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A new day dawns with another hangover and the feeling that things are moving
too fast.
I mean, how do I know that Tommy won’t hand me over to some turn-in-a-terrorist program? As crazy as it seems, the possibility still eats at me. Boudreau was involved in a lot of illegal shit in his day and never ratted out anyone I know of—but times change and people do too. Years go by and one can never tell who’s taken a turn for the worse.
Speaking of people changing, seeing Michael has ramped up my desire to connect with him but I don’t feel safe enough yet to reveal myself.
I spend the day working on a new disguise.
From my pile of used clothing, I pick an old black suit coat with the elbows worn shiny. I manicure a gray wig to fit under a black watch cap, select a pair of blue suit pants two sizes too big, and, for the big diversion—haul out the shoeshine kit.
A crazy old shoeshine guy can go a lot of places and hear a lot of things. Talk a little gibberish about ‘Nam or Watergate or the size of your prostate tumor, and people will say anything around you without fear.
I’ve been reading in the local alternative newspapers, the Tattler and The Rickshaw, about a burgeoning local music scene across the bay in Zenith City. It’s possible that my son could be hanging around some of the clubs.
But all the thinking makes me weary and fatigue catches up to me in the early afternoon. I fall asleep on the couch, wake at dusk, eat a TV dinner and get nauseous, then go to bed. I don’t remember dreaming.
Daytime hours for the next few days are spent at my little box of a house, reading, working out and sleeping when it comes. At night I cross the bridge and prowl the bars and clubs of Zenith City, shoeshine kit in tow and black horn-rimmed glasses sliding down the bridge of my nose. I’m the white Mr. Bojangles, except I can’t dance as well.
Just call me Carl.
On any given night, I might hit a downtown watering hole patronized by lawyers and businessmen. Or maybe a rock and roll club, a biker hangout or a sports bar. I keep myself clean and never bother anybody. Most places will let me stay if I buy a few beers with the money I get for the shines.
It can be a pretty demeaning thing, bending over to shine someone’s shoes while he’s drinking with his buddies and they’re all staring at you like you’re a leper. You’re holding his foot and trying to act like you enjoy your work but what you really want to do is twist the guy’s ankle until it snaps like a chicken bone.
You can really get the feel of a town through its bars, though. Liquor makes the tongues loosen up and the frustrations come spilling out. You hear a lot of things when you’re down on the floor rubbing a soft cloth across a wingtip.
You hear what they think about the stuff you’re reading in the papers. You learn who is in favor of what project and who hates another one. You hear the street versions of busts and the backroom schmoozing on land swaps and development schemes. You find out what drugs are being sold and what the prices are. In general, a lot of valuable information; if you’re a politician or a cop.
Being a shoeshine guy for a month should be a requirement for those jobs.
Time goes by and I see no sign of my son. The phone numbers burn a hole in my pocket but I don’t use them. I haven’t got the guts. What would I say, anyway? Mike Waverly? This is your father, Keith. You remember, the one who abandoned you in Florida after I talked your mother into moving down there. Remember me now? And how is your mother, anyway? Still drinking like a fish?
Then before I know it, it’s two days before the Fourth of July and I’m in my easy chair waiting for the sun to go down. I’m listening to the Rolling Stones’ “Midnight Rambler,” and my mind is drifting back to those sweet, summery times when Carole and Mike and I used to watch the fireworks together. We’d go down to the lakeshore with a blanket and watch the show and then on the way home stop at Bridgeman’s to get ice cream.
But the reverie bursts like an old balloon when the thought hits me that summer, and somehow, my life, are approaching their respective ends. I need to find some things out before I eat myself alive. I contemplate hanging myself from the shower curtain rod, but choose instead to use one of the phone numbers crumpled inside my wallet.
Having no phone in my house, I run out to the car and drive to a phone booth at a Spur station out on Highway 2. I put a quarter in the slot and pull the worn piece of scrap paper from my wallet. I don’t really need the paper anymore but I look at it anyway and punch out the digits.
It rings four times and then the metallic sound of an answering machine: You have reached the Jennings residence. We are unable to take your call at this time. Please leave a short message and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.
