Where Mercy Flows (5 page)

I nodded. I was still curious even after all those years. He separated the stomach sac and ran the dull side of the blade
down its length. “Periwinkles.”

The phone rang. The Judge held up his bloody hands helplessly, and I reached for the portable phone on the end of the counter.
“Hello; Dodd residence.”

The caller didn’t speak, but I sensed that someone was there. I shrugged my shoulders and held the phone away from my ear.

Immediately, the Judge snatched the receiver away, bloody hands and all. “Hello?”

I heard a voice then, a male voice, and my father spun away. He strode out of the kitchen and down the hall toward his study.
Curious, I followed, pausing just outside the door, but heard nothing else until the receiver slammed down on his desk. He
let out a long sigh.

“Who was that?” I asked.

He looked up, startled to see me there. “Nothing; nobody. Just a prank call.”

We returned to the kitchen in time to see TJ
cleaning
his fish with soap and a sponge. I laughed, but the humor seemed to be lost on the Judge. He took the sponge from TJ to clean
off his phone, rinsed his hands and left the room without speaking.

M
Y SON FOLLOWED Mom from the open oven to the counter with his mouth and eyes agape. “Grandma, that’s a giant chicken!” She
had prepared a Thanksgiving feast, though it was not quite May.

Mom laughed. “TJ, don’t tell me you’ve never seen a turkey before.”

“Yes, I have. I colored one at day care.” He eyed the golden-brown bird with a hint of a frown. “He was the Pilgrims’ pet.”

I picked up a bowl of green beans and headed for the dining room. “We ate in a restaurant last Thanksgiving. TJ had a hamburger.”

The family congregated in the dining room, along with Matthew, my father’s comrade since they had roomed together in college.
Matthew was a medical doctor with a family practice in Seattle. I sat facing the window where the river winked at me through
the trees.

My sister, Lindsey, scooted next to her new husband, who looked like she had cut him out of an Eddie Bauer catalog. His dark
wavy hair seemed to be polished with something and a supposedly wayward strand was carefully positioned on his forehead. I
wondered if he ironed the crease in his khaki pants himself.

The last time I saw Lindsey, we were both seventeen and she wore a ponytail. Now her hair was bobbed and she had graduated
from cheerleader skirts to a sophisticated silk dress and pearls. She tossed a blond wisp behind her ear with a perfectly
manicured hand. “So, Samantha.” She smiled too hard, like someone you run into in the grocery store who can’t remember your
name. “We have so much catching up to do.”

“You first,” I said. I still had not formulated an appropriate account of the last seven years.

Mom placed the turkey platter at the head of the table near the Judge and everyone grew quiet, all eyes on him, until he bowed
his head. “Father, we are grateful for all You provide. . . .” I peeked and saw TJ staring at his grandpa’s face. When I caught
his eyes, I closed mine demonstratively and bowed my head. My father’s voice was soft and low like distant thunder. “And for
bringing Samantha and TJ home . . . Lord, we are truly thankful. Amen.”

“Amen,” we repeated in unison.

Lindsey remembered where we had left off. “Okay”—she tipped her head adoringly toward her husband—“where do I begin? Well,
as you know, David and I were married about two years ago. Oh, Sam, I wish you could have been there! It was a fabulous wedding!
David’s parents’ home is right on Lake Washington. We had the ceremony and reception out on the lawn and then we left for
our honeymoon from their dock, waving good-bye from the deck of their cabin cruiser.”

The Judge arched one dark eyebrow and smiled only with his eyes. “She couldn’t see who she was waving at, with that veil blowing
across her face.”

“Oh, I saw enough to know that you were crying!” Lindsey teased. “I expected Mom to be the gushy one, but it was you, Daddy.”

“That was the wind in my eyes.” He winked at her.

A familiar pain bored into me, long and slow. I looked away from them. “TJ, eat your potatoes.”

“I don’t like potatoes.”

“You like French fries.”

“I know. But I don’t like potatoes.”

“Anyway,” Lindsey continued, “David passed his bar exam last June and had a position waiting for him at Wiley and Murdock.
They’re already talking about making him a partner.”

“That’s good,” I said as sincerely as I could. “Where do you work, Lindsey?”

