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That night around eleven, I go back to Planet Mars dressed in the shoeshine get-up. I’m thinking it was too dark last night for my pursuers to get a good look at me. I’m gambling on that.
The place is nearly empty when I walk in and I realize it’s a Tuesday night. A traditionally empty bar night where the din of voices and the clouds of smoke aren’t there to distract you from the stink of the place or how rotten you feel.
I sense a real bad vibe tonight on Planet Mars.
I hear a couple of the bouncers talking sharply, almost hissing: “He’s fuckin’ dead,” one of them says. I hear the word “cops” but can’t pick up any more of the conversation. It’s obvious the boys are upset. They’re pacing around the bar like there’s a jock itch epidemic.
I drink my beer slowly and wait for Mike to come in. The long hand on the clock goes around the horn. Then the bartender decides he’s closing early and sends us all packing. It’s twelve-thirty and no sign of Mike.
Halfway to the Honda, the heavens open up and drench me in cold rain.
After another painful, restless night and another gray morning spent motionless on the couch, I’m determined to make something happen.
The afternoon turns sunny. The rain has made everything green and radiant, soft breeze pushing the trees just a little. But I can’t enjoy it, because something is grinding at me like a rat chewing on a hunk of rotten cheese. Me, being the rotten cheese.
I grab a bottle of Bud and go out to the front steps to read the paper.
I unfold the Bay City Telegram.
UWBC Baseball Player Murdered, screams out at me from the top of page one.
Story concerns Todd Edwards, a former UWBC baseball player from Mountain Iron, Minnesota. Paper says he was found dead in a roadside ditch Monday morning, just minutes from his South Bay City apartment. Mr. Edwards, who was awaiting trial in Douglas County on charges of possession with intent to sell methamphetamine and MDMA, otherwise known as ecstasy or X, was found severely beaten and shot in the head, execution style, making it Bay City’s most brutal murder ever. “Possibly gang-related,” says Detective Sergeant Frank Oliver of the Bay City Police Department.
An unnamed source goes on to say that many on the police force believe it to be the work of professional killers-for-hire. They also believe others in the area may be targeted.
Something in the story scratches at me. Something doesn’t sound right. Like the part about others possibly being targets.
What do these cops know that they aren’t letting out?
My nerves get closer to the edge and I try to go back to sleep but end up walking aimlessly around the quiet neighborhoods, getting a headache from the pollen. My mind still races as I return home and take another shower.
I choke down a box of macaroni and cheese for dinner and then stare at the TV for a few hours. Just waiting. Around ten o’clock I get into my smelly costume, my hands shaking. I drink two quick beers and take a blast of rum to settle down.
I get a cab downtown.
The cabbie must think the shoeshine business pays pretty good, judging by the look he gives me when I hand him ten on a five-dollar fare.
I walk in the front door of Planet Mars and ignore the looks of not-him-again, coming my way. I limp up to the bar and order a beer. Halfway through the weasel piss, two blonds approach me. One requests that I shine her shoes, and for an instant I think she said, “Lick my cooze.”
I would have obliged.
“Three bucks,” I say.
After I’m finished with the navy blue flats, the second chick says she wants her shoes done. She’s got nice legs, a flowered skirt.
I’m buffing her blue pumps when Mike walks in the back door accompanied by two big dour-faced dudes.
I finish the lovely lady’s shoes. She gives me a five and says keep it. I mumble Thanks then go back to the bar and order another beer.
I watch Mike and his companions in the mirror behind the bar. They’re having an obviously serious and sometimes angry discussion. At one point, Mike stops talking and looks nervously around the room. Then, at Mike’s prompting, they end their discussion and move to a little room to the left of the dance floor where the pool tables are located.
The bartender takes a long time to get me the beer. I can tell he doesn’t want me here. I wonder if maybe he’d like his nose shot off.
