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By Root 1977 0

day, Stephen searched through back newspapers from other cities, primarily the state capital, discovering, again to his shock, information about his father he hadn’t known. Beginning in late winter, here were front-page articles with stark, damning headlines: PROMINENT STATE JUDGE NAMED IN BRIBERY-CORRUPTION CONSPIRACY; MATHESON DENIES CHARGES; MATHESON TO TESTIFY BEFORE GRAND JURY; MATHESON, PROSECUTOR WORK OUT IMMUNITY DEAL; MATHESON GRANTED IMMUNITY, GIVES EVIDENCE AGAINST FORMER ASSOCIATES; CONSPIRATORS PLEAD GUILTY IN JUDICIAL CORRUPTION SCANDAL. Stephen was stunned to learn that it hadn’t been at all as we were told, that Father had been an innocent victim of others’ malevolence and manipulation; instead, Father had initially denied his guilt in numerous instances of bribery (one of the cases involved a $5 billion environmental pollution class action suit brought against one of the state’s largest chemical companies), then abruptly admitted it and agreed to inform on his former co-conspirators in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Far from being persecuted by his enemies, as Father had said, he’d been very generously treated. An editorial reeking with sarcasm, in one of the Albany newspapers, put the case succinctly—MATHESON REWARDED FOR RATTING ON HIS FRIENDS.

In a May issue of the newspaper, Stephen read that one of the accomplices named by his father, a high-ranking official in state government who’d been a frequent guest of the Mathesons’, had killed himself with a revolver on the morning he’d been scheduled to begin an eight-year prison sentence at Sing Sing.

This knowledge we’d been forbidden, that the rest of the world knew.

Except I’d been too cowardly—too respectful a son—to find out for myself.

Stephen contemplated the rapid succession of photographs in the papers of Roderick Matheson. The earliest was the most familiar—depicting a boyishly handsome man, younger-looking than his age, a lock of hair disingenuously fallen onto his forehead, his gaze direct and forthright at the viewer. After Father’s arrest, this image abruptly changed. For here was an angry, resentful, embittered man; once caught in the act of shouting at a television reporter; another time, descending the steps of the state courthouse accompanied by police officers, he was hunched over in guilt and shame, trying to hide his face behind upraised hands, wrists shackled together. Roderick Matheson, in handcuffs! Father, a criminal! For the first time the reality of it swept over Stephen: the enormity of his father’s crimes, the shame that accrued to the name Matheson.

Stephen slumped over the library table, hiding his hot, perspiring face in his hands. I can’t believe it! I know it must be true.

12. The Face

That night returning late to Cross Hill as in one of those dreams of frustrated, impeded progress in which, desperate to move, you seem to be paralyzed; returning far later, past ten o’clock, than he’d ever returned before; for he’d stayed for supper with the McKearnys and lingered at their house as if fearful of leaving until Mrs. McKearny urged him to stay the night and he’d had to stammer that he could not, he had to return home. And Mr. McKearny walked with Stephen outside, and insisted that he take with him a weapon to protect himself, a hunting knife of Mr. McKearny’s, a hunting knife with a razor-sharp ten-inch blade; though Stephen protested he didn’t need such a weapon, he didn’t want such a weapon, Mr. McKearny reminded him of how that evening they’d been talking about the mutilation-murders in the valley, the perpetrator still unknown, a madman, or a maddened bear, and in any case of course Stephen should be armed, and so Stephen agreed, clumsily fitting the knife in its leather sheath into his belt and bicycling off, into the night, a gauzy moonlit night of humidity, droning insects, mosquitoes; and Mr. McKearny called after him, “Good night, Stephen! God be with you!”—so quaint an expression Stephen had to smile, or tried to smile; but he was very nervous.

And so pedaling his bicycle along the streets of Contracoeur,