by Deni Béchard
He sighed, maybe seeing this from the perspective of all that followed. He didn’t sound sad, just contemplative, as if this were no longer about him. The other cop wanted to check his fingerprints. The fingerprints found a match, and my father fit the description given by the man with the burned eyes.
“The cop who’d talked with me about boxing couldn’t look at me,” he said. “He was embarrassed to have spoken to a criminal the way you talk to a normal man.”
He cleared his throat as if embarrassed himself, as if he’d meant to tell me something amazing that would make me forget about school. I had the impression he was only now discovering his past, trying to see where it fit in his life, as if the stories were surprising him, too, changing him, his eyes different, a hint of rage in them.
“But after the arrest,” he said and forced a smile, “after that—that was funny. The police wanted me to fly to California. My trial was going to be there, but you can’t force a convict to fly. It’s not legal.
“They offered me a big meal, wine even, if I’d take the plane. I said I would, and I stuffed myself. It was a great meal. Steak, lobster, wine. But when I got to the airport the next day, I said I wouldn’t fly. I shook my head and told them, ‘I’m not getting on. I just remembered I’m afraid of planes.’” He laughed, repeating the line, and he let himself look at me, smiling. “After that big meal they bribed me with, they were furious. They had to drive me across the country, from Florida to California. I didn’t like the drive either, but I figured I stood a better chance of jumping out of a moving car than out of a plane.”
Seeing his face, I knew that I was right, that this was new for him. He smiled like someone hearing a story for the first time, losing himself in it.
“During that trip, I spent every night in a different jail. Whenever I got to a new one, a local cop had to fill out a form with my personal information. Each time, when he asked my occupation, I said, ‘Unemployed bank robber.’ Most of those guys laughed, but there were some real hard-asses who asked over and over. I guess they finally just wrote down unemployed, because I didn’t change what I was saying.”
Outside the snack bar window, the fog broke beneath occasional rain, but the sun remained caught in mist, like a dull, fat fly in a web.
“How long will you be staying?” Jasmine asked.
“I don’t know,” I said and sank deeper into my jacket, breathing against its collar to warm my throat. I closed my dog-eared novel. “How long have you been living here?”
“A few months, I guess.”
“Where do you know André from?”
“He was friends with my parents. He offered me a job.” She explained that her stepfather was a drunk and my father had helped her leave home. I couldn’t see the appeal in living at a ferry landing on a lonely stretch of river. She didn’t even have a car.
I told her my own stories, about life in Virginia, stealing the motorcycle, but she didn’t smile. She squinched up her face. “That’s stupid.”
Drivers had shut off their engines, customers braving the rain, hurrying toward us.
“What? I—”
“It’s dumb. Does your father know?”
She got up, went to the orange counter, and took an order for coffee.
I stared off along the line. The rain fell harder, rushing from the overhang onto the shoulders of the man reaching for the sugar. An old couple turned back to their camper.
I couldn’t imagine my life after Christmas. Was this being a man? He was using me, but I didn’t know what for. If I didn’t return to school, I’d have to repeat the year. With a rage that surprised me, I hated him.
“I’m going inside,” I told Jasmine and ran through the rain and sat on the couch.
From the window, I could see the orange counter and, just inside, in the angle of unmoving light, the curve of her breasts beneath her sweater. Shadows hid her face. She appeared too still. At the docks, the green light lit up, and the traffic crept forward.
After dark, as rain fell past the strand of colored bulbs, the red and gray GMC pulled into the driveway. I hid my book. Jasmine had just closed the snack bar, and my father came inside with a grease-stained bag of Chinese food. But once we were at the table together, we hardly spoke. He asked a few questions about sales, then looked at the cassettes next to the radio.
“One time,” he said, “when I was traveling in the States, I pulled into a gas station right after Elvis had been there. I even saw his Cadillac leaving, and the attendant told me it was Elvis. It’s too bad I didn’t get there earlier. I’d have liked to see the King.”
