The Wanderer
Author: Robyn Carr
“Wow,” he said. “Just wow. I really can’t believe no one asked you.”
“Oh, I was asked, just not by the right person....” She started to back away. “Bell’s gonna ring...”
He snagged a piece of her sleeve. “Yeah? Who asked?”
She grinned. “Wanna know your competition, huh? Well, he’s not—I can’t stand him. I’d never go out with him.”
“Yeah?” Landon asked, grinning hugely. “Who’s that?”
“Morrison. Jag Morrison. He’s just a stupid ass. I gotta go. See you later, like after practice or something.” And she whirled around and was gone.
Landon turned back to his locker, closed it and let his head fall against the cold steel. Oh, man, he thought. I can’t believe this is happening. My life is definitely over.
* * *
Landon’s sister worked two nights in a row in North Bend so she could be off the weekend of the high school homecoming game. That gave Landon just the right amount of freedom to check in with Cooper. It was a misty, moonless night, but he jogged Ham across the beach, confident there wouldn’t be people out there. He saw the lights on in Ben’s place and heard music, so he ran up the stairs to the deck and pounded on the door.
Cooper answered. He was wearing a dirty old sweatshirt covered with sawdust, a tool belt around his hips, a surgical-type mask over his mouth and nose and a crowbar in his hand. The music came from an old paint-splattered radio. Cooper pulled down the mask. “Well, I thought you were avoiding me,” he said with a grin. He looked down at the Great Dane, who sat patiently beside Landon. “Hello, Hamlet. Kind of calm tonight, aren’t you?”
“I ran him across the beach.” Landon almost forgot his mission. Cooper was surrounded by debris—piles of wood, dismantled bar and shelves, boxes of what looked like Ben’s things. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to clean the place up, renovate. So I can sell it.”
“Sell it? You’re going to just sell it?” Landon asked.
“Well, it needs a lot of work first. But in a few months I’ll sell this and the piece of land it sits on.”
“We have to talk,” Landon said.
Cooper thought about this for a second, then put down the crowbar and removed the tool belt. “Let’s go in the house and get a drink. I don’t suppose he knows how to wipe his feet?” he said, shooting a look at Ham.
Landon pulled a rag out of his back pocket. “I got it,” he said.
The house was, of course, Cooper’s fifth wheel, the toy hauler. Cooper went first, brushing off his shirt and pants. Landon did as he was asked, wiping the sand off Ham’s feet and, for good measure, the drool off his mouth. When he stepped inside, he said, “Nice.” Then, hanging on to the dog’s collar, he picked a chair by the door and kept the dog sitting politely at his side.
Cooper went to the kitchen and washed up. He opened the refrigerator and helped himself to a beer. “I have bottled water, tea, cola and Gatorade.”
Landon shook his head. “I’m not going to be here long.”
Cooper gave an impatient sigh and reached for a cola. He handed the can to Landon. “Your sidekick there need a drink?”
Knowing they were talking about him, Ham sat up a little straighter.
“He wouldn’t turn it down, thanks.”
Cooper filled a saucepan with water, grabbed a towel to put under it and delivered the water.
“Remind me never to have dinner here,” Landon said.
“I’m planning to wash it.”
“This place is nicer than I thought,” Landon said. “You wouldn’t expect this.”
“The toys are under the tarp behind the trailer. I have to keep it nice—I live in it. I lived in it for two years in Corpus Christi. I couldn’t see renting or buying anything when I had this. It’s plenty for one person.”
“You don’t settle down, do you?”
He shook his head. “Nope.”
“Well, we have that in common,” Landon said.
“How’s that?” Cooper said, sitting on the couch across from Landon.
Instead of an answer, Landon said, “Listen, I saw you at the game. In Coquille.”
“I was pretty obvious,” Cooper said. “I intended to be obvious. You didn’t have any trouble, did you?”
“No, but listen, you can’t be telling the deputy what’s going on. You can’t. You’ll just make it worse, I’m telling you.”
