Jack Weyland - Peppertide

1983 Deseret Book Company

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

First printing February 1983

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Weyland, Jack, 1940

PepperTide.

I. Title.

PS3573.E99P4 1983 813'.54 82-25171

ISBN 0-87747-96-4

eISBN 978-1-64933-071-0 (eBook)

When I was fourteen years old, my father announced he had a deal going that would make us all rich. He always had deals on the fire, and it seemed we were always just about to get rich. This one required him to go to Mexico for a few days. He gave me fifty dol lars for groceries, put me in charge of my younger brother and sister, threw a sleeping bag in his old pickup, hugged the three of us, and drove away.

That was eleven years ago. It was the last we heard from him until six months ago.

"I have a person-to-person collect call for Jimmy Pepper from Hank Pepper. Will you accept the call?" the operator asked.

"You must have the wrong number," I said.

"Jimmy? It's meDad. I saw you on Johnny Carson last week. You were so funnyI died laughing."

"Will you accept the call?" the operator broke in.

"What?" I mumbled, feeling stunned. "... I guess so."

"... Like I said, you were so funny. Even my barber said so."

"Who is this again?"

"It's Dad."

"Where are you?"

"Buffalo, Wyoming. I work at a carwash."

A long silence. "Why did you call?"

"Just to say hello."

"Oh sure. Well, nice hearing from you ... call again sometime."

"Wait. The reason I never came back ... I was in jail in Mexico. When I got out, I didn't know how to contact you ... not till I saw you on TV last week."

"Do you need money, is that why you called?"

He said he didn't need any money.

"Ryan's dead," I said.

There was a long silence. Finally he said, "I heard about it. It was too bad. He was a good boy."

"How do you know what he was? You weren't around to find out."

A long silence. "Can you and Jill come see me?"

I wiped my forehead. "Hank, I'm having a hard time with this. Give me your number and I'll get back to you."

"Who was that?" my wife asked after I'd hung up.

I stared at the phone, worried it might strike again. "My fatherhe's alive. He wants Jill and me to go see him."

"Are you going?"

"I don't know." I left the house for a walk, trying to fight the flood of memories. Somewhere in my mind a dam had broken, unable to take the strain any longer.

There were three kids in our family. I have a sister, Jill,sixteen months younger, and a brother, Ryan, three years younger.

When Dad left, we were living in a small rental house in Cheyenne. The front door opened into the alley, the only house in town that did. The address was 319 Holcomb. As a boy,I remember resenting the , as if it meant we weren't good enough to merit a whole number. Once I tore it down from where it was tacked on a tree in front of the house, but Jill told on me and I had to put it back. Both our parents were originally from Utah, but after they were married they never returned. Hank had little use for religion or relatives, both of which were in too plentiful supply in Utah.

There's been a parade of mothers and foster mothers running through our lives. Our real mother died when I was eleven, a victim of a hit-and-run accident along a gravel road near Cheyenne.

Our second mother was a woman Dad met in a truck stop cafe when he was driving truck. It was less than a year after Mom died. Her name was Joan. We woke up one morning to find a woman rattling around in the kitchen, complaining about the mess. Dad walked in, tucking in his shirt and carrying his shoes and socks, and more or less off-handedly announced, "Oh, this is your new mother."

"We don't want a new mother," I said.

He shrugged his shoulders and sat down to put on his shoes. "Don't matter what you want. You got one, and you better obey her if you know what's good for you."

She made good hash browns and liked to watch TV, but more than anything I remember she looked on the grumpy side of life. If you said it was a nice day, she'd tell you it was going to rain.

We didn't get along very well with her. It wouldn't have been too bad if Dad had been around to smooth things over, but he was still driving for a moving van company. He drove all over the country. We loved it be cause each time he returned, he'd bring gifts from wherever he'd been. Once he went all the way to Maine and brought back a lobster frozen in ice. We loved to hear him talk about the places he'd been.

I'm not sure exactly what went wrong between him and Joan, or whether they were actually even married. About a year after she'd been there, a man started to drop by and pick her up at nights while Hank was away. She always said she was going to a movie, but there were only two movie theatres in town, and they changed movies once every two weeks, but she was gone four times a week.

When Dad got back from a long trip, they got into an argument that lasted late into the night. I tried to stay awake to listen, but finally fell asleep.

The next morning she was gone.

"Where's Joan?" Ryan asked.

"Gone," was all Dad ever said about it.

For a while he quit driving so he could watch us. He got a job as a dispatcher for the company. Either it didn't pay much or he didn't like sitting at a desk, because by the time I was fourteen he'd quit.

After that we didn't know what he was doing. He'd be gone for a few days, then suddenly appear with lots of money. It was great when he came back, because he'd take us out for pizza and buy us things. Once he bought us new bicycles, and another time, fishing and camping gear. He'd stay home a week or two and then be gone again. At first he paid a lady to come and stay, but I told him he might as well save his money, that I could cook as well as that lady, who always made casseroles with noodles and cream of mushroom soup. It was years later when I finally realized why most women would rather fix casseroles than just about anything.

That's why he left us alone on that last trip.

We got along okay at first, but after three weeks, with him already two weeks late, I started to wonder.

One day we were playing in an old junk car that perpetually sat in our front yard, which, because the house faced the alley, was everyone else's backyard. To us, the car was a wonderful toy, rich with the smell of mildew and rotting orange peels and grease. In that car we had chased and been chased by outlaws. Sometimes it was even a plane or a rocket.

Ryan was sitting on top of the car eating a peanut butter sandwich while Jill and I played "Famous Actress." It wasn't that much fun for me, but she liked it. She was a famous rich actress, and I was her chauffeur. She'd spend hours rummaging in an old trunk in the basement, where Dad had put Mom's clothes. Then she'd come outside, her face smeared with makeup. She'd get in and order me to take her to the Empire State Building.

While we were playing, I looked back and saw a neighbor lady from across the alley standing at her fence and staring at us long and hard. She'd come to empty her garbage but had already done that. She just stared at us. Then without a word she shook her head and left.

The next day after school a woman came. She said her name was Miss McCormack and that she was a caseworker from the county. For a while I thought she meant she worked in a canning factory. But that isn't what she meant at all.

I couldn't figure why she came, because all she did was sit and look. We were watching TV and having our usual peanut butter sandwiches and milk. She sat on the couch in front of the TV, but didn't seem very interested in the show.