I considered this other brand of story, innocuous, innocent, a groupie’s celebrity sighting. He couldn’t tell his real stories with Jasmine there. Who had he been before I’d come back? How much had he changed for me? She glanced between us, and not wanting to seem like a boy, I gazed at him evenly, without interest or emotion.
His hand rested on the table, half curled into a fist, and he rubbed the muscle on the back of his forearm absently. Slowly, he flattened his hand against the wood and studied it. He put it in his lap, rolled his shoulders, and swallowed. He met my gaze and stared.
“I can’t believe I have to stay here,” I told Jasmine after he’d left.
“Why? What’s wrong with being here?”
“He wants to start a new family. That’s why he’s making me live here.” I repeated some of what he’d told me and explained his interest in Sara. She listened intently.
“Is she his girlfriend?” she asked.
“I don’t think so. He just likes her, but she’s too young.”
She pulled her knee to her chest and wrapped her arms around it. Her brow was furrowed, her bottom lip slightly loose, as if in a pout. She traced the leg seam of her jeans with a fingertip.
After a moment, she got up and went into the bathroom. I could hear her brushing her teeth. Then the door clicked shut, and there was only the sound of water whining in the cold pipes. I sat at the table and opened the notebook in which I’d started a fantasy novel. When she came back, she’d changed into her nightgown. It had flimsy straps, and as she got a glass of water, the spreading lines of her collarbone shone beneath the kitchen’s naked bulb. The olive skin of her legs moved against the pale, ruffled fringe. She stood next to me and looked at my cramped scrawl. Her hip touched my shoulder as she leaned forward, her nightgown loose at the front, my eyeballs twisting painfully in their sockets, trying for a glimpse even as I held my face to the page.
“Why do you write this stupid stuff?” she asked. With the glass of water in her fingers, she went upstairs, crouching to avoid the low ceiling, the curve of her ass lifted.
The rain slackened to a drizzle, and I left the house, fumbling with my jacket, hurrying past the snack bar, panting. Anxiety, the feeling of being trapped, had come quickly. The water on the ground had frozen, and I almost slipped. I stopped near the landing. The ferry’s horn called from over the river, red and yellow lights in the mist. A pickup appeared on the dark road, slowing to enter the docks.
A week had gone by. My father had called a few times to ask how we were doing, but he was too busy to visit. I slept or read or hung out in the snack bar. Jasmine kept her distance, arms crossed, shoulders drawn in. Nights, I sat at the table, creating a fantasy world, drawing maps, while upstairs she lay in her attic bedroom, reading a romance novel.
Now would be the time to hitchhike, but where? I realized how safe my adventures had been before. Could I cross the country again? Cross the border? The problem was the same as in the realistic stories I’d tried to write, the ones in which I escaped but only got so far before the options ran out. If I went back to my mother, she and Dickie would win. My father was a liar. He had nothing but stories.
The string of flaking colored bulbs swayed faintly with the wind. I went inside and took the phone. Who could I call?
Under the sink, a mildewed, six-year-old phone book left its cover glued to the bottom of the cabinet when I lifted
it. It had been there since before my mother fled. I found the name of a classmate from elementary school, a girl I’d liked named Deborah. The address seemed right, and I tore out the page and threw the book back on its cover. It left sooty streaks on my hands, and I wiped them on my jeans. The ferry horn sounded, and a car door closed in the line.
I went to the couch and sat. Then I picked up the receiver and dialed.
After four or five rings, a groggy adult answered, and I asked for Deborah. The voice that finally said hello sounded awake, my age but not familiar. I told her who I was.
“Of course, I remember you. How are you?” She sounded somewhat pleased.
“I’m good.”
There was a moment of silence as I thought of what to say.
“Where are you?” she asked. “You disappeared. Nobody knew what happened.”
“I’m back.”
“Nearby?”
“No. But maybe soon. I moved to the States. My parents separated, and we went to live there. How about you?”
