Fairy Tale Blues

by Tina Welling

  Laughing didn’t seem the thing to do, but the desire to do so rose strongly. I covered up my grin by sipping wine.

  Daniel watched Stocker take another bite with a grim set to his lips. He sighed. “I’ve been trying to get him in better shape. Started fast-walking a mile down the road with him, then moved into a short jog, and planned to build from there. Last night I tossed some good running shoes in his open car window when he took a restroom break. Now look at him.”

  Daniel uncrossed his legs and positioned his body with his back to Burl Stocker, but before giving up the subject, he said, “He could have ordered soup.”

  Our salads were served. Daniel said, “I’m talking too much.”

  “No, it’s interesting. Tell me more about Parson Fields.”

  “Well, Parson was a star pilot and despite the shadow of suspicion around him during the years he turned, he later became a very well-connected administrator working out of Washington, D.C. He’s gambling with his life right now, but he seems to figure he has nothing to lose. He’s pulling in all his favors and apparently thinks I owe him some.”

  “Do you?”

  “Not by my mathematics. And though it doesn’t whitewash my crimes, I sent every penny I acquired illegally back into Mexican housing projects around Juarez.” Daniel took a couple bites of his salad. Then he added, as if thinking out loud, “Maybe he figures since he succeeded in pulling me in once, while we were both active, it should be easy to pull me in again, now that we’re both retired.” He looked up. “So that brings me to why I’m in hiding down here.”

  “Hiding?” I stilled my fork. “But, my God, they’ve found you.”

  Daniel smiled. “No, they haven’t found me. These guys, like I told you, they’re just watching to be sure I’m really out of the game, now that Parson is active again. Nobody ever had anything on me, other than my close relationship to Parson. I’ve done what I can in restitution. It’s the Mennonites and their cartel that I’m in hiding from.”

  “The who?”

  “Anglo-Mexicans, the Mennonites.”

  “Like the religious group?”

  “One and the same.”

  “You can’t mean. . . .”

  “Back in the nineteen twenties, the Mexican president offered land to the Canadian Mennonites, because Canada was pressing them to join their army and conform to public schooling.”

  The waiter brought raw zucchini sticks and a tarragon dip, along with an apology for a delay with our lunches. I set my salad aside and tried the dip while Daniel gave a brief history of the Mennonites in Mexico. He said the Mennonites accepted the invitation to resettle in Mexico so they could continue to school their own children and stay out of the army. They farmed the land given to them, crafted the furniture they were known for in the Old Colony and followed their religious traditions. Eventually they farmed marijuana, then cocaine, and smuggled it across the border in their handcrafted furniture.

  “Damn nice furniture, too,” Daniel said. “Mission style. Quite the rage in Texas and New Mexico.”

  “But Mennonites?” I was picturing the darkly dressed men and the women with their bonnets and long skirts. “Mexican drug smugglers?”

  “It’s the strangest thing to see. They’re white-skinned, blond and blue-eyed. Speak fluent Spanish as their first language, but teach their kids English in order to do business in the U.S.—”

  “Their kids do business?”

  “They bring along the whole blond, blue-eyed bunch—parents, grandparents, kids and babies. Load up their pickups and trailers with their handmade furniture, packed with drugs, cross the border, unload, collect their cash, get the kids ice cream and go home. Now they’re working the Canadian border and even recruiting smugglers in Manitoba from the Old Colony, where some still have relatives.”

  During the story, the waiter had brought a basket of warm rolls covered with a napkin and another apology. I was getting hungry, wishing we’d ordered a sandwich dripping with mayonnaise like Burl Stocker. I reached into the basket for a roll. I said, “But Parson Fields is retired, so are you, and yet these officers are hanging around.” I swung one palm out toward the water and then over to Burl Stocker at the bar, his back to us with his eyes watching us in the mirror, sandwich eaten, now sipping an iced drink. “You’re in hiding, but not from them.”

