure where to begin."
"Begin at the beginning and go on to the end. Then stop," Steve quoted, adding helpfully, "White Rabbit. Alice in Wonderland."
Jesse sat back in his chair and folded his arms, quoting back, "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Sherlock Holmes."
This game of literary one-upmanship was an old one between father and son. Steve'd arrived at his appreciation of arts and literature somewhat later in life than most. The family library, occupying fitted shelves along the back of the greatroom and containing hundreds of well-thumbed books, had begun with a single leather-bound volume of poetry given Steve by Dora on their first anniversary—Khalil Gibran's 'The Prophet.' And he'd gone on to sire a tribe of voracious readers.
Steve regarded his firstborn with an admixture of amusement and concealed impatience. Of the four children, Jesse'd always been the most docile yet the most difficult to read. He had his mother's temperament... at least, as Dora used to be in her younger days. Over the course of their forty years together as man and wife, they'd somehow swapped personalities—Dora becoming more assertive and Steve more reticent as time went by. Unlike his mother, however, Jesse'd never been a dreamer. He'd been a studious, observant child, sensitive to every nuance, and had grown into a self-contained, pensive adult. It wouldn't have surprised Steve at all if Jesse'd professed for the clergy.
Steve'd come to accept that his taciturn son never plunged directly into a presentation but always chose the most circuitous route possible—or so it seemed—and only after thorough examination of all possible angles. What someone else might categorize as disjointed ramblings, Steve recognized as Jesse's approach to a complex issue. The more serious it was, the longer it'd take him to arrive at the subject.
"Anytime this week would be good," Steve prodded gently.
"Well... it's about Pallas... at least, it starts with her..."
Jesse and Vonda's eldest daughter was in her freshman year at the Glacier Institute, a privately-funded progressive liberal arts college in western Montana renowned for its emphasis on the humanities—especially visual and performing arts. Gifted with a sublime four-octave vocal range, Pallas'd already been scouted by both the Intermountain Opera Society in Bozeman and the Montana Lyric Opera in Missoula but had not as yet settled on that—or anything else—as her intended career path. The narrative faltered as Jesse stared at the flash drive as if expecting it to continue speaking for him.
"I'm listening..."
"Actually... it's about this boy Pallas claims she's going to marry..."
"Marry? Nonsense! She's only a child!" Steve snorted dismissively. He liked to tell himself he loved all his granddaughters equally but in truth Pallas remained first and favorite. It was with a pang that he realized she was now a woman grown... no longer the bubbly, energetic toddler demanding to be taken up on the saddle in front of him.
Jesse shrugged. "She's eighteen... she could marry without our knowledge or permission if she wanted to, but that's not the issue..."
"Pallas isn't in the family way... it's nothing like that?" Steve cut in sharply.
"No, of course not! Lighten up, Dad... Vonda's already had that talk with the girls."
"Children today know too much too young," Steve sighed, shaking his head. "Back in my day..."
"Let's not go there, okay?"
"She's too young!" Steve reiterated.
"Oh, we agree... but you know Pallas... stubborn as her grandmother and her Aunt Jules once she gets the bit in her teeth... and we can't very well lock her up until she's thirty. Anyway, she's told us this won't happen until after she graduates..."
"What is it, then? Don't tell me you're coming to me for advice!"
"Not exactly, no..."
"Well then... is this boy unsuitable for some reason?"
"I guess that would depend on your point of view..."
Steve shook his head vigorously. "You're the girl's father and head of the family. If you disapprove of her young man, it's up to you to put your foot down... nip the affair in the bud!"
Jesse rolled his eyes. "Really? I seem to recall Mom had an unsuitable suitor once upon a time... and look how that worked out!" Dora's long-estranged parents had not only sternly forbidden her to associate with Steve but had gone into total meltdown, cutting her off without a penny when she'd married him anyway.
Steve chuckled and said, "Touché! But seriously... I'm not following."
"It's not so much what he is as who he is... maybe this'll be easier if I just show you." Jesse nodded at the iMac. "Mind if I drive?"
"Help yourself."
Jesse scooted his chair around so that it was on the same side of the desk as Steve's and positioned it so that they'd both be facing the monitor. Steve moved over slightly and pushed the keyboard toward Jesse.
"You still don't do FaceBook, do you?" Jesse asked, cueing up the site.
Steve shook his head. "I don't understand this social networking madness. Privacy is difficult enough to maintain as it is without giving it all away on the Internet. Your mother likes it, though—says it's useful for keeping in touch with family members. I only go there to look at all the latest snaps of the children."