“I didn’t tell Mac you were getting shoved around.”
“It looked like it.”
“I know what it looked like. We were talking football, talking plays. I pointed to a few players I knew, made sure they saw me pointing them out to the deputy, but we were talking football.” He took a drink from his bottle of beer. “They can’t beat you up if I tell on them, Landon. I was there, remember? I can talk about what I heard and saw and that doesn’t make you a snitch.”
Landon scooted forward on his chair. “You think they’re going to see it that way?”
“They may be stupid, Landon, but I do believe they know that if they beat you up, they’re going to answer to me. And one of my only friends here is Mac, who seems to know what he’s doing. You should tell him, but if you won’t, I’ll just look like the bad guy for a while. How’s that?”
“You shouldn’t get into this, Cooper. You don’t have to do this.”
Cooper gave a shrug. “Listen, I was the new guy a lot when I was your age. I wasn’t the star football player, but I always had trouble fitting in. And there was always some asshole who thought pushing me around and making my life miserable would be fun. By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask you...what makes Morrison so special?”
“Money, I think. His family is about the richest family around and he has two older brothers who have big football fame at Thunder High—big athletic scholarships. Not pro ball kind of stuff, but they’re a lot older and finished with college and everyone around here thinks the Morrisons are awesome. I only know Jag and he is not awesome. He’s not even that much of a football player.”
“Huh,” Cooper said. “They live in that big house out on the point, right? Where do they get the money?”
“Hell if I know,” Landon said. “The brothers have trophies in the trophy case and people talk about them like they’re legend. That’s all I know. The coach and Mr. Morrison are old friends.”
“How convenient...”
“And my situation is just going to get more interesting because Jag asked Eve McCain to the homecoming dance and she said no.” Cooper’s eyebrows shot up. “So then she asked me. And I should’ve said no, but I couldn’t. I said yes.”
“You couldn’t...?”
“Man, I should’ve said no, just to keep her as far from this Morrison thing as possible, but I didn’t know till after that he’d asked her first. And my God, she’s so hot. And nice, so nice. And funny, too. Plus, she said it was hard to ask me and also said to please not hurt her feelings too much.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t tell her no, man. It would’ve killed us both.”
“Whoa.”
“Yeah, Morrison might just have more to be pissed about...”
“Okay, now we do have an issue, because I gave Mac my word that if I saw anything going on that put his daughter in a bad place, I would definitely tell him....”
Landon sat tall. “And have you? Seen that?”
“Come on, Landon, let’s be straight here—you’re worried about it. You as much as said so....”
He shook his head. “I don’t think Morrison would ever do anything to Eve. But he’d get even with me if he could.”
Cooper relaxed, propping an ankle over his knee. He took a long, leisurely drink of his beer. Then he said, “Good thing I go to games. And even though I was mad at her for it, it’s a good thing Gina conned me in to helping her and Mac chaperone the dance.”
Landon hit his head with the heel of his hand. “Aw, man!”
“My feeling exactly,” Cooper said. “So, if you have any trouble, speak up.”
“You can’t say anything, Cooper,” he said pleadingly.
“I probably won’t have to, but you should. You should at least tell the coach and, if necessary, tell Mac. You’re going out with Eve. It’s your job to keep her safe.”
“Right. Tell Mr. Morrison’s good friend, the coach....”
“Look, you know what I think. Just think about what’s the right thing to do, for Eve if not for yourself, okay? Now, let’s change the subject. I haven’t seen you in over a week, except at the game. Where’ve you been?”
“My sister has been around a lot. She’s working tonight so me and Ham, we’re on our own.”
“I know you moved here because she got a divorce, but you said you’re like me—you don’t settle down. Why’s that?”
“My sister’s job. She’s reassigned every couple of years. Sometimes even more often. Our folks died right after she started with the Coast Guard. At first she was going to leave me with our aunt Frances, who is the aunt from hell, by the way. I begged and pleaded and finally just started running away a lot until not only did Sarah take me, Aunt Frances gave her a door prize for getting me off her hands.”
