P. Parrish - Thicker Than Water

Ronnie Cade had heard the Mustang’s door and came out of the shed, wiping his hands on a dirty rag.

“You found the place,” Ronnie said.

“It wasn’t hard.” Louis looked around. There was a double-wide trailer parked behind the shed. It was fronted by a small concrete patio that held a barbecue grill and some plastic chairs clustered around an old wooden electrical spool. Huge purple thunderheads were piling up again in the west.

“You have a lot of land here,” Louis said.

Ronnie squinted out over the grounds. “Yeah, ten acres,” he said flatly. “Come on inside. We can talk while I finish up.”

Louis followed, stepping over the comatose dog. Inside, it was cool and smelled of cut grass. The shed was filled with bags of fertilizer, compost, power mowers, edgers and other gardening tools. Ronnie went to a workbench, where the guts of a gas-powered leaf blower lay exposed under the glare of a florescent light.

“I was surprised when you called,” Ronnie said, picking up a screwdriver. “I thought when I didn’t hear from you, you decided to blow me off.”

“I went and saw your father,” Louis said.

Ronnie turned to look at him, but then went back to poking the screwdriver in the blower. “So?”

“He didn’t give me any compelling reason to take your case.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“Maybe you can.”

“Can what?”

“Give me a reason.”

“I already did. I told you, my father is innocent.”

“What about twenty years ago?” Louis said.

Ronnie turned and stared at him. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

“Well, I need-”

Ronnie pointed the screwdriver at Louis. “Look, it doesn’t matter. I don’t want to talk about it.”

Louis heard a motor outside and the sound of air brakes releasing. He looked out the door and saw a yellow school bus pulling away down Mantanzas Trail.

A moment later, a boy came to the door, stopping in the threshold when he saw Louis. He was about thirteen, gangly, with unruly dark hair and sunburned arms exposed in his Van Halen T-shirt.

“Hey, Dad, what are you doing home? I thought you were cutting Bay Beach today?” he asked, eyeing Louis.

“Got rained out. What about you?”

“Teacher work day. Half day.” The dog had come in, and the boy dropped his backpack to scratch its ears.

“Go get changed,” Ronnie said. “I need some help loading that sod before it starts raining again.”

“Oh, man. .”

“No lip, you hear?”

He heaved a sigh. “I’m hungry.”

Ronnie wiped a hand over his brow. “Okay, there’s some of those pizza things left. Then get back out here, okay?”

“Do I nuke ’em on high?”

“No. Half-power or they splatter up the inside.”

With a lingering look at Louis, the boy left, the dog trailing after.

“Your son?” Louis asked.

Ronnie nodded, concentrating again on the leaf blower.

Louis was thinking how much the boy looked like Jack Cade. He remembered that Ronnie had said he lived with his son and wondered if the boy’s mother was in the picture. He had the feeling she wasn’t; there was something about this place that had the forlorn aura of men living alone.

“He helps you around here, I take it?” he asked.

“Eric? Yeah. He’s a good kid. Not like me when I was his age. I gave my dad a lot of shit. He even had to bail me out of jail once when I did something stupid. But he kept me straight after that. Maybe that’s why I feel I owe him this now.”

Ronnie glanced at him. “You got any kids?”

Louis shook his head quickly.

“I raised Eric by myself,” Ronnie said, his fingers deep in the blower’s greasy bowels. “His mother split when he was seven. Hand me those pliers, will you?”

Louis scanned the bench and held out the pliers. Ronnie’s face was screwed in concentration as he took another stab at the wounded motor. Finally, he threw the pliers down.

“Fuck! The fucking thing is stripped. Shit!”

He ran a hand over his brow and took a step back, staring at the mess of metal on the bench. He looked at Louis and gestured to the bench. “The fucker’s shot!”

Ronnie spun and kicked at a metal stool, sending it crashing against the wall. He stood there for a moment, hands on his hips, head bowed. Then he turned to Louis.

“I can’t pay you,” he said, his voice strained.

Louis held out his hand. “Look, Cade-”

“No, you’re not hearing me. That five hundred I said I’d pay you?” Ronnie was shaking his head. “I haven’t got it, man! I have two-hundred and thirty-three dollars in my checking account and if I don’t use it to buy a fucking new blower, I can’t go to work tomorrow!”

Louis saw something move in the corner of his eye and glanced over to see Eric Cade standing at the door. He had changed into cutoffs and a frayed man’s dress shirt that looked too big for him. He was holding a pair of leather work gloves, staring at his father.

Ronnie saw him and look a deep breath. “Eric, go get started. I’ll be there in a minute.”

The boy hesitated.

“Go! Now!”

The boy spun and disappeared outside. A low rumble of thunder came from the west.

“Shit,” Ronnie whispered.

Louis stood there, not knowing what to say.

“I’m sorry, man,” Ronnie said. “I lose it sometimes.” His lips twisted into a grimaced smile. “Brat attacks, Cindy used to call them.”

Ronnie’s eyes focused again on the leaf blower on the bench and came back to Louis. “They want half a million bail for my dad,” he said.

“You’d only have to come up with fifty thousand,” Louis said.

“Fifty thousand,” Ronnie said softly, his eyes still on the leaf blower. “I was thinking I could get a mortgage. The land’s free and clear. It’s the only thing I own, except my truck and that piece of shit trailer.”

Louis didn’t know how mortgages worked, but he suspected that it would be tough for a man like Ronnie to get a bank to even listen to him. It started to rain, a soft tattoo on the roof of the woodshed.

“I don’t want to lose this place,” Ronnie said.

“I can understand that,” Louis said.

“My dad bought this land in the fifties after he got back from Korea,” Ronnie said. “There was nothing on the key in those days, but he knew it was going to be worth something someday. He was always good at taking care of plants, so he started growing some palm trees. We were the first landscaping business on Sereno.”

Ronnie picked up the screwdriver again, making a half-hearted poke at the metal. “It was tough at first, but Dad and me, we made it work. After a couple years, we had contracts at the golf courses and built up a good client base taking care of the yards over in Hyde Park.”

Louis recognized the name. It was a neighborhood of old homes along the Caloosahatchee River, an enclave of grace that had survived the financial vagaries that plagued Fort Myers’ downtown core.

“What happened?” Louis asked.

Ronnie’s hand paused over the metal, but he didn’t look up. “What happened?” he said. “They found that girl’s body in the dump, that’s what happened. Everything changed after that day.”

Louis wished he had more details about the Jagger case. “What made them think your father killed her?” he asked.

Ronnie was silent.

“Ronnie?”

“A tool,” he said. “They found one of his tools next to her body.”

The rain had stopped. Louis could hear a grunting sound out in the yard. Through the open door, he caught a glimpse of Eric Cade stacking slabs of sod onto a flatbed.

“He didn’t do it,” Ronnie said softly. “I don’t know much else about what happened but I know that much. He didn’t do it.”