The Sledgehammer Concerto

THE SLEDGEHAMMER CONCERTO

Francis W. Porretto

THE SLEDGEHAMMER CONCERTO

A novel of speculation and reflection

Copyright © 2010 by Francis W. Porretto

Cover art by Donna Casey (http://DigitalDonna.com)

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted without the express written permission of the author, except for brief quotations embedded in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. The persons and events described here are entirely imaginary, nor are they intended to suggest or imply anything whatsoever about actual persons or events. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental. All locations and institutions are employed fictitiously.

Contact: [email protected]

To Beth,

To Rachael and Anya,

And to the greater glory of God.

Novels by Francis W. Porretto:

The Realm of Essences Series:

Chosen One

On Broken Wings

Shadow Of A Sword

Polymath

Statesman

The Spooner Federation Saga:

Which Art In Hope

Freedom’s Scion

Freedom’s Fury

The Futanari Series:

The Athene Academy Collection

Innocents

Experiences

The Wise and the Mad

In Vino

The Aeolian Fantasies:

The Warm Lands

Other novels:

The Sledgehammer Concerto

Priestesses

Love In The Time Of Cinema

Antiquities

The Discovery Phase

Overture

It wasn’t a kidnapping, but it had the feel of one.

Andrea Ducati sat silently in the passenger seat of her uncle’s four-by-four, with no idea where they’d been headed since five that morning. For the last four hours she’d held back an avalanche of questions. The most urgent of them was for herself: why she’d agreed to this jaunt into the back end of nowhere, with a man she was barely willing to speak to on major holidays.

They’d left the county road five minutes earlier. The land to either side of them was as wild a woodland as she’d seen. Yet the dirt road they navigated was smooth and unblocked.

He kept his eyes on the road. He’d said he did very little driving, these days.

This isn’t State land?

He shook his head.

Who looks after it?

A slight smile. Aha! The who-what-when-where at last. I make sure the road stays clear. Other than that? It looks after itself.

And I thought Mom and Dad were creatures of mystery.

He guided the truck up the thirty degree incline at a steady ten miles per hour. Despite the steep grade, he could have driven faster. There were few ruts, and no debris.

How much further?

It’s just ahead.

Two dozen yards later the trees fell back and the incline flattened out completely. Before them, at the center of a large clearing, stood a large, handsome log cabin. Its windows were dark. There was no sign of human presence.

He pulled to a stop in front of the cabin door, killed the engine and turned to her with his most enigmatic smile.

You think you know the story. You think you know the players. But there’s a lot you don’t know, because you never asked the one man who did.

What --

And the one man, he interjected, wasn’t me.

She studied his face. According to her mother, Devin MacLachlan was well into his sixties, yet he still possessed a round, perfectly unlined face. His step was sprightly and his thick red-brown hair showed only a hint of gray. His boundless vitality was the wonder and consternation of their family. He liked to say that he stayed young on a diet of practical jokes and puns. He was well known for both.

He’d better not have driven me a million miles into the boonies for some kind of prank. Not when I’ve got all this work to do.

I cashed in a lot of chips to get today off. The network isn’t known to forget stuff like this. He’d better not be wasting my time.

Andrea Ducati, grim child of the millennium a quarter century old, had no time to waste, especially not on the foolery to which her uncle was addicted.

Are you going to tell me why we’re here?

He pursed his lips. Have a little patience, An. He let himself out of the truck and strode to the cabin door with his keys in hand. He had the cabin door unlocked and open before Andrea had dismounted.

The cabin had a musty odor, probably from having been sealed up for a while. It was a hunting lodge-style design, with an elevated sleeping loft connected to the lower room by a flight of stairs that ran down the centerline of the building. The windows were of an old style, doubly glazed, with wide pine frames and sashes. The flooring was a snug structure of wide oak planks that had been varnished to a high gloss. A large stone fireplace equipped with glass doors and simple black andirons stood at the eastern wall. Over the mantel was a dark wooden rack that held three long guns. All of them looked old and much used. Near the center of the room was a Franklin stove on a brick pedestal.

All it needs is a moose head.

The bottom floor was sparsely furnished. A simple nylon sofa and a leather recliner stood a little way from the fireplace, facing toward it. There was a rolltop desk against the northern wall, its top closed.

Near the window in the western wall was a simple dinette set, a small table and four chairs in some dark wood. They looked old but sturdy, ready for heavy use and accustomed to it.

