Bay of Souls Read Online Free Page B

He was nervous, drinkless. It might be safer driving, Michael thought, to let him have a belt.
    Michael was aware of Norman watching him. "You didn't shoot today," Norman said.
    Michael shrugged.
    As they were waiting for the check, Norman said, "I have to ask you something. Over at St. Emmerich's, what are they teaching my friend Paulie about abortion? Me, I don't think there's much wrong with the world that doesn't come from there being too many people."
    Michael poured out the last of the beer.
    "I'm sorry," Norman said. "You're the only person I know to ask."
    For the second time Michael was annoyed with Norman. Of course, sociology was the man's job. And he had never been subtle or discreet. He had been to Vietnam. He owned the big questions.
    "They don't talk about it," Michael said. "Not at that level." He put a paper napkin to a tiny puddle of foam on the table before him. "They talked about hunting the other day." What he said was not exactly true. Paul was being taught that life began at conception. The rest, of course, would follow. But Michael was not in the mood to defend the theses of St. Emmerich's Christian instruction. Embarrassed, he flushed and hid behind his beer. He felt besieged. As though they were trying to take something away from him. Something he was not even sure he possessed.
    Because I believe, he thought. They know I believe. If I believe. But faith is not what you believe, he thought. Faith was something else.
    A blond waitress with a pretty, wholesome smile came over to them but she did not have the check.
    "Is one of you guys Michael Ahearn?" she asked.
    "Me," Michael said.
    "Sir, you got a phone call. Want to take it in the kitchen?"
    He followed her across the room, resounding with polkas, laughter, the rattle of plates and foaming schooners. In the kitchen three generations of women, the oldest in her late sixties, the youngest a little older than his son, worked purposefully. The warm room smelled of vinegary marinades. His wife was on the phone.
    "Michael," she said. Her voice was distant and, he thought, chill. It made him think of the woods. Or of the light shining at the bottom of the freezing stream. "Paul is not accounted for. He was at the gym and then I thought he was going to Jimmy Collings's. But he's not there. And his school books are here. And Olaf is missing." She paused. "It's snowing here."
    He remembered the deer at the edge of the stream. Its life ebbing, legs giving way.
    "I suppose I called for moral support," she said. "I'm afraid."
    "Hang in," he told her.
    He walked unseeing back through the noisy room. Alvin and Norman were paying the check. Michael went into his wallet, took out two twenties and threw them on the table.
    "That's too much," Norman said.
    "Kristin is worried about Paul. He's out late."
    It was snowing on Ehrlich's parking lot when they got to the Jeep. Alvin checked the lines securing the carcass of the deer. Michael took a back seat.
    "You know," Alvin said, "kids are always getting up to some caper and you get all hot and bothered and it's nothing."
    It was the last thing anyone said on the ride home.
    The snow came harder as they drove, slowing them down. Michael watched it fall. He thought of the man with the deer in his wheelbarrow. By gad, sir, you present a distressing spectacle. If he could make it up somehow. His thoughts had all been mean and low. What he did not want in his mind's eye now was his son's face, the face on which he so doted. But it was there after all and the boy under snow. Hang in.
    "Did I pass out?" he asked them.
    "You were sleeping," Norman said.
    How could he sleep? He had slept but forgotten nothing. His boy had been there the whole time. Prayer. No. You did not pray for things. Prayers, like Franklin's key on a kite, attracted the lightning, burned out your mind and soul.
    When, hours later, they drove into town there were dead deer hanging from the trees on everyone's lawn. The lawns were wide in that prairie town.