I take my beer and walk back to the poolroom. Coming through the doorway, I hear Mike saying, “We don’t know for sure who did it. Could’ve been anyone. Maybe someone trying to rip him off. Let’s not panic here.”
The guys see me, frown and mumble and turn back to the pool table. Mike looks at me and I think I see a flicker of recognition in his eyes.
“Anybody want a shoeshine?” I ask.
“How about if I shine your ass with my boot, you fuckin’ geek,” says one of the pool shooters, a tall kid with a hawk nose and mean eyes below a low-rise forehead.
“Hey, hey, Ronnie,” Mike says, “Leave the old guy alone.” Then turning to me: “I don’t think we’ll be needing your services tonight, sir. Thank you, anyway.”
The kid is kind and polite; it makes me feel good.
I nod my head, grin stupidly, shuffle out of the room and take a table where I can still see the pool table. I crouch over my beer and turn my good ear to the opening.
“We can’t panic,” Mike says. “We don’t know if he told them anything. He never said shit to the cops when he got popped.”
I lean my chin on my hand, elbow on the table.
“Are you fucking serious, Mike?” The one called Ronnie snarls, face red and tight. “We don’t know for sure that he never snitched. Maybe the cops are just taking their time with us, you know, watching everything and giving us more rope so we can really fuckin’ hang ourselves. And you know as well as I do what the guys that killed him were after. Dudes like that don’t fuck around. If someone was beating on Todd, I know he’d say whatever the fuck he had to. Anything to make them stop. Shit, he’d tell them everything they want to know and then fuckin’ offer to kill us for them. I just can’t see Todd holding up to fuckin’ torture. Can you? All that fuckin’ crank he was doin’? That shit ain’t known for its character building.”
“Ronnie’s got a point, Mike,” the third guy says. “I’m getting the fuck out of town tonight. Don’t even wanna go back to my place. Who the fuck knows who’s watching it? That shoeshine geek over there could be watchin’ us, for all we know.”
I stare at the floor as they glance over.
“You two can keep anything I got coming,” the third guy goes on. “I’m taking what I got and bolting, fuck it.”
“I’m not sure if running will do you any good, Terry,” Mike says. “That will totally tip the cops that you were in on it.”
“Fuck the cops,” Terry says, “I’m not worried about the cops. Cops won’t cut off your dick and stick it in your mouth.”
Ronnie turns red again. “You fuckin’ pussy, Mitchell. Stay and fight these guys with us. We can retire and move to Florida when this is over if you don’t turn fuckin’ chickenshit.”
“Fuck you, Macintyre,” Terry says. He’s two inches taller and thirty pounds heavier than Ronnie. “I’m leaving. You gonna try and stop me, Ronnie?”
Macintyre just stares at him.
I watch Terry walk out of the room and head for the back door. Mike starts to say something but is drowned out by the opening riffs of Warren Zevon’s “Disorder in the House” blasting out of the wall speakers.
The edgy, raucous song seems to mirror the mood in the room.
I see Ronnie say something to Mike. Mike shakes his head from side to side for a moment, a concerned look on his face. Then he reaches down into his jeans pocket and lifts out something that he puts in his mouth and washes down with Heineken.
Ronnie angrily slugs down the last of his drink and follows Terry’s path out the back door. Mike comes out of the poolroom, gives me a brief glance and glides slowly over to the bar where he starts chatting up one of the waitresses, a cute girl with tight brown curls for hair.
I finish my beer and move to a table closer to the back of the bar, near the bathrooms. A waitress comes over and I order another beer and a shot of rum.
Two beers and another shot later, I watch Mike walk by me on his way to the men’s. I get up and follow him into the narrow hallway. He’s about to push on the door with a drawing of a little green man on it. Martians it says in Day-Glo paint. Across the hall, the women’s door says Venusians, under a rendering of a large-breasted female in a spacesuit.
“Hey, Mike,” I say before he goes in. “Still got that round scar on your thigh where the radiator hose on our van burst on you?” I remove my prop glasses and put them in the wrinkled pocket of my suit coat.