Along the southern wall, snugged into the left corner, was a roughly finished cabinet that supported a plywood worktop and an old sink. It was flanked by a set of pantry shelves that jutted from the wall. The shelves contained an assortment of kitchen gear, and a variety of jars and cans. In the right corner was the most curious fixture Andrea had ever seen. It was plainly a shower of some sort, but it had a bewildering array of jets, dials, and controls, a twenty-first century appliance in a nineteenth century home. Clear plastic walls surrounded it.

Is there running water here?

He nodded. What good would that contraption be, if there weren’t? He drew his index finger across a touch-sensitive dimmer switch she hadn’t noticed. Strip lighting mounted along the walls glowed softly, and the cabin became a much more welcoming place.

She turned completely around once, faced her uncle again and spread her arms. So? It’s very nice, in a primitive sort of way, but what about it?

He frowned at her a moment, then pointed to the couch. Sit.

She sat, and he ascended the stairs to the sleeping area. When he came down a few minutes later, it was with an armload of large leatherbound books. The bindings of some of the books were creased with age; others looked almost new. He seated himself beside her and deposited the stack of books on the floor before them.

You already know that the man whose name you bear is not the man whose genes you bear. Your father --

Meaning who?

He chuckled. Sorry. James Ducati, the man who raised you and whom you’ve called ‘father’ all your life, knew that your mother was pregnant when they married. She wouldn’t discuss the matter with him, and one of her conditions for marrying him was that he never inquire into it.

He pointed at the stack of books. Those are your biological father’s diaries, Andrea. They cover the last twenty-five years of his life. Not long before he died, he asked me to give you access to them, when I judged you were ready.

She shrugged. Why?

His eyebrows rose. The first ‘why,’ but not a good one. Where’s your reporter’s curiosity, Miss Rising Star? Don’t you want to know anything about the man who sired you?

Andrea’s anger rose. She fought it down and tried to think.

Devin and his late siblings Andrew and Rachel had attached themselves to the Ducati family before Andrea was born. What had drawn the two families together was never revealed to her. It had puzzled her from the first. James Ducati was a gas-station proprietor. Lori Ducati was a homemaker and sometime poet. The MacLachlans might well have had no occupations at all, for they never mentioned them even in passing.

Just after Andrea turned thirteen, Andrew moved into the Ducati home. After that, any occasion was excuse enough for Lori Ducati to hail garrulous Devin and otherworldly Rachel to their table.

James Ducati objected to none of it. Though taciturn by nature and little interested in the world beyond his doors, Andrea’s father had welcomed the MacLachlans into his home with no reservations. Though Andrew MacLachlan was nearly two decades older than her father, the two men had been strongly bonded. They’d shared an elusive kinship that was never discussed, as if they owed one another debts of which they would be embarrassed to speak.

Andrew had had as much responsibility for raising the Ducati children as had Lori or James. Despite her artless attempts to avoid him, he’d paid for Andrea’s college education, and for much else besides.

Even now that Andrew and Rachel were only memories, Devin was seldom long away from the Ducati household. Andrea’s mother always welcomed him with the affection due a beloved relative. Her father treated Devin with the respect due a great man, and insisted that the Ducati children do the same. Yet Devin’s antecedents were entirely opaque, and his role in her family’s life had never been clear.

This irritating little leprechaun was privy to the central secret of her existence, a secret held so closely that even she hadn’t been trusted with it. She’d wondered at the contrast between her coloration and that of her four younger sisters for fifteen years before learning the bare outline of it. If not for the bout of leukemia that had made a bone-marrow transplant necessary to save her life, and had forced the admission from her mother, she might not know of her wood’s-colt origins even now.

On her twenty-fifth birthday, long after it had ceased to matter, Devin MacLachlan, the last person on Earth she’d have expected to know something that intimate about her, had decided to bestow the knowledge of her parentage upon her whether she wanted it or not. The anger surged back and spoke for her.

I don’t see how it can improve my life. He didn’t hang around to be part of it, now, did he?

He shook his head slowly. He did.

It shocked the breath out of her.

You mean --

I mean nothing. His voice had become flinty. There are the books. They’re in chronological order from the top down. Read them or not, as you prefer. I’ll take you back to Hamilton whenever you like. But if you choose not to read them, Andrea, I shan’t bring you here a second time.

He rose, went to the mantel and dismounted one of the guns. I’m going out for a walk. I should be back in a couple of hours. I suggest you lock the door behind me. He opened the bolt of the old rifle and peered into the chamber, nodded for no obvious reason, closed it and strode out of the cabin.

She sat still in the sudden silence, pondering what he had said.

If Mom loved him enough to have me by him, and insist that Dad accept it, he must have been special.

