For once, he rode on the damn right horse. Years of Friday afternoons betting five or ten dollars of his pension on horses to show, and never had he left Delmarva Downs with as much as a nickel. Today, an unseasonably cool Friday in May, when he saw Cindy’s Girl, a squat Palomino, posted at $15.50, he put down forty to win and walked away with almost 400 dollars.
He never actually thought of what he’d do with the money, since he’d never won before, but he stopped at the bus station and bought two bus tickets to Baltimore. He was not getting younger. He needed to find the other Polenskys, his brothers and sisters, and he needed to ingratiate Heidi into their care. She needed to know she had a home if his heart stopped, and by the slow, dull weight of it, the gasps of his breath at night, he figured it might be sooner rather than later.
And a steak. He wasn’t due to pick up Heidi for another couple of hours. The Golden Corral restaurant had $7.99 sirloin tips. He could count on his fingers, since he had Heidi, when he’d eaten steak. Ten dollars for lunch, thirty for the bus tickets, and the rest for Heidi to do what she wanted. To live a little, for chrissakes. She had appointed herself house accountant over the years, and it broke his heart to see her move the expenses into his column—for medications, for Ben-Gay, for orthopedic shoes, a cane—and not into hers. She put her Christmas money and birthday money into her savings account for college, and although it accorded with the stinginess of his cheap Pollock heart, he didn’t understand why, when she’d brought home straight As for the past five years, she didn’t think she’d be eligible for a scholarship or five.
At the Golden Corral, he loaded up on the sirloin at the salad bar, along with a baked potato, green beans, and a few breaded items that he assumed were vegetables. He slid into a booth and took his wallet, bulging with tens and twenties and the tickets, and put it beside him on the table because its newfangled shape burred into his ass. He cut the steak and guiltily wondered whether he should have waited for Heidi, taken her to dinner. She’d always given him larger portions than hers at dinner, even though she was technically the one still growing and required adequate sustenance. But he wondered whether he’d just embarrass her. He saw her face every day when he picked her up at school, even crying the one day he met her teacher, Missus Fancypants. He’d thought of letting her have the truck during the week, if it weren’t so unreliable. He imagined her breaking down at school and getting a lot of crust from her schoolmates, or worse yet, she’d break down on the way home and have to huff it for six miles. She had enough crosses to haul ass with every day; being with him, in public, no less, was not another he’d hoist on her back.
His stomach gurgled. The fried mushrooms and zucchini must not be sitting well with him, or maybe it was the fried egg he’d sneaked in for breakfast after Heidi was at school, washing the plate but leaving a clean bowl in the drainer to make her think he’d eaten oatmeal. He stood up and hauled off to the men’s room as fast as his stiff leg and back would work, and while he sat on the hard, cold, slightly moist toilet seat, expelling large volumes of liquidated food, he remembered his wallet, sitting fat like a stuffed duck on the table.
He could not stop the waterworks, the grunting. Now his chest was getting into it, too, a little heartburn. He grabbed at his knees and remembered the days back in Germany, when he had the shits so bad and Johnson made fun of him, shitting in his helmet like that. He cleaned it out in the river, in the frozen water, but for the rest of the war, he could still smell it, the faint whiff of shit, and it got to the point where the next pile of dead they came upon, mostly newbies, he took a shining, clean helmet off a dead boy’s head, not even dead a few hours, and left his on the boy’s chest. No sense making the boy’s hair smell like shit, too. Not that he wouldn’t smell worse than that by the time he got to the Graves Registration Department.
Kind of the way he smelled now. Christ. He grunted and shuddered and forced what seemed like every spare drop out of his ass and then hurried back to his table. He felt light and achy, like he had a fever, but he broke out in sweat when he saw the table empty of his plate and his wallet. How long had he been in the bathroom?
“My stuff.” He grabbed a short Mexican man who was wiping down the table next to his. “Where’s my plate, my wallet?”
“I dunno.” The man shrugged. He pointed to the plastic dish bin, which sat on the table. At the top was the plate with the remains of Stanley’s sirloin.
“You stole my wallet, you dumb spic.” Stanley grabbed at his t-shirt, but he knew, even being a head taller, that the little wetback could have him on the ground faster than a rodeo cowboy than rope a steer. “Where’s your manager?”
“Can I help you, sir?” A woman, a black lady with a cross hanging on her neck larger than the ones displayed outdoors at some churches, appeared. One of her breasts, large and pendulous like a sock filled with change, brushed against his arm as she forced her girth between them.
“He stole my wallet.” Stanley’s hand went to his chest, not so much to get away from the oblong breast—he took what he could get—but to scratch at the sudden burning there.
“Ernesto, did you take this man’s wallet? Empty your pockets, please.” She peered into the dish bin and began shifting the plates.
“There is man, he leave before I bus table. I thought he eating there. Maybe he took wallet.” Ernesto pulled out the white cotton pockets of his jeans and displayed a marble, and lighter, a coin purse, and a gas station receipt. Not even his own wallet. What kind of man didn’t carry a wallet? He stared at them, three-quarters-size Ernesto and the Baptist who needed to pray to God about her droopage, and decided he didn’t like the world. Not when some sleezeball stole his wallet and these two were left as his booby prize.
Someone needed to take control of the situation. Stanley moved to the front of the restaurant, scanning the parking lot. It was sparse, the lunch hour long over, too early for dinner. No cars pulled away. He wondered what was on the security cameras. He imagined himself as Colombo, salivated at the sudden promise of importance. Then he remembered his heartburn, that he was old. That he couldn’t even be trusted with his own wallet.
“Sir, if you’d like to sit, I can call the police.” The manager touched his arm. “Maybe Ernesto can give them a good description. Maybe there’s something on the tapes we can go on.”
“Don’t matter. It’s gone.” He shrugged her off. The pain moved into his stomach and crept toward his left leg. He wasn’t sure what he was saying anymore. “It’s all gone.”
He got in the truck, but he couldn’t pull away. His chest felt water-logged and he began to sob, his head on the steering wheel. He could never do anything right for Heidi. But the worst part of it was, she had accepted that, and accepted it long ago. The waterworks from his eyes did not dispel the drowning sensation he felt inside his body, so he flung the truck into gear and gunned it home. He’d take an aspirin and lie down for an hour. When he got to school, Heidi would know what to do. She always did.
At home, he limped toward the house, his leg heavy now, and he took the stairs carefully, one at a time, was pleased that he made it. By then, he felt completely underwater. When he closed his eyes, he heard the whooshing of it, like the ocean, and he felt himself sinking deeper and deeper into its tide, sweeping him from shore.
On the porch stood a young man, tall and square, his jaw set like concrete. Stanley couldn’t place him, even though the chill of recognition settled in beads on his forehead, the back of his neck. He wore a leather jacket, jeans, strange boots with caulks on them. Probably the young tuff who stole his wallet at the Golden Corral. Stanley figured he’d noted the fat wad of cash in his wallet and probably thought there was more at home. But the tuff had no car. He would have had to have flown to get there before Stanley.
“Who the hell are you?” Stanley puffed out his wheezing, concave chest and strode up the steps.
“Don’t you remember me, pole?” The man smiled. “It’s me, Calvin Johnson.”