Wes Boyd’s Spearfish Lake Tales Contemporary Mainstream Books and Serials Online

Cindy and Russ were already waiting for Pat when he came into the restaurant early the next morning, wearing civvies now. “So how are you this morning?” he asked politely although he was still very curious about whatever it was Russ and Cindy wanted.

“How about still stunned?” Cindy shook her head as a waitress left off coffee and a menu for Pat.

“Nobody in the Bradford Class of ’88 who was there is ever going to forget it,” Russ agreed, a small smile on his face. Now that Pat thought about it, he hadn’t seen Russ smile at all last night, or Cindy, for that matter.

“And everyone who didn’t make it is going to wish they had been here when they hear about it,” Pat agreed. “You just don’t expect something like that to happen.”

“I never would have expected it out of Jennlynn,” Cindy said flatly. “I mean, never, ever! I mean, Jennlynn is worth some serious money, there’s no doubt about it. But to hear her tell us that she paid for college and her flying lessons by being a legal Nevada prostitute! And she wasn’t pulling our legs, either! At least I don’t think she was. And she says she’s still doing it, as a hobby!”

“Right, LearJet Jenn, the fastest woman in the state of Nevada,” Pat sighed. “And if she’s not pulling our legs, I’ll bet it would take a month’s pay for five minutes with her.”

“I wonder about that a little,” Russ said thoughtfully. “I know she was seriously pissed off with her parents. I can’t help but wonder if she said that just to piss them off. I mean, you know what the gossip is like in Bradford. They’re not going to miss hearing about it, along with everyone else in town.”

“It’s possible, I suppose,” Pat agreed. “I don’t keep up on the local gossip, so I wouldn’t know for sure.”

Cindy shook her head. “And if that wasn’t bad enough to just about give us all heart conditions, who would have ever thought that Denis Riley would become a woman?”

“And as good-looking a one as she is, too,” Pat agreed. “I’ll tell you what, that came as a total surprise. There isn’t even a hint of Denis there. I mean, there’s easily the most disliked guy in the class, even worse than I was, and he turns into a bright, personable, good-looking woman.”

“Pat,” Russ said soberly. “I honestly don’t think that you can call yourself that badly disliked. You weren’t, and you know it. Granted, you were having some tough times, and a lot of kids tried to avoid you because of them, but I don’t honestly think people hated you the way they hated Denis. They, just, well, didn’t want to get involved.”

“But you come out at the same place,” Pat replied, a little bitterly. In spite of everything, including the memorable tenth reunion of the Bradford High School Class of 1988, it was all too easy to dig back into the tough times he’d had in high school and be sensitive about it.

“And that shit is in the past,” Russ replied flatly. “I think last night proved that you still have some friends in Bradford, or at least friends from the class. One of the things that happened in the last ten years is that a lot of that high school horse shit has just been hosed away. From what I could see last night, you’ve done well for yourself, better than a lot of people expected you to. What’s more, you’ve done better than a lot of the kids who tried to put you down back then. I don’t know who said it, but they were right when they said, ‘Living well is the best revenge.’ That’s nothing to sneeze at, Pat.”

“You’re right, you know,” Pat said thoughtfully. “But damn it, when I think back to those days, well, it still hurts. If my mother hadn’t been such an asshole, things could have gone a lot better.”

“That’s water over the dam; you know it and so do we,” Russ said. “You’ve put that part of the past behind you. I wish we could, but we can’t seem to do it ourselves. The memory of what we lost when that asshole tried to outrun the cops is with us all the time.”

Pat realized that the course of the conversation had quickly changed, although he still had no idea of why he was sitting here talking with Russ and Cindy in the first place. “Yeah. That has really got to hurt. If something similar happened to me, I don’t think I’d take it as well as the two of you are doing.”

“Oh, make no mistake, you’re seeing us after we’ve accepted it a little,” Cindy told him, the somber mood coming back over her “We’ve had a year to get used to it a little, but it still hurts all the damn time. Yesterday morning, before we came up here, I saw a butterfly out in the back yard. I said, ‘Caitie, come see the butterfly,’ before it struck me that Caitie isn’t here to see it, and she never will be again. I broke down crying over it for about the millionth damn time.”