He jumps a little and his head snaps in my direction. “Excuse me?” Confusion and fear swim in his blue eyes.
“How about that long, thin scar on your calf from cutting it on a broken bottle at Pike Lake that summer—still got that?”
“Yeah, I got those scars. How do you know this shit, old man? Who the hell are you?” His eyes soften as he studies me.
“This may come as some surprise to you, Mike,” I say, feeling like fucking Darth Vader, my heart about to come out of my mouth, “but I’m your father, Keith Waverly.”
Something seems to ring hollow in my voice.
He looks in my eyes and gives me the once over and I’m thinking he’s going to hit me or pull out a weapon. Instead, his eyes fill with tears and warmth. “Goddamn it!” he says, then comes over and gives me a bear hug.
I’m a little blown away but I hug him back and for a few seconds it’s everything I dreamed about.
Then he pulls back and looks at me and he’s still smiling and I’m thinking it’s going to turn ugly pretty soon.
But he just keeps on smiling.
“What are you doing here?” he says. “Are you a shoeshine guy for real?”
“No, Mike. I’m really working for the CIA. I’m here investigating an alleged al-Qaeda plot to blow up all of Wisconsin’s breweries, which would send the entire region into chaos and doom.”
His smile gets bigger and his eyes do, too, but a dash of doubt wrinkles across his face.
“Seriously, Dad? Or should I call you Keith? I’ve talked with Mom and Uncle Steve, you know. I know you’ve had some trouble with the law. So what are you really doing here?”
“I came back to see you, Mike. And your mother. I’ve been away too long. I couldn’t stay away any longer, cops or no cops.”
“Well, you stayed away too long for Mom, Keith. She died two years ago. Had cancer.”
A shock whips through me, followed by leaden pain and sadness. I’m surprised at my reaction. The good times we shared come back to me in a rush and a flurry. Even though they’re gone, you still hold them dear, I guess. “I’m really sorry to hear that,” I say. “She was a good woman—when she wasn’t drinking.”
“She’d been sober for almost twenty years.”
I hide my surprise. “I’m glad she did right by you, Mike.”
“She actually got to be a pain in the ass after a while, all that sobriety shit,” he says, suddenly laughing, eyes twinkling. Then: “Come on, Dad, let’s get out of here. This is not a good venue for family reunions. Let’s go to my place. I’ve got beer and stuff.”
We walk out the back door and Mike is still smiling but he surveys the parking lot real good before we walk through it and make our way down the alley. Before we cross the side street he looks cautiously up and down. I’m searching for the Impala but don’t see it anywhere.
Mike walks over to a pearl-white Lexus and squeezes the key fob. I hear the beep and the locks popping up. I’m about to ask him where the Chevy is but catch myself in time. I climb into the gray leather of the Lexus and we drive off.
“Jesus fuckin’ Christ, a Lexus? You must be doing all right, Michael.”
“It’s not mine. A friend and I traded for a while. I drive an Impala Super Sport.”
We wind slowly through light traffic for a few minutes then hit the four-laner leading to the Bong Bridge. He gives it the gas and in the blink of a loon’s eye we’re flying low. I look over at the speedometer. Fucking ninety.
“What’s the hurry, Mike?” I suddenly feel like a parent. “Slow the fuck down for Christ sake.”
He lets off the gas and looks over at me. He’s still smiling. “Sorry, Dad,” he says. “Didn’t mean to scare you. I’m just anxious to leave that town behind me.”
“You didn’t scare me. Just no sense in getting picked up, that’s all. I don’t particularly want to talk to any cops right now. Know what I’m sayin’?”
“I do.”
“You live in Bay City, Mike?”
“Yeah, but I’m in the process of moving. I was assistant baseball coach at UWBC this spring, but I don’t think I’m coming back next year.”
“Assistant coach... that’s great, I’m proud of you, Mikey. You always could play ball. Remember when we used to knock it around down in Florida?”