  I waited until Daniel finished a bite of salad. I asked, “How are you in hiding, exactly?”

  “Daniel is not my name.”

  I could tell that I looked stricken with this betrayal. I tried to smooth out my face. What difference did it make what his real name was? I’d known this guy for . . . well, clearly, I didn’t know one thing about this guy.

  We sat quietly as the waiter, at last, set plates of mahi vera before us, removed our salad plates, poured more wine into each of our glasses, wished us enjoyment, then left.

  Daniel smiled softly. “I’m sorry, Annie Teague.”

  The use of a name that hadn’t been mine legally for decades, and for which I had not corrected Daniel’s use of, put the situation in perspective for me. I shrugged.

  Daniel took a bite of his mahi, then acted as if he’d just had a bright idea.

  “Go out with me some evening and I’ll tell you my real name.”

  “I know your real name.” His fork halted midway from his mouth to his plate for a half second. I said, “Rumpelstiltskin.”

  He laughed.

  “And no more talk like that. I’ll leave.” I took a bite and added, “After I finish this.”

  Daniel said, “It’s great, isn’t it?”

  “It’s divine.” The spectacular flavors of the mahi vera burst through even in the face of my fascination with this story of Daniel’s . . . or whatever his name was. Each flavor stood out distinctly while somehow the background of cumin pulled it all together.

  After a couple of bites, I invited Daniel to continue. I said, “The Mennonites are who you’re hiding from.”

  “Right. They owned me once; it would take very little for them to own me again. But I knew they wouldn’t find me—unless they got some help, which my old mentor is lately willing to supply. On their own, there is no real reason for the cartel or its enforcers to look for me. They have other pilots who are willing to turn. That doesn’t mean I’m out of danger with them.”

  “Why a boat? Why down here?”

  “Adventure, challenge, learning new skills. It’s beautiful down here. And far from trouble—or so I had thought.” He scoffed, “Retired. I’m fifty-two years old. An interdiction pilot, used to high stakes, risk, combat—those were the daily components of my life. None of that leads toward the rocking chair, and the guys who think it does, like Parson, get themselves sick or in trouble.” He took a sip of his wine and I continued to eat, happy that I just had to ask the questions, not slow my lunch by answering them.

  In the background Jimmy Buffet’s song “A Pirate Looks at Forty” played through speakers mounted over the deck. I thought, looking at Daniel, that this could be his theme song. “The cannons don’t thunder, there’s nothing to plunder.” Daniel seemed to feel out of time and place.

  “When a lone guy with a boat hangs around the water much, word gets out and he’s invited to do a little job here and there. If he’s interested.”

  I was relaxed, relishing the tastes in my mouth. Then I sat up straight. “Daniel, you’re not working with them?” I set my hands on either side of my chair, ready to push back and clear out.

  “No, of course not. The damage to humanity is fierce.” He was quick to reassure me. “But I was approached. I reported that to friends I’d made in the coast guard, while I trained at Chapman.”

  He took a bite. “That’s how I learned the Mennonites have begun moving their product into the States through Florida. That explained the surveillance and Parson’s approach. But now”—he opened his palms—“I’m on hold. Can’t move in any direction. Need to stay put to convince the feds I’m straight, while sitting like a duck in water f
or Parson and his contacts to implicate me. Jeter and I just hang loose.” He reached his hand down to his dog, lying between us on the floor, and rubbed his ears.

  We were quiet for a moment. Burl Stocker, at the bar inside, was lifting a hip to pull out his wallet and pay his check.

  Daniel’s eyes cast out toward the go-fast boat. “Got to wait this out, but I’m getting restless.”

  Overhead Jimmy Buffet was winding down: “Mother, mother ocean . . . An occupational hazard being . . . no occupation around.”

  “You aren’t guiding now?”

  “Bit awkward taking out clients with an entourage following. I have only one client right now, a lawyer friend, who loves to fish and knows what’s going on. He advises me.”

  Our plates were removed. We passed on dessert, and Daniel asked for the bill.

