by Warren Read
Rodney had been sweeping out the warehouse for a good four months or so, yet had only spoken to Charlie Kruger twice. And even those moments had been just in passing. But he had seen the boss around the shop, and knew the man’s face, and the hollow baritone of his voice as he drew out his words, as if vowels were to be savored as gifts from the gods. The sustained “O” of Rodney’s mother’s name could carry to the farthest reaches of the warehouse. “Ro-oohse!” he would call out. The rest would be nothing more than a rumble of words, unintelligible.
“He’s alright,” Rodney said. “He drives a big car.”
“Is that so?” Otis leaned forward suddenly, his fingers raining on his knees like keys on a piano. “What kind?”
“I don’t know.” Rodney didn’t know cars too well, other than Otis’s Bonneville. And the Impala that had been out front of course, once upon a time.
“Is it a Cadillac? Or maybe a Monte Carlo. Does it have a front end that goes on forever?”
“I said I don’t know what kind of car.” Rodney undid the top button of his shirt, offering a welcome breeze against his chest. “This is stupid,” he said. “It’s just dinner.”
“On that,” Otis said, “you and I agree.” He stood from the high-back chair and went into the kitchen, where Rodney’s mother was working the pots and pans and the cupboard doors like they were drums.
“By the way,” he heard her say to Otis, “I don’t want you drinking.”
“At all?” Otis said.
“Ideally.”
Then there came the rattle of bottles on the refrigerator door. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “You’d think we were having dinner with the goddamned mayor.”
From where he sat, Rodney caught a blink of movement through the open drapes as a long, silver sedan stuttered to a stop against the curb, like a railcar pulling into the station.
“He’s here,” Rodney called out.
Otis flew into the living room and huddled against the wall, peeking out the window from its edge like he was a five-year-old looking out for Santa Claus.
“Looks like a Lincoln,” he said, snapping the drapes back. “Figures.”
Rodney’s mother opened the door and called out hello, and Kruger howled her name as usual.
Otis looked over to Rodney. “Ain’t they just a couple of chums?” he said.
Kruger carried a bottle in one hand, and as he walked up the front steps his suit jacket swung back and forth from his barrel stomach. His face was vivid pink behind a curled mustache, and he nodded to Rodney when he caught sight of him.
“Little man,” he said.
“Hello Mister Kruger,” Rodney answered. He didn’t need his mother’s shoe against his shin.
“Mister Kruger,” Rose said. “This here is Otis.” She motioned behind Rodney. “Otis Dell.”
Kruger walked past Rodney, his hand reaching out. A shine of metal and stones winked from his fingers, no less than three impressive rings leading the handshake. The two men greeted one another like men do, hands melted into a single fist, arms pumping, eyes locked in some unspoken competition.
“Is that a Lincoln you got out there?” Otis asked.
Kruger looked over his shoulder as if he needed a reminder. “Yes sir,” he said. “Continental.”
“Damn fine car,” Otis grinned.
“I couldn’t afford a yacht,” Kruger said, “so I settled on her.”
“I did the same thing.” Otis nodded at Rose and winked.
“Aren’t you the comedian?” Rose reached out and Kruger gave her the bottle. She turned it in her hand and looked over the label. “Very nice,” she said, smoothing her thumb over the paper. Rodney knew for a fact that his mother didn’t know one kind of wine from another. “It’s all just sour grapes to me,” she had said to him once.
Kruger turned and peered into the living room, his reddened eyes scanning the walls from one end to the other. He craned his thick neck, the flesh spilling over his collar. It looked to Rodney like he was lost, or maybe searching for something he’d left behind at a previous visit.
“I always wondered what it looked like in here,” he finally said. And when Rose cocked her head, he smiled and added, “Curious, I guess. Ever since I was a boy.”
Otis said, “It’s been around that long?”
