33 The Return of Bowie Bravo Read online

  Bowie handed Sera over.

  He got up and washed his hands. Returning to the bedroom, he went to the bay window. It was quiet out there, the sky a gray blanket, the street covered in white. The wind had died down and he could see across the river now. Smoke spiraled from the chimneys of the houses over there and people were already outside, shoveling walks, scraping off windshields. “The snow’s stopped,” he said.

  “Ah,” Glory replied, kind of absentmindedly. He looked over and saw she had the baby at her breast and she was stroking the little one’s matted dark hair, smiling a tender, secret, mother’s smile.

  Bowie checked the phone to see if they had a dial tone yet.

  Nothing. Dead air.

  So he went to work mopping up the floor with the towels he had ready. He cleaned up as best he could without making a lot of noise and disturbing the exhausted mom and the tiny girl in her arms.

  Glory asked for some apple juice. “In the fridge, downstairs,” she added softly.

  He went down to get it. The doorbell rang as he was starting up the stairs again and the sound grated in his ears, made the muscles at the back of his neck jump tight. He didn’t want to answer it. He wished they’d all just stayed away.

  Everything was so peaceful now. He hated to ruin it.

  And he knew it would be ruined the moment everyone started showing up and they all found out that Bowie Bravo was back in town.

  “Bowie?” Glory called from above.

  “It’s all right. I’m getting it.” And then he turned and went and pulled open the door.

  His brother Brett and his sister-in-law Angie, each wearing heavy coats and snow boots, mufflers, wool hats and gloves, and each with a black medical-looking bag, stood on the other side.

  Angie blinked her big brown eyes. “Bowie. Wow. Mina said you were here.…”

  “Hey, Ange.” He faced his brother. “Brett.” And he knew, just from the wary look in Brett’s hazel eyes, exactly what his brother was thinking, Not again. As a matter of fact, he’d seen the same look in Angie’s eyes. He didn’t blame them. How could he? After all, they were both there the day that Johnny was born, when he’d been drunk as a skunk and nothing but trouble. “Look,” he said levelly, “I’m stone sober and I’m only here to help.”

  Brett and his wife exchanged a look. And then Brett said, “Good enough.”

  Bowie stepped back and let them in. They set down their black bags and started taking off the layers of outerwear.

  Brett said, “Sorry it took us so long. The phone was out at Redonda’s all morning. We didn’t have a clue Glory was in labor until we got back to the clinic twenty minutes ago.”

  “Who is it?” Glory shouted from upstairs.

  Angie answered, “It’s me and Brett. We’re on our way up.” She grabbed her bag and raced up the stairs.

  Brett hung back. He asked Bowie quietly, “How’s she doing?”

  “She did great,” Bowie answered. “She’s a damn champion.”

  Brett looked puzzled. “Did?”

  And then Angie called down from the second floor. “Brett, you won’t believe this. You’d better get up here.…”

  Ten minutes later, Brett had cut the umbilical cord and checked over both mother and child. He’d said what Bowie pretty much already knew. That Glory and Sera were doing fine.

  Brett looked at him with real respect, which Bowie couldn’t help but find gratifying. It was a much better reaction than he’d expected.

  “Little brother,” Brett said, “you did an excellent job here.”

  Even Glory gave him a tired smile. “Yeah, you did. Thanks.”

  He looked in her big brown eyes and dared to think that maybe coming back hadn’t been such a dumbass idea after all.

  The placenta arrived. Bowie was very grateful that it had waited to make its appearance until Brett and Angie were there to deal with it. Angie packed it up in a cooler to take to some woman who made vitamins out of it for the new mother—or something like that. Bowie didn’t really care to get the particulars on the subject.

  He checked the phone again a few minutes later and got a dial tone. “Phone’s back on,” he said, in case anyone needed to know.

  It rang the second he hung it up. He stepped aside and let Angie get it. It was Rose Dellazola, Glory and Angie’s mom, known around town as Mamma Rose. Angie told Rose that Rose’s new grandbaby had arrived safely and everything was fine. When she hung up, she reported that Rose and the others had headed for Grass Valley at the crack of dawn that morning. It had been rough going, getting back in the storm. But they’d made it safely and Rose was coming over right now to meet her new grandchild.

  Bowie and Brett’s mom called next. Angie repeated the happy news and then passed the phone to Bowie. “Your mom wants to talk to you.”

  He took it. “Hey, Ma.”

  “Bowie, it’s so good to hear your voice.” He could tell that she was smiling, just by her tone. And maybe getting a little misty-eyed, too. He’d kept in touch with her in the time he’d been away, even started calling her now and then in recent years. Twice in the past two years she’d visited him up in the Santa Cruz Mountains. She said, “You come on down the street and see me.”

  He wasn’t going anywhere until Johnny got home. “I will, Mom. In a few hours.”

  “Shall I fix up a room for you?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Think about it.”

  “I will.”

  He’d barely hung up when Glory’s mom and dad—and her aunt Stella, too—arrived. He and Brett went downstairs to let them in. Brett answered the door and they all three looked like they were seeing a ghost when they caught sight of Bowie.

  “Bowie!” Glory’s dad, whom everyone called Little Tony, clapped him on the back. “Good to see you, man!” He actually seemed to mean it.

  Mamma Rose and Stella were friendly enough, too. They’d always been civil to him. Back when Johnny was born and Bowie had hounded Glory for months on end to marry him, the older generation of Dellazolas were all on his side. They were good Catholics. They believed that a man ought to be allowed to do the right thing and marry the mother of his child.

  Bowie did see the irony. He’d been so worried about everyone’s reaction to his showing up. But Stella was more upset about Glory’s phone message than she was about seeing Bowie Bravo back in town again. She clutched her rosary to her chest. “I am hurt. Terribly hurt. Glory said she didn’t want me here. Why wouldn’t she want me here?” And then she started quoting scripture. “‘And I will cleanse them from all their iniquity, whereby they have sinned against me; and I will pardon all their iniquities, whereby they have sinned, and whereby they have transgressed against me.’” She turned her dark eyes on Bowie then. Probably because he was the biggest sinner in the front hall at that moment. “Jeremiah, thirty-three,” she declared in a noble tone, “verse eight.”

  Mamma Rose, who was taller, thinner and prettier than her sister, patted Stella’s shoulder. “Now, Stell, you can’t go taking it personally. You know how Glory is.”

  Stella pursed up her lips and fingered her rosary. “Yes, I do, sadly enough.”

  Rose put an arm around her and gave her a quick squeeze. “You know what they say? This, too, shall pass away.”

  Stella’s reply to that was an injured, “Hmmph.”

  A minute later, the two women went upstairs and Glory’s dad joined Brett and Bowie in the kitchen. Brett and Little Tony seemed right at home in Glory’s house. Brett got a fresh pot of coffee brewing and Little Tony went through the cupboards and the fridge looking for snacks, coming up with some packaged cookies and a box of mini chocolate doughnuts.

  They sat for half an hour or so, drinking coffee, eating the doughnuts and talking about the we
ather and the New Bethlehem Flat High School basketball team. Nobody seemed to want to get around to the big, fat elephant in the room—which was what was Bowie doing there and where the hell had he been for all this time?

  And then Mamma Rose appeared. She loaded some food and juice on a tray and took it back upstairs.

  Once she was gone, Little Tony finally broached the delicate subject. “So, tell me, Bowie, how you been for all these years?”

  Bowie said he was doing okay, that he lived in Santa Cruz, up in the mountains.

  “You find work?”

  “I did. I’m a carpenter now.”

  “As in construction?”

  “I build mostly furniture.”

  “Any money in that?”

  “I make a living.”

  “Good. Good. And it’s great to see you back in town.”

  “Yeah,” Brett agreed. “Good to have you back.”

  Bowie figured that was probably the warmest welcome he was going to get—except maybe when he went down the street to say hi to his mother. He told himself to be grateful that a few people seemed glad to see him. For the rest of them, he would either earn their respect—or get along without it, as he’d been doing for all of his life.

  Later, after Brett and Little Tony left, Bowie sat in Glory’s kitchen for a while, wondering what he ought to do with himself now. The women were all upstairs with Glory and the baby, doing whatever women do after a baby comes. The kitchen clock and the Timex watch he’d used to time Glory’s contractions both agreed that it was quarter of one. What time did school get out? Two? Three? Four?

  He took off the watch and put it back in the drawer where he’d gotten it and then he wandered around downstairs for a while. It was a great house. He’d always admired it. The place was well over a hundred years old and still standing strong. There were built-ins—that little desk area in the kitchen, the dining-room china cabinet and the waist-high bookcases on either side of the family-room fireplace. The bookcases, like the mantelpiece, were hand-carved with flowers and vines.

  Eventually, when he ran out of quality woodwork to appreciate, he put on his jacket and went outside. The storm had dropped about six inches of new snow, white and pure, stretching out over the wide field at the back of the Rossi house, all the way to where the pines started. Since the house was at the end of Jewel Street, where the street hooked to the northeast and then came to an end, there was a good deal of open land around it on the north and east sides. His breath pluming in the icy air, he stood at the base of the back-porch steps and looked up at the mountains that rimmed the town, all of them blanketed in snow-dusted evergreens.

  His hometown. In some ways it still didn’t seem real to him, that he was here, that he’d actually done it. Returned to the place of his childhood. The place where he’d grown up and made such a mess of everything.

  After a moment, he shook his head. He started moving, trudging through the fresh, powdery snow, out to the big gray barn fifty feet or so behind the house.

  The barn had windows. He wiped the snow off the panes and peered in. The structure had been divided. The smaller side was a garage for a riding mower and other yard equipment. The larger section was a workshop. Through one of the workshop windows, he saw a cot and a free-standing woodstove, as well as pegboards hung with tools and long, rough waist-high wooden workbenches. A fluorescent light fixture hung from a ceiling beam.

  It wasn’t bad. Big enough for both a place to work and a living area. His needs were simple. A cot to sleep in and a stove to keep him warm during the long winter nights. If he stayed, the workshop would suit him fine, although he’d have to have a phone installed because his cell wasn’t going to be any use to him here.

  But getting a landline put in was no biggie. The biggie would be getting Glory to go for it. He hardly felt confident on that point.

  You’ve got zero hope of getting a yes if you never ask the damn question, Wily Dunn would have said.

  Right, Wily. But it’s Glory we’re talking about here. Glory wouldn’t give him a yes if her life depended on it.

  Still. If he felt he had to, he would ask the question, anyway. He’d know better what his next step should be after a certain six-year-old got home from school.

  He returned to the back porch, knocked the snow off his boots and went inside again. Angie and Stella were in the kitchen and something that smelled good simmered on the cooktop.

  “Soup and a sandwich?” Angie asked. She looked at him warmly, he thought. And suddenly, he was grateful after all that he’d come today, that for once, he’d been there for Glory when she needed him—and that her sister knew it.

  He realized he was starving. “Soup and a sandwich would be great.”

  Angie fixed his food and he sat down to eat while she and her aunt loaded up a couple of trays and went back upstairs.

  After he ate, he started wondering how Glory and little Sera were doing. He went out into the front hall and stood at the base of the stairs with a hand on the newel post and thought about going up there. He wanted to go up, but he didn’t quite dare to. Instead, he went into the family room and rebuilt the fire that had burned down to coals during Sera’s birth.

  He’d just gotten it going good when he heard the front door open. He shut the door to the fireplace insert, hung the poker back on the stand and rose to his feet. The front door closed. Hesitant footsteps came closer. And stopped. He turned slowly to face the sturdy, handsome boy who stood in the arch to the foyer.

  Still in his coat and hat, his rubber boots and backpack, the boy had Glory’s brown hair and big eyes. And the telltale Bravo cleft in his square chin. He took his time, looking Bowie up and down.

  Bowie returned his stare. The only sound was the crackle of the newly revived fire at his back. For Bowie, in that wordless moment, the world seemed to shift on its axis. Everything came into sharper perspective. He saw what he’d already known in his mind. But now he saw it through his heart and whatever that thing was that might be called a soul. Only at that moment did he fully accept that he had a job to do here, a job he’d left undone for too long.

  There was no way he could leave town. Not in the near future anyway.

  “I know you,” the boy said at last, his mouth that was the same shape as the mouth Bowie saw when he looked in the mirror, curved in a sneer. “I’ve seen your pictures in Granny Chastity’s house. You’re the one they call my dad. But you’re not my dad. My dad died. And I hate you.”

  Chapter Four

  Bowie stared at the son who’d just said he hated him and tried to think of an acceptable reply.

  There was none. Anything he said right then would only be so much crap.

  Johnny didn’t wait for him to think up something meaningful. He demanded, “Where’s my mom?”

  “She’s…resting.”

  Johnny dropped the backpack down one arm. It plunked to the hardwood floor, although he still held it by a strap. “In her room?”

  “That’s right.”

  Hefting the pack, Johnny turned for the stairs.

  “Wait.”

  The boy whirled back. “Don’t you tell me what to do.”

  Bowie almost smiled. It was the kind of thing he used to say a lot—and not only when he was six. He thought of his own mom, for some reason. Of Chastity’s calm, matter-of-fact approach to things. She used to be the only one with a chance of getting through to him. She never fought fire with fire. He said quietly, “Your sister was born this morning.”

  The boy tried to keep sneering, but his eyes went wide. “Is my mom okay?”

  “Your mom is fine. Resting, like I said. Your aunt Angie, your grandma Rose and your great-aunt Stella are with her.”

  “What’s her name, the baby?”

  “Serafina Teo
dora, but your mom calls her Sera.”

  “I want to go up there. I want to see my mom and the baby.”

  “Take off your coat and hat and boots first. And go quietly. Remember to knock.”

  The boy did what he was told. He unzipped his jacket and took off his hat. Bowie marveled. At six, Johnny had more self-control than Bowie had possessed at twenty-six. The boy turned and left the archway.

  Bowie didn’t follow. Getting too close so soon seemed like a bad idea.

  From where he stood at the fireplace, Bowie had a clear view into the front hall. He watched Johnny set his pack at the base of the coat tree, hang his jacket on a low hook and put his boots side-by-side next to his pack.

  In stocking feet, Johnny went up, not looking back. Once he disappeared from view, Bowie moved to the foot of the stairs. He heard Johnny knock on his mother’s door, a gentle, careful sort of knock.

  And then he heard the door open and Mamma Rose’s voice. “Here’s our big boy.…”

  Johnny said something. Bowie couldn’t make out the words. He heard the door click shut.

  There was an easy chair by the fire. Bowie returned to the family room and sank into that chair. He sat and stared at the flames and waited for his son to come back downstairs.

  It didn’t take all that long. Fifteen minutes, maybe, and he heard the light step descending.

  Bowie stayed in the chair. He had the feeling that sudden moves on his part would not be appreciated. Better to continue to keep his distance for a while. He might even get lucky and the kid would come to him.

  Doubtful, but you never knew. So he waited.

  The light footfalls came closer. “My mom says I have to be nice to you.” The boy had stopped maybe six feet from Bowie’s chair. He’d put on a pair of tennis shoes while he was upstairs.

  Aware of a strange tightness under his breastbone, Bowie drank in the sight of him. “Did you see your sister?”