“Of course I do. That was the last time I saw you.”
Silence falls on us like a lead blanket as we come off the bridge on the Minnesota side and catch the freeway heading west. My chest tightens from the emotional heaviness lingering in the car. I can tell what’s coming next.
“Why did you leave us, Dad?” he asks, emotion cracking his voice.
“I don’t know, son. I had to, I guess. I was in a bind because of some stupid things I’d done, and everything got real bad real fast and I thought the best thing for you and your mom was to be rid of me. So I left. Believe me, I regret what I did. I’m sorry.”
“Mom said you were into drugs and that you were violent. So maybe your assumptions were correct at the time. Uncle Steve said you were possibly a killer.”
“Don’t believe everything you hear, Mike. People like to assume and presume, but most of ‘em don’t know shit. The truth is that I’ve been around lots of drugs and my share of violence and a lot of other generally bad stuff. It’s not a life I’m real proud of, but it’s my life, nonetheless. Don’t glorify it or romanticize my selfish ways, but also don’t condemn me—at least until you know the whole story.”
“Rumor around town has it that you killed some bad dude back in the seventies and have been on the run ever since.”
“I was with you in Florida at the end of the seventies, Mike. Always plenty of low-ball rumor mongers out there willing to spread bullshit around.”
He blinks rapidly a few times then angles off the freeway onto Grand Avenue and heads west toward Fond du Lac. The streetlights cast an amber hue on the old buildings as the Lexus hums smoothly along the empty street. Mike turns toward me. Tears are streaming from his eyes, but the smile remains on his lips.
“I’m in trouble, Dad,” he says, coughing a little. “Don’t you think it’s funny? I mean, it’s like you leave your family behind because of drugs and violence—and now here I am, into drugs, with violence surrounding me like a noose.” He wipes his eyes with the back of his hand and chuckles bitterly. “I really need your help, Dad. I’ve been praying for months that you’d come back to help me. Hoping against hope. And now my prayers have been answered, sort of... I mean, you came back all right, but you’re a shoeshine dude. That’s something to think about.”
“Don’t judge a book by its cover, Mikey,” I say, crushed by his tears and his assessment of me but not wanting to show it. “What kind of trouble we talking? Knock up some hard guy’s daughter or something?”
“I’m over thirty years old, Keith. Not some snot-nosed kid who knocked up his girlfriend. I’ve already got two kids of my own, for god’s sake.”
“You’ve got kids? I’m a fuckin’ grandfather? Jesus fuckin’ Christ, why didn’t you tell me? And what are you doing hanging around the bars when you’ve got two goddamn kids. You should be home with them. Maybe you don’t realize how important that shit is.”
“Oooh, Mr. Responsible is lecturing me. I gotta admit you’re right, though. I do miss them. It’s because of this trouble that I can’t see them. They’re better off hidden away with their mother. I can’t drag them into this shit. I thought you’d understand—of all people.”
“I’ll tell you one thing I understand: The apple doesn’t fall very far from the fuckin’ tree.”
“Well whose fucking fault is that?”
“I don’t know, Mike, I don’t know. No fault, I guess. What the hell kind of trouble are we talking, here—cops?”
“I don’t know for sure about the cops. I think I’m okay with them, for now. But a couple of the ballplayers and I got involved in something that turned out to be too big for us to handle. Way too big.”
“Like how big?”
“Did you see the paper this morning? Story about that guy who got murdered?”
“I saw it. One of your baseball buddies?”
“Yep. And I think whoever whacked Todd is after the rest of us.”
“What the hell did you guys do? Don’t lie to me, Michael. Tell me the whole fuckin’ truth.”
“It all started back in May near the end of a disappointing baseball season. Wasn’t even my idea. Todd and Terry and Ronnie were hangin’ at my place one night and we got to talking about party supplies. We were all anxious for the season to get over, and the annual Wisconsin Point-full-moon-smelting-and-keg-party was coming up. It’s a really big deal around here. Anyways, Todd said he knew a guy who just scored a big batch of X. Ecstasy. You know what that is?”