I hang up. It didn’t sound like Carole’s voice. Maybe she married someone named Jennings. But then they wouldn’t have the same phone number as the one I found in the old phone book, would they?
So I punch out the number I have for Mike. A young male voice comes on.
“Hello.”
“Is Mike there?”
“Mike who?”
“Mike Waverly.”
“Waverly doesn’t live here anymore, moved out over a year ago.”
“Um, this is an old friend of his family, visiting from Florida. I’m in town on vacation, and I thought I’d look him up. This is the last number I had for him. Any idea where I might reach him?”
“Not really. My roommate might know, but he’s not here right now. But if you’re looking for Mike Waverly, you should go to Planet Mars.”
“Pardon me?”
“That’s the name of a bar over in Bay City. You wanna find Mike Waverly, go there and wait and eventually he’ll show up.”
He hangs up and the phone buzzes in my ear. A black tunnel opens up behind my eyes and I fall into it.
You wanna find Mike Waverly, go there and wait and eventually he’ll show up.
Planet Mars.
The words spin around in my gut like rats trying to get out of a maze. Sounds to me like little Mikey, is following his old man’s precarious path. Perhaps unknowingly stepping along in the shadows of his father’s footprints.
One of my greatest secret fears seems to have come to fruition. Will the sins of the father be visited upon the son? Will Mikey somehow have to suffer for what I have done?
Before, it seemed the right thing to do was stay out of the kid’s life. Leave him alone and let him keep whatever illusions he’d created of his disappearing father. But now it seems imperative that I see him—and most importantly—reach him, somehow.
There are many things I can tell him about the life he seems to have chosen. Mainly, how he should get the fuck out of it before it’s too late. But Christ, judging by those two gorgeous chicks he had with him the other night, it could be like trying to convince the fox to vacate the hen house.
But then I think that possibly he’s a musician and Planet Mars is a club where he plays. That could be. We always played lots of music around the house when he was a kid. Mike liked to dance and bang on the drum, and I’m thinking maybe Carole bought him a guitar like we always talked about and the kid learned to play it real good.
I get in the car, put it in gear and head off toward Planet Mars, without the benefit of a rover to scout the terrain in advance. I’m thinking Bay City always did feel like another planet, precisely the reason I chose to live there.
I guess I’m stuck with the shoeshine get-up for the time being. I’m hoping it’s good enough to fool the gang boys, should any happen to appear.
It’s a balmy night, and it brings back memories of many others like it. Summer is reaching its peak. But at the same time, you can feel it slipping from your grasp.
Bay City is hopping, traffic heavy on Tower Avenue. I’ve got an empty spot in my heart and I have no clue what I’ll do should I see Mike.
I park two blocks from the club and walk slowly down the darkened sidewalk, gazing at the old buildings and empty parking lots, making sure my gait is slightly erratic. I go around to the back of Planet Mars and enter through the dented, green metal door. I’m expecting it to be green inside, like green cheese.
Walking through the narrow back hallway I find that instead, the bar’s interior is red, and there are lights throwing crimson beams around. The high ceiling is done up to look like the Milky Way Galaxy and the walls are peppered with posters of sci-fi films with Mars or Martians in the title. They’ve got The Man from Mars, A Trip to Mars, Flight to Mars, Mars Attacks and, of course, the granddaddy of them all, War of the Worlds from 1898, where the Martians are depicted as stick figure like creatures with spherical, fishbowl heads.
I remember then that it’s the moon that’s made out of green cheese. Mars has little green men.
This red planet is a converted warehouse with strange lighting and bartenders in green shirts who aren’t very little and aren’t all men. The crowd is full of girls wearing too much makeup and guys looking like they came out of a bad independent movie. Sprinkled among them are a dash of expensively dressed kids with good teeth and great hair and fresh young faces that never saw a day of doubt. Throw in the requisite burnouts and derelicts and you’ve got the makings of a genuine Wisconsin tavern experience.
Then there’s me.
