Chapter 3
When Clay was twelve years old, his mother went to the hospital for the last time.
He was thirteen when she returned as ashes in an urn.
The urn was mauve and looked like the antique pottery Clay’s mother had collected.
Depression pottery, she’d called it. Clay’s father set the urn on the mantel and proclaimed it Pam Hawkins’s eternal resting place.
Clay had other ideas. When it came to Judd and his pronouncements, Clay always had other ideas. Still does.
Pam Hawkins’s dream was to see Europe, the land of her favorite composers.
Judd promised his wife they would make that trip.
They married at nineteen and swore they wouldn’t have kids until they were at least twenty-five.
They had plenty of time. That was the plan, but nature wasn’t listening.
Judd and Pam were only twenty-one when Clay was born.
It was the lactation nurse who first discovered the lump in Pam’s breast. Pam was in and out of remission for the next twelve years.
Clay had only known his mother as a sick person, sometimes home, sometimes at the hospital, hairless from chemo, burned from radiation, hopeful about the next new trial drug and disappointed when it didn’t work.
Pam and Judd Hawkins never took that trip to Europe.
Plenty was to blame. Clay arriving years earlier than planned.
Pam’s illness. And the demands of Judd’s job as a police officer for the city of Riverwood, Minnesota.
But Pam Hawkins talked about that trip until the day she died.
As if it would be her reward for beating the big C.
Pam showed Clay the books she’d collected.
Books with photographs of the places she longed to see.
It broke Clay’s heart that his mother would die having never seen those places.
Walked their cobblestone streets. Listened to their orchestras in centuries-old concert halls.
On the one-month anniversary of Pam’s death, Clay took the Depression pottery urn down from the mantel and carried it into the kitchen. He lifted the lid and peeked inside to see a clear plastic bag sealed with a twist tie. As if his mother were a loaf of bread.
Clay had sat around enough campfires and their aftermaths to know the slightest movement of air could scatter ash into oblivion.
He made sure the kitchen sink was clean and dry, then unfastened the twist tie and opened the bag.
He used a tablespoon to carefully transfer a small heap of white ash from the urn to a Ziploc sandwich bag.
He did this in the sink figuring that if he spilled, he could easily wash part of his mother down the drain.
That might seem heartless, but if it happened, her going down the drain fit with Clay’s plan, albeit in a less-scenic way.
He did not spill his mother. Clay zipped the sandwich bag closed, twist-tied the original bag inside the urn, and returned it to the mantel, careful to wipe away his fingerprints.
Judd would notice those. He might even dust it for prints to prove Clay the culprit.
And then the questions would start. Clay knew better than to invite an inquiry from Officer Judd Hawkins.
Clay pocketed the baggie that contained a bit of his mother and carried it outside to the creek behind the house.
That’s where he set her free. Liar’s Creek merges with Camp Creek which tumbles into the Root River which feeds into the Mississippi in the town of La Crescent.
The Mississippi River flows south to the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean where, in Clay’s imagination, at least, currents would carry his mother to the shores of Europe. One heaping tablespoon of her, anyway.
He understood, even at the age of thirteen, that the gesture was symbolic.
His mother wouldn’t really visit Europe.
Even if her ashes made it across the Atlantic they were not Pam Hawkins.
Pam Hawkins, if she was anywhere, was not tied to anything physical.
But the gesture of sending her ashes on their way made Clay feel the tiniest bit better.
As if he could give his mother what his father had not.
And she deserved that. Pam Hawkins had been Clay’s steadfast champion.
His earliest memories were of his mother defending him. He’s not like you, Judd. He doesn’t want to play baseball. He doesn’t like sitting in a boat all day. He doesn’t want to kill animals. I’m not judging you for what you like. And I am asking you to do the same toward your son. Your only child.
Clay appreciated his mother standing up for him, although he wasn’t the sensitive artist she thought he was.
Yes, he enjoyed reading more than most boys his age.
And yes, he played the violin better than anyone his age, at least in southeast Minnesota.