“The Collettis—they were this big, Italian family—they lived here when I was your age,” Kruger said, glancing at Rodney. “Nice people, but good lord, were they ever loud. You could hear one of those girls of theirs from a half mile away, whether she was fighting with one of her sisters, or just talking to herself. Anyway, the rumor that rumbled among us kids was that something happened one night between old man Coletti and this brand-new teacher of ours. She was a pretty young thing whose name I couldn’t come up with if you paid me. I do remember she’d just moved here from Chicago, though.” He looked at Otis and winked. “Anyway, the wife, she didn’t take too well to the news as you would imagine. Apparently some words got said in a public place, in a way that was too messy to get out of. Shortly thereafter, the whole brood picked up and moved away in a single weekend.”
“That’s something,” Rodney’s mother said. “I can’t imagine.”
Kruger offered up a big, horsey nod. “The house sat here empty and boarded up for quite some time after that,” he said. “Somewhere around ’68, I’d guess, old man Kovac bought it.”
Otis said, “Sounds like a Jew name.”
“Otis,” Rose said. “Don’t be like that.”
“I’m just thinking out loud,” he said, tapping his shiny forehead. “I didn’t know we had a Jew for a landlord.”
“Why would you?” Rose said. “It’s not even a detail worth sharing.” She reached around and put her hand on the small of Kruger’s back, and he seemed to stand a bit taller when she did this.
“Let’s eat, shall we?”
She had bought a tablecloth and fancy cloth napkins for this, though she apologized for having what she said were the wrong glasses, though they were the same tumblers they always used. As she tipped the bottle with a trembling hand, the red licked up over the rim some.
“If it’ll hold what I’m drinking, it does what it needs to,” Kruger said. He raised the glass in the air before taking a drink. Rose laughed softly and Otis said, Amen, tipping the glass to his mouth and staring up at the ceiling with raised eyebrows.
They all piled their plates with roast beef and green beans, and scalloped potatoes that Rodney knew had come from a box, and at first everybody ate and nobody talked, with the exception of an occasional compliment from Kruger.
“The meat is perfectly cooked.”
“This is just like my mother used to do it.”
“It’s been awhile since I had such a meal, Rose.”
Rodney’s mother would smile behind her napkin, or whisper a sheepish, “Oh now,” while Otis would nod, his cheeks distended and flushed. He took a hard swallow and turned to Kruger.
“So,” he said. “How long have you owned that outfit on Charlotte?”
Kruger wiped his napkin over his mouth. “The store was my father’s place first,” he said. “He opened it in ’39. A lousy time to start a business.”
“Why’s that?” Otis cocked his head and shoveled another forkful into his face.
“Why’s that?” Kruger grinned. “The Depression, for one. And then the war shortly thereafter.” He turned and winked at Rodney. “Of course.”
“Of course,” Otis said, giving an unconvincing nod. “That crazy goddamned war.”
“God bless, he somehow made it work,” Kruger went on. “He was a crusty old S.O.B., and I mean that in the best way.” He took a gulp of wine and blinked a glance at Rose. Otis took up the bottle and reached over, adding a few splashes to Kruger’s glass.
“I grew up in that place,” Kruger continued. “Started working in the warehouse when I was his age,” he said, nodding his chin toward Rodney. “After Mom passed in ’65, the old man lost whatever interest he ha
d in the place. So I took it over. Figured I couldn’t do any worse.”
Rodney’s mother stared at her plate, now and then glancing up at Otis during the monologue. It was clear she had heard it all before.
“He passed on a few years later,” Kruger said, circling a chunk of bread along the edge of his plate. The rings on his fingers caught the overhead lamplight in glitter-like bursts. “I sold off the old house here in town and built my little place up there on Prospect Hill. And here we are.”
“You never got married?” Otis asked.
“Otis,” Rose said. “That’s personal.”
“It’s all right,” Kruger said, touching her on the shoulder. “It’s a tendency of some to wonder.”
“And?” Otis insisted.
“To be frank,” said Kruger, “I don’t spend a great deal of time even thinking about it.” He then turned his attention to Rodney. “You’re doing a fine job in the warehouse,” he said. “Prompt. Efficient. Good traits for a young man to have.”
“You need to hit the corners a little better, though,” Rose piped in.
“Now then,” Kruger said, turning one of the rings on his finger. “The finer details will come.”
