Chapter Ten

"Mr. Burns," said Waylon from the bottom of the stair, seeing him enter the front door of the mansion and hang his hat on a nearby hat rack.

"Waylon!" He turned sharply around and yanked the door back open. "If you require any assistance, the servants are at your disposal," he said, snatching his hat back from the rack and hurrying out the door, his eyes cast toward the ground.

"Mr. Burns, wait!" he shouted, running to catch up to him. "Mr. Burns, did I do something to offend you?"

Burns paused to look up at him for a moment. "Don't be absurd. Now, get out of my sight." He started the process of closing the mammoth door behind him.

"You've been avoiding me ever since Clayton got here last week. If you have a problem with him staying here –"

Burns stayed the door and said in exasperation, "No, Waylon, I do not."

"Then why –"

"I have to go to work," he said, rushing the words out of his mouth, pupils darting as he searched for his excuse.

"But it's six o'clock; you just got back from –"

"Au revoir!" He slammed the entrance door shut.

Waylon went back into Clayton's room with a basket of his freshly laundered linens. He casually knocked at the slightly open door before pushing it with his elbow and walking inside. "I've got your laundry."

"Thanks," he said, changing into a warm, clean shirt, wood burning in the fireplace and crackling in the background. "So, how was your day?"

"Well, at the lab, we were shooting protons at lithium."

"Sounds exciting."

"Very."

"You don't sound excited."

"Mr. Burns has been avoiding me all week, and I can't figure out why."

"Are you sure it's not about me?"

"I don't think it is. I don't think he'd have let you stay in this room if it were."

"Why do you say that? What's so special about this room out of the dozens of guest rooms here?"

"For one thing, this isn't a guest room. It used to be Mr. Burns' bedroom."

"Really? I thought it might've belonged to this guy Engelbert."

"Who?"

"I found his picture in this book," he said, holding up the 1925 printing of Kafka's Der Prozess. The olive green cover tilted away from the pages, and a sepia photograph of a man in his twenties with short, golden brown hair fell to the floor. Waylon picked it up. "It says 'Engelbert' on the back."

Waylon flipped the photo and read the name on the reverse side, a phone number scrawled beneath it. "This is Mr. Burns' handwriting. They must have met while he was traveling in Europe."

"Why would Mr. Burns let me stay in his old bedroom?"

"I have a good idea why. He told me in confidence, but I've every reason to trust you. You see, in his adolescence, Mr. Burns had a crush on a schoolmate of his – a boy. There's a picture of him in the drawer." Clayton opened the drawer and removed the faded color photograph. "His father caught them lying in each others' arms here and beat him, then sealed the room. I think it's why he funded your defense."

"So I wonder who Engelbert was."

"Hm?"

"If this was his crush," said Clayton, holding the color photograph, "Then who was Engelbert?"

"I don't know. Someone he met in Germany."

"I also found this in the book," said Clayton, opening to a later page and revealing a black-and-white photograph of Lyla. "Her name is Lyla. Apparently, they had some kind of affair that went awry. On the back, he called her his 'treasure' but then crossed the word out and replaced it with 'traitor.'"

Waylon took the photographs. "This really isn't any of our business."

"Yeah, well, I wouldn't be so nosy if I had more to do. I can't read German, and I can't exactly socialize when cooped up here."

"Why don't we go into the game room and play a game of chess?"

"You beat me every time."

"Okay, then, how about we shoot some pool?"

"You're on." They went into a room with a billiards table and began to chalk up their cues. "How about Eight Ball? I'll let you break," said Clayton, handing him a pool cue.

After setting the balls into a triangle, Waylon chalked the end of his cue and then positioned himself to break. "I understand you're getting bored," he said, hitting the cue ball and sending the other balls rolling in all directions. "I'll talk to Mr. Burns about letting you in his library. He's bound to have something interesting for you to read." He surveyed the table, walking around it. "That is, if I can get him to talk to me." He readied his cue at a shallow angle and hit the cue ball into two other balls, sending them to the center and corner pockets, respectively. "I'm solids."