Taught by his mother, no less. And no, he did not want to sit in a boat all day or kill animals.
But Clay was more like his father than he let on.
He loved to fish but preferred stalking trout in small streams to sitting still in a boat.
He loved athletics, but not the same sports Judd liked.
And Clay felt a deep love of country and a need to protect it.
But that, like everything else, manifested itself differently in Clay than it did in Judd.
Differently and more quietly. Or maybe a better word is clandestinely.
With his mother gone, Clay turned to Judd’s brother, Uncle Teddy.
For advice. For a little spending money.
Just to hang out. Listen to music. Fly-fish the spring creeks of Fillmore County.
Teddy would have bought beer for Clay and his friends if Clay had asked.
But Clay never did. He had plans on leaving Riverwood, Minnesota, and didn’t want to participate in anything that might delay his departure.
Clay’s friends were jealous. Uncle Teddy was the coolest uncle anyone ever had.
Teddy had played rhythm guitar in a punk band up in Minneapolis.
That was before Clay was born, but Teddy still had the guitar, a beat-to-shit Les Paul worn clear through the guitar’s black lacquer, exposing the woodgrain of the body.
Teddy had a book full of newspaper clippings, yellowed and frail, from the late seventies.
Advertisements for the 7th Street Entry, the Cabooze, and the 400 Bar.
All with lists of bands appearing that week.
The Replacements. Hüsker Dü. The Hypstrz.
And Dye the Sun Blue. That was Teddy’s band.
He used to know Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson. Bob Mould and Prince.
In 1979, the Clash played in Minnesota for the first time.
Teddy had weaseled a backstage pass from local security, and when Joe Strummer blew an amp speaker during sound check, Teddy took off for an hour and returned with the exact same amp.
Joe Strummer was so grateful, he gave Teddy the small gold hoop from his right ear.
Teddy removed the stud from his own ear, replaced it with Joe Strummer’s hoop, and hasn’t taken it out since. Coolest damn uncle ever.
Cool but far different from Clay’s mother.
Pam had a degree from Winona State. Teddy never graduated high school.
Pam taught band and orchestra to middle-school kids before her illness forced her to stop.
But even then she still made money giving private lessons on everything from piano to oboe to cello.
Teddy has never held a steady job in his life.
He plows driveways and mows lawns. He does some basic handyman work.
Plumbing. Electrical. Carpentry. He occasionally fills in as a bartender or short-order cook.
He isn’t reliable or good at any of it, so the jobs don’t last long.
But everyone likes Teddy. Likes him so much they tend to forget what a bad employee he is so they hire him again. And the cycle repeats itself.
Teddy is Judd’s fraternal twin. No one ever confused them for identical twins because they are opposites in most ways.
Physically, temperamentally, and on which side of the law they’ve lived their lives.
They were even born opposites: Judd left the womb headfirst. Teddy came out a few minutes later feetfirst. A breech birth is dangerous but the doctor thought it would be less dangerous since Judd had led the way.
And it seems like ever since the day they were born, Judd has continued to lead the way, rescuing Teddy from one kind of jam or the other.
Young Clay loved his uncle Teddy, but it was Teddy’s lack of reliability that led Clay to become self-reliant.
Without telling Judd, he applied to Dorset-Cornwall, a private boarding school just outside of town that attracts students from all over the world for its rigorous academics, elite athletics, and world-class music education.
Clay was admitted and granted a full scholarship based on test scores and an in-person violin audition.
After Judd got over the shock of Clay’s secretive application to, and acceptance from, Dorset-Cornwall, he agreed to let his son attend if and only if Clay commuted from home.
Clay was Judd’s last living connection to Pam—he wasn’t about to let his son move out of the house at thirteen years of age.
During his first year at Dorset-Cornwall, Clay was introduced to soccer.
He fell in love with the sport, and the sport fell in love with Clay.
One year later, he made the team’s starting eleven and led Dorset-Cornwall in goals and assists.
By the time he was sixteen, professional clubs and colleges sent scouts to Riverwood so they could watch Clay work his magic on the pitch.