“I’m familiar with it. MDMA is its scientific name, I believe.”
Mike nods slightly then wheels the Lexus through a right-hand turn. Now we’re floating along with the St. Louis River on our left shimmering like root beer, in the light of the moon.
Mike chews on his fingernails and continues:
“So then Ronnie cooks up this scheme. Says he’s going to print up a bunch of counterfeit twenties on a color copier and buy enough X from this dude to supply the whole party. Ronnie said that even if the guy discovered the funny money, they could beat him up and just take the shit.
“I wasn’t going along on the scam, so I didn’t say anything about it one way or the other. Only, that I’d take some of the X when they got it. I didn’t think much about it until the next night when I get a call from Todd telling me to get over to the dude’s crib, like right away, but don’t let anyone see me and don’t tell anyone.
“So I’m hoping it’s just a bad fucking joke, you know. I rush over there and they’re all standing around looking like the world is about to end. They tell me the gang-banger spotted the fake twenties and pulled a gun. Then I guess Ronnie slapped it out of the dude’s hand and it hit the floor and went off and put a hole in the dude’s fuckin’ head.
“The poor fucker is lying on the kitchen floor in a pool of blood. And sitting on the kitchen table was more dope than I’ve ever seen in my life. Forty pounds of Mexican weed, a quarter pound of pure crank, some Oxys and about fifty thousand hits of X, with a picture of Spider-Man on the tablets. I knew right away the dead guy must have been some kind of regional warehouser or something like that. And, that before very long someone was going to be coming for the stuff. I told everyone that.
“But Ronnie managed to convince us that we’d just gotten a lucky break, and only fools and cowards would pass up this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
“We’re talking around a million or so street value, right, Mike?” I ask, incredulous. “What the hell did the boys want you to do? Sounds like Ronnie was calling all the shots.”
“Todd and Terry were panicking, and somehow I was the one they thought could help them out of the jam. I guess they looked up to me, after baseball and shit. Respected my decisions, I suppose. When I went along with Ronnie’s ideas, they went along, too. Nobody wanted to face up to the possibilities.”
“Looks like you lived up to their expectations, son,” I say, laying on the sarcasm. “Ever think of calling the cops right then and there and telling the truth?”
“That’s what I wanted to do, at first. But Ronnie started screaming that I’d let them use the copier on campus to make the counterfeit bills, so I had to go along. Then he made a pretty convincing case that if we got rid of the body; we’d get rich besides. So we all decided to go along with Ronnie’s plan. I helped them clean the place up. Made sure everything was extra clean, like I’d seen in the movies. Then I figured out a way to dump the body.”
“What did you do?”
“Carried it out of there stuffed inside the guy’s old sagging couch. Terry got his Dad’s boat and we weighed the body down with anchors and old weights and dropped him to the bottom of Lake Superior.
“We should have done the same thing with the dope.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Nope. We were too greedy. I thought if we were extra careful, we could get away with it. I didn’t think anyone saw us going in or out of the dude’s house. Place was kind of remote. And who’d expect good all-American boys of a drug-related killing?”
“Certainly not me,” I say, bile rising in my throat.
Mike continues: “Besides that, I’m wondering who really knows that the prick is dead? He’s still officially listed as missing. For all anyone knew, he could’ve split with the shit himself. What fucked us was when Todd got busted for the crank and the narcs found a few hits of the Spider-Man X and let it out to the newspapers.”
“Goddamn journalists. So what the fuck you want me to do here, Michael?”
“I don’t know. Something. Anything. I’d heard all these stories about you, and somehow in the back of my mind I thought you could help me. Us.”
“Have you thought about going to the cops now, after the fact?”
“I’d do five years in Waupun for the drugs alone.”