  “That’s my story, Annie Teague.”

  “So what now?”

  “Like I said, I hang out, prove to these guys watching me that they don’t need to watch me any longer. I’m clean and staying that way. And hope that Parson and the Mennonites leave me alone.”

  “And if they don’t, then what?”

  “Then I’ll need to relocate again. And the need could come up rather suddenly.” He tossed some bills on the small tray the waiter had left with the check.

  Daniel drained his glass of wine. He nodded to the cell phones lying on the table. “Which one’s yours?”

  I flipped them both open. Different wallpaper. “This one.”

  Daniel said, “Same, same. That’s what they say in India.”

  I took a final drink of ice water, and Daniel rose from his chair and waited as I scooted out of mine. “I watched a little boy come into Jamie’s clinic with spots all over his arms and legs. He pointed to each one, trying to communicate with Jamie, saying, ‘Same, same.’ ”

  We headed for the steps down to the pier. “Your daughter sounds pretty special.”

  “She is. I admire the hell out of her.”

  Daniel waved to Stocker, who waited for us while propped against a piling on the pier.

  Daniel continued. “I never lived with her and her mother, but the kid turned out to be this bighearted young woman, calm, sweet-natured. Doesn’t seem to distinguish good from bad—and I don’t mean the way I once didn’t distinguish good from bad.” He laughed and I joined him.

  “Jamie makes no judgments. She doctors everyone—monks in their clean orange robes, beggars in their dirty tatters, tourists in their L. L. Bean travel wear, donkeys, dogs.” He shook his head in admiration. “I watched her tenderly care for a woman beaten by her husband—broken arm and nose, bruises from being kicked—and just as tenderly care for the husband, who’d had his eye scratched in the battle.”

  We reached Daniel’s boat.

  “Thank you for lunch.”

  “Come back to visit, will you?”

  “I’ll be back.”

  And I would. I wanted to offer my companionship during his struggle, and I wanted to enjoy his company during my own.

  Before boarding his boat, Daniel glanced down the pier toward Burl Stocker, who was using his cell phone. “If that guy calls for a take-out order of key lime pie again this afternoon, I’m walking right over there and dumping it in the trash.”

  I threw back my head and laughed.

  Either Daniel’s training as a pilot and Customs officer accounted for his vibrant alertness, or he was drawn to the field originally because of his desire and ability to be exceptionally present. I found his bright attentiveness to life around him refreshing. On the walk home I realized that being in his company awakened the memory of how I, too, was once considered by my friends and family to be especially lively. I used to take pleasure in every aspect of my life to a degree that others seemed unable to reach. Jess told me long ago that he had fallen in love with me for that exact reason. Always happiness had pulsed inside of me and made me vitally awake. Somehow, during the past few years, life seemed to have rolled me over often enough to have rounded off those ebullient spikes, subdued those effervescent peaks. That was another reason I would be back to see Daniel. I needed reminders of that enlivened person I hoped to become again.

  Twenty-eight

  Jess

  Once AnnieLaurie and I sat in the movies and watched a black actor up on the screen, his naked back rippling with muscles, his shoulders broad as a ridge beam. In the film his character was eating a piece of toast and rhapsodizing at length about the texture of the bread, the creaminess of the butter, the joyous complexity of the orange marmalade smeared on top, until the theater audience howled and understood this character was in the grip of an extraterrestrial force. With wonder, I turned to Annie and whispered, “Shit, you eat breakfast like that every day.”

  A bit of an exaggeration, yet Annie recognized what I was saying and laughed self-consciously. She took great pleasure in the small events of daily life. For me, “Nice toast” said it. For Annie, a soliloquy celebrating the toast wouldn’t be unusual. But then, according to her, I flattened the highs in life and belittled the importance of the lows.

