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Something resembling happiness courses through me as I park the Buick in the alley behind Tower News. I go in the old store and breathe in the scents of newsprint and tobacco and browse for a while. I buy a cigar and a copy of the Zenith City Tribune.
Puffing on the cigar down Tower Avenue, I’m thinking I’ll stop at the first bar with a window to the street and a place where I can read the paper. It’s somewhere around ten o’clock on a weeknight and relatively quiet.
My mind flicks back to young Michael and I worry for him. I’ll try to find him again after my head clears.
If it ever does.
I come on a glowing yellow neon sign announcing the Zephyr Lounge. Appears to be a dive—but then so do most of the saloons in this town. It’s got a window to the street and seems to fit my needs. I’m about to go in when I get another surprise. Again, I can’t believe what I’m seeing. But yes, on second look it is in fact that same old buffalo-nickel face I remember so well. And it just came around the corner and walked into the Zephyr.
I follow the guy inside, walking slowly as my eyes adjust to the dim light. I see that familiar profile at the bar in a red nylon windbreaker over a blue polo and a pair of slightly wrinkled brown cotton slacks. He’s wearing a white baseball cap over medium length hair that’s still dark, despite his age. I blink my eyes and the image stays the same. He looks a little older, but don’t we all.
I walk up to the bar and let the bartender come my way. I order a Budweiser and watch the Indian sip his drink. He turns to me and nods and then looks up at the tube. A small, round pin on the front of his cap says Born again Pagan.
I get a good look at him and realize that it is, indeed, my old buddy and one-time benefactor, Tommy Boudreau. He’s looking fit and trim, if a little weary.
But he’s not paying me any mind.
I take a swallow of my beer and lean toward him, smiling: “Old man like you still able to make it around the golf course without a cart?”
He frowns slightly and looks me over slowly. “Are you talking to me, sir?” he says. Polite.
“See any other former slow-pitch players in here?”
“Do I know you?” he asks, slightly annoyed.
“Maybe if you’d put on your fuckin’ glasses, you’d recognize your old third baseman. Or maybe you’ve gotten too old and can’t remember a goddamn thing.”
He blinks and studies me, lingering on the buzz cut and eyes. He takes a deep breath, looks me up and down and then starts grinning. “Fuckin’ Waverly, you bastard. You had me going there, you sonofabitch. I didn’t even fuckin’ recognize you. How the hell are you, man? Haven’t seen you in years. Since—Christ—a long time ago... fuck, remember?” His eyes gleam. “How’d that ride I got for you back then work out?” He smirks.
“Worked out just fine, Tommy, just fine. Ended up driving it into Gitchi Gummi, but that’s a story for another time. But, truly, I have to say it worked out all right. No problem, you know? It’s really great to see you, man. You’re the first person I know that I’ve seen since I got back here. I mean, you know, people from the old days. It’s a different world now.”
“Same world, different people. You’ve been gone all those years? Since I got you that Lincoln?”
“All those years. I’m not even back now, anyone wants to know. Know what I’m saying?”
“Yeah. I heard that you’ve gained the attention of law enforcement. But you know me, I never say anything.”
“That’s what I’m counting on, Tommy. Let me buy you one, man. What are you drinking?”
“Rum and coke.” He rubs his temples and his forehead with his long brown fingers. “You know, man, now that you mentioned it, I do remember something on the TV news back then about a white Lincoln they found stuck in Lake Superior out on the South Shore. Always wondered if that was you. Thought you could drive better than that though,” he says dryly.
“There were extenuating circumstances I don’t care to discuss any further. If you don’t mind.”
“No sweat, man, Tommy says, laughing, the skin around his deep brown eyes crinkling. “Just didn’t want you blaming me for your poor driving skills.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, Tom. I loved that sled. Was like my own private space ship. You know, ground-control-to-Major-Tom-type shit.”
He’s still laughing, mouth open, silver fillings reflecting bar light, when the drinks come. We get reminiscing about old times.
“Those were some good days,” Tommy says. “Although I’m not sure I knew it at the time. We were, a crazy fuckin’ bunch.”