“I’ve had the same damn thing happen to me time and again,” Russ added. “Pat, you can’t believe how much this whole thing has dragged us down. We had everything going for us: a nice house, the agency going well, everything we could ask for. Then this shit happened, and our lives have gone to hell in the sadness. I had to ask my uncle to come back to work to help us get over the hump. He’s retired and wants to move to Florida. I can’t say as I blame him, but he’s a nice enough guy that he’s willing to help. I don’t know how we could have managed the last year or so without him.”

“I’m really sorry for you,” Pat told them. “But honestly, I don’t know what I can do to help you out other than to say to pick yourselves up and start over. You’re not so old you can’t have more kids, and that probably would help heal the wound a lot.”

“You’re not the first person to say that,” Russ replied, with no joy in his face. “Maybe not even the hundredth and first. And believe me, we agree with you and everyone else who says it. Another kid wouldn’t exactly be a replacement for Caitie, because there’s no way she could ever be replaced. But another kid would help fill the hole that’s been left in our hearts.”

“Then why not have one?”

“We’d like to,” he said. “God, you have no idea how much we’d like to. We agreed right from the beginning that Caitie wasn’t going to be an only child. I mean, hell, both of us grew up as only children, and I think we both feel we’ve missed something because of it. I mean, things like getting along with other people, tolerance, and those sorts of things. We’ve tried and tried and tried. For a long time, a month never went by that we didn’t make a serious attempt to get Cindy pregnant again. It got so bad that we went to a fertility clinic, and the upshot of it is that we can’t. I’m sterile.”

“Sterile?” Pat said, beginning to see what this was about. He hoped it wasn’t – but it could be that it was.

“We had to dig back into old medical records from when I was a kid,” Russ explained. “It turned out that I had mumps when I was a kid, and that was that. I’ve never shot anything but blanks.”

Pat got just exactly the kind of feeling he suspected he’d have if he were ever to spot a rocket-propelled grenade flying toward his Bradley. It was on the way; the only thing he could do was to see whether it was going to be a hit or a miss – and how bad the damage would be. “Russ?” he said. “Cindy?”

“Pat,” Cindy said with a hopeful look on her face. “Do you remember when you sent us that Teddy Bear after Caitlynn was born?”

“I thought I ought to send you something,” he said. “Just to show I cared.”

“It was always Caitlynn’s favorite toy,” Cindy said, tears starting to fill her eyes. “She slept with it every night. I mean, she didn’t miss a night, and she’d be real upset if she couldn’t find it at bedtime, and that was right up to her last night. I always thought that some how, some way I’ll never be able to explain, she knew that it was from her real daddy.” Tears were rolling down her face as she continued, “We buried her with it in her arms, so she’ll always have what she called ‘Soldier Bear’ with her.”

By the time Cindy finished her statement the battle-hardened staff sergeant was leaking tears himself. “Tell me . . . tell me it isn’t so.”

“I’m afraid it is, Pat,” she replied. “I’ve only had sex with two men in my life. One of them can’t get me pregnant. The other one did.”

“But . . . but . . . ” Pat began, grasping at straws. “That was in October, just about eight years ago now. I didn’t hear about it till I got back stateside, then went through NCO academy, so it would have had to have been late August, maybe early September.”

“I know,” Cindy nodded sadly. “Caitlynn was born in early July. I deliberately held off writing to you about her for a while so you wouldn’t be able to make the math work out right. I’m very ashamed of that, Pat, and I’ve always felt a little guilty about it. But Russ and I decided it was the right thing to do. You were in Saudi at the time, facing a war, and we didn’t think you needed that worry on top of everything else. We were going to wait to tell you after you got back, but . . . ”

“But we chickened out,” Russ finished for her. “I still don’t think it was the right thing to do, but, well, what’s done is done. Cindy told me she was pregnant not long after she found out about it, and I, well, I offered to marry her. We’d often talked about it in the past, but we drifted apart for a while.”

