Durkin stood glumly with his arms crossed and his stare cast down to the floor.
“Mr. Durkin, am I getting through to you?”
Durkin nodded slowly.
“Good.” He sighed heavily. “Right now I’d better go and see if I can have a talk with your son. Mrs. Durkin, what hospital is he at?”
“First Baptist.”
Minter nodded, repeated that he’d be speaking to them soon and headed towards the front door. Glass crunched under his tennis sneakers. He didn’t seem to notice. Lydia yelled out to him, asking whether this was going to change their plans.
Minter stopped and gave her a tired look. “I hope not,” he said. “No, it shouldn’t. If it was an accident like you say, then it shouldn’t matter. It might make our investors skittish for a week or two, but that will hopefully be the extent of it.”
He nodded once more to them and then hurried from the room. They heard the front door open and close only seconds later.
Lydia sat frozen, her small wrinkled face twenty years older than earlier that evening. At that moment Jack Durkin had a good idea how his wife would look on her deathbed. It also made him think of a magician’s trick. Lower the curtain and raise it a second later to reveal that the middle-aged woman volunteer has been replaced by her elderly mother. She stared straight back at him without appearing to notice him. Slowly recognition seeped into her eyes.
“You’re not going to ruin this for me,” she said in a quiet, dispassionate voice. “Not just for me, but for Lester and for Bert. Do you understand that?”
“Look, I haven’t done anything.”
“I asked if you understand me?”
Durkin saw cold violent murder in her eyes and nodded accordingly.
“You are going to do exactly what that lawyer told you to do. And you’re not going to say another word to anyone about a weed biting off Lester’s thumb. If you do, so help me God.”
She stood up awkwardly, tottering for a few seconds on her feet before getting her balance. Durkin felt sick inside seeing how she held her injured hand and how swollen it had gotten.
“You need to have a doctor look at that,” he said.
“Only thing you should be worrying about now is how you’re going to explain to Daniel Wolcott why you didn’t have Lester’s thumb with you when you brought him home.”
He sat and watched her leave the kitchen, then listened to the sound of her heels clacking across the living room’s hardwood floor and later on the stairs leading to the second floor. When the sounds faded, he found the broom and dust-pan and swept up the broken glass. After that he washed and dried the dishes.
The more he thought about it the more that lawyer’s plans sounded like pie-in-the-sky dreaming to him, but if Lydia wanted to believe it then he’d let her. He didn’t see any harm coming from it, and if it gave her some hope, all the better. Eventually he’d get the town to increase his honorarium, and once that happened, Lydia would settle down. As far as Wolcott went, he pretty much expected the sheriff’s reaction to what he told him. But what else was he going to say? Make something up? He’d pay anything, though, to see Wolcott’s reaction when Lester told him his side of the story. Wolcott always treated him as a crank, as if what he did was one big joke, and he’d love to see the look on that smug bastard’s face once it dawned on him that maybe the Aukowies were something other than weeds. The only problem was if Lester couldn’t remember what happened. He had a nagging fear that that might happen. It seemed as if Lester went into shock almost immediately, and if he did and had somehow blocked out his memories of dropping the camcorder and having his thumb chewed off, then Wolcott would continue his snickering and treating him like the town loon. Worse, he’d probably arrest him and keep him from weeding Lorne Field. That thought had worried him most of the afternoon.
Durkin fished through Lydia’s junk drawer where she kept coupons and recipes and other odds and ends. In the back of it he found a torn piece of paper that had been sitting in there for years. The ink was mostly faded, but Durkin could still make out the phone number written on it.
He picked up the phone and called the last number he had for his brother. It had been almost ten years since Joe called and left the number with Lydia, and almost twenty-five years since Durkin last spoke to his brother. He had no idea whether the number was still good, but he prayed that it was.
Joe answered after the fifth ring.
“What do you know,” he said, “my big brother, Jack, calling. Never thought I’d hear from you again.”
“How’d you know it was me?”
Joe laughed. “Caller ID. You should get it and join the twenty-first century.”
“Joe, I need your help.”
“What, no pleasantries? After what, twenty, twenty-five years-that’s all I get from you, that you need help? You can’t even pretend to ask how me or my family’s doing? But then again you’re a busy man saving the world each day.”
“What are you trying to say? That you don’t believe I save the world each day?”
“I don’t know.” There was a long pause, then, “Look, Jack, you drank the Kool-Aid, I only sniffed it. I just don’t know.”
“You think I’m crazy then,” Durkin said angrily. “And pa and grandpa and every other Durkin before them. And you’re the only sane one of us ’cause you got to go off to college.”
“Jack, I’m not saying any of you are crazy, but this is something I’ve thought a lot about since leaving home. Maybe there’s some other explanation. For example, maybe the weeds secrete a mild hallucinogenic that can be absorbed through the skin when you touch them-”
“I don’t touch them. I wear gloves.”
“Do you wear latex gloves underneath?”
“What? No.”
“Then it could still be aborbed through the gloves and then into the skin. Or through the air. Or maybe the Aukowies are exactly what pa and grandpa always said they were. Anyway, don’t get mad, I’m not saying any of this to upset you. It’s been on my mind, that’s all. So how much do you need?”
“I don’t need money from you.”
“Then what?”
“I might need you to take over for me.”
“Jack-”
“I might not be able to do this much longer.”
“Jack, I can’t do that. I’ve got a wife and family. Three daughters and a son, not that you ever bothered to ask. I can’t just pack up and move halfway across the country.”
“They might throw me in jail tomorrow. Somebody’s got to weed the Aukowies if I can’t. It’s only two months or so ’til first frost. That’s all I’m asking.”
“Why are you going to be thrown in jail?”
Durkin rubbed some wetness from his eyes. “It’s not important,” he said. “It ain’t definite either. So you going to come if I need you to?”
“Jack, I can’t.”
“All I’m asking for is two months. Joe, I’ve been doing this over thirty years, and you know everything I gave up to do this. You can give me two months… Joe? Hello, Joe, are you still there?”
“Yeah, I’m still here. I’m sorry, Jack, I can’t. Listen, if they’re nothing but weeds then there’s no point in me taking over for you, but if they’re what pa and grandpa said they were, then it wouldn’t make any difference whether I tried weeding them or not because they’d rip me to shreds the first day I was out there. Remember, Jack, pa spent a whole summer teaching you how to weed them. Besides, I’d be violating the contract.”
Red flashed brightly in Durkin’s brain and burned deeply. He stood trembling as he held the phone, only half-aware of telling his brother to go fuck himself and putting the receiver down. It was a long time before the red faded and he could breathe normally again. He moved back to the kitchen table and sat down. He buried his face in his hands and wept until there was nothing left inside. Until he felt completely empty. Then he wiped his face off with the dish towel and went upstairs to join Lydia in bed.