Scott Free by John Gilstrap

for a long moment before lowering himself back into his seat. “This needn’t be all down time,” he said, reaching into his desk drawer for a pad of yellow legal paper. “Tell me about your son. Do you have any recent pictures?”
    Brandon pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and opened it, grateful to be doing something useful. He found Scott’s school picture and handed it over. “This is about two years old—eighth grade, I think. He’s sixteen now and he’s grown about six inches since then, but hasn’t gained an ounce.” Long and thin, the boy in the photo stared at the camera with his head cocked, a crooked grin exposing perfect teeth. The blue eyes showed a serious side, too, giving the impression that maybe he knew a few more secrets than he should.
    “Handsome boy,” Whitestone said. “Would I recognize him from this photo?”
    Brandon nodded. “I think so, yes. Except for the goatee that only he can see. Oh, and his hair is blue now.”
    That brought the chief’s eyes up. “Excuse me?”
    Brandon smiled. “Closer to purple, actually. The kids on his soccer team call him Smurf.”
    Whitestone laughed. “Artist or musician?”
    “Sounds like the voice of experience.”
    “I’ve got a thirteen-year-old drummer at home. I lost the earring battle two years ago, but haven’t faced the hair war yet.”
    Brandon made a dismissive motion with his hands. “I don’t even fight it. I think he’s up to three earrings—maybe it’s four. I know there’s two in at least one ear. I figure what the hell? It’s his money and he’s on the honor roll every quarter.” He laughed as he recalled the day Scott broached the hair issue. “It’s a look, he tells me, for his band. He’s lead guitar, and features himself to be the next Kirk Hammett.”
    “Ah, heavy metal. I get a headache just thinking about it.”
    “Scott’s actually pretty good,” Brandon said. “And if you can’t listen to the Stones, then Metallica ain’t a bad substitute. Anyway, I made him wait six months on the hair, and when he still wanted it, I said okay.”
    Whitestone seemed genuinely intrigued. “Is it permanent?”
    “As permanent as any dye, I suppose. I mean they had to bleach it down to white before turning it blue. Now, ask me if I’m washing blue-stained pillowcases every week. The answer is yes.”
    The chief shook his head. “And I thought I was daring by wearing a ponytail halfway to my ass.”
    God, wasn’t that the truth? Brandon thought back to the screaming matches he’d had with his own father over the length of his hair. A career Navy aviator and an Academy grad, his father knew only one hairstyle—high-and-tight—and saw the hippie movement as a bunch of Communist sissy-boys. When young and rebellious Brandon had refused to get a haircut, his father had produced a straight razor and threatened to take care of it himself. Only the intervention of his mom saved the boy from a bloodbath, but from that day on, his dad introduced the boy as “my daughter, Brandon.” They never spoke again, his father and he, after that day with the razor. Eight months later, nearly to the day, a surface-to-air missile reduced Lieutenant Commander Curtis O’Toole to so much humidity over the skies of Hanoi.
    Brandon dedicated his life to avoiding the same mistakes with his own son. Sitting there in Barry Whitestone’s office, his brain flashed images of the morning when Scott was maybe three hours old and they made eye contact for the first time; not just the squirmy look-at-all-the-new-stuff gaze that he’d seen earlier, but that real, bonding, I-trust-you-with-my-life stare. It came with a smile, and Brandon realized in that instant that all the times when he thought he’d fallen in love had just been poor imitations of the real thing.
    Under different circumstances, the long silence that filled the chief’s office might have felt uncomfortable, but this one didn’t. Here, two fathers sat together, one of