“Not so close to Aunt Frances, huh?”
“I hate her. She hates me. If she ever goes missing or her body turns up somewhere, I should be a suspect.”
“I see. Jesus, you’re a lot of work,” Cooper said.
“Oh, but I’m not. I’m easy. I never get in trouble, I get good grades, I take care of things at home and you know why? Because all Sarah has to do to straighten me right out is say Aunt Frances.”
“What the hell did Aunt Frances do to you?”
“General bitching, 24/7. She screamed, she slapped. She locked me in my room, took away dinner, hated me and punished me every second.”
“Gotcha,” Cooper said. “I guess a big kid like you couldn’t deal with that.”
The look that came into Landon’s eyes was almost scary. “I was five,” he said seriously. “A five-year-old kid whose parents had just been killed in an accident.”
Cooper just connected with that stare for a long time and said nothing. “What about your uncle?” he finally asked.
“No uncle,” Landon said. “One of the many things that probably made her such a bitch.”
“Aunt Frances doesn’t sound like a nice person.”
“Not a nice person.”
Cooper leaned back. He drank a little of his beer. Then he said, “I’m sorry, man. So. What does Sarah do for the Coast Guard?”
“Search and rescue. She’s a helicopter pilot.”
Cooper choked. Then he coughed. Finally, he said, “That right?”
“You need me to pound on your back?” Landon asked.
“Nah, I’m okay,” he rasped. “Helicopter pilot?”
“Yep. She works out of the North Bend station. She’s pretty senior but she has to sit alert sometimes. Overnight. She finally trusts me enough to leave me without a keeper. I think Ham here was a trick to hedge her bets—he has to be fed and let out, so I have to be home to do that. She has the old neighbors next door monitoring my truck—they don’t have anything better to do but look out the window and watch when I come home from school, leave for school, that kind of thing. And she calls me. A lot.”
On cue, Landon’s cell phone rang. He answered, “Yes, my queen?”
Cooper laughed and shook his head.
“Wow,” he said. “Just wow. I really can’t believe no one asked you.”
“Oh, I was asked, just not by the right person....” She started to back away. “Bell’s gonna ring...”
He snagged a piece of her sleeve. “Yeah? Who asked?”
She grinned. “Wanna know your competition, huh? Well, he’s not—I can’t stand him. I’d never go out with him.”
“Yeah?” Landon asked, grinning hugely. “Who’s that?”
“Morrison. Jag Morrison. He’s just a stupid ass. I gotta go. See you later, like after practice or something.” And she whirled around and was gone.
Landon turned back to his locker, closed it and let his head fall against the cold steel. Oh, man, he thought. I can’t believe this is happening. My life is definitely over.
* * *
Landon’s sister worked two nights in a row in North Bend so she could be off the weekend of the high school homecoming game. That gave Landon just the right amount of freedom to check in with Cooper. It was a misty, moonless night, but he jogged Ham across the beach, confident there wouldn’t be people out there. He saw the lights on in Ben’s place and heard music, so he ran up the stairs to the deck and pounded on the door.
Cooper answered. He was wearing a dirty old sweatshirt covered with sawdust, a tool belt around his hips, a surgical-type mask over his mouth and nose and a crowbar in his hand. The music came from an old paint-splattered radio. Cooper pulled down the mask. “Well, I thought you were avoiding me,” he said with a grin. He looked down at the Great Dane, who sat patiently beside Landon. “Hello, Hamlet. Kind of calm tonight, aren’t you?”
“I ran him across the beach.” Landon almost forgot his mission. Cooper was surrounded by debris—piles of wood, dismantled bar and shelves, boxes of what looked like Ben’s things. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to clean the place up, renovate. So I can sell it.”
“Sell it? You’re going to just sell it?” Landon asked.
“Well, it needs a lot of work first. But in a few months I’ll sell this and the piece of land it sits on.”
“We have to talk,” Landon said.