I realize right away that the shine business is a bad fit at Planet Mars because most of the kids are wearing sneakers or sandals. I shoulder the black box with the footrest on top and move past a few jerky, non-rhythmic dancers. The band plays from a raised stage to my left. I make it to the bar, ignoring a few strange looks and smirks.
I sit down on a curvy red chair shaped like something from the Jetsons, lower the kit to the floor and order a tap beer from the green-shirted, spiky blond, football player sized bartender.
Tonight’s band is called Pinhead Patio Party, a group I’ve read about in the Rickshaw. They’re playing mediocre, above-the-waist rock and I’m thinking, come on, people, rock is the devil’s music, supposed to make you want to fuck. Or at the very least, make out. These guys—and one skinny chick in a red beret—are coming down somewhere around meaningful conversation.
I take a few sips of my beer and make sure I get a little foam on my lip. I leave it there for a while. I get to the bottom of the beer glass and turn around, smile goofily at a few people and look down at their shoes. I finish the beer in a chug, order another and begin to relax, checking out the crowd.
No sign of anyone familiar. No son. No moon. No shining star.
But then I see someone I remember. Amy Solberg. And she’s looking pretty good for someone in her early forties who seems to be still living the high life. She’s wearing tight jeans and a black T-shirt a couple sizes too small and everything looks pretty good.
I watch her drift around the room, greet several people exuberantly and finally stop at a round table occupied by two leather-and-denim clad studs in the double extra large range.
Her face looks a bit harder than I remember it but not too bad, considering. And she hasn’t gained any weight in all those years. Would’ve thought she’d have gained a few pounds by now. She always had the curves and carried them like they were worth something.
I’m thinking she must have been awfully young that night back in ‘77 when Jimmy Beezer brought her into the Paul Bunyan Bar like he’d just won a Kewpie doll at the Tri-State Fair. Amy couldn’t have been more than seventeen but she had every male tongue in the place hanging out after the first hour.
I’m not too worried she’ll recognize me, with my gray, scraggly beard, thick glasses and stringy hair, so I continue to observe her.
The band takes a break and I have another beer and then another. I start making frequent trips to the men’s room.
The band plays another set, takes a break and then starts again, as I continue to quaff beer.
So then I’m coming back from the men’s and I see Mike on the dance floor with a college girl type and my heart starts to fibrillate. I snap wide awake and feel an intense, weird kind of pain. Makes me want to walk right up to him and tell him who I am.
Instead, I watch him. The boy seems so happy, a warm smile seemingly permanent on his face. How can a boy without his father be so happy, I wonder? Losing me must have been good for him.
But I begin to notice chinks in the kid’s armor: The jerky motion of his hand when he smokes. The greedy way he drinks his screwdrivers. Those furtive glances at the doors. And the fingernail biting...
Just like his mother.
He seems to have a lot of friends here. Conversations with many different people, including a few of the employees. He smiles through it all.
I start drinking Meyer’s Rum neat and smoking Al Capone cigarillos, one after another. I continue to watch Michael and don’t feel good about what I see. The band is filling me with dread and Amy has left the building, which darkens my mood even further.
A little before one, Mike gets up and walks out the front door. I stumble out after him and then stand by the door watching as he saunters a few paces down the sidewalk and pulls out his cell phone. He’s standing next to that big Impala, looking like he won’t be there very long.
I move away down the sidewalk to get my car, but by the time I pull around to the front of Planet Mars, there’s no sign of Mike or the Impala. A vague melancholy and a deep fatigue roll over me. I drive home and go to bed.
Scenes of Mike as a baby, the little one slipping through my hands and falling into the abyss, haunt my dreams. Then I see him as a young boy turned cold and indifferent, telling me he doesn’t want me to be his dad anymore.
I wake up at eight feeling sick. I go to the living room and lie on the couch with the front door open and listen to the sounds of life coming through the screen. After a while it seems like I actually have a life. But it’s hard not to go back over the past and flog myself for sins committed. I desperately need a chance to explain myself to Mike and Carole.