“What?”
“I don’t know. What school do you go to?”
She named one I’d never heard of, then said it was private and asked about mine.
“I just moved back,” I told her. “I took a month off. I’ll probably start again soon.”
The silence held a little longer. Outside, beyond the window, the line had built up. A few passengers got out for air, pant legs flashing through headlights. I asked about other friends. A few had moved away, and two attended her school. This struck me as odd, but I recalled that their houses had been nicer than mine. She asked what I was doing, and I told her, “I work for my father. I hate his fucking fish business.”
“Things were hard for you, weren’t they?” she asked.
Her question shocked me, its innocent honesty.
“Actually, I’m going to be a writer. I’m working on a novel right now. Every night. I pretty much don’t even sleep.”
“Oh,” she said. “That’s interesting.”
I told her about the book, the hero fleeing through an imaginary land. It sounded impossibly stupid.
“Well,” she said after a pause, “if you’re ever around, you should call again.”
I put down the phone, the muscles of my jaw trembling. I pressed my palms to my face and promised myself I’d never cry over something so stupid. I made the emotions stop, as if crushing them with an act so tangible I could feel the pressure in my chest. Fear and sadness seemed weak and childlike. I could escape. How hard could it be? How smart was my father if this was his life? I’d just have to be patient. Still, I wished he would prove that he was more than what he seemed.
For the rest of the night, I filled my notebook. A young man of uncertain parentage appeared from a sky torn asunder, as if he too had arrived in a plane. But even as I wrote, I hated it. My hero became surly, defying prophecies and kings, leaving the places of his youth. I wanted to write something real, but I had just a feeling—no story, no characters. I knew only that when I wrote, I was who I truly wanted to be.
I turned off the light.
The clock’s bony red numbers read 4:50. The moon had set, and there was a deep predawn darkness over the river. I rubbed my eyes, not wanting to sleep and wake to the misted lineup before the docks.
Steinbeck’s characters had seemed like losers to me, men wandering and escaping. Why did people like to read about criminals? Because they were free? They survived, always chasing a dream.
My father had traveled cross-country. Dressed in a suit, he’d driven from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, he and his friends armed with guns, drinking, laughing over money they’d stolen. He’d described more innocent adventures in his youth working in the wind, running along the beams of skyscrapers, until the day his friend tripped and died.
As if in a fantasy novel, it seemed that only after some terrible thing happened, the journey would begin.
He arrived shortly before noon. Freezing rain was falling, and we drove to a diner, where we sat in a booth and ordered coffee, fries, bacon, and eggs. Outside, a few semis had been left running, faint vibrations rattling the windows.
“I want to go back to school,” I said.
“Come on. You were never good at school. A year off won’t hurt.”
“I want to go back in January.”
He looked me in the eye. “Listen, you can’t just come into my life and expect me to do what you want. I’m too busy to support you through school. Besides, it isn’t for you. That’s clear to me. You and me, we’re the same that way. You just have to grow up and see what the world’s really like. You have no idea.”
I was twisting my napkin. I forced myself to stop, to sit up straight. I tried to work through my rage, looking for a solution, my thoughts like water against a barrier, seeping into it, searching out fissures. When I’d left Virginia, I was a decent if indifferent student. Now school seemed the only freedom possible.
“You know,” he went on, “I didn’t pay for you to come out here so you could live like a king. I can’t let you turn my life upside down.”
“What? What am I doing wrong?”
He waved his hand. “You almost never called. Five years is a long time. You didn’t even write. You want to be a writer, and you didn’t write.”
“I wanted to come back, but I wasn’t allowed.”
“You could’ve run away,” he said, his lip drawing back from his teeth, one of his incisors faintly darker. “It’s easy. You just take a bus. You stole a motorcycle but you couldn’t figure out how to come back.” He hesitated, then repeated, “Five years,” as if these words contained all the wrong in the world.