She plucked the top book from the stack and rested it in her lap. It was as heavy as it looked, a solid weight upon her thighs. The covers were stout slabs of fine-grained brown leather. The binding was a work of precision and care, the threading regular, the signatures absolutely even. She riffled casually through the large, creamy pages. They were closely covered in a beautiful hand, penmanship much too good for the age of the ubiquitous keyboard. The mere appearance of the flowing script sent a pang through her, a sense that she was about to look through a window into a vanished world.

For ten years I’ve told myself that I didn’t want to know. I don’t think I convinced myself.

There was no name on the flyleaf. She would have to identify her mystery parent from whatever he’d chosen to set down for posterity. Something in her reporter’s psyche chafed at the idea.

What moves a man to keep a diary, anyway? How can an ordinary person delude himself that the day to day details of his life will ever matter to anyone else?

She turned to the first page and began to read.

First Movement: Communion

Andrew MacLachlan set the dirty dishes on the rough plywood counter next to the old sink, turned back toward his younger siblings and held up the package that contained the final cupcake. Any takers?

Rachel’s and Devin’s hands shot forward. Andrew grinned. Too many. I suppose I should just eat it myself.

Want to live through the night, Drew? Rachel’s voice was its usual mix of edginess and sensuality.

Andrew chuckled. Well, how do we decide who gets it, then?

Devin shrugged. Draw straws?

Rachel snorted gently. Come on, Dev, try being original for a change.

They don’t encourage that in accountants, sis.

Andrew unwrapped the cupcake and set it on a small plate. He brought it to the dinette table and placed it in the exact center with exaggerated ceremony and precision. Play a game?

What kind? Devin chirped. Andrew suppressed a smile. At thirty-five, Devin still sounded like a schoolboy when he got excited, or when his curiosity was piqued.

Funny stories. Whoever can make the other two laugh wins.

Nothing doing, Drew. Rachel peered up at him from hooded eyes of emerald green. You’re the family jokester, and we both laugh too easily.

I never thought so.

Andrew looked out the cabin’s west window at the broad, rock-filled stream that flowed past his cabin. The sun was setting in the distance, and the play of the reddening light off the water was one of his few delights. He never failed to savor it. He’d spent the whole of his fortieth birthday, less than a month ago, sitting at that window and watching that stream.

They fought like mortal enemies all our lives. They blamed all their troubles on one of us, or all of us. They made us pawns in their power games, and turned us into three barely functional neurotics. We’ve spent most of our lives unlearning their lies and struggling to create the family we should have had. Then they went and died before we could forgive them. But at least they chose this spot and built this place.

Sad stories, then. Make me cry and I’ll relinquish my claim.

Rachel shook her head again. Neither of us has your way with words.

Then we’ll establish conditions. Each player gets ten minutes maximum. His score will be the number of his listeners he gets to cry times five, plus one for every whole minute he can give back out of his allotment, minus five if he cries himself. How’s that grab you?

Devin smirked. Sounds like exactly the kind of thing a demented engineer would come up with.

Andrew grabbed for the cupcake and poised it theatrically above his waiting jaws. Either agree to my terms or the hostage dies. Three! Two! One!...

The others laughed in unison. All right, Rachel said, but I want to add another condition. They have to be true stories about our family. Nothing made up, nothing you read somewhere. That way, we’re all on an even playing field for material.

Andrew set the little cake down on its plate. He felt a tightness in his chest. You sure that’s a good idea, sis?

Rachel’s lopsided grin wasn’t intended to look as malicious as it did. Probably not, anyway. Can’t kill us. Might smart us up some.

I’ll go with that, Devin said. His voice was steady, but his moonlike face showed a hint of nervousness.

All right. Andrew looked Rachel in the eyes again. Cut for order?

Go get the cards.

Just keep your hands off that cupcake.

#

Andrew closed the glass doors over the fireplace and set down the poker. He watched his carefully built fire rise and become bright, then settled onto his recliner and picked up the kitchen timer.

Rachel and Devin sat side by side on his sofa. Both were hunched forward, toward the fire. The firelight illuminated their faces but left their bodies in shadow.

You ready, sis?

Rachel nodded.

Andrew twisted the dial to the ten-minute position and set it down so that all of them could watch its progress. Begin.

Rachel stared at the floor in silence for several seconds. Firelight sparkled from her mane of copper hair.

Our parents weren’t just any abusive, incompetent fools. They took it to the heights of art. When they found one technique for keeping us frightened and confused growing stale, they’d shift to another. Both of them.

She looked up, and her eyes engaged Andrew’s briefly. "I wanted to be a scientist from the day I first learned what one