I take it easy until ten o’clock. I watch the TV news then put on my shoeshine outfit and head back to Planet Mars. I sit there for an hour drinking beer and absorbing annoyed looks from one of the bartenders. It strikes me that anyone dressed up like a Martian should lose any right to judge people based on the way they look.
About eleven-thirty, I’m wishing Amy Solberg would come in. Also hoping Mike doesn’t show—losing my courage again—but you know how it goes.
Midnight on the bar clock, Mike comes in the back door and passes by me almost close enough to touch. I have to fight back a spastic greeting. After he takes a seat at the other end of the bar, I go out to my car and drive around until I locate Mike’s Impala. I pull into a spot a few spaces behind it. I sit there and wait and try and keep my eyes open. I take the glasses, hairpiece and watch cap off and put on a black baseball cap, pulling the bill down low.
Time goes by slowly.
I turn on the car radio to the local college station in time to catch the last notes of “Seven Mile Army” by the White Stripes. Then I hear voices and footsteps on the sidewalk. I hunch down in the seat as Mike passes by with a young blond hanging on him like a drunk clinging to a moving lamppost. They make it to the Impala, exchange a few deep kisses and some crotch grinding at the door and then get in.
I start my engine and hear Mike’s Chevy spring to life. He’s a half block down before I pull out.
The tail is on.
It’s not hard to keep him in sight. The traffic is spare and the big bad Impala ain’t that hard to see.
We roll out of downtown and head west a few blocks, then wind around for a while and come onto River Road from the south. The whole way the chick is so close to Mike it looks like a two-headed driver. Out here, we’re the only cars around.
Mike doesn’t seem in any hurry, taking his time on the winding road. Before long we come to where the big houses begin and soon he makes a right turn past some thick hedges into the long driveway of one of the mansions. I drive past the house, go down a little ways, turn around and park, hoping the cops don’t come by. I wait there in the dark, window open to the soft night air and the silence.
I’m getting close to an out-of-body experience as I realize that just a couple blocks from here is where the old McKay mansion stood some twenty-five or so years ago. Before my companion that night, Mary Ranford, blew it up with a couple cherry bombs stuffed inside a Phillies Cheroot, the resulting blast igniting all the accumulated gas in the kitchen, after she’d turned the stove valve open and extinguished the pilot light.
My brain spins like a quarter rolling down a coin slot as the sound of that explosion and the sight of the flash jump across my mind.
Memories are made of this.
I make a mental note to come back out here in the daylight and check the place out.
I’m beginning to wonder if Mike will be coming out of that house tonight.
Thoughts and memories continue to flow...
On the one hand, my life seems fated. Like everything is coming full circle and I’m powerless to do anything about it. But on the other hand, it seems like there’s a chance I can change a few things for the good and make the world a better place before I die.
At least that’s what I tell myself, as I continue to wait.
I’m nodding off and fighting sleep when I finally see Mike come waltzing out of the big white house, looking like a guy who just got his rocks off. The light under the portico glows off his blond hair and I’m amazed at his good looks. Quite a young stud indeed.
He fires up the Chev and winds slowly around the long driveway, comes to the road and heads back the way we came. I turn the key on the Buick, throw her in gear and follow.
We weave slowly through the bends and turns until the country opens up and the road straightens. I see the rear end of the Chev dig in and start to fade away at an alarming rate. I hit the gas and give chase. Seems like the only thing to do. Well, I do have choices, but I’m not listening to any of the suggestions.
I keep the Chevy’s taillights in view as Mike makes a right turn about a quarter mile ahead of me. I push the Buick to the max, braking at the last second for the turn, but I hit it too fast and my tires squeal in protest as I slide across into the wrong lane.
Good sense takes me over. I slow down and straighten it out and pick up the taillights again.
Sweating and wondering if I’ve pushed things too far, I keep the Impala in sight. A little farther down it goes left at a stop sign. I hurry to the intersection and catch sight of it turning right again about two blocks away. I hump it down there and take the turn and see the Chevy cruising slowly, just a block ahead.