“I couldn’t believe it when he made the offer,” she replied. “But right then I was so God damn desperate about what I was going to do that I let him talk me into it.” She let out a sigh, and continued, “I think it was probably the best move for me, especially at the time, but I shit on you in the process. I should have told you, right from the beginning. It might have not been the right move for either of us, but at least you should have known. It was the only fair thing to do, and I didn’t do it. Pat, will you forgive me that?”

Pat was silent for a minute or more, churning this news over in his mind. It was nothing like what he had expected! He let his mind run back over the last few years; it would certainly have made life different. “If you’d told me . . . ” he started, then thought some more before starting over. “If you’d told me back then, and you hadn’t married Russ, I would have at least felt I should at least offer to marry you,” he said. “It would have made things a lot different for me. A lot of the success I’ve had in the Army has come from the fact that I haven’t been married, and I haven’t had a wife and a family to worry about. I can concentrate on being the best soldier I can be. If you and I had been married the last few years . . . ” he paused for a moment to figure out the best way to say what he had on his mind “. . . it seems likely that things wouldn’t have gone as well for me. And I don’t think they’d have gone as well for you, at least until Caitie died.”

There was silence for a moment, until Russ said quietly, “The heck of it is that we pretty much came to the same conclusion. Up till the minute Caitlynn died, things probably worked out for the best all the way around. I know I’ve often thought that if I’d let things happen the other way, she’d still be alive and happy and playing. I wouldn’t know her, but at least she would be alive.” He let out a sigh and went on, “I’m afraid I robbed you of the chance to know what a neat kid she turned out to be, and I robbed you of the chance to be her father. I’m very sorry about that, Pat. It was not the most honorable thing I’ve ever done, but up till a year ago, it probably was the best thing for me, for Cindy, for Caitie, and for you.”

“What’s done is done,” Pat said, trying to wiggle out from under the discomfort a little bit. “We can’t go back and put things the way they should have been, no matter how much we’d like to. I’ve often wondered what it would be like to have a wife and a family, but I’ve never gotten close to it. Maybe I never will, I mean, except for this.” He sighed and went on. “And maybe it’s for the best that way, although it would at least have been nice to have met Caitlynn.”

Yes, and that’s something else we robbed you of,” Cindy agreed. “We’re both very sorry about that, too. But, well, we lost track of you several years ago. We got a letter back saying you’d moved, and had no forwarding address.”

“Figures,” Pat replied. “Odds are it was one of those times I was on temporary duty. Sometimes those happen pretty quickly, and I might not have set up a forwarding address, or maybe not have gotten it right.”

“It doesn’t matter now,” Russ said. “The bottom line was that we got lucky. From what we know, Emily was looking to get addresses for every class member possible for the reunion, and she wasn’t having any luck with you until she asked Sheila Amberdon, who got your address from the Army somehow. We found out from Emily.”

“No great trick, at least when I’m at a permanent station,” Pat agreed. “You just have to know how to do it, and Sheila would have known how. Emily probably wouldn’t have.”

“We didn’t find out till a couple weeks ago,” Cindy added. “If you hadn’t shown up here yesterday, we’d probably have been down at Fort Knox looking for you next weekend.”

“It was that important for you, to tell me all of this?”

“Yes,” Russ said. “Think it through. We desperately want, no, need a child to fill in for what we lost when Caitlynn was killed. She was such a wonderful little girl, and we really miss her. Our lives are not complete without her, and that is that.” He took a deep breath and went on, “I really hate to use the word ‘replacement,’ but that’s what we want, a child who can fill in for her in the best way possible. To be blunt, Pat, it worked very well before, and there’s no reason it can’t work just as well again.”

That was not what Pat had been expecting; until the previous few seconds he’d had the impression that this whole exercise had been something to relieve the guilt Russ and Cindy felt all the way around. “I suppose I can understand that,” he said. “But isn’t there some other way?”

“There are other ways,” Cindy told him. “We considered adopting, and we considered getting a random sperm donor. If you don’t go along with this, then that’s what we’ll probably end up doing, and pretty soon. We still want another child, and we want more than one. But we both honestly feel that the best option is to do the same thing that worked so well with Caitlynn.”

“I can’t believe you’re actually asking this of me.”