“That’s what you deserve for messing with crank.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with the crank. Ronnie and Todd moved the meth and the Oxys. Terry and I were strictly weed and X. But I doubt the distinction would mean much to the cops. And they also don’t appreciate people who throw dead bodies in the lake.”
I feel a sour stomach coming on. “This is true,” I say. “But I see one possible advantage. Lake Superior never gives up her dead, they say. Without a body, they’d have a hard time making a case. Unless of course Terry and Ronnie run to the law and implicate you just to save their own asses. If that were to happen, then you might truly be fucked. I suppose you could always deny it and blame them, and without a body they might have a hard time getting a conviction... but fuck that depressing shit. Tell me about my grandchildren. What are their names?”
Mike squints at me as if to say Are you for real?
Then: “Boy and a girl. Connor is one and Haley is a little over three. But aren’t you hearing me here? You don’t seem to be taking this very seriously.”
“Oh, I am taking it seriously, believe me. But grandchildren—them I take really seriously. I just feel lucky to have any. You’ve got to take me to meet them.”
“They’re with their mom at a little house outside of Poplar. But I don’t go out there much. Don’t think it’s safe.”
Then who the hell was the chick at the mansion, I’m thinking? Seems like this kid has got more deals going than Donald Trump...
“You’re going to have to take me out there, Mike. I insist. If you want my help, I have to meet my grandkids first. We can take my car. As for your predicament, I don’t think we need to worry about the cops, for now, anyway. They probably would have already popped you if Todd had snitched. But you never can tell for sure. The man works in strange ways sometimes. Didn’t you realize that something as distinctive as Spider-Man ecstasy would attract enough attention anyway in a town this size? All anyone would have to do his hang around a few bars in town and find out what the local pharmacology was. Someone looking for stolen property, that is.”
“I’m down with that. And that’s why we sold the shit all around Minnesota, mostly the Range and down in the Cities. Very little ever got out around here. We moved it for two months without any trouble. Then Todd gets popped and it hits the papers and now Todd is dead. It’s the mob coming after us; I know it. Some guy followed me all over town the other night, but I managed to lose him.”
I can’t help but laugh. “That was me, Michael. Just my clumsy way of saying hello after a quarter century away.”
“That was you? Ronnie said it had to be some pro. Shot at them and drove like a madman, he said. Later that night they got Todd, so I thought it had to be the same guy.”
“No, sorry to say it was just your long lost pa.”
“You still got that gun?”
“Yeah.”
“You gonna help me?”
“I s’pose.”
Mike perks up a little as we take the bridge across the St. Louis River into a little flap of Wisconsin that Highway 23 passes through. He hangs a left on a dirt road running parallel to the river.
The tires crunch on the gravel as we wind alongside the heavily flowing water for a piece before turning into a sloped driveway leading up a slight grade to a medium-sized log cabin nestled within the pine and birch trees. Mike stops the Lexus against the foot of a small grassy knoll below the cabin.
“This is it, Keith. My home away from home. At least until my friend’s parents get home from Europe.”
“Pretty nice, Mike. Who’s the friend?”
“Her name is Darla. It’s her parents’ cabin.”
“She the friend with the Lexus?”
“The very same. She gets a rush out of driving my big American muscle car.”
“What’s going to happen to my grandchildren if you run off with this rich bitch?”
“I’m not going to run off with Darla. She’s really more of a diversionary tactic. Smokescreen, you might say. I need to look like I’m single, you know, unattached to any family. But now I’ve got you.”
“Nice front you and Darla put up. But excuse me if I don’t quite swallow it. I saw you two in the bar the other night, and you were making Planet Mars turn redder.”
“Darla’s very passionate. Also very generous with her father’s possessions, not to mention a great help in getting rid of major quantities of X to her Twin Cities’ friends.”
“Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive...”
“Ha, I remember that. Mom used to say it to me all the time when I was a little kid.”