Finally I understood. All this time he’d been torn between pride and anger. I’d come back, so in a way he’d won. But I’d also let him down, and now I had to prove myself.
“She said you were dangerous,” I offered, wanting him to understand.
“What? She had no right. The day she left and took the three of you, I came back to the house while she was packing. She had some friends helping her. They were from one of those spiritualist groups, and they all got scared and left, even the men. A bunch of cowards. She told me you guys were in the States already. She said the police knew all about it.”
He took a breath and shook his head.
“I’m not allowed across the border. She knew what the police could do to me.”
He hesitated, searching for the point he was trying to make. He sounded as if he were continuing an argument he’d carried on in his head for years.
“I let her leave. I didn’t have to do that.”
I had nothing to say. I’d finished eating and now I listened, looking down, forced to wait this out just as I was waiting out my detention by the river.
“You can’t understand what it was like,” he said. “After she took you, I spent weeks in bed. I couldn’t do anything. I could barely move.”
He was staring through me, his eyes shining, wet with rage.
“I deserve another chance. I’m still young.”
He looked down and picked at his cold fries. He pushed one around the plate, smearing the ketchup, then ate it.
A tall, stooped man came from the kitchen, pens in his shirt pocket, and my father smiled, instantly transformed. He shook his hand. It was the manager, asking what fish were available. My father introduced me as his son, but I didn’t offer to shake the man’s hand, barely nodded.
After he left, as soon as the kitchen door closed, my father leaned forward sharply.
“Let me tell you something. That guy—you don’t know a thing about him. He could be anybody. He could kill you just like that. You understand? So don’t be rude.”
I shrugged.
“You know,” he said, “I saw a guy get his head blown off. We were in a bar in Alaska, and a friend I worked with got into an argument with a pimp. The pimp walked away, but he sent his whore over to slap my friend. My friend didn’t say anything. He just left. Then ten minutes later, he came b
ack with a shotgun and emptied both barrels in the pimp’s face.
“I saw that guy years later in the pen, and he told me he didn’t regret a thing. He wasn’t crazy. Even in the pen, he kept to himself. That’s how easy it is. So don’t go making people feel stupid. A man has to live with himself. Be polite.”
Sleet was falling hard, obscuring the drab country beyond the highway, the roadside grass pale and distinct. Ice gathered on the windshield, the wipers pressing it away in layers. He held the steering wheel in both hands, and in the gloom, they seemed too large and dark, reminding me of how they’d looked to me when I was a boy. They gripped the plastic as if he had to keep them busy.
“You think you’re tough,” he said, and from his tone I knew he’d do something, the way as a child I’d sensed his recklessness moments before he swerved through traffic.
I didn’t speak, and he continued. “That’s good, because you’re going to do a job for me.”
I held my hands between my knees as he cut into a subdivision of identical unkempt houses, the postage-stamp yards tangles of frozen weeds. He coasted a ways and stopped. He looked past me, through the passenger window. An ancient Ford tow truck filled a driveway, all bare rusted metal and tied-up chains. It belonged to Brandon, a man who occasionally worked for him, a slacker who always wore a stained Canucks cap. I’d met him at the market.
“Brandon owes me fifty dollars. I want you to get it for me.”
He groped beneath the seat, pushing at pop cans and candy-bar wrappers, and took out a wooden baseball bat with Slugger printed on the side. He put it in my hands.
“Fifty dollars is nothing,” I said, digging my fingertips at the smooth, hard wood.
“It’s a question of principles. I don’t let anyone laugh at me.”
As soon as the door closed, he pulled away. I was instantly wet. The bat felt too heavy, and I cradled it against my arm. The small print on the side said it had a lead core.
The address plaque read 64 Picadilly, printed with faded flowers that still stood out against the gray plastic siding. Very little of the tow truck was without rust. My father had once told me it dated to the fifties, like those he’d seen in Montreal. My footsteps moved far below my body as they carried me toward the door. I hesitated, then knocked.