“See any of the old crew anymore?” I ask, recalling all too clearly those days when life burned hot and emotion pounded inside me like a jackhammer on full bore. “Micky or Steve or any of them?”
“They’re around somewhere, I think,” he says. “Haven’t seen any of ‘em in a while.”
“Fuck, man, you’ll never guess who I ran into back in the early eighties,” I say. “Fuckin’ Myron Sloan. Right out of the blue in the middle of Iowa, we run into each other.”
“Fucker still crazy?”
“Pretty much. Don’t know where he is now, though....”
“Out west somewhere, I heard. I guess he came back here a few years ago. Jaybird said he ran into him one night over in Zenith. Said Myron was doped up on lithium on doctor’s orders and was bald as a golf ball.
“No shit. Would that be Jaybird the old softball player?”
“Yep.”
“Sure was a bunch of guys with animal names back then: Jaybird, Frog, Worm—Myron Sloan’s old bud, Carp. Seen him at all? Bet he’s still working at the same Piggly Wiggly store he was at when he was sixteen.”
“Unfortunately not. They found him in his apartment in St. Paul around Christmas time, long time ago, stiff as a frozen dog, coke spike still in his arm.”
“Christ. He never seemed the type for such excess.”
“Carp was never the same after his old lady ran off on him. I knew he was doing a lot of coke, but I never knew he was shooting it.”
“The fucking coke will kill you and the acid will make you crazy,” I say, then take a swill of beer and look around the barroom, thinking about the past. “Any other stories, man?”
“Let me see,” he says, scratching under his chin and taking a sip from his drink. “Frank Rauzzi died.”
“Ah, man, really? I always thought he had enough life in him for ten people.”
“True. Fuckin’ lung cancer took all of it. Just died last fall. Wasn’t even sixty.”
“I remember him from college.” I say, smiling at the memory. “He had some great stories from his years as a rock drummer. Playing football at UMZ for Jablonski was also worth a few tales.”
“He was a damn good drummer,” Tommy says. “Good chef, too.”
“One of my heroes, man.”
“Definitely one of a kind,” Tommy says, shaking his head.
“Sam Cross—ever hear anything about him or his brother?”
“No, nothing. Haven’t seen them, read their names in the paper or heard any stories.”
“Maybe they’ve dried up and blown away.”
“Possibly.”
He shrugs and shifts his attention back to his drink.
“Things do change I guess,” I say. “You know, I saw this picture in the paper the other day that looked really familiar to me but I couldn’t place the face. Turns out it was goddamn Terry Robbins. And now I understand he’s a senator or some fuckin’ thing.”
“State senator,” Tommy says.
“Last time I saw him was the winter of 1975. I was down in the lower hall at UMZ and he comes up and asks me if I know any chicks that might want to spend the winter with him in a cabin in the woods up by Roseau. Said he had a load of acid and needed someone to do the cooking for him. He didn’t have anyone particular in mind, but he wanted to find a girl right then and there, so he could get on the road.
“I introduced him to the only girl I knew in the building at the time, cute little blond cheerleader type. But she wasn’t intellectual enough for Terry, I guess. I mean, shit, did he really think any smart chick would want to spend months in a cabin with a total fuckin’ stranger? In the fuckin’ winter? A stranger constantly ripped on acid?”
“Good question.”
“I hope he’s gotten a lot smarter now that he’s a senator.”
“Probably not. But I hope so, too. Hope we’ve all gotten smarter.” He gives me a look.
We continue our drinking and blowing on about softball teams and old girlfriends and crazy, wild nights. After a couple more rounds we come around to bitching about the state of the world, which often happens with old guys in a bar.
The conversation begins to get heavy and I’m starting to regret I could never hold my booze. After awhile we stop bitching and grow quiet. Maybe embarrassed that it’s gotten down to this. Next thing you know, we’ll be talking about our ailments. And I’ll have the best story of all.
Tommy buys another round and looks at me with a gleam in his Coca-Cola-colored eyes. “So, Keith,” he says, “It’s been twenty-some years—what the fuck you been up to all this time? I’ve heard some shit, like I said, but I’d like to hear it from the horse’s mouth.”