“I remember, Mike, I remember. It’s from Macbeth.”
“I know that. Um, let’s go inside. I could use a smoke and a beer.”
“Cigarettes are bad for you, son. You should quit.”
He shoots me a look and opens the car door. I’m feeling like a real dipshit. I get out and smell pine boughs and moist air as we walk up the wooden steps as Mike fumbles with a key chain. We go inside the cabin. Mike flicks on the light in a nicely equipped kitchen with a stainless steel frig, wood cabinets and slate countertops.
“Want a beer?” he asks, eyes red.
“Sure,” I say and take a seat on one of the sturdy wooden chairs around the kitchen table.
Mike opens the glistening double-door refrigerator and comes out with two bottles of Heineken. He clips off the caps with a Coca-Cola opener fastened to the wall.
“Come on in here,” he says, motioning toward the living room with a beer bottle. “I’ll light a fire.”
“Don’t need to take the trouble on my account.”
He hands me a beer and I follow him.
“No trouble,” he says, flipping on a table lamp next to a brown leather couch. “I’m too wound up to sleep right now, anyway. Fiddling with sticks is just what I need. I think I’m going to take another hit of X to mellow me out. Want some?”
“Ah, no thanks. But now I know the source of that permanent smile of yours.”
He grins and turns away, goes to the stone fireplace on the far wall and kneels over an oval shaped, brass wood box. I take a seat in a dark green easy chair and have a slug of the beer. I reach behind me, lift out the pistol and place it gently on the dark end table.
In about ten minutes we’ve got a blazing fire. Mike is sitting on the edge of the couch, his face orange from the fire, his leg hanging over one arm of the sofa and my gun in his hands. He’s hefting it and pointing it and whistling softly.
I find myself at a loss for words.
After a brief silence Mike puts the gun back down on the table then gets up and turns on the radio in the fine-looking sound system. A new Jayhawks tune comes on.
I watch him stare at the fire. Then he takes a pill out of his pants’ pocket and puts it in his mouth.
“You always carry a pocket full of that shit around with you?”
“I just had a couple with me. What can I say? I’m sad because Todd is dead and all this shit is happening. X makes me feel warm and positive when the world looks dark and cold and hostile.”
“I did Ecstasy a couple of times back in the late eighties,” I say. “This waitress I knew could get it, so one night we did some together. We get high and all she wants to do is talk about her family. Fuckin’ sisters and every goddamn thing. Funny thing was that’s all I wanted to do, too, talk about my family. Mostly you and your mom. My mother and Steve, a little. Problem was it just made me miss everybody. And I knew I couldn’t come back here. Being on the run is fucked, Mike, I’ll tell you that right now. We have to figure out a way to end this situation of yours for good. And then you’ve got to get the hell out of here with your wife and kids and get away from all this drug bullshit.”
“Here we go again. Mr. Perfect telling me how to live.”
“All I’m telling you, Mike, is what I know. How I basically blew everything worthwhile in my life because I went for the big score and said fuck you to everything else. And now I’m old and fucked up and I know what it is that I missed. I know very well what things I wish I had—and you’ve still got a chance to have them. Is that so hard to understand?”
“You sure you’re not just stuck in the past? Sure you’re not looking at the things you can’t have and making them out to be something better than what they are? The grass is always greener....”
“Listen, Mike. You want my help you’re going to have to listen to what I’ve got to say. I’ve got a lot of lecturing to catch up on. If you want me to just be a hired gun, I don’t think you can afford me.”
“Afford you? I’ve got tons of money, for fuck sake. We didn’t give the shit away you know.”
“Then what are you doing, still around here? Why not take your family and leave?”
“Because I don’t want to be on the run, believe it or not. Weren’t you just saying?”
“Yeah, but splitting would seem like the right thing to do in this situation. With all that cash you say you have...”
“Look, I’ve seen The Godfather and all those mob movies. I just didn’t think these guys would stop until we were all dead, no matter where we went. And hell, I believe you. That kind of life obviously extracts a toll. I can hardly recognize you.”