Jesse went to Facebook, clicked on Pallas' home page and then on 'photos', where her albums were neatly labeled by event and year. Scrolling to 'Summer Camp 2014' he clicked through the snapshots, stopping at a close-up featuring Pallas together with a young man. The girl possessed her mother's Nordic attributes, with silky straight hair so white blonde it was almost colorless. Her only physical resemblance to her father lay in her lustrous deep brown eyes. Her unsmiling companion didn't strike Steve as remarkable in any way, his facial features mostly hidden in the shadows cast by his wide-brimmed cowboy hat. Both youngsters sported bright yellow teeshirts emblazoned with the logo of the children's camp where Pallas'd worked as a counselor last summer and the year before. The tagline identified them as Pallas Ross and Rowan Cameron. There were a few other pictures in which he appeared but none in clear focus. It was as if he were deliberately avoiding the camera.
"Yes, I remember seeing these before," Steve commented. "Is that the... erm... suitor?"
"Yeah, that's him. Not real good pics, I know, but she says he dislikes having his picture taken. I'll show you a better one in a minute."
"Looks a bit weedy to me. Not at all the sort of chap I'd expect her to be interested in. Have you met him?"
"Not until much later. I'd actually seen the boy at a distance earlier when I took the other girls for the first session Family Day at the end of June—Vonda'd had a business commitment and couldn't go. Pallas pointed him out as one of the wranglers but we weren't introduced at that time. She'd been transferred to wrangler dutyas replacement for an injured girl and moved into the duplex the wranglers shared—girls on one side, boys on the other. She started working closely with this boy every day and at some point they became an item."
"An item?"
"That's what they call two people who're seeing each other these days, Dad."
"Oh."
"So anyway, Vonda took the girls for the second session Family Day at the end of July. I couldn't go because I had a board meeting in Los Angeles. So I wasn't there when the trouble started..."
"What trouble?"
"When Pallas introduced him as her co-worker, Vonda didn't like what she saw. She had the good sense to keep that to herself at the time but she asked some questions and when she got home she let me have it with both barrels!"
"What did she see that set her off?"
"I'm fixing to show you..."
Jesse stood up and walked over to the sideboard, from which he extracted two glasses and two bottles—scotch for his father and bourbon for himself. Carrying them over to the desk, he poured doubles for each of them.
"A bit early in the day for that," Steve said flatly.
"Trust me... we're gonna need it." Jesse plunked himself back down in the chair. "Suppose... just suppose one fine day you found out that you had an illegitimate son... one you never knew existed? What would be your reaction?"
Steve blinked. "Hypothetically?"
"Not necessarily," Jesse replied enigmatically, repeating, "How would you handle it?"
Steve shrugged. "I don't know what I'd do... it's not something I've ever thought about. I mean, why would I? I guess it would depend on the circumstances..."
"For the sake of argument, let's say this boy grew up unaware of his biological parentage… that by some peculiar twist of fate both father and son were simultaneously made aware of each other's existence. As the father in question, would you want to meet him? Or would it complicate your life too much? How would you go about telling your wife and your other children about him?"
Steve narrowed his eyes. "What are you getting at? Jesse... what've you done?"
"Hold that thought. First, let's talk about Rowan Cameron… Pallas' young man."
Jesse slotted the flash drive into a free USB port and waited for the icon to pop up on the desktop. After opening PhotoShop, he then double-clicked on the icon to display several innocent-looking data folders and double-clicked one of those. Steve wasn't all that computer literate but he recognized the contents as jpegs. Jesse double-clicked on one of them.
"The picture I'm about to show you was taken last year, for the kid's tribal registry and identification badge. His mother is one-quarter Shoshone. Kinship is reckoned matrilineally so he belongs to his mother's Osprey Band, which is part of the Métis Shoshone tribal association. His Shoshone name is unpronounceable but I was told it means 'walks like a lynx' or something like that. Another name for lynx is bobcat."
"So he's... what... an Indian? Feathers, not dots, one presumes?"
"Part Native American, yes," Jesse confirmed somewhat impatiently. Although 'First Nations' was the current politically-correct appellation with reference to the indigenous peoples of North America, Jesse went with the term 'Native American' as that was still commonly understood throughout the rest of the world to mean 'American Indian.'
