Thunder Bay

SEVEN

Early the next morning I went to the hospital to see Meloux. He was still in the ICU, still looking like he had a toehold in the next world. His eyes were closed. I thought he was sleeping and I turned to go.

“You have news?”

His eyelids lifted wearily. Behind them, his almond eyes were dull.

“Maybe,” I said.

One of the monitors bleeped incessantly. A cart with a squeaky wheel warbled past his door. In another room someone moaned. This had to be hard on Henry. He was used to the song of birds in the morning all around his cabin. If he were to pass from this life, it shouldn’t have been there in that sterile place but in the woods that had been his home for God knows how long.

“Tell me,” he said.

I walked to his bedside.

“I found a woman, Henry. Maria Lima. Her father was a man named Carlos Lima.”

Meloux’s eyes were no longer dull.

“Carlos Lima,” he said. The name meant something to him, and not in a good way.

“She passed away many years ago.”

He didn’t seem surprised. A man as old as Henry probably expected everyone from his youth to be dead by now.

“She was married, Henry. To a man named Wellington.”

From the way his face went rigid, I might as well have hit him with my fist.

“Wellington,” he repeated.

“Maria Lima Wellington had a son,” I went on. “She named him Henry.”

His eyes changed again, a spark there.

“And he was born seventy-two years ago.”

“What month?”

“June.”

He seemed to do the calculation in his head and was satisfied with the result.

“Is he…?”

“Alive? Yeah, Henry, he is. He lives in Thunder Bay, Canada. Just across the border.”

Meloux nodded, thinking it over.

“I want to see him,” he said.

“Henry, you’re not getting out of here until you’re better.”

“Bring him to me.”

“It was a miracle just finding him. Bringing him here? I don’t know, Henry.”

“You did not believe you would find him.”

This was true, though I hadn’t said anything like that to Meloux. Somehow he’d known my thoughts. Typical of the old Mide.

“You will find a way,” he said.

“Look, I might be able to talk to him, but I can’t promise anything. Honestly, I’m not sure how I can make any of this sound believable.”

“The watch, you found it?”

“Yes.”

“Show him the watch.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Meloux seemed comforted. He smiled, satisfied.

“I will see my son,” he said. His eyes drifted closed.

I started out.

“Walleye?” the old man said.

I turned back. “We’re taking good care of him, Henry.”

He nodded and once again closed his eyes.

I spoke with Ernie Champoux, Meloux’s great-nephew, who was in the waiting room. He told me the doctors were puzzled by the symptoms the old man was presenting and were still running tests. Things didn’t look good, though.

I’d dressed for church, suit and tie, and when I was finished at the hospital I met Jo and the kids at St. Agnes for Mass. I didn’t pay much attention to the service. I was thinking about Thunder Bay and how to go about keeping my second promise to Meloux. I thought about some guy approaching me with the kind of story I was going to toss at Wellington. It would sound exactly like a con. On the other hand, maybe the man was already aware of some of this. Who knew? The watch might have some effect on Henry Wellington. But how to get an audience with the notorious recluse in order to show him the item?

It would have been better to know the whole story: how a Shinnob had come to father-apparently illegitimately-the man who’d headed a major Canadian corporation. That had to be some tale. If the old Mide had been stronger, I might have pressed him.

“You seemed distracted,” Jo said at home. “How did it go with Meloux?”

“The news did him good, I think. He asked me to bring his son to him.”

We were in our bedroom, changing. Jo stepped out of her slip and threw me a questioning look.

“You promised?”

I pulled off my tie. “It felt that way.”

“Good luck, cowboy. If I were Meloux’s son and you told me this story, I’d have you locked up.” She unbuttoned her cream-colored blouse and went to the closet to hang it up.

“Maybe the guy knows the story.” I took off my shirt.

“What exactly is the whole story? How did Meloux come to father a son he’s never seen?”

“He’s not saying.”

Jo stood at the closet door in her white bra and in panties that had little yellow flowers all over them. She’d been through hell in the year since the brutal events in Evanston. But the human spirit-with the help of counseling-is amazingly resilient, and looking at her as she stood ankle deep in a puddle of sunshine, I thought she’d never been more lovely.

I dropped my shirt on the chair next to our dresser and walked to her. I put my hand gently on her cheek.

“Part of your question I can answer,” I said.

“Oh? And which part would that be?”

“How he fathered a son.”

I kissed her.

“You have to open Sam’s Place in half an hour,” she reminded me. “Old pros like us can accomplish a lot in half an hour.”

She smiled seductively, took my hand, and together we went to the bed.