“Oh.” The question seemed to catch her off guard. “Well, I don’t really.” She fiddled with her watch and I noticed it was
the kind some of the rich women wore where I had tended bar in Reno.

“You work, honey,” my mother pitched in. “You just don’t get paid for it.” Then she turned to me. “Your sister does a lot
of volunteer work at the hospital in Darlington. She uses puppets to entertain children in extended care, runs errands, and
even decorates the wards. Sometimes the nurses call her in to sit with a worried mom.”

Lindsey smiled humbly. “I’ve made a lot of friends.”

I tried to concentrate on cutting my son’s turkey. Lindsey was still perfect. The Judge’s eyes ignited at her smile. She had
married the perfect man, the son that our father never had, educated and respectable and a law enthusiast to boot.

Matthew spoke next. “Samantha, one of my favorite memories is of watching you on your hands and knees in the creek, groping
under logs for crawdads. You must have been about fifteen.” Matt’s wiry hair had crept away from his dark forehead and had
gone prematurely gray. I had loved to pat his head when I was young. Back then Matthew and his family were the only black
people I knew.

Lindsey giggled. “She was always like that! She would stay down at the creek all by herself until after dark.” She turned
to me. “Remember when you were on that wildlife photography kick? You made a blind out of branches and sat in there for hours
on end!”

“I was going to sell my pictures to
National Geographic
,” I said. As I recall, no animals wandered remotely near my hideout, except for a batch of birds that twittered and picked
at the roof above my head.

“But you ended up in Nevada.” Matthew shook his head. “Quite a contrast. Any decent fishing there?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Seems like I was working all the time.”

“What kind of work did you do?”

“I waited tables mostly. Before that I worked on a ranch outside of Reno.”

“And she was a dancer,” TJ volunteered proudly.

My head jerked toward him but too late to shut him up. “Who told you that?” My face was instantly hot.

“Mindy.” We had shared an apartment with Mindy and her son for the last two years. She worked a different shift and watched
out for TJ sometimes. “She said you were a dancer just like her.”

I couldn’t think of a thing to say, so I told the little tattle-tale to eat his vegetables. It’s not like I ever took tap
or ballet lessons. Mom mercifully began to offer second helpings and fussed over David for not getting any homemade jam for
his rolls. When I raised my eyes, they met Lindsey’s, but hers flitted nervously away.

I wasn’t imagining things. My father became broodingly silent. His eyes took on a distant glare and the flames of hell began
licking at my toes. I studied the green hill beyond the river, wishing for my own private tree house with a view of the bend.

David and my mother started comparing their stocks and mutual funds. David advised her to pick up more of some company I had
never heard of, because they were about to merge with so-and-so, but I could tell she didn’t think it was a good idea. She
said Microsoft stock was down now due to their recent legal battles and she was going to pick up a few more shares tomorrow.

“What does she mean by a few?” Matthew looked to my father with amusement in an obvious attempt to lighten him up. Matt was
one of a handful of men who were not intimidated by the Judge. He had been like a beloved uncle to us as far back as I could
remember. “Are you checking in here, bud? Don’t forget the alpaca caper.” He threw the next comment my way. “Did you know
your mother had eight alpacas grazing out here before she realized you gotta get your shoes dirty to take care of them?”

Mom shook her head. “Nasty animals.”

Lindsey said they had sweet little faces.

“What’s an alpaca?” TJ asked.

“A cross between a giraffe and a goat,” Matthew said seriously.

The Judge leaned back in his chair for a moment and sighed deeply before letting his eyes sparkle at Mom, with just a hint
of a smile. “She knows what she’s doing. If she can just cut down a little on new shoes, I can retire soon.”

“Are you serious?” I blurted. “About retiring, I mean.”

“Why not?”

“How old are you, anyway?” I remembered our mother reading a clipping from the local paper to Lindsey and me once. The article
said that our father was the youngest man ever elected to the bench in our state.

“Forty-nine.”

I studied him for a moment. “You look pretty good, for an old guy.”

“Old!” He acted insulted. “I’m in my prime . . . right, Doc?” Matthew nodded. “I challenge you to a game of tennis, young
lady. Then we’ll see who’s old.”