"Damn. You've been practicing haven't you?"

"I suppose you could say that. Billiards is a simple matter of physics." He brought his eye down to the level of the balls, preparing his cue. "It's about linear and angular momentum, conservation of energy, and Newton's laws of motion." He positioned his cue to the cue ball facing the number four ball, which was directly in the line of sight of a corner pocket and only about a foot away, then hit the cue ball, sending the number four rolling toward the pocket, where it bumped into the side of the pocket and then stopped in front of it. "And sometimes, it's just dumb luck."

"All right, get ready to be trounced," said Clayton, chalking up his cue and then sinking four consecutive balls. "So, what's your theory on why Mr. Burns is avoiding you, if he doesn't have a problem with me?" He sank a fifth ball. "Did something awkward happen, like you walking in on him naked or something?"

"No, nothing like that."

"Then I don't know. He's acting like he's embarrassed about something. If you don't know what that might be, then I'm stumped." Clayton scratched, and Waylon prepared his cue, circling around the table, looking for a good place to start.

"He seems to be acting guilty to me. Maybe he feels guilty about your defense failing and you having to live in secret." He took a shot and sank the number seven ball into a corner pocket, then brought his eyes to the level of the table to aim for the next ball. "He saw how devastated I was when I thought you were dead, and obviously you were devastated to do what you tried to do." He lifted his head up to stare directly at his brother, and in a strangely steady voice, he said, "Promise you won't do that again."

"I promise," he said, flatly if not flippantly.

"I mean it, Clay," he said, walking around to the other side of the table where Clayton stood. "It was hell thinking I'd lost you."

"I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't been sure I'd already lost myself."

"In a few days, your papers should be ready, and we'll take you to Uncle Wayland's old cabin, and you can start your life over."

"Yes. I'll just start over. Make a clean break with my life. Forget about mom and dad, about vindictive lovers, about trials and prison, about Springfield... It'll be as if none of it ever happened."

"I know it won't be easy, but at least you're free."

"I wonder how free I really can be. Always looking over my shoulder, hoping no one from the city comes by and recognizes me, wondering if it's just a matter of time before I'm back in a dank cell with nothing but a surgeon's knife hanging over my head like a sword of Damocles to look forward to."

"We can't dwell on that possibility. The important thing is, you're alive, and you're free. As far as the authorities or anyone else knows, you're dead, so they won't be looking for you. And I'm sure they'll forget about you in a few years, so even if someone did see you, what are the odds they would recognize you and call the police?"

"I guess you're right." He looked to the billiards table, then set his cue down and sighed. "I expect I'll get lonely after years by myself."

"I'll visit you as often as you'd like. And you'll have the forged identification papers, so you can move somewhere far away, a big city maybe with a thriving subculture, and meet people who don't know anything about the skeletons in your closet. Maybe meet a man who's worthy of you."

"Maybe. I don't expect I'll ever be able to trust another man enough to be intimate with him." He winced. "I would have sworn Sterling loved me."

Waylon set down his own cue and hugged him. "He was a fool to spurn you. I understand this ugly incident has soured you on love, but Uncle Wayland and Deforest loved each other. They were together for over sixty years."

"I guess anything is possible. I wouldn't count on it, though. Counting on love was my biggest mistake."

Waylon patted Clayton's shoulder. "Maybe. But maybe giving up on love entirely would be an even bigger one."

"Your glass is always half full, isn't it?" said Clayton.

"I'm happy as long as it's not half full of cyanide." He picked up his cue and aimed for his next shot.

Mr. Burns hovered anxiously over the shoulders of a man in a white lab coat in one of the Springfield University biology labs as he prepared some blood samples. "Just how long will this take, Dr. Flynn?"

"Not long, Mr. Burns," he said, retrieving an eyedropper with antibodies in it. "I'll just test the blood samples to see which antigens they react to, and based on that, we'll know their blood types."

