* * *

  There’s another homemade sign a little farther up the road. “You’re almost there!” it says. Blue Skies, I guess. Is that where we’re going? Looking at Dad’s bleak expression, I don’t think so.

  Then suddenly he puts on his indicator light, slows down and pulls off 509 onto a dirt driveway. I catch sight of the name on the battered black mailbox. The letters are cracked and peeling but the ghost of them remains. “Whiticar,” it says.

  The driveway climbs through stunted trees and moss-covered granite glowing pink in the setting sun. The bush closes in around us. Tall weeds brush the sides of the car. Then we come to a clearing littered with cannibalized cars and scrawny chickens that flutter out of our path as we come to a stop in a cloud of our own dust. Before us sits a rambling tarpaper shack. There’s a porch with a bowed and rusted tin roof held up by arthritic log posts.

  A man is standing in the shadows on the stoop. He steps out into the sunlight. His shadow is a lot longer than he is. He’s wearing filthy gray work pants held up with a length of twine, and a T-shirt stained yellow around the armholes. He comes down the steps. He’s got a farmer’s tan; his lower arms are oven-roasted, his upper arms are as white as bone. He’s got a grizzled gray beard, a balding head and there’s a scowl brewing on his face.

  I glance nervously at Dad for some clue. An uncle? A second cousin three hundred times removed? Dad is staring straight ahead at the unfriendly looking geezer, as if he’s in a trance.

  This other Whiticar is making his way toward us, kicking at chickens that cross his path. Dad opens the door and steps out and quickly I do the same. We slam our doors shut simultaneously, as if we’re Starsky and Hutch arriving on the scene of the crime but in a white and timid-looking Honda.

  Mr. Chicken-Kicker may be short but he’s as solid as a forty-gallon drum. His arms and rounded shoulders look strong, despite his age. He’s got a long rod in his hand. Some part of a tractor, I guess: oily and rusty, with a chain at the end. He stops, looks Dad up and down, his scornful eyes resting on the faded yellow jeans.

  “Does this look like a music festival?” he says. He sounds like he just ate a bucketful of gravel. “It’s another mile to Blue Skies, asshole,” he adds. Dad doesn’t answer. “Are ya stoned?” the old man shouts. He has reached the front of our car now and he raises his rod as if he’s going to strike the grill.

  “How about I put your lights out,” he shouts. “Will that wake ya up?”

  He brings his improvised weapon down hard on the ground. I gasp and a smirk lights up his face. And then it dawns on me who this swamp creature must be. My father is slim and tall but the flecks of gray in his black hair are the same as the gray of this man’s beard. My father will one day grow bald in the same way as this man. And, looking at my father now, I see an exact reflection of the other’s anger. This is my grandfather and he’s anything but dead. He also seems to have realized who it is he’s talking to.

  “Well, well, well,” he says. “What brings you here?”

  “A bird.”

  Grandfather cackles.

  “A woman?”

  “No,” says my father. “A real bird. A nasty little bird a long way from home.”

  Old Mr. Whiticar squints suspiciously. “What in hell’s name are ya talking about?” he demands.

  “I’m explaining how I ended up here, ” says my father, and his voice is so brittle, I worry for him. “These pants — they’re part of the story,” he says, soldiering on. “A friend — a kind stranger — lent them to me when my own pants went up in smoke. And do you know why that happened? No, of course you don’t. Well, it was because I was trying to make things nice. Pretty stupid, eh? Trying to make everything nice.”

  The old man shook his head in disgust. “You’re a frigging lunatic,” he says. And with the salutations out of the way, he turns his attention to me. “This yours?” he asks Dad, as if I were a used car.

  “This is Michel, my son,” says Dad.

  The old man assesses me the way a butcher might weigh up a side of lamb. “He looks soft,” he says. He makes the word sound like the first symptom of a terminal disease. “Is that why you gave him a girl’s name?”

  “He’s a good boy,” says my father. “A wonderful boy. But I wouldn’t expect you of all people to recognize that.”