“I’ve had a lot of skin cancer from spending too much time in the sun. Probably never would have happened if I’d stayed around this neck of the woods. And yeah, being in the wind does take its toll. Being away from your people is what kills you. And speaking of taking its toll, don’t you think you ought to watch yourself with that X? I’ve heard some horror stories.”
“Been watching too much TV, Dad?”
“Probably. But take it from someone who knows—everything you do to yourself when you’re young comes back to get you later. Nothing is free. Everything has its price. You don’t know what that shit will do to you after a few years.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll stop when this whole thing is over. I can’t do much of it when I’m dead. Want another beer?”
“Sure.” I’m thinking of all kinds of advice, but I keep my mouth shut.
We stay up drinking and smoking and staring at the fire, the radio turned down low. At some point in the night Mike gets me to swallow a hit of the X he still happens to have in his pocket. From then on the conversations get deeper and more emotional.
We talk about Carole, how she’d become a pillar of society in the years after I left. How they had moved back to Minnesota and she’d become a successful business executive. How she’d gotten sober in the early eighties, while I was out scouring the country for the perfect American waitress.
I’m amused by it all and amazed at how Carole turned herself around.
Mike and I continue to drink. He breaks out a bottle of Bacardi Dark from the well-stocked liquor cabinet. After a shot of that he confesses his love for the children’s mother, Jan. How he feels guilty about leaving the kids and her alone but how he sometimes feels like someone is pulling his strings and he’s just not always sure what he should do.
It’s clear he’s got a chunk of me in him.
I start to reminisce about Mike as a baby and a toddler. Those golden years we had before Carole and I split up the first time. Pretty soon I’m crying. Hadn’t cried since I left them back in 1979. Mike starts crying, too, and then hugging me.
In the glow and shadows from the flickering fire, the two of us hugging and crying gives way to a double dose of chest-heaving sobs. Then it’s over and we’re laughing a little, kind of embarrassed. We sit down at the dinner table—a beautiful round table in front of a big picture window—and continue to softly reminisce.
As the first shards of light seep through the edges of the shade, Mike starts to fade, his head nodding. We put down one last shot of rum to crown the night and he stumbles off to the couch mumbling something about take any bed I want. Then he’s out and snoring softly.
I put a blanket over him and step outside into the approaching dawn. I’m tired but feeling more alive than I can remember. I know there’s a lot left to take care of and it won’t be easy, but somehow the weight on my shoulders seems lessened. At least now I know this is where I belong.
I’m excited to meet my grandkids. A little tremor goes through me when I think about it. The morning air is fresh and sweet, just a hint of chemical odor from the river. I go down the steps and admire the Lexus and the beauty of my surroundings. At the edge of the lot there’s a garage, and I walk to it. The sand and gravel soil feels like sponge cake beneath my feet. I peek in a window on the garage door and see fishing rods against the wall and a plastic tackle box on a workbench. I recall a board in the kitchen with keys hanging on it, one being labeled Garage.
I go up the hill to the house and get the key. Go back down and open the garage and grab a spinning rod off the wall and dig a chartreuse Rapala from the tackle box. Below me, across the access road, I see some wooden steps leading to a dock.
First cast, I nail a pound-and-a-half smallmouth bass. It leaps twice, shaking beads of water that glow like gold nuggets in the morning sun. I reel it close and grab it by the lip, smell the wet wildness. I pull out the hooks and drop it gently into the stained water. Someone must be smiling down on me, I think, because I can’t remember feeling this good for a long goddamn time.
I catch two more bass and a small northern pike before fatigue creeps in and I put both the rod and my ass down on the dock.
Staring out at the water, I can feel the earth vibe grounding me, the power ebbing and flowing through me. I know there’s probably nothing but trouble ahead, but I wouldn’t be anywhere else.
And I have a plan that I think just might work.