Matthew had succeeded. The smoke had cleared and everyone seemed more comfortable. “You play tennis now?”

“I had to take it up. Your mother made me.”

“We play poker, don’t we, Mom?” Good old TJ. “You wanna know how much money I have now, Grandma?” He held up six fingers.
“I have seven dollars.” He apparently hadn’t noticed that I borrowed it from his Donald Duck bank to put gas in the Jeep.
He giggled along with everyone else at the table. “One time my mom won all my quarters and then I had to give her my shoes.”
He was as delighted with the telling of it as he had been during the game.

“That’s terrible!” Lindsey feigned shock. “Then what did she do with them?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably gave them to the poor people after I went to bed.” He could be so dramatic. Little did
he know that
we
were the poor people and that most of his shoes had been broken in before I found them at yard sales.

“Well, I’m going back to cash-only with you,” I said, shaking my head. “Those shoes of yours pinched my toes. And they light
up in the dark when I’m trying to sneak around.”

When the hill beyond the river turned to blue-green, the Judge pushed back his chair. “It’ll be dark soon.”

Matthew nodded and stood, removing the napkin from his lap. “Can you still handle a fly rod, Sam?”

“I’ve done it in my sleep.”

“Come on,” my father said. “I’ll rig you up.”

Lindsey helped Mom clear the table and David followed us out to the garage. We equipped ourselves with rods and reels, but
David didn’t come to the river, as he didn’t have the proper shoes. TJ begged to come, but his grandma bribed him back into
the house with a piece of pie.

The Judge’s rod tip pointed the way through the trees along the riverbank, a route he could surely navigate blind. He paused
to pinch a new bud from a cottonwood sapling and then trudged onward, rolling the sticky, aromatic gum between his thumb and
forefinger beneath his nose. My father had always loved the perfume of the cottonwoods.

Before we spread out on the river, he offered me his open fly box like a box of cigars. I chose a parachute Adams and waded
into the shocking coolness until I was wet to the thighs. I probably should have asked for advice on the fly. The river showed
no signs of a recent insect hatch. The Judge and Matthew had positioned themselves downstream and were already casting as
I planted my canvas shoes among the rocks and fumbled with rod and line. My casts were a little awkward at first but got worse
as I imagined my father’s watchful eye.

It was on my twelfth birthday that my father gave me my first fly rod. Until then it had been enough for me to wade the creek
that cut through the ravine behind the barn until I found a deep hole and to let the current bounce into it a worm weighted
with split-shot. Back then I preferred to fish alone. Few of my friends had the attention span I did for fishing, and it was
annoying to get a half mile upstream only to turn around because someone thought their mother might be calling. My mom and
I had an understanding. I would eventually come home.

But the fly rod changed everything. It was like going from wooden-crate go-carts to driving a real car. It meant learning
a new set of techniques and equipment, as well as graduating from the little creek to the river it fed. My father had coached
me on the front lawn. “Forward, pause, back, pause.” His hand was wrapped around mine on the cork handle of the bamboo rod.
“Watch the path of your line. Now let it load behind you.”

I knew he was an expert. From my perch in my favorite old cottonwood tree I had observed him many times, hypnotized by the
graceful dance of arm and rod and line. I had seen his fly light on the water at the perfect spot to ride the current behind
a rock and the ensuing flash of fish and taut line. He always talked his fish in. “Okay, run,” he would say as a trout stripped
the whining line from his reel. “Now come on back. That’s right,” he would say, reeling it in. But he was delighted when a
fish refused to cooperate and burst through its ceiling in a defiant spray, violently attempting to shake the hook, running
upstream and down. My father had great respect for a fish like that and he always told it so as he deftly removed the hook
from its lip and let it slip from his hand back into the cold stream.

I always liked my father best when he was knee-deep in the river. He wore soft flannel shirts instead of the stiff white ones
that he wore to the courthouse. And he rarely frowned. That first day of lessons, though, when we moved from the lawn to the
river, I had tried his patience. My awkward casts scrambled the air above me and not once had my fly landed anywhere near
target. I snapped off three hand-tied nymphs in rapid succession. He gestured to a spot about ten yards upstream. “See that
white rock? Plop your fly right down on the middle of it.”