  Old Mr. Whiticar doesn’t favor his son with so much as a glance. His eyes are trained on me and filled with mischief. “Hear the way he talks to his old man?” he says. “Nice, eh?”

  I don’t answer. I feel as if I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole. The Mad Hatter is moving now, coming around to my side of the car.

  “Does he bad-mouth me a lot, kid?”

  Even if I could speak, the words would never make it to the top of this pit I’m in. He leans against the car, shaking his head contemptuously.

  “You’re a meek little son of a bitch,” he says. “Does he beat ya?”

  I look at Dad. I want him to do something — to at least say something — but his mouth is clamped shut. I see that flicker of a pulse along his jaw, like a worm under the skin. I turn to his father and shake my head.

  “He hit me once,” says the old man rubbing his belly. “Can you believe it?” He sneers. “He only tried it once.”

  He slides his oil-stained hand along the car as he comes toward me. I back up — can’t help it — until my hand is resting on the door handle. He smiles a bully’s smile of satisfaction. And that grimace is like a toehold for me, somehow, at the very bottom of my pit. I start to climb.

  The man sidles up closer, glancing sideways to appraise how this is going over with Dad. Dad watches, nothing more, and I can see the horror movie still playing in his eyes.

  Now, Grandfather Whiticar is close enough that I can smell the sourness of him. At close quarters I see the bitterness in his pale blue eyes.

  “I’d watch him, if I were you,” he says to me in a stage whisper. He indicates my father with a wag of his head. “Got a temper on him like a wild turkey.”

  I clear my throat. “I can see where he gets it from.”

  Grandfather’s amused face darkens. “What’s that, boy?”

  I let go of the door handle and step tentatively toward him. “If my father has a temper, I can see why.”

  The old man rubs his bearded chin. He looks hard at me, re-evaluating the merchandise. “Your dad there, he got real insolent round about your age.” His face is right up close to mine, except he’s shorter, and he has to look up ever so slightly. “Don’t pay to be rude to me, boy,” he says poking himself in the chest. “Not a bright idea.”

  I nod. “I think I understand.”

  “Good,” he says, hoisting up his pants, as if I’ve passed a test. And now he looks across the car toward my father. “Big shot over there never figured it out. Thought he was something special. Thought the sun shone out of his scrawny butt.”

  I interrupt him. “No, I meant I think I understand why my father never bad-mouths you. Never talks about you at all.”

  “He doesn’t?”

  “Never. Not a word.”

  The old man looks wary, “All right, bright spark. Tell me why?”

  I make myself look right into his stony eyes. “Because you aren’t worth talking about.”

  I see his hand jerk — the one holding the weapon — but I’m quicker than he is. My foot comes down hard on the chain, and the whole rusty thing leaps from his hand and clatters to the ground.

  He grabs his wrist in pain. “You little bastard,” he says and steps toward me with his meaty hand raised.

  “Michel!” Dad shouts and the cry is enough to stop the old man in his tracks. He sounds so angry, we both turn to look at him. But Dad is staring only at me.

  “Apologize to your grandfather,” he demands.

  I can’t believe it. His eyes are filled with an unholy rage.

  “You heard him,” says Whiticar, poking me in the shoulder. “It’s the first sensible thing he’s said since he got here.”

  Hearing his gravelly voice wakes me up. A whole tumble of things make sense all at once. I look at my father and there is so much more than rage in his eyes. There is a furious spark of defiance and a wicked glint of humor. I get it. I get it all in one atom-splitting instant. And I know exactly what I have to do. I turn to face my aggressor. He looks smug.

  “I’m so sorry, Granddad,” I say humbly and submissively. “I didn’t mean to be impolite.”

  It works like a charm. It is a charm, because when I glance at my father he looks as if he’s been released from a spell. The horror movie is over. It’s as if my apology has slammed a door in the old man’s face. He can’t get at my father anymore. He can’t get at either of us.

  We climb back into the Honda. When we turn the car around to go, Whiticar is still standing in the same place, still rubbing the wrist of his right arm. But in my last glimpse of him in the side-view mirror, he looks frail, as if anger was all that was holding him together. All his beautiful wickedness.

  * * *

  As the summer night settles around the car, Dad tells me of the time he punched his father. The old man had been terrorizing Mrs. Whiticar and Dad couldn’t take it any longer. He hit him and knocked him down. Then he left and never came home again. He was thirteen, like me. He wrote to his mother, worried about her. She wrote back and told him that she could look after herself but she could not look after him, so it was just as well he was gone.

  Silence descends upon us, but it’s a companionable silence. Dad never once reaches for his smokes. It’s a long time before he talks again.

  “When we started fighting, it frightened me,” he says.

  “I bet it did. He’s so mean, so strong.”

  “I mean when you and I started fighting,” says my father.

  I turn to look at him. “Fighting? Us?”

  “Arguing,” he says. “You know. Questioning me. Daring to have your own opinion. You had always been this helpful little guy who liked to hang out with his father, run errands, help with chores. Then, out of nowhere, there’s this cocky stranger rolling his eyes. It caught me off guard. I was outraged. And my anger frightened me to death.” He pauses and a spasm of resentment contorts his face. But by now I know it’s not me he’s angry with. “I was afraid I was becoming him,” he says.

  I stare out through my own reflection at the night. I look back at Dad. I see him differently. We have traveled so far today.

  “You are allowed to disagree with me, Dad,” I say to him. “As long as you realize that I’m always right, I’m sure we’ll get along just fine.”

  His face breaks into a moonlit smile. “I understand,” he says.

  * * *

  He wakes me as we fly down the Don Valley Parkway. He’s found an oldies station playing “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” by the Beach Boys.

  “I was thinking we should get a pizza,” he says. He makes it sound as if he’s decided we should buy a Ferrari. “Maybe we could drop by your mom’s place. Tell her where we’ve been. You think she’d be up for a party?”

  I rub the sleep out of my eyes and check the clock on the dashboard. It’s coming on to 2:00 a.m. What was it he said? Tell her where we’ve been. And through the muzziness of sleep a bright and glittering penny drops.

  “Mom doesn’t know about him, does she.”

  Dad slowly shakes his head. “I didn’t want to burden her.”

  “But you’re going to tell her now, right? She has to know.”

  He nods. “You’re right. Will you help me?”

  I think hard. Then I take a deep breath. “What kind of a pizza, Dad?”

  He gives it some serious thought. “A really big pizza seems in order. With banana peppers and anchovies and both kinds of olives and double cheese?”

  I nod again. “We’d better get some ice cream, as well,” I suggest.

  “Good thinking,” he says.

  I yawn and settle comfortably in my seat. I look ahead down the empty freeway. It won’t be dawn for hours yet, but if I strain my eyes, I swear I can almost see the light.

  In a House Built out of Dragonfly Wings

  There is an overgrown trail off the Foxtail Road that leads down through maple and silver birch to a brook. It is an old logging trail, but Jess calls it the Haunted Road and she calls the brook the Stream of Dreams. She says there is a tiny house on a rock below the Teacup Falls. The house is really a jail, she says, and it’s made out of dragonfly wings, and there is a girl who was kidnapped by the gremlins trapped inside it.

  “Does your guitar really have strings made of cats’ guts?” she asks Walker.

  Walker shakes his head. “Nylon,” he says. She glares, chooses not to believe him.

  “Well, I think the door of the dragonfly house is made out of cat-gut strings, anyway, but they are enchanted so that the girl inside can’t get through them. When she rattles her cage it sounds kind of pretty, though. For a prison.”

  On and on, Jess rattles. And Walker listens and Walker hears about as much as any eighteen-year-old ever does a ten-year-old.

  He knows the brook, the Teacup Falls, though it had always been just “the falls” to him. Lying on the bank there on a spring day not unlike this one when he was about Jess’s age, he watched an otter cruise downstream toward him. He recalls it vividly now. He remembers knowing even then with all the certainty of childhood that the otter was playing. Not hunting, not building a den or on the make — not working. Playing.

  He used that otter once in an argument with his father.

  “Animals don’t play,” his father told him with all the certainty of adulthood. Then he issued Walker a dire warning. “Let me tell you this, my friend: no wild animal dies of old age.”

  Walker wasn’t sure what he meant. But his father had rhymed it off as if it were the coup de grâce in their quarrel. It was only later that Walker learned it wasn’t his father’s idea, anyway; it was a quote from Ernest Thompson Seton, whose nature stories were almost as dreary as his father.

  He remembers that quarrel now and thinks of how little play there was in his father. Maybe that was the reason his mother divorced him. Then Walker thinks of play and wonders how much of it there is in his own life at college. His guitar, of course; weekend parties; beer; girls. But even that seems like work sometimes. Has he died, then, the child in him?

  Gleefully, he recalls the otter, how it came that close to where he lay in wait, hardly breathing, before it noticed him and fled overland in terror. But he doesn’t recall any dragonfly real estate. He was never that kind of a kid.

  Walker is tagging along not for the fairy house but because it is spring. Spring is his agenda, and that long-ago otter, bright again in his mind’s eye, poking its whiskery nose up through the residue of text books and exam papers littering the floor of his exhausted brain.

  Wild leeks are on his agenda, too. There were leeks up this way; sharp, green shoots in the wadded carpet of the forest floor.

  And finally, there is Jess. It has been a rough term and Jess is powerful medicine.

  * * *

  The moon shines foolishly in the middle of the afternoon sky.

  “Do you think there could be something like derring-don’t?” asks Jess. “Kind of the opposite of derring-do.”

  Walker is amused. “Derring-don’t? Why not. Someone filled with the desire not to do anything adventurous?”

  “Yeah,” says Jess. “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

  “Then how about free won’t?” says Walker, caught up in Jess’s enthusiasm for everything under the frail thumbprint of a moon. “I guess that would be the freedom to not be able to do what you want to do.”

  Side by side, Jess and Walker slog through the sodden leaves, eviscerated of color by the winter. “Are you thinking about your princess in her dragonfly jail?” he asks.

  “She’s not a princess, Walk, just a girl. And I wasn’t thinking about her just now. I was trying to think what free won’t is. Is it the opposite of free will? Is that the joke? Because I don’t know what free will is.”

  Walker chuckles to himself. To explain free will to Jess would be like explaining how to get home to Lassie. “How do we get in these conversations, Jess?”

  Jess shrugs. “I guess it’s because I was talking about derring-do and derring-don’t, but I can’t remember why anymore.”

  “Oh,” says Walker. And then he stops and says, “Shhh.” For the sound of the brook has come to him.

  They are quiet: Jess with the hope of catching gremlins at work, Walker with the hope of catching otters at play.

  There are rocks, a careless stairway down into the Teacup. Silently Walker and Jess make their way to where the brook, having splashed through an obstacle course of boulders and dead trees, cascades down a series of rapids and pools to the swampy, wooded valley below.

  And because they are so diligent in their silence, they hear a sound above the noise of splashing water that is neither fairy folk nor anything quite natural. A metal creaking, a clanking sound. A man’s laugh. Jess skibbles back up to the rim of the Teacup, and Walker follows awkwardly on all fours.

  Down below and only a stone’s throw away through the still-naked trees stands a half-ton truck, its back to them, its body sprung high for off-road sport. There are two men standing on the tailgate, tipping a forty-gallon drum. A thick stream of black sludge gushes out onto the ground. There are four drums in all.

  “What the hell!” says Walker.

  “We have to get their license number,” whispers Jess.

  Walker nods in agreement and starts to calculate in his mind whether the men have just started or whether they’re just finishing; whether he and Jess can make it back through the woods in time to intercept the vehicle out on the open road; whether they can make it look unintentional; whether he has a pencil.