“More like the horse’s ass,” I say. “I’ve been wandering, man. Wasting my fuckin’ life away. Working bar gigs and assorted other things along the way.”
“The hell brings you back here?”
“Mental deficiency.”
“I hear you.”
“How about you, Tom, what you been up to?”
“Worked for the tribe for years. Tribal newspaper, public relations, casinos, what have you. Lived all over the Midwest since I last saw you. Iowa, Dakotas, Wisconsin.”
“Dealing blackjack?”
“Fuck, no. I managed places. Bar manager, casino manager... you name it, I did it. Did all those jobs and got fired from every goddamn one.” His face crinkles up into a laugh, crevasses deepening.
I don’t ask him why he got fired but I suspect it had something to do with his inability to take shit from fools.
“What’re you doing now, man?”
“Playing golf and collecting money from the government. I got in on some of that cash they were passing out to Indians a few years back. Mostly, now, I play golf.”
“Can’t do that in the winter up here.”
“Right. But I’ve managed to get south every year for a while. And we got a dome in Zenith now, up past the mall. You can hit balls all winter.”
“S’pose you’ve been playing all the time, lately—weather’s been good for it.”
“Been super. I just played today out at Nemadji. That’s why I’m here. I never cross the bridge anymore otherwise.”
“I guess it’s my lucky night then.”
Tommy orders another drink and I head for the men’s room, Sheryl Crow’s reedy voice slipping out of the jukebox.
I go in the can and straddle the urinal. Sheryl finishes her song about daytime drinking and some hideous metal tune starts up. On the pea green wall in front of me it says “Power to the Penis!” above a graphic rendering of an elephantine male organ.
Feeling suddenly inadequate, I drain unsatisfactorily, zip up and go back to the bar. A few more people have trickled in. There’s a table full of large women with loud voices. A fresh bottle of Bud sweats in front of my unoccupied barstool.
A little ways down from to my left, two young girls smoke cigarettes and drink colorful drinks in tall glasses. They’re both kind of pretty. One has long, straight brown hair and the other is a blonde with dark roots on her long tresses. Waitresses on their night off, I’m thinking. Too young yet, to show the strain of constant hours on their feet and frequent nights of drug abuse. More than likely, at least one of them has a kid at home with a babysitter. Probably both of them do. They’re the kind of women I’ve spent my life with. And damn if they don’t look good in those peasant blouses and tight jeans. The eye makeup kind of turns me on and I feel a little stirring down low.
I take a pull on the Bud. It goes down cold but now I want something tropical, like the girls are drinking.
“Thanks for the beer, Tommy,” I say, getting thoughtful. “Ever think about the fact that the best part of a person’s life is in the beginning and the worst part at the end?”
“I try not to.”
“Ever think about if you started off life as an old man and then got younger as you went along, like that old F. Scott Fitzgerald short story we studied in Mr, Davis’ class up at UMZ? Remember?”
“Yeah, I remember. I was just out of the service and you were a longhaired hippie freak. And maybe you think too much.”
“How can you think too much? Seems to me most people don’t think enough.”
“I’ll buy that, Keith. Depends on what you think about, I s’pose.”
“Well, what I’m saying here is that at the end of life, your body breaks down and your dick stops working—”
“Speak for yourself.”
“I am dude, I am. Just listen. You know as well as I that what lies ahead for us is maybe a few good years before the final slide into the old by and by. Before that you got your arthritis, your hearing loss, vision loss... shitting yourself... all that good stuff.” I take a long pull of the Budweiser.
“Your body’s getting brittle as we speak,” I go on. “I mean, doesn’t it piss you off that the best days are behind you? I don’t know about you, but I’d sure like to do something big before the end, something to make the beginning look like child’s play.”
“I got a lot of golf ahead of me. And riding my Harley. Shit, man, I’m fuckin’ sixty years old and not as willing to take risks as I used to be. I kind of like slowing down a little. I was off the charts for a long time back in the old days.”
“You know, I just read something that applies here. Was in a book by Kinky Friedman. Remember him?”
