It came together. Dutch’s nephew. He had met the kid that afternoon, outside Dutch’s house.
“Let me buy you one,” Wohl said, smiling and offering his hand. “Matt Moffitt, right?”
“Matt Payne,” the boy said. “I was adopted.”
“Yeah, I heard something about that,” Wohl said. “Sorry.”
“No problem,” Matt said.
The bartender appeared.
“I don’t know what he wants,” Wohl said, “but Johnnie Red and soda for me.”
“The same,” Matt said.
“You old enough?” the bartender challenged. “You got a driver’s license?”
Matt handed it over. The bartender eyed it dubiously, then asked Matt for his birth date. Finally he shrugged, and went to make the drinks.
“They lose their licenses,” Wohl said. “You can’t blame them.”
When the drinks came, Matt laid a twenty on the bar.
“Hey, I’ll get these,” Wohl said.
“My pleasure,” Matt Payne said. He picked up his glass, raised it, and said, “Dutch.”
“Dutch,” Wohl repeated, and raised his glass.
“I just came from the Moffitts’,” Matt said. “After that, I needed this.”
“I was supposed to be there. But I got tied up,” Wohl said. “I couldn’t get away. I’ll go by Marshutz & Sons, to the wake, tomorrow.”
“It was pretty awful,” Matt said.
“Why do you say that?” Wohl asked.
“The kids, for one thing, my cousins,” Matt said. “Losing their father is really tough on them. And my grandmother was a flaming pain in the ass, for another. She was a real bitch toward my mother.”
“What?” Wohl asked. “Why?”
“My grandmother thinks what my mother should have done when my father got killed was turn into a professional widow, like she is. Instead, she married my stepfather. “
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Out of the church,” Matt said. “Mother married one of those heathen Protestant Episcopals. And then Mother converted herself, and took me with her. And then let my stepfather adopt me.”
“German Catholic mothers of that generation have very positive ideas,” Wohl said. “I know, I’ve got one of them. She and Gertrude Moffitt are old pals.”
“You weren’t at the house,” Matt said, and Wohl wasn’t sure if it was a question or a challenge.
“I also have a German Lutheran father,” Wohl said, “who went along with her until he suspected, correctly, that a priest at Saint Joseph’s Prep was trying to recruit me for the Jesuits. Then he pulled me out of Good Ol’ Saint Joe’s and moved me into Northeast High. She still has high hopes that I will meet some good Catholic girl, who will lead me back into the fold.”
I wonder why I told him that?
“Then you do know,” Matt said.
“The reason I didn’t go to see Jeannie Moffitt tonight was because I didn’t want to,” Wohl said. “And I figured if Dutch is really looking down from his cloud, he would understand.”