"And from that we can determine the paternity?"

"Quite probably. There is the chance we'll be unable to determine paternity, for instance if both potential fathers have the same blood type. But we might well be able to rule out paternity by comparing the potential father with the child. If that is not possible, we can look at the mother's blood to find out more information, rule out some possibilities. We'll start with a simple test." He dropped liquid from the eyedropper to the dish with a blood sample labeled "W."

"Something's happening," said Burns, noting the cells were clumping together.

"Indeed. It's reacting to the A-antigen antibodies, so we know W.'s blood type must be A or AB. Now we'll see if it reacts to the B-antigen antibodies." He replaced the eyedropper with a different one and squirted a few drops into another blood sample also labeled "W." "It's reacting to the B antibodies too, so we know W.'s blood type must be AB. Now, let's try it with C.'s blood." He repeated the test for the A antibody.

"It didn't do anything," said Burns.

"So if C. is W.'s father, C. must have type B blood. We'll know in a minute," he said, retrieving the eyedropper with B antibody, Burns sweating profusely as he methodically applied the test. "No reaction. C. has type O blood. He can't be the father."

Burns sighed in relief. "Thank you, doctor, that's all I needed to know," he said, maintaining his composure as best as he could. Once he left the lab room, he jumped up and said, "Whoopee!" He walked down the hall as if helium-filled balloons were clipped to his shoulders. He's not my nephew. Thank heavens. Waylon, the man I've been so attracted to, is not my nephew. I have no intention of making a move on him, but it relieves me to know my lustful thoughts have not been aimed at my own flesh and blood. He is a terrific young man, and he'll make some lucky lady very happy one day. But for now, there's no harm in admiring him.

When Burns arrived home, he scoured the halls for Waylon and Clayton, finding them in a room relaxing in easy chairs, reminiscing by the fireplace. Burns stood at the open door for a minute, listening to them laugh and talk about good times growing up. At least they had a happy childhood. He stepped forward during a lull in their conversation, announcing his presence by clearing his throat.

"Hello, Mr. Burns," said Clayton.

"Hello." Mr. Burns turned to Waylon. "I apologize for my skittish behavior, Waylon. I've felt deepest regrets I was unable to fund a successful defense for your brother. It's been difficult even to look you in the eye. But that's all changed now," he said, reaching into his inner jacket pocket and pulling out some papers. He handed them to Clayton, saying, "From now on, your name is Jacob Smith. You grew up in Sneed, Arkansas, and you left after a tornado wiped out the town and killed your parents, John and Mary Smith, on April 10, 1929. Your birthday now is October 4, 1912, making you twenty years old."

Clayton stared at the papers in his hand, stunned at the surrealism of the exchange. He turned to Waylon and said, "So I guess now you're my older brother. You put him up to it, didn't you?"

"I swear, I didn't."

"Admit it, you've always wanted to be the older brother and boss me around."

"I might have suggested it."

Burns put his hand on Clayton's shoulder. "I'll permit you to stay for the time being, but the longer you stay here, the greater the chance a servant might see you and say something. I'll drive you both to your great-uncles' cabin when you're ready, as soon as tomorrow morning."

Clayton said, "Tomorrow morning sounds good," then turned to his brother. "It'll be great seeing the cabin again." Waylon sighed. "What's wrong?"

"I'm going to miss you."

"It's not like I'm moving to Siberia. You'll get to visit me often."

"I know. I just wish you didn't have to hide like a common criminal."

"It'll be an adventure, like when we were kids playing at the cabin, pretending we were pioneers. Remember? I'll be living my childhood dream. Just like you always dreamed about working in a science lab, and now you do. The great outdoors is my science laboratory, and after all the time I spent in jail, then crammed in a trunk, then holed up in a room, wide open spaces sound damn good to me."

"Excellent," said Burns. "Tomorrow morning, we get you settled into your new home."