Blunt Darts

NINETEENTH

– ¦ "I'm not sure how far it is to Granville, but I expect it's going to be an overnighter. You know how I hated to travel without you. And I can't very well call you, you know."

The carnations weren't there anymore. The kid in the jeans had probably scoffed them as soon as I'd left the last time. I squatted down and arranged Mrs. Feeney's red roses on the spot where the carnations had been.

"The grandmother hasn't played straight with me, Beth. I think I know where the kid is, or at least where he was headed, because one of the ranger stations is only four miles from Granville. But I have to check out a few things first."

A puff of wind came off the harbor and ruffled the roses. I foraged a rock to hold them down.

Off to the left, at another grave, I noticed an elderly man. He wore an old gray suit and held a Homburg in his hand. He was motionless, standing to the side of a headstone and staring at it.

I looked down at Beth. Funny, I almost never looked at the stone. Probably because the stone wasn't her, wasn't where she was for me.

"This boy I'm looking for, Stephen, must be some piece of work. His teachers think he's at least exceptional and a doll in his class thinks he's a genius and is crazy about him. His father seems not to care about him, his grandmother seems not to care about much anything else. He's apparently shy around most kids, but he has perseverance enough to search his father's house for a gun for four years, and then balls enough to take off and use the gun to stand off a shake-down artist twice his size."

Something was wrong there. Like always, Beth sensed it before I did. But I couldn't quite put it into a thought, and she couldn't put it into words.

I needed to get something else off me and squared away, anyway. I took a breath and hunched down again.

"I did a necessary thing this afternoon, Beth. I roughed up a cheating, lying trucker. He was the shake-down artist. But I did a stupid thing before that. I spidered a big, bullying college kid into a short fight and humiliation. It wasn't just my overeager sense of righteousness, Beth. I was showing off. Showing off for somebody I was with. Valerie. Sort of the way I showed off for you. But not quite. For you I showed off for you. For Valerie, I showed off just to see that I could still show off for somebody. Pretty dumb, not to mention a pretty boring description of being dumb. But then, you always put up with dumb, boring me much better than most."

I laughed for her, then got serious again. "Valerie took offense, but I apologized and it's okay now. Except that she's invited me to dinner, and I'm afraid she's getting the wrong impression, that she thinks that I'm-"

I stopped because Beth and I had come to a decision. It certainly seemed the only fair thing.

I stood up. The mini-yachts of the well-to-do who lived on the renovated waterfront were tacking and running in the harbor below. I looked down at the grave. Mrs. Feeney had done a nice job with the roses. As I walked out of the cemetery, the elderly man with the Homburg was still standing over the other grave. Still motionless.