Past Tense (Jack Reacher #23)(114)

Amos said nothing.

They all went to the door together. More seemly, Burke insisted, given the hour. Like delivering a death message, Reacher thought. Two MPs and a priest.

He rang the bell.

A whole minute later a hallway light came on. He saw it through a pebbled glass pane set high in the door. He saw a broken-up mosaic of calm cream colors, a long narrow space, with what might have been family photographs on the wall.

He saw an old man shuffle into view. A broken-up mosaic. Stooped, gray, slow, unsteady. He walked with his knuckles pressed on a millwork rail. He got closer and closer, and then he opened the door.





Chapter 44


The old man who opened the door was about ninety. He was thin and stooped inside too-big clothing, maybe favorite stuff bought long ago, back when he was a vigorous seventy. He could have started out six-one and 190, at his peak, before the start of a long decline. Now he was bent over like a question mark. His skin was slack and translucent. His eyes watered. He had strands of gray hair, as fine as silk.

He wasn’t Reacher’s father.

Not even thirty years older. Because he wasn’t. Simple as that. Also forensically, because no broken nose, no shrapnel scar on his cheek, no stitch mark in his eyebrow.

The photographs on the wall were of birds.

The old man held out a wavering hand.

“Stan Reacher,” he said. “I’m pleased to meet you.”

Reacher shook the old man’s hand. It felt cold as ice.

“Jack Reacher,” he said. “Likewise.”

“Are we related?”

“We’re all related, if you go back far enough.”

“Please come in.”

Amos said she and Burke would wait in the car. Reacher followed the old guy down the hallway. Slower than a funeral march. Half a step, a long pause, another half a step. They made it to a nook between the living room and an eat-in kitchen. It had two armchairs, set one each side of a lamp with a big fringed shade. Good for reading.

Old Stan Reacher waved his wavering hand at one of the armchairs, like an invitation, and he sat down in the other. He was happy to talk. He was happy to answer questions. He didn’t seem to find them strange. He confirmed he grew up in Ryantown, in the tin mill foreman’s apartment. He remembered the kitchen tile. Acanthus leaves, and marigolds, and artichoke blossoms. James and Elizabeth Reacher were his parents. The tin mill foreman himself, and the bed sheet finisher. He said it never occurred to him to wonder whether they did a good job or not. Partly because it was all he knew, and partly because he didn’t notice anyway, because he had been introduced to birdwatching by then, which had given him a whole other world to go live in. He said it wasn’t about checking off new sightings on a list. There was a clue in the word. It was about watching. What they did, and how, and why, and where, and when. It was about thinking yourself into whole new dimensions, with whole new problems and whole new powers.

Reacher asked, “Who introduced you?”

“My cousin Bill,” Stan said.

“Who was he?”

“It was a time, back then. Somehow most of the boys you hung out with were your cousins. Maybe it was a tribal instinct. People were afraid. It was tough times. For a spell it looked like the whole thing could fall apart. I guess cousins were reassuring. Any kid’s best friend was likely his cousin. Bill was mine and I was his.”

“What kind of cousin was he?”

“Neither one of us could count high enough. All we knew was I was Stan Reacher and he was William Reacher, and way back we both had the same ancestor in the Dakota Territory. I suppose the truth is Bill was a waif and stray. He seemed to be based up on the Canadian border. But he was always roaming. He spent a lot of time in Ryantown.”

“How old was he, the first time he came?”

“I was seven, so he was six. He stayed a whole year.”

“Did he have parents?”

“We supposed so. He never saw them. But they weren’t dead or anything. He got birthday cards every year. We thought they must be secret agents, undercover in a foreign country. Later we thought they were more likely organized crime. Whichever required a greater degree of secrecy. Which was sometimes hard to tell.”

“Was he already a birdwatcher at the age of six?”

“With the naked eye. Which he always thought was best of all. He wasn’t good at explaining why. He was only a kid. Later we understood. After we got binoculars. You get a bigger picture with the naked eye. You don’t get distracted by the close up beauty.”

“How did you get the binoculars?”

“That was much later. Bill would have been ten or eleven by then.”

“How did you get them?”

The old man looked down for a second.

He said, “You got to remember, it was a time, back then.”

“Did he steal them?”

“Not exactly. They were spoils of war. Some kid with a stupid vendetta. Bill ran out of patience. We had been reading old battle poems. He said he felt he should seize something. The binoculars and thirty-one cents were all the kid had.”

“You wrote about the rough-legged hawk together.”

The old man nodded.

“We sure did,” he said. “That was a fine piece of work. I would be proud of that today.”

“Do you remember September 1943?”