“It’s all about the details,” Otis said.
“I know that,” Rodney said.
“A job worth doing is a job done good,” Otis added.
“I know that, Otis,” Rodney said, his voice rising. His fingers started to itch. This dinner was running a lot longer than any dinner he’d ever had.
“I don’t want to be nosy,” Otis then said to Kruger. “Those rings, they’re something.”
“Oh, Otis,” Rose said. “For crying out loud.”
Kruger reached over and opened her hand for her, then slid a ring off—the biggest one—and set it in her palm. “That’s a ten carat gold piece there,” he said. “Three-quarter carat rose cut in the center. Got it about seven years ago from an old Russian jeweler on a trip through San Francisco.”
“Any occasion?” she asked.
“Indulgence,” he said. “I’ve got a few. This is just one of many.”
“Rings or indulgences?” Otis asked.
“Yes and yes,” Kruger said, tipping the wine bottle and emptying the last drops into his glass.
Rodney pressed his feet to the linoleum and ground his chair back. His mother turned to him.
“Are you asking to be excused?” she said.
Otis said, “We’re still eating.”
“It’s alright,” Kruger said. “No boy his age should be stuck listening to a bunch of talk about business and personal vices.”
Rodney’s mother waved a hand, and Rodney pushed himself the rest of the way from the table, and ran off to his bedroom.
He sat on the edge of his bed for some time, the hum of conversation continuing in the other room, the cut of laughter and the occasional rattle of ice against glass.
Rodney slid his hand beneath the mattress and drew out one of the magazines, a Detective Comic, still in its plastic wrapping, protected from filthy hands and childish, undisciplined excitement. Safe. The hero swinging from one building to another, his black cape practically filling the entire cover, was Batman—though he was called The Batman in this issue.
Rodney considered taking it from its sleeve, this thing that was older than he was, older than Otis—maybe even older than Mister Kruger. He ran a single finger over the cover, the thin plastic shifting and creasing under the pressure. He could do it. He could take it out and read it, and fold the pages, tearing a couple loose if he wanted to. He could throw it away in the trash and nobody, not even Otis, would miss it.
The evening light began to settle. Rodney screwed the bulb on his nightstand lamp, and then there came a merciful lull, with the business of thank yous and good nights. Rodney got up from his bed and stood at the window, watching as Mister Kruger walked to his silver car, a little lighter and unsteady on his feet than he had been upon his arrival. He walked around the rear end of the car to the driver’s side, where he stood with his hand on the roof, his eyes looking back toward the front door.
“Hey.” Otis was there at the bedroom door, behind him. He had changed into a dingy white T-shirt, which hung from his body like a shop rag. “Go help your mother with the cleanup.”
“Isn’t she on the porch?”
Otis screwed up his face at Rodney. “Why the hell would she be on the porch?” he said. Shaking his head, he gave a whispered laugh, and thumped on down the hallway to the bathroom. “Ain’t she on the porch,” he said once more. Outside, Kruger’s giant car was gone.
When all was washed and put away, the last remnants of Charlie Kruger flushed down the drain, Rodney lay on the sofa watching the final stretch of a movie he had seen several times before. It was a cops-and-robbers flick, with the criminals on a cross-country run, heroes though they had killed a few bystanders along the way. His mother and Otis sat at the kitchen table together in darkness, except for the single tiny bulb over the stove.
Otis was nursing a beer while Rodney’s mother moved a cigarette from her lips to a glass ashtray, a dancing vine of blue smoke rising to the ceiling. They were talking, but Rodney could only catch snippets, and only when things seemed to come to a flashpoint.
“How should I know?” His mother’s voice. “If you’re so brilliant…”
“He said so.” Otis now. “You heard him.”
They went on like this for some time, and when they got tired of the chairs or the conversation, or had run out of beer perhaps, or she had finished her last cigarette, they got up from the table and went past the living room to the bedroom.
“Don’t stay up too late,” his mother said.
“Just till this is over,” Rodney answered.
“When’s that?”
“Twenty minutes.” He had no idea, really.