The image Jesse brought up was a professional studio upper-body portrait taken against a dark backdrop. Sensual full lips in a wide mouth gave an impression of reserve. Heavy eyebrows arched over startlingly brilliant amber eyes and a knife-edged nose. A beaded headband across the forehead held back shoulder-length hazelnut-brown hair. The subject was shirtless, displaying a uniform caramel skin tone with a faint coppery sheen and no telltale differentiation of shading at neck and arms indicating a 'farmer's tan'. A noticeable scar marred his right collarbone.
"Look very carefully," Jesse instructed his father. "See anything familiar?"
"Not really, no," Steve said. "Looks very... ah... ethnic, though." There in fact was something disturbingly familiar about the face, stirring a repressed memory that he couldn't quite put a finger on.
"Are you sure?"
"What am I supposed to be looking for?" Steve complained.
Yvonne had warned Jesse that this would happen. He'll only see what he expects to see... an Indian kid. You'll have to be more direct. Closing out that image, he brought up a similar but non-ethnic shot in which the same subject now wore a conventional collared white shirt, unbuttoned at the throat and without the indigenous accoutrements. He left it long enough for Steve to get a good look at it before cueing the next photo—a duplicate of number two. At Vonda's suggestion, Jesse had doctored this one in PhotoShop—the amber eyes were now a warm, deep chocolate colour, the hair and eyebrows a rich sable brown, the complexion many shades lighter, the face slightly narrower and eyebrows heavier.
"How about now?" Jesse asked quietly, scanning his father's face for a sign of comprehension. Just like his mother, he'd always been able to read Steve like an open book. Actually, anyone could. The elder Ross was completely guileless. He usually said what he thought and what he didn't say his face had always given away, which was why he'd never been able to pull off hard-nosed negotiations in business and was quite possibly the world's worst poker player.
Steve scrutinized the photo with rising apprehension. Ross genes had proven dominant in their family—Jesse and Julia were undeniably his get, as were the twins although Michael and Sarah were taller with hair a shade lighter. As he grew to adulthood, Jesse had come to resemble his father so closely that on several occasions they had been mistaken for brothers. Steve felt the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck prickle as understanding began to coalesce. The longer he studied the portrait, the more traits he began to identify—the way one eyebrow perpetually rode a tad higher as if in inquiry, how the corners of the mouth turned up, the tiny chin indentation that if any larger would be termed a 'cleft', the angle of cheekbones and sculpted planes of the face, the beginnings of laugh lines creasing the cheeks... it was all there if you knew what to look for. On the hand visible in the lower left corner of the picture were the same long, slender fingers that all the Ross children and their father possessed.
"How old is this boy? Where's he from?"
"Just turned nineteen... born and raised in Montana, on the same reservation where I worked the summer of '94. I guess you can see what Vonda was so upset about."
Steve sat back in his chair and turned to Jesse in bewilderment, doing the math in his head and his focus zeroing in on the appalling implication… Jesse had just turned eighteen when he skipped off to California in 1993. He and Yvonne had both just turned nineteen when they married in 1995. Steve struggled to mask his rising agitation with a calm demeanor but his mind was roiling. He recalled being told that Jesse had taken a temporary summer job on a working cattle ranch in one of those intermountain states. Was his son trying to tell him—not in so many words—that this young person was the by-blow of a long-ago encounter?
Thanks to the many American exchange students with whom he'd rubbed shoulders at university, Steve was not unacquainted with the reputations of the mega-universities of the American West Coast—hotbeds of drug and alcohol abuse and licentious behavior. Their toe-curling stories had formed the real basis of his resistance to his son's determination to attend UCLA. Jesse was a gentle soul, a country boy, whom Steve'd feared could too easily lose his way and become detached from the moral values of his relatively conventional upbringing. Had Jesse survived his years of immersion in that dangerous foreign culture without any addictions or major blots on his copybook only to have a youthful indiscretion spring up out of nowhere after two decades?
Steve's mouth went dry as a maelstrom of unpleasant scenarios whirled in his head. He visualized his firstborn involved in a casual affair resulting in a bastard child who even now could be indulging in an incestuous relationship with his own half-sister. The havoc that would be wrought upon the family was too terrible to contemplate. At first words failed him as the gap between possibility and probability shrank at a terrifying rate, then he slapped the desk and leapt up, shouting...
"How could you have been so stupid? What was it? A one-night stand? Or were you so drunk or stoned you can't remember who you slept with?!"
Jesse cringed involuntarily and for a brief moment he was transported back to childhood and memories of flaming rows between his parents. The fights weren't always private and too often the children had been privy to them.