“Yeah. Thought he was a musician. Didn’t he write ‘The Asshole from El Paso?’”
“Same dude. Now he writes detective novels. Anyway, he quotes this line from a French writer name of Gustauve Flaubert; I think it was. It goes: ‘I feel very old sometimes. I keep going, but would hate to die before dumping a few more buckets of shit on the heads of my fellow men.’
“That’s what I’m talking about. I can’t believe there’s no one or nothing out there you don’t have an old beef with, Tom. Gotta be some old scores you’d like to settle. You can’t tell me you haven’t got at least one thing you’d like to do before you die.”
“Yeah, there is. Fuck Britney Spears up the ass. Think I got a shot?” He pauses, cocky look on his face. “Besides, revenge is for guys who don’t have a life.”
“I’m not talking necessarily just revenge. What if you could make a statement? Change things for the better in the world. Make the world a better place.”
“You talking that crazy hippie shit?”
“Maybe.”
“Suddenly, Mr. Waverly, I see your point. I do see something I want to do.” He grins dreamily and turns his head in the direction of the young ladies down the way. “I want to fuck one of those girls down there. That will definitely make my world a better place.”
“Now who’s talking crazy? You got about as much shot there as you do with Britney.”
His eyes twinkle. “Just watch me.”
He stands up, brushes down his jacket and slacks and motions to the bartender.
The stocky, young kid comes over. He’s got a broad, flat nose and black hair greased forward to the hairline where it pushes up in a little tweak.
“Wahttaya need, Tommy?”
“Get the young ladies down there (nods toward the girls) a round on me, would you please, Brian?” Tommy throws a ten on the bar and says keep it.
Drinks are still cheap as dirt in Bay City.
The bartender grins, first sign of consciousness he’s shown all night.
Tommy moves confidently down the bar and times it perfectly, arriving behind the girls just as Brian brings the drinks. I’m thinking the girls are going to send him packing with his dick between his legs and I can’t help but feel a little sorry for the old cuss. No fool like an old fool, they say.
I’m shocked when the girls start to smile and laugh and Tommy slides his barstool close to the one with the blond hair and dark roots.
The one I like best.
Certain that the ladies are just humoring the old bastard—they’re waitresses, after all, and know how to deal with fatuous old fools—I lift the cigar from the ashtray where I left it, grab a book of matches from a black plastic box on the bar, light up and open the newspaper.
It’s too dark for me to read anything but the headlines. At least I won’t have to make eye contact with Tommy when he comes back browbeaten and defeated.
I scan the paper only to find more of the usual misery and political chicanery: Some people lost their homes. Some corporations merged and got bigger. The government wants more money for security. I turn the pages: Some people got blown up. Some celebrity is suing somebody for something. Israel and Palestine won’t agree.
Then Sheryl Crow comes back to us with “My Favorite Mistake” and I think of my ex-wife, Carole. I’m drifting back in time when I hear a little commotion at the front door. I turn to see what’s up. Four obviously loaded young dudes in doo rags and muscle shirts, tattoos and hard-guy looks, are scuffling playfully among themselves just inside the door.
They shuffle by and give everybody the once-over, letting us know how tough they are. They take up stools at the far end of the bar, a few paces down from where Tommy is holding court with the chicks. The hackles on my neck rise up and I reflexively reach behind my back under my shirt and touch the beveled wood grip of my pistola.
Tommy is still going strong with the ladies.
I put the paper down and drink more of my beer while Sheryl Crow lets loose with the opening line of “The First Cut is the Deepest.” The large women at the round table have been plugging the juke.
When Sheryl gets to the chorus, the gang boys sing along loudly: “The first CUNT is the deepest, baby I know, the first CUNT is the deepest.”
I suppress a laugh and look around the room. No one seems offended. Second and third time the guys do it; it isn’t as funny. Bartender just stands there grinning like a dufus. The young girls are maybe looking a little scared.
The song finishes and the gang boys are bent over with laughter. I watch Tommy get up. He comes back and slides in next to me like the fox that stole the key to the henhouse.
