24
THE GOTTA-GO GENE
In the dressing room, Macho Man held out his arms and Meat went forward.
“Lemme see you. Lemme see what you look like.” He turned Meat around and studied him. His grin broadened, showing two gold teeth.
“Am I glad to see you. And look at you. You’re like me. This is my boy, Al. Come meet my boy. Al here’s my manager.”
“He does look like you. Hey, maybe you could form a tag team—father and son. That’s never been done.”
“My boy’s for better things, Al.”
Meat’s dad was so pleased, it was as if he’d arranged the whole thing himself. But then he said, “Ah, Albie, Albie. Thank God you found me, son. How’d it happen?”
“Herculeah ... that’s her—” Meat nodded to the doorway where Herculeah stood with her father—“she bought an old camera and it had pictures of us in it, you and me, and you were in your outfits in some, standing in front of a poster. Mr. Jones did the rest. You know about that.”
His dad pulled Meat against his chest and hugged him hard. Then he pulled back for another look.
“So what’s going on in your life, Albie? You keeping busy?”
“Yeah, I just solved a murder.”
“Murder?”
“Yes, I found the body and then it disappeared and then I found it again and then I found the murderer.” He shook his head. “Only I could never be a real detective like Mr. Jones—he’s the man who brought me here—because I felt sorry for the one who did it. It turned out to be a girl. She’s going to plead guilty to accidental homicide which isn’t quite as bad, and Mike Howard’s pleading guilty to obstruction of justice.” Meat glanced over his shoulder at Chico Jones to make sure he had told it right. Chico’s nod told him he had.
The Macho Man cleared his throat. “Speaking of disappearances, son,” he began, “I always felt bad I left the way I did.”
Meat waited.
“This doesn’t justify it—nothing does—but it seems like almost every man in my family got what we call the gotta-go gene. We must have had nomads for ancestors. We can’t help ourselves. One day we go out to get a newspaper or a haircut and we’re outta there—just keep going. My dad dropped me off at school one morning and we didn’t see him again for sixteen years.”
“That’s a long time to be without a dad,” Meat said, speaking from experience. Ten years had been almost more than he could bear.
“I wouldn’t have stayed at home as long as I did if it hadn’t been for you.”
Meat managed a smile. “I hope you didn’t pass the gotta-go gene on to me. I like where I am.”
“Well, one thing you can be sure of. Now that we found each other, son, we aren’t going to let go.”
He put his arm around Meat and drew him close.
“You know,” Herculeah said to her father, “Meat doesn’t seem bitter at all.”
“You expected him to be?”
She nodded. “But then I also expected he would be ashamed that his dad turned out to be a professional wrestler.” She smiled. “I guess I don’t know Meat as well as I thought I did.”
“Yes, he seems very proud of his father.”
They looked at Meat. Pride showed in his face, in his stance. Herculeah slipped one arm around Chico Jones’s waist, and she smiled up at him.
“I know the feeling,” she said.