Steve's temper was legendary back in those days although he'd never once resorted to physical violence with either his wife or his children. The fights would usually end with Dora dissolving in tears and Steve coming over all contrite and begging forgiveness. As years went by, however, Dora discovered her own inner resilience and capacity for hanging tough when necessary. She learned to give as good as she got. By the time the younger children came along, the sparring matches had dwindled to the normal disagreements and spats that every couple experiences occasionally. More often than not it was Dora who dealt punishment to miscreants, and Steve who blotted away tears and dispensed consolatory hugs. For someone whose own childhood had been devoid of love and nurture, he'd demonstrated a surprising tenderness toward his own children and an ability to show affection, if still unable to vocalize it. Jesse and his siblings'd never once doubted that they were loved by both parents.
The little boy inside Jesse wanted to hang his head and scuff the carpet with his toe, but he reminded himself he was prepared to deal with just this sort of reaction. He commanded himself to remain firm and practical in the face of Steve's rant, knowing worse would likely come when the full extent of the dilemma was revealed.
Still, Jesse gulped audibly. "Stupid...?"
"I thought I stressed the importance of protection when you were a teenager..."
"You did... but..."
"And if there's an accident, it's never only the girl's fault! The man involved has to assume his share of the responsibility. Didn't you get that part?"
"Yes, but..."
"Do you have any idea how this is going to upset your mother?"
"Dad... I..."
"And now you're condoning a liaison between your daughter and this... this bastard..."
"I'm not con..."
"What are you thinking? This situation is both immoral and illegal! Have you gone barking mad?"
"If you'd just let me..."
"I always suspected America was full of crazy people with debauched morals. Now I'm convinced!" Steve's face was contorted with fury, the veins in his temples bulging as he loomed over his son, his mouth opened to continue his diatribe.
Fearing that his father was working his way up to a stroke, Jesse stood up so that they were practically nose to nose and shouted back.
"DAD… SHUT UP AND SIT DOWN!"
AT HARTSFIELD AIRPORT, ATLANTA
Meanwhile, at the refueling layover in Atlanta... As all the jet bridges at the independent carrier concourse were in use, the Embraer was hardstanded at some distance from the terminal and a mobile staircase brought up. The ecumenical delegates debarked unsteadily in a high degree of sartorial disarray, no few of them legless by then and requiring offloading support by the stewards.
Elayne and Sally took advantage of the downtime to stretch their legs. An understanding attendant allowed them to stand outside the hatch at the top of the staircase in order to check their smartphones for messages and make a few quick calls. A sultry November breeze blew about them, the humidity alone threatening to topple Elayne's elaborate coiffure.
"I got three text messages from Dot," Elayne announced. "First one was at one o'clock their time..."
"That would have been six in the morning our time—we were already in the air."
"All the gals'd gone shoppin' an' there weren't no one in the house but her an' Jesse an' Steve an' one a them maids, so she figgered he was gonna be makin' his move soon. She went up to her room, pertendin' to get her after-lunch nap."
"And?"
"Next one was at two o'clock. After Jesse done come up to check on her like she knew he would, she snuck back downstairs to see what was goin' on."
"You mean eavesdrop?"
"Whatever. At three o'clock she was hid out in Dora's study next to Steve's, list'nin' to Jesse tell about..."
"How could she hear what they were saying?"
"She says they's a vent between the two rooms, way up high near the ceilin', an' she can hear every word jus' fine. Hang on... here's another text comin' in..."
Sally glanced at her wristwatch. "It's ten-thirty here, so it's three-thirty there. What's happening now?"
"She says Jesse's still leadin' up to the main bomb. He ain't dropped it yet."
Just then the senior pilot emerged from the hatch, joining them on the ramp and wringing his hands apologetically.
"Ladies... I'm afraid there's been a slight hitch in our schedule... we're experiencing a minor mechanical difficulty and we're going to be here a little longer than anticipated..."
"Booger!" Elayne exclaimed.
"How long is longer?" ever-practical Sally inquired with a frown. "We're booked on a flight leaving JFK at ten o'clock and it's imperative we not miss it. Do we need to try to rebook with another carrier to New York?"
"Oh no, m'am... I don't believe that'll be necessary." The pilot made some mental calculations. "Let's see... on our original schedule we would have been setting down at six o'clock this evening so you would've had a four-hour layover. The technicians expect to have us back in the air within two hours... so we'll have you there two hours before your flight's scheduled to depart. To compensate you for the inconvenience, American Eagle has authorized me to present complimentary day passes to the Delta Sky Club and XpresSpa facilities, both here and at JFK, if that's agreeable..."