“Pat, to be honest, if I could father a child we wouldn’t be asking it of you,” Russ said quietly. “And we might not be hurting so badly over the loss of Caitie, since we most likely would have other children by now. They would, well, they’d help fill the hole. But I can’t do it, and that’s that. There is no hope of it. Asking you is the next best thing, in my viewpoint. In fact, in one way it may be better anyway.”

“How’s that?”

“Way back when I first found out Cindy was pregnant, I told her that no one would have to know about your involvement except us. Back in those days, we were pretty much the same size, same build, same hair color, same eye color, so there’d be little reason to suspect there was something a little different going on.”

“I suppose,” Pat agreed. “But how do you figure it could be better?”

“Oh, hell, think about it,” Russ said. “You’re in damn good shape. I suppose a lot of that is Army physical training, but I think you just naturally have the body of someone who can get into good shape easily. I know I have a tendency to run to fat. Granted, I have an office job where I sit down a lot, but at least until Caitie died, I tried to exercise and keep in shape, but it was a goddamn struggle every inch of the way. And I’m starting to show signs of going bald. I know with that haircut you can’t tell very well, but it looks to me like you’ve still got a good head of hair. I could point out other things, but you ought to be getting my drift by now.”

“I think you’re reaching a little on that one,” Pat smiled. “But it’s your opinion and I’m not going to argue with you.”

“I think he’s right,” Cindy said flatly. “And when you get down to it, once you get past the fact that there’s a general resemblance, it doesn’t matter. Pat, what it comes down to is, will you do it for us?”

Pat was silent for a moment, but he was thinking hard. There were some obvious pitfalls in the proposal . . . but, although he’d never met Caitlynn, had barely known she’d existed, in some surreal way he found himself missing her, and sympathizing with the Bradstreets on their desire to fill the hole.

“Russ,” he said. “If I decide to go along with you, there’s not going to be any resentment or jealousy from you, is there?”

“Oh, hell no,” Russ replied. “This idea is as much mine as it is Cindy’s, maybe more. Eternally grateful, yes. Jealous, there can be no way, considering what we’re asking you to do.”

“All right,” Pat said, throwing caution to the wind. “I’ll do it, but there are conditions, all right?”

“What?” Russ asked.

“The first thing that comes to mind is that I’d like to have a release of responsibility signed by the both of you. I don’t know how they do these things for sperm donors at fertility clinics, but there has to be some kind of form or something.”

“There is,” Cindy said. “I looked into it a little since up till now we’d been considering a random sperm donor as a backup. They have some kind of a boilerplate form. I’ll look into it. What else?”

“The next thing,” Pat went on, “Is that this is going to have to remain a secret. Just you two and me know, nobody else.”

“Until a few minutes ago, nobody but the two of us knew about Caitlynn,” Cindy said. “That’s not normally a problem, unless the kid has some sort of a genetic problem where they have to get back into the family history to find a cure. Something like a bone marrow transplant for leukemia, for instance.”

“If something like that comes up, sure, I have no problem with it having to come out,” Pat said. “And maybe when the kid gets older they’ll need to know it. But unless it’s something seriously health related, not as long as I’m in the Army, OK?”

“Not without your permission, unless you’re totally unfindable,” Cindy said. “Is that good enough?”

“Fine with me,” Pat replied. “I have no reason to argue with it if you think there’s a good reason for it. Just remember that revealing it could be as embarrassing to you as it is to me. Now, the final thing is that I want to be involved with the kid, at least a little. I mean, they don’t have to know the truth. All they have to know is that I’m a distant cousin or some friend who shows up every now and then to bring them presents, play with them and tell them stories, at least so I can see them and interact with them.”

“Sure,” Russ said. “I feel that it’s the least we can do, considering that we never let you know about Caitlynn.”

“Good enough,” Pat smiled. “Go ahead and get set up whatever you need to get set up. I suppose not today?”

“No, but next weekend ought to be just about right,” Cindy said. “You realize, of course, that if I don’t catch then, we’re going to have to try it again?”

“I suppose,” he nodded.

“You’re still not going to be off the hook,” she smiled. “Because we want to have at least two kids before we’re done. Maybe even more.”

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