“Carrie and Becky wondered if you didn’t want to join us for another cocktail,” he says, acting cocky. “They said you looked lonely over here, Old Paint.”
“Old Paint? What the fuck is that? You’re the old man here.”
“I’m also the guy who just got us in the door to the palace of sin.”
“So we can spend all our money and end up with a kiss on the forehead? We probably remind them of their fathers. You, their fuckin’ grandfather.”
“Keep laughing, asshole, because you’ll be crying when they invite me out for a three-way.”
“Three-way fuckin’ ice cream social.”
He looks back toward the girls. Two of the punks are slinking up behind them, cigarettes dangling from tattooed hands.
“Now look, Keith. See there—your hesitation has caused us complications. And you, I recall, were the guy laying down all the shit about doing something worthwhile in your old age.”
“I think I’m beginning to see the light, Tom. What say we join the ladies and tell the little boys they can go home and choke the chicken?”
He shrugs and motions to Brian as I grab my beer bottle and step on down to the Mayday picnic.
Tommy swaggers our way and slides back onto the barstool next to the blonde, bumping one of the punks with his shoulder as he wedges in. The kid sneers and turns his eyes on me, does a little dance step.
“Eh, homes?” the dude says to the black kid standing next to him, while keeping me in the corner of his vision. “These old fucks must think it’s Viagra Night or some shit.”
“You know, man,” Tommy, says to the kid, “you’re a real comical, funny guy.” He’s squinting at the dude, Tommy looking like the devil himself. He turns away from the speaker and stares into the black kid’s eyes. The kid is about six-two and wiry, silver ring in his ear, blue doo rag and a blue denim shirt with the sleeves cut off, revealing pumped-up biceps.
“But maybe you can help me out here,” Tommy says to the black kid. “I got a question I wanna ask you.”
The punks look confused now. They exchange quick looks, seemingly not knowing whether to be pissed off or amused. Their other companions, a couple of wharf-rat, white trash burnouts, sense trouble and move up behind them, cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon in their nail-bitten, self-tattooed paws.
Tommy sits there, eyes at half-mast, a sly grin turning up the edges of his mouth. “Now you guys gotta tell me. You see, I was wondering. I can see by your tats that you’re Gangster Disciples. And in the past, I always thought the Gangster Disciples was a black gang. But then someone told me that up here in the North it’s completely bogus, because there ain’t enough black dudes to go around, y’know? So they take whites, Indians, spics or anyone else stupid enough to join.” Staying deadpan as he eyeballs the two whites and the Hispanic kid. “That true with you guys?”
The black dude smirks a little, narrows his eyes and stares, but says nothing. The two white kids, one of whom resembles Vanilla Ice if he’d been raised on macaroni and abuse, ball their non-beer-holding fists and sneer Fuck you, in unison, like a two-headed ferret on crack.
I reach behind my back and palm the pistol just as the Latino kid rushes at Tommy and throws a haymaker.
Tommy ducks the punch expertly and drives a crushing bolo punch to the kid’s nuts.
The kid doubles over, groaning and cupping his balls.
He’s turning white when Tommy grabs him under the arms and rams his head into the bar. Dude collapses to the floor like a sack full of dirt as the girls shriek and scatter away. A barstool tips and hits the floor with a clang and a bang. The bartender yells Hey and bends down behind the bar. The punk lies motionless on the dirty floor. I get the urge to kick him in the ass but don’t.
Then a switchblade clicks in the hand of Vanilla Boy and out comes the handgun from my jeans in a smooth arc that ends on the punk’s temple. He drops like he fell from the roof and the two other gangstas back off. Brian the bartender drops his baseball bat on top of the bar and makes a move for the phone on the back bar. The bat rolls off and clanks on the floor as I point the pistol at Brian and yell, “No calls please, Brian. Everything here is fine as frog hair. Keep your hands off the phone and we’ll be gone real soon.” Turning the gun toward the two remaining upright punks, I say: “That is, unless one of you two would like to let some sunshine in.”
They shake their heads to the negative.
“Sorry, girls,” Tommy says to the young ladies as they watch anxiously from the back of the room. Tommy is breathing hard, face sweating. “Guess we’ll have to postpone our party. Maybe another time.”