Cooper thought about this for a second, then put down the crowbar and removed the tool belt. “Let’s go in the house and get a drink. I don’t suppose he knows how to wipe his feet?” he said, shooting a look at Ham.
Landon pulled a rag out of his back pocket. “I got it,” he said.
The house was, of course, Cooper’s fifth wheel, the toy hauler. Cooper went first, brushing off his shirt and pants. Landon did as he was asked, wiping the sand off Ham’s feet and, for good measure, the drool off his mouth. When he stepped inside, he said, “Nice.” Then, hanging on to the dog’s collar, he picked a chair by the door and kept the dog sitting politely at his side.
Cooper went to the kitchen and washed up. He opened the refrigerator and helped himself to a beer. “I have bottled water, tea, cola and Gatorade.”
Landon shook his head. “I’m not going to be here long.”
Cooper gave an impatient sigh and reached for a cola. He handed the can to Landon. “Your sidekick there need a drink?”
Knowing they were talking about him, Ham sat up a little straighter.
“He wouldn’t turn it down, thanks.”
Cooper filled a saucepan with water, grabbed a towel to put under it and delivered the water.
“Remind me never to have dinner here,” Landon said.
“I’m planning to wash it.”
“This place is nicer than I thought,” Landon said. “You wouldn’t expect this.”
“The toys are under the tarp behind the trailer. I have to keep it nice—I live in it. I lived in it for two years in Corpus Christi. I couldn’t see renting or buying anything when I had this. It’s plenty for one person.”
“You don’t settle down, do you?”
He shook his head. “Nope.”
“Well, we have that in common,” Landon said.
“How’s that?” Cooper said, sitting on the couch across from Landon.
Instead of an answer, Landon said, “Listen, I saw you at the game. In Coquille.”
“I was pretty obvious,” Cooper said. “I intended to be obvious. You didn’t have any trouble, did you?”
“No, but listen, you can’t be telling the deputy what’s going on. You can’t. You’ll just make it worse, I’m telling you.”
“I didn’t tell Mac you were getting shoved around.”
“It looked like it.”
“I know what it looked like. We were talking football, talking plays. I pointed to a few players I knew, made sure they saw me pointing them out to the deputy, but we were talking football.” He took a drink from his bottle of beer. “They can’t beat you up if I tell on them, Landon. I was there, remember? I can talk about what I heard and saw and that doesn’t make you a snitch.”
Landon scooted forward on his chair. “You think they’re going to see it that way?”
“They may be stupid, Landon, but I do believe they know that if they beat you up, they’re going to answer to me. And one of my only friends here is Mac, who seems to know what he’s doing. You should tell him, but if you won’t, I’ll just look like the bad guy for a while. How’s that?”
“You shouldn’t get into this, Cooper. You don’t have to do this.”
Cooper gave a shrug. “Listen, I was the new guy a lot when I was your age. I wasn’t the star football player, but I always had trouble fitting in. And there was always some asshole who thought pushing me around and making my life miserable would be fun. By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask you...what makes Morrison so special?”
“Money, I think. His family is about the richest family around and he has two older brothers who have big football fame at Thunder High—big athletic scholarships. Not pro ball kind of stuff, but they’re a lot older and finished with college and everyone around here thinks the Morrisons are awesome. I only know Jag and he is not awesome. He’s not even that much of a football player.”
“Huh,” Cooper said. “They live in that big house out on the point, right? Where do they get the money?”
“Hell if I know,” Landon said. “The brothers have trophies in the trophy case and people talk about them like they’re legend. That’s all I know. The coach and Mr. Morrison are old friends.”
“How convenient...”
“And my situation is just going to get more interesting because Jag asked Eve McCain to the homecoming dance and she said no.” Cooper’s eyebrows shot up. “So then she asked me. And I should’ve said no, but I couldn’t. I said yes.”
“You couldn’t...?”