  The thing was: she wasn’t all that easy to be around in some ways. Maybe it was just in contrast to me, but she seemed excruciatingly exuberant at times, and I don’t think I was the only person who found that uncomfortable. I mean, it was like living with a psychiatrist who could read deep meanings in each of your actions combined with a goddamn mystic in ecstatic relationship with unseen forces. She was so there, I needed to hide from her. It wasn’t like I was one of the store employees who was buoyed up by her happy presence, then got to go home at the end of the day. There was no rest around that girl unless I created mini-spas by absorbing myself in TV shows, newspapers or just plain spacing out. Then she accused me, “You don’t listen to me, and if you do listen, you misunderstand, and if you don’t misunderstand, you forget what I’ve said. There’s no pinning you down, is there, Jess?”

  Not if I could help it.

  Who wants to be pinned down by a psychic surgeon—no anesthesia?

  But now without her, without the fear that she could overrun me, a big, empty ache sat beside my heart.

  I’d always suspected I’d feel this way without her, but couldn’t stand to think about it. How could I have acted like a man while confronted with this knowledge and her bright presence at the same time?

  Before this, I had caught glimpses that sideswiped me with the full brunt of knowing how much I needed her in my life. I remembered stepping out of the shower one morning after we’d made love, and just as if the shower door itself had slammed into my body, I suddenly felt the impact of her effect on me. I loved her; I loved her with my whole being, and somehow that knowledge threatened me, as if she held some power over me that gave her too much control. I felt afraid, thinking, What if I lost her? And then I felt an unreasonable anger toward her, as if she had plotted to get me in this place of vulnerability. None of this came to my mind in words, just one wash of feeling after another.

  Sometimes I felt the urge to punish her for making me feel this way.

  That morning, without thinking, I flung my wet towel on Annie’s white cashmere sweater that she’d hand-washed and laid to dry on her end of the bathroom counter. The towel was a red, beach-sized sample embroidered with JACKSON HOLE, which a salesman had left at the store and I’d brought home and used without laundering first. That morning I didn’t pick up my dirty clothes from my side of the bedroom, and I ate Annie’s piece of coffee cake along with my own before taking off for the store.

  We’d begun a routine of me opening the store; then Annie came in an hour later and stayed an hour after me to close up. That morning, first thing after kicking the office door closed behind her, she upended a large canvas bag on top of my desk, inches beneath my nose. My dirty clothes, the red towel and the now pink-stained cashmere sweater. Not a word. Just walked back out of the store, and I didn’t see her again until late that night.

  I learned afterward that she’d spent
the day at the movies, watching two in a row, then went out to dinner alone. When she got home I called a friendly greeting from the sofa like nothing had happened. When she answered back, I thought, Whew.

  I never brought up the ruined sweater and waited and waited for her to indulge in her usual rant about my deficiencies, but it never happened. From then on I felt suspicious about what was going on with her—when I thought to think about it at all—because she stopped reacting in the expected ways. Sometimes I thought that was her insidious revenge, keeping me wondering like that.

  I fixed her; I stopped wondering.

  But now I had to realize that Annie had left me; these old methods weren’t going to work anymore. Many times she had told me that insulating myself against my feelings was damaging our relationship. And during our counseling, Lola had backed her up. She had suggested that my philosophy of what you don’t know can’t hurt you worked for me as a child after my mother’s death, but was working against me now.

  I closed the office door at the store, sat at my desk and lifted the phone. It felt as heavy as a log. I gripped it with both hands and rested my forehead against it. If I started down that long road, I might never again return to being the innocent boy before the accident. I might find it harder and harder to escape in the outdoors, in front of the TV, in numbness.

  But maybe one more appointment wouldn’t kill me.

  I dialed Lola’s number.

  Twenty-nine

  Annie

  Lucille made raspberry jam from tomatoes and strawberry jam from zucchini. She had told me this a few days ago, while we stood in her backyard and watched our puppies romping adorably. Today she huffed up the steps and handed me a jar of each. They sparkled in the sun like pink lamps as she held up a jar in each hand to announce her reason for visiting.