He bows and we back our way slowly out of the bar, me swinging the gun from head to head while the large ladies hold their throats and look dumbfounded, trying to figure it all out.
I see Carrie and Becky slowly drift out the back door as we slide out the front. We run twenty yards to Tommy’s truck and escape into the night. We don’t say much for a while, both of us trying to catch our breath and allow our hearts to slow down. Or at least that’s what I’m trying to do as I stare at the lights sparkling around the bay and wonder if my son is out there somewhere.
The Bong Bridge gets us to West Zenith. We’re stopped at a red light on Grand Avenue and Tommy looks over at me with the evil eye. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ, Waverly. I don’t see you for twenty-five years and look what happens. You’re just a goddamn magnet for trouble, you know that?”
“I’m beginning to come around to that point of view, Tommy, but I’m not the one who started taunting those dudes. I was ready to just get wasted peacefully, until you started in with your macho man routine.”
“Your little speech must’ve got me all jacked up. I guess I was trying to prove I could still cut the mustard.”
“And you did, Tom, you certainly did. I don’t know what else to say to that.”
“You can say that you’ve got a match for this.” He pulls a fat joint out of his pocket and waves it at me, “Lighter in this truck don’t work.”
“I just happen to have a book of matches, courtesy of the fine establishment we just terrorized. That makes these a collector’s item.” I hand him the matchbook.
“You, Waverly, are a fuckin’ collector’s item. What the fuck, are you doing with a gun, anyway? Fuckin’ pistol with a silencer for Christ fuckin’ sake. Somebody calls that in; the cops’ll be paying me a visit in a New York minute. They know me in that bar.”
“Guess we won’t be going back there for a while then, eh, Tom? And what the fuck exactly is a New York minute? I’ve always wondered.”
He shoots me a withering, impatient look.
“I’m getting too old for this kind of shit,” he says. “But, I have to admit it was fun there for a Zenith City minute. At least until I started to think about things.”
“More fun than golf? Now there’s an exciting sport.”
“Fuck you. You are definitely wacko.”
He takes a hit off the joint and hands it to me. I follow suit and then hand it back to him.
“I probably am crazy,” I say. “But it seems a lot better way to be than most of the so-called sane people I see around.”
He inhales deeply and holds in the smoke, blows it out in a cloud and pauses thoughtfully, holding the joint between two brown and bent fingers, steering wheel gripped loosely with his left hand at twelve o’clock. “You know, Waverly,” he says, “you and me are probably the only two guys who could do it.”
“Do what?”
“I got an idea—something we could do to better the world.”
“Oh yeah? What, pray tell, might that be?”
“We could strike a blow against one of the worst polluters in the region. Fucking oil company. Been polluting for years. I used to have a girlfriend lived out by the refinery, and I’m telling you it is an evil goddamn place. Just the smell around there is enough to make you sick. You and I could do some righteous damage.”
“How’s that?”
“Seems I have some C-4 left over from my days in the business. Can’t allow the shit to get too old because it gets unstable.”
“C-4?”
“Plastic explosives, for you civilians.”
“And what brings on this change of heart all of a sudden, Tom?”
“Truth is, I’ve been wanting to hit this place for years. Your little speech just reminded me. Guy in charge was my landlord a long time ago. Little prick evicted me and my kid.”
“So it’s a personal vendetta.”
“Half and half. And, isn’t everybody out for themselves? Place is a miserable polluter and would be easy to blow. Many nights I’ve thought about how to do it. I’ve got the perfect plan. They’d never catch us.”
“Now you’re talking my language. But right now I think it’s time for a drink. All this fun has made me thirsty.”
We stop at T-Bone’s Bar and Grill and drink until close. He writes his phone number on the collector’s matchbook and offers to drive me home, but I decline. I have him drop me off in front of a cab at the Greyhound Bus station.
I roll back across the bridge in a yellow Chevy taxi with a driver smells like cheese and onions. He asks me if I know how to stop a Bay City girl from having sex. I say No. Marry her, he says. I chuckle politely and our conversation is over.