“Man, I should’ve said no, just to keep her as far from this Morrison thing as possible, but I didn’t know till after that he’d asked her first. And my God, she’s so hot. And nice, so nice. And funny, too. Plus, she said it was hard to ask me and also said to please not hurt her feelings too much.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t tell her no, man. It would’ve killed us both.”
“Whoa.”
“Yeah, Morrison might just have more to be pissed about...”
“Okay, now we do have an issue, because I gave Mac my word that if I saw anything going on that put his daughter in a bad place, I would definitely tell him....”
Landon sat tall. “And have you? Seen that?”
“Come on, Landon, let’s be straight here—you’re worried about it. You as much as said so....”
He shook his head. “I don’t think Morrison would ever do anything to Eve. But he’d get even with me if he could.”
Cooper relaxed, propping an ankle over his knee. He took a long, leisurely drink of his beer. Then he said, “Good thing I go to games. And even though I was mad at her for it, it’s a good thing Gina conned me in to helping her and Mac chaperone the dance.”
Landon hit his head with the heel of his hand. “Aw, man!”
“My feeling exactly,” Cooper said. “So, if you have any trouble, speak up.”
“You can’t say anything, Cooper,” he said pleadingly.
“I probably won’t have to, but you should. You should at least tell the coach and, if necessary, tell Mac. You’re going out with Eve. It’s your job to keep her safe.”
“Right. Tell Mr. Morrison’s good friend, the coach....”
“Look, you know what I think. Just think about what’s the right thing to do, for Eve if not for yourself, okay? Now, let’s change the subject. I haven’t seen you in over a week, except at the game. Where’ve you been?”
“My sister has been around a lot. She’s working tonight so me and Ham, we’re on our own.”
“I know you moved here because she got a divorce, but you said you’re like me—you don’t settle down. Why’s that?”
“My sister’s job. She’s reassigned every couple of years. Sometimes even more often. Our folks died right after she started with the Coast Guard. At first she was going to leave me with our aunt Frances, who is the aunt from hell, by the way. I begged and pleaded and finally just started running away a lot until not only did Sarah take me, Aunt Frances gave her a door prize for getting me off her hands.”
“Not so close to Aunt Frances, huh?”
“I hate her. She hates me. If she ever goes missing or her body turns up somewhere, I should be a suspect.”
“I see. Jesus, you’re a lot of work,” Cooper said.
“Oh, but I’m not. I’m easy. I never get in trouble, I get good grades, I take care of things at home and you know why? Because all Sarah has to do to straighten me right out is say Aunt Frances.”
“What the hell did Aunt Frances do to you?”
“General bitching, 24/7. She screamed, she slapped. She locked me in my room, took away dinner, hated me and punished me every second.”
“Gotcha,” Cooper said. “I guess a big kid like you couldn’t deal with that.”
The look that came into Landon’s eyes was almost scary. “I was five,” he said seriously. “A five-year-old kid whose parents had just been killed in an accident.”
Cooper just connected with that stare for a long time and said nothing. “What about your uncle?” he finally asked.
“No uncle,” Landon said. “One of the many things that probably made her such a bitch.”
“Aunt Frances doesn’t sound like a nice person.”
“Not a nice person.”
Cooper leaned back. He drank a little of his beer. Then he said, “I’m sorry, man. So. What does Sarah do for the Coast Guard?”
“Search and rescue. She’s a helicopter pilot.”
Cooper choked. Then he coughed. Finally, he said, “That right?”
“You need me to pound on your back?” Landon asked.
“Nah, I’m okay,” he rasped. “Helicopter pilot?”
“Yep. She works out of the North Bend station. She’s pretty senior but she has to sit alert sometimes. Overnight. She finally trusts me enough to leave me without a keeper. I think Ham here was a trick to hedge her bets—he has to be fed and let out, so I have to be home to do that. She has the old neighbors next door monitoring my truck—they don’t have anything better to do but look out the window and watch when I come home from school, leave for school, that kind of thing. And she calls me. A lot.”
On cue, Landon’s cell phone rang. He answered, “Yes, my queen?”
Cooper laughed and shook his head.