I follow it down a long residential street dotted sparingly with small, darkened houses. Mike rolls past a sign that says Dead End and I creep along behind him, thinking about what I’m going to say when the opportunity presents itself. I watch the Chevy come to a halt at the far end of the street where there are no houses, just dark woods and an open field.
I’m getting a little shaky but I keep going, thinking maybe I should say something to remind him of our shared past. Something only his parent would know. I let the Buick roll. My gut is in a knot. I come up slowly and stop before I get too close. Mike has turned the Chev around to face the way he came in. He has his window down. I roll slowly alongside and he’s squinting at me like I’m an invader from Mars.
I start to say “Hi, Mike,” but only get out the Hi before he shoots me the finger and floors it out of there past me. Tires squeal and dust flies and gravel spits from the shiny alloy wheels on the Impala.
I settle back in my seat and decide not to follow. I can always find him at Planet Mars, it seems. I’m thinking maybe I can greet him humbly and tell him who I am. Shouldn’t take him long to realize I only mean him well.
I light a cigar and blow the smoke out the window. It drifts silently into the darkness as I slowly turn the car around. I’m about to drive out of there when I see three sets of headlights coming down the street toward me. The two cars in front are side-by-side, with a third one following close behind.
They keep coming straight at me down the middle of the street until I’m forced to stop. They’ve got the high beams on me. I lift my pistol out of the shoeshine box as the doors on all three cars open up, looking in the glare like giant birds of prey. Reminds me of movies I’ve seen about South American death squads. Then the headlights go out and the interior lights blink off and five burly bodies emerge with long dark objects in their hands.
Rifles or shotguns, I’m thinking.
I stick the Sig out the window with my left hand and pop a few bursts over their heads and the big boys scatter like seagulls chasing popcorn. I slam down the gas and go screaming over the low curb on my right. I rip through a thick patch of brush at the edge of someone’s yard, branches stinging my arm and face through the open window, and the Buick starts to bog. But it breaks loose and I come out throwing dirt inside a long narrow backyard. I keep it floored and blast through a white picket fence, boards flying wildly in the rearview, and enter another backyard. I send a couple of garbage cans flying off my rear bumper as I hang a hard left and run along the side of a yellow bungalow to the street. Sparks bounce off the concrete as I slam down off the curb and jerk the Buick to the right. I run full bore to the next street and hang a hard sliding left onto it, tires screeching. Buick bounces off the curb and I fishtail away.
I look back from whence I came and see a swarm of headlights arcing angrily in my direction.
Two blocks farther, headlights no longer visible in the mirror, I shut off my lights and slide into the driveway of a darkened ranch-style house. I pull in front of a huge Dodge Ram pickup. Squeezing the pistol in my hand, I get slowly out of the Buick and crouch down behind a hedge along the edge of the driveway. It’s clear to me that Mike is into something a lot bigger than I’d assumed. Dude even has his own crew of enforcers for Christ sake.
I wait quietly, the Buick’s engine ticking. Isn’t long before the three pursuing cars go flying by. I wait a few more minutes, sitting down in the dirt and listening carefully for the sound of V-8 engines. I wait five more minutes, checking my watch every thirty seconds, it seems, then slip quietly back into the Buick and drive slowly out of there.
With my feet on the pedals and my head on a swivel, I get back to the East End without any sign of pursuers. I pull in my driveway, roll the Buick up to the off-kilter doors of the garage, lock up the car and go in the house. I grab the bottle of rum from the kitchen cupboard and settle into the couch for another sleepless night.
I take one drink, then go reluctantly back outside and switch the cars: Buick in the garage and Honda in the driveway. I grab a screwdriver from the Buick and switch the plates.
I’d like to say that now things are clearer or that I’ve found some direction, but in reality, things have become more muddled and disturbing. What the hell is Mike into? How could Carole allow this to go on? But then who knows what she’s like now.... used to be crazy drunk most of the time and crazy sober, the rest.
There are so many things eating me, I feel like roadkill. I pick up the rum bottle and commence my journey to the pass-out stage.
Around dawn I go under, only to awake sourly around eight, rigid with pain. My head pounds and my heart races as I limp into the bathroom for a session with the prostate.