Otis disappeared into the bedroom and started opening and closing drawers, and rattling the clothes hangers.
“Hey,” she said to Rodney.
“Yeah.”
“Look at me.”
Rodney rolled to his side and turned his head to his mother. She stood there leaning against the door jamb, a sleepy smile drawn over her face. The day had been endless for her, and she wore every minute of it like a rain-soaked, woolen coat.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For being nice to him.”
Rodney shrugged. “He seems nice.”
“He is nice,” she said. “Not everybody gets to see that side of him.” Then she kissed the air and said good night, and slipped into the bedroom where Otis was quiet now, closing the door behind her.
19
It was the first time a woman had been a part of the mix. She was young, eighteen at best, and accompanied by an older man wearing what looked to Nadine like pajamas. He was nearly bald, with only a light downy patch circling around the back from ear to ear. The girl spoke to him in whispers and tiny gestures, huddling against him as he nodded and smiled a gentle crescent moon. After a few moments, he patted her on the shoulder and she moved a step or two away from him, and the two of them stood with hands on the porch railing, gazing out over the expanse of the cluttered land. The old man said something, then tottered down the steps to pace around the property with his hands clasped in front of his body, studying the piles of rusted junk that Lester had dropped everywhere. He looked over them as if they were discovered treasures, ancient artifacts from some long-dead civilization.
In time, the girl turned her attentions to Nadine, keeping to her like a horsefly, pointing out things and chittering at her in what sounded like some secret code, a tumbling nonsense, the girl occasionally laughing at her own words. What could Nadine do with that? So she took up a one-sided conversation of her own, spilling complaints about Lester and the house, of the winter that would clench those very hills in just a few short months. The place needed more work than one person could possibly do, but Nadine supposed that was just the way it
was going to be as long as she stuck around.
“I don’t know how he ever survived on his own up here,” Nadine said as she and the girl crowded into the henhouse, the air tinged with grit and fluff and fans of incoming sunlight. Nadine handed over the basket, and the girl went right over to the nesting boxes at the far end and started plucking eggs from the straw like it was her daily chore.
The girl looked at Nadine and held up a single egg. A lone, downy feather had lit on the side of her head, a white starburst against the inky black of her hair.
“Egg,” Nadine said.
“Egg,” the girl repeated, and then she grinned and said, “Les-ter Fan-ning,” as if she were picking the syllables from a jumbled pile of words.
“Lester Fanning,” Nadine said, and then she moved her hand in an outward movement from her body, as if she were smoothing it over a distended gut. The girl laughed at this, curling her hand to her mouth and turning away from Nadine.
Nadine started doing this with everything. At first it was fun, in a Miracle Worker kind of way. Nadine the teacher, the girl trapped in a world in which she could not communicate. They wandered the circumference of the house, and Nadine would point out things. Tree. Squirrel. Mushroom. As exhausting as the charade quickly became, Nadine was glad for the hard barrier of understanding between them. She couldn’t even explain to herself the reasons for sticking around, much less to another person. For every moment she found herself ready to descend that mountain and climb into the first truck she could throw herself in front of, there was another moment that grabbed hold of her. A voice telling her it wasn’t worth it, that it was her problem, not his. After all, hadn’t she decided long ago that while there was probably no such thing as a truly good man, the world was at least likely made up of a number of halfway-decent ones? That all she had to do was stand ready until they showed her there wasn’t enough decency to make it all worth the effort? For all his swagger and self-centeredness, and the occasional ridiculous ultimatums, Lester was no better or worse than any man she’d ever been with—or would ever be with.
Jimmy had hovered around decent for some time, long enough for him to have promised to maybe marry her, someday, to have spent a bit of his paycheck on the little pawn shop ring which he gave to her over hamburgers at that little diner in Yakima. He hadn’t hit her or anything like that, even when she made him so mad he pulled the car off the road and stomped fifty paces off into the rows of someone’s apple orchard. But he could hurt her with words; that was for damned sure. Comments and assumptions about her education, or lack of, touting his community college degree as if it was a fucking PhD. “You wouldn’t last in college,” he’d say to