As I stand openmouthed, she shuts the door in my face, then slowly makes her way back toward the kitchen and her story.
On the road back to Bienville, the sting of Tallulah’s last words takes a long time to fade. I remember staring after her through the glass, watching her waddle across the floor of a twenty-first-century hacienda owned by a man whom she would as soon let fade into darkness, if she didn’t depend on him to support her into old age. As for myself, I don’t much feel like going to Nadine’s store just now. I need to think. Most of all, I need to talk to Jet. But not yet. Right now I need to see my father. If he comes out of his coma without brain damage, I will give him the only medicine that might yet bring him relief at this point in his life. If he doesn’t, then I will still speak the words that, after my revelation in the jail, I know must be said. For who knows what sleeping minds might register, and how deeply? Perhaps even in darkness the soul can be healed before the last warm pulse of life fades.
Chapter 47
“Marshall?” says my father, blinking his yellow eyes in the ICU bed.
They brought him out of his coma thirty minutes ago. Often patients emerge from unconsciousness in a state of confusion that can persist for hours or days, but after about ten minutes, Dad oriented himself to both recent history and his present situation. I missed his awakening, but Mom told me that what brought him fully alert was the sight of this morning’s guerrilla edition of the Watchman.
“Right here,” I tell him, touching the thin cotton bedspread over his thigh.
A soft cacophony of beeps, whirs, and pumping sounds fills the room, and voices leak in from the nurses’ station beyond the half-open sliding glass door. Dr. Kirby has come and gone, heading for the lab in search of some elusive test result, leaving my mother and me to perform the play I’ve authored with the Bienville Poker Club.
“Dad?” I say, moving closer. “I need to tell you something. It has to do with the future of the paper.”
He closes his eyes. “I don’t want to talk about that. All these years I clung to it . . . fought to keep it open . . . then I lost it right at the end, when you were making good use of it.”
“Dad—”
“Blythe showed me your special edition,” he whispers. “I haven’t read it yet, but I saw the front-page headlines. Printed on the job press, I heard.”
“Aaron and Gabriel tried hard, but they couldn’t get the folder for the old Heidelberg up to speed in time.”
Dad lifts a trembling hand and points at the paper lying across his lower legs. “That’s all right. I’m damned proud of that. Proud you did it.”
I haven’t heard him say anything like that since I was a boy. The lump in my throat stops me from going on for several seconds. “Dad, listen to me for a second, please. I’ve got a present for you.”
“Did your mother tell you Marty Denis came by this morning?” he asks in his reedy whisper. “To apologize for what he did? That took some guts. I was asleep. Seems Claude Buckman took over the debts of Marty’s bank. Poor Marty had no choice in the matter—had to do whatever Buckman told him to.”
I don’t know whether that makes me feel better or worse about Marty Denis. But it makes me feel better about the next two minutes. “Dad, stop talking. You’re about to get one of those moments that’s very rare in life.”
At last his bleary eyes find mine. “What are you talking about, son?”
I nod to Mom, and she goes to the glass door, beckons through the opening. A moment later, Arthur Pine walks into the room in a rumpled suit. In his left hand are some papers, which he begins to unfold.
“Arthur?” Dad says, obviously confused. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ve got some papers for you to sign, Duncan.”
Dad squints at him, the malevolence in his eyes burning right through the drugs. “You get out of here. I already signed away my life’s work. I’ve got nothing left for a vulture like you.”
Pine steps closer to the bed. “I’m afraid you don’t understand. This agreement formalizes the full return of the Bienville Watchman to you and your family. Also your home. Blythe owns it free and clear now.”
Dad blinks in confusion, as if this is some cruel prank.
“Marshall, this is upsetting him,” Mom says.
“Dad, it’s true,” I say quickly. “You’re getting the paper back. And the house. Mom owns it now.”
“But—” He blinks like someone coming out of anesthesia. “I don’t understand.”
“The Watchman is coming back to our family,” I tell him. “Debt-free. I’m going to go downtown and open up the doors today. Bring the whole staff back on. And as soon as you can walk, I’m taking you down there to sit in your office.”
He’s shaking his head as though worried he’s having another hallucination. “But . . . how?”
“Turns out your son here is a hell of a businessman,” Pine says. He holds out the contract and a Montblanc pen.
“Don’t worry about it now,” I tell Dad. “Just sign your name, and the Watchman’s yours again.”
“Not if you bought us out of the hole,” he says, shaking his head on the pillow. “I won’t stand for that.”
“Marshall hasn’t paid a cent,” Arthur says with ironic bonhomie. “I can assure you of that.”
I grab an Architectural Digest that my mom was reading and slip it beneath the contracts so that Dad has something to press against when he signs. Still bewildered, he looks over at Mom, who nods and says, “Sign it, Duncan. Take your paper back. For old Angus McEwan.”
“Well then . . . all right.” He takes the pen with his trembling hand and, after some struggle, signs a semblance of his name.
Arthur flips some pages and has him go through this struggle twice more. “That’s it,” says the attorney, handing me a copy. “You’re back in business, Duncan, and close to two million dollars better off than you were yesterday afternoon. I’d stay to help you celebrate, but considering the circumstances—”
“You’ll get the hell out,” I finish.
Before he leaves, Arthur gives me what I can only describe as a smile of grudging respect. He’s screwed enough people to appreciate a good fucking when he’s on the receiving end.
After he’s gone, my father says, “What the hell just happened?”
“Poetic justice,” Mom says with satisfaction.
His jaundiced eyes seek me out, then settle on my face. “How the hell did you do this, son?”
“The Charles Colson method. I got them by the balls, and their hearts and minds followed.”
Dad closes his eyes and mumbles something I can’t make out. Then in a stronger voice, he says, “You gave up something. You had to. They wouldn’t have given it back to us. Not free and clear.”
“I gave up nothing.”
“Did you hurt your career?”
“No,” I lie.
“Did you bury something for them?”
Jesus . . . “Do you remember your Greek proverbs, Dad? Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”