Cassidy

Fourteen years old

 

Five years ago, after my father’s conviction, when life in town had become unbearable, Mama and I moved in with my grandfather Cleary, who lived in a cabin in the woods, way off the grid, in Northeast Piscataquis.

In this unorganized territory of northern Maine, with no local government and about 340 people living in 1,800 square miles, my grandfather lived on acres and acres of unbridled, untamed wilderness. The closest road was a dirt logging road, about four miles away from his cabin, accessible only by unkempt ATV trails in the woods.

I was nine years old when we moved here.

I was ten years old when my father was killed in a prison fight.

I am fourteen now.

Before we moved here, Mama and I had visited my grandfather every summer. We were picked up by a puddle jumper at Dewitt Field near Bangor by an Army buddy of my grandfather’s, and dropped off on the grassy meadow by his solitary homestead.

I’d grown up understanding how his unusual home functioned.

The original structure was built by my grandfather, Frank Cleary, and great-uncle, Bert Cleary, when they returned from Vietnam. At first, it was only meant to be a hunting cabin, small and tidy at 800 square feet, with a rainwater-collection tank, a diesel generator, and an outhouse.

But as my grandfather, who had lost his arm in the war, became disillusioned with the world he’d returned to, he made adjustments on the property little by little, adding on a kitchen, a sitting room, and two more bunk-style bedrooms. His brother came to help him every summer, and they managed to add a wraparound deck, a root cellar, and a small, glass-enclosed greenhouse. They cleared trees and planted a garden, then built a small barn to hold half a dozen chickens, one rooster, a cow, and a goat. That same year, they winterized the buildings so someone could stay year-round and tend the livestock. And when spring rolled around, my grandfather decided not to leave at all and made the homestead his permanent dwelling.

A couple of years later, at a conference on solar panels in Nashua, he purchased enough cells to cover the roof of his cabin. He also met my grandmother, an ex-hippie from Seattle, who’d been thinking about taking the plunge to sustainable living herself.

After a quickie wedding in Boston, they returned to Maine, and together they fixed up the original cabin, a woman’s touch raising its general quality to that of a comfortable, if very basic, suburban home. The solar energy absorbed by the panels was enough to power one appliance at a time, lights, and other small electric devices.

And they were happy.

Until my grandmother discovered she was pregnant with my mother.

At first, my grandfather argued that raising their child off the grid was the best gift they could give their offspring, but my grandmother, whose sensibilities had changed with impending motherhood, found off-the-grid living less palatable. Without any formal medical training between them, she was uncomfortable being so isolated. Plus, she insisted, for proper mental development, their child needed more social interaction.

Grudgingly, my grandfather sold the cow and the chickens, closed up the cabin, and moved his family to the closest proper town, Crystal Lake, which still had a pretty good view of Katahdin.

There, he survived, not lived, waiting for the day his daughter graduated from high school, and he and his love could return to the woods. Sadly, my grandmother, who died from ovarian cancer before I was born, never returned. After her passing, however, my grandfather quit his job, sold his Crystal Lake home, and returned to the Northeast Piscataquis cabin, vowing to never, ever leave again.

Mama homeschooled me from fourth grade onward, and Gramp taught me everything else I needed to know to take care of myself. By the age of twelve, I was capable of managing most of the property: adjusting and cleaning the solar panels, checking the rainwater tank, minding the livestock, and tending the indoor and outdoor gardens.

The furnishings my grandmother chose in the 1980s are probably outdated now, but I don’t really care.

This cabin, with its outbuildings, gardens, and meadow, is my home. It’s far away from prying eyes full of hate and biting voices that call you names you inherited but never earned.

It is my sanctuary, and I love it here.

“Cass, come and help yore ol’ gramp in the garden a spell. I need to talk to you, son.”

 “Sure, Gramp,” I say, flicking a glance at Mama, napping quietly on a window seat in a beam of summer sun. In the past few months, she’s started napping more and more, leaving me to direct my own high school studies.

Last week, Gramp radioed for a plane, and it took my mother to a doctor in Millinocket, where she remained for four nights having tests. She returned yesterday evening looking even sadder and more frail than before she’d left. Last night, I fell asleep listening to the soft murmur of her voice as she sat across from Gramp at the kitchen table, both of them talking in urgent, emotional whispers.

Here is what I know:

There is something wrong with my mother. And it’s bad.

And as I stand up to follow Gramp outside, my chest fills with dread.

I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know.

Sometimes you just don’t want to hear the words.

“Cover yore mama up, then come meet me in the greenhouse, eh?” he says, gesturing to a blanket with his prosthetic hand.

“Sure,” I say again, watching him trudge out the kitchen door, leaving me alone.

For most of my life, even when my father was alive, my grandfather was the most important father figure to me. I never felt very close to Paul Isaac Porter, never felt the sort of love for him that a child is supposed to feel for his father. It’s possible that his extensive travel schedule had stunted the emotional growth between us, but I know that was only part of the reason. I never felt comfortable around my father the way I did around my grandfather. Maybe it was the memory of that suffering raccoon. Maybe it was a sixth sense about who my father really was. But my father had been a nebulous figure on the fringes of my life at best. My grandfather, bigger than life, with a booming voice and the best bear hugs, had lived inside my heart.

As I unfold the blanket on the windowsill and pull it over Mama’s chest, the book she’d been reading slips to the floor, but I manage to grab it just before it falls. Tucking it under my arm, I finish covering her before taking a look at it.

The cover of the book has a grainy picture of Adolf Hitler and what appears to be black-and-white high school pictures of several young men. The Last of the Hitlers. I turn it over and read the blurb on the back:
At the end of World War II, the man Adolf Hitler called “my loathsome nephew” changed his name and disappeared . . . the British born William Patrick Hitler, by then settled in the U.S.A., remained anonymous . . . until now. William Patrick’s story so fascinated British journalist David Gardner that he spent years attempting to find the last relative to bear the Hitler name. Gardner found . . . that his four sons had established a pact that, in order for Adolf Hitler’s genes to die with them, none of them would have children.

I know who Adolf Hitler was. Mama and I dedicated quite a bit of my schooling to World War II.

Turning the book back over, I look at the young men on the cover, next to the picture of their great-uncle Adolf. They were his nephews, right? Men who’d decided, apparently, never to marry, never to have children, so that the genes of a madman would die with them.

Inside my chest, my heart starts racing, and I drop the book on the small end table beside Mama, staring at it as if it were a coiled snake.

Hitler’s nephews had tacitly agreed to kill their bloodline.

My mind segues without preamble to me and my father, and to those twelve girls he raped and killed.

And I wonder—gulp—I wonder if Mama’s reading that book because she thinks that I should do the same . . . that I should also make a pact to—

“Done in there, Cass?”

Jumping at the sound of Gramp’s voice, I turn away from Mama and hurry to join him at the back door. “Yes, sir.”

His blue eyes, older and sadder than usual, look into mine. “Let’s pick some tomatoes, eh?”

I follow him to the greenhouse, pulling the door shut behind me and picking up a wicker basket from the floor.

“Ain’t no good at sugarcoatin’ things, Cass,” says Gramp, gently pulling a tomato from the vine and putting it in my basket.

“No, sir.”

“Yore mama asked me to talk to you.”

I clench my teeth and hold my breath, blinking my suddenly burning eyes, as he places another tomato in the basket.

“Sir,” I whisper, but his words come quickly:

“She’s dyin’, son.”

The room spins and I hear myself gasp sharply, the quick intake of cool air hurting my chest as the basket slips from my fingers.

“Easy, now,” Gramp is saying as he takes the basket from me with his prosthetic hand. His other hand lands on my shoulder. “Easy. Breathe in, Cass. You knew somethin’ was up.”

“Yes, sir,” I manage with a ragged breath as the hot tears crowding my eyes begin to fall. His craggy face blurs in front of me.

“Ain’t been well for years. Turns out cancer was eatin’ away at her . . . just like her mama.”

“There’s medicine. Chemotherapy,” I say, swiping at my eyes so I can see him clearly.

“Too late for all that.”

“Gramp. No!” I sob, leaning forward to rest my forehead on his massive shoulder.

He holds me close, occasionally patting my back as I weep.

“Git all that out, now,” he says in a choked-up voice after I’ve cried for several minutes. “I’ll ask you to be strong for my Rosie. For my li’l . . . Rosemary.”

His voice breaks as he says Mama’s name, and it wrings another round of tears from me until I am hiccuping and spent.

Gramp releases me, walks to the back of the greenhouse and returns a second later with two pails, which he upends across from each other so we can sit and talk.

“She’s always been there for you, son.”

“Yes, sir,” I say, staring down at my hands and forcing myself to stop crying. Mama doesn’t need to see my tears; she needs me to be strong for her.

“After what yore daddy did, some folks, well, they thought you might be a bad seed too.”

I look up at him, swallowing past the lump in my throat.

Cassidy is his son, ma’am.

“. . . thought maybe she should find a home for you somewheres, change her name, and start a new life for herself.”

“What?” I am appalled by the idea of this parallel existence from which I was spared. “When . . .?”

He waves my question away. “Point is, she didn’t. She stuck around. She stuck by you.” His face softens, and he says more to himself than to me, “Her snow baby, born on Easter Day.”

My mind slides back to the book my mother’s reading, and it occurs to me that she always seems to be reading books about DNA and genetics, and about people who’ve done evil in the world.

“Does she think I’m a bad seed?”

He winces, looking away from me. “She worries ’bout you.”

“Do you think I’m a bad seed, Gramp?”

I want him to say no quickly, but he doesn’t, and a chill races through my body, pinging off my bones and making me cold. He searches my face for a long while before saying, “You’re Paul’s son, Cassidy.”

“But I’m me,” I insist, “not him!”

“I ain’t know what’s inside of you, Cass,” he says, reaching out to cup my cheek with his weathered palm. “I’ve prayed to every god that ever was that whatever was inside Paul ain’t inside of you too, son. And you’re a good boy. Seems impossible that you could go down such a dark path one day. But the reality is, well, there ain’t no way to know for sure.”

I know! I want to scream, but the truth is that I don’t. The foremost terror in the furthest reaches of my mind is always there . . . always, always, always there: the possibility that I could somehow turn out like my father. To know that my mother and grandfather share this fear makes it real to me, makes me feel sick, makes me feel like I’m living with a ticking bomb inside me.

Even after we’d left town, Mama mostly refused to talk about my father. The way her face would seize up whenever I mentioned him made me feel bad, and anyway, I gathered that she hadn’t known him all that well.

“He said he was from Indiana,” she told me once. “He said his parents were dead, and he’d used the money from sellin’ their house to buy his rig.”

My parents met while my mother was waiting tables at a café in East Millinocket. He’d pull off I-95 every few weeks and sit in her section, staying for hours and tipping her way too much. Over time, he started bringing little gifts, like pieces of jewelry—items that we discovered, years later, were trophies from his victims.

Mama was beautiful to me, but compared with a few of the much prettier teachers I’d had in school, I knew she was homely. But based on my thin memories and the one photo I’d kept, my father was handsome enough. I imagine the attention of a good-looking, flattering trucker was enough to sweep a naive country girl off her feet.

Once I asked her why he’d never hurt us. She stared at me a long time before replying that she didn’t know.

I guess he’d lived two lives.

“Gramp,” I say, looking up into his weary eyes. “What happens now?”

“Be strong for yore mama,” he says, patting my knee. “She don’t have much time. A handful of weeks. No more.”

Another sob escapes my throat, and I gnaw on my cheeks until I taste blood.

“After she’s gone, we’ll continue on here together, Cass. You’re safe here with me for as long as I’m alive. And I’ll teach you everythin’ I can to be certain that you’ll be able to protect yoreself after I’m gone.”

I cannot bear the thought of losing Gramp, so I push it from my mind. When I do, the grainy image of Adolf Hitler from the front of Mama’s book takes front and center in my head.

“What should I do about . . . the rest?” I ask, wondering about the possible demons that lie dormant inside me, that could spring to life at any time, making me into a monster like my father.

“I know it would ease her heart to know you’ll be careful, son.”

“Careful?”

“Live quiet,” says Gramp, using his preferred terminology for our isolated, off-the-grid lifestyle. His blue eyes hold mine like two life rings, and he nods sagely, comfortingly, patting my knee again. “Live quiet, and no matter what happens inside of you, you won’t never be able to hurt someone, Cassidy. It’s what yore mama would want.”

Live quiet.

Live quiet.

Live quiet.

“I promise,” I say.

“Good boy.”

I nod at him, vowing that the blood in my veins will never, ever infect another life.

I will live quiet.

And Paul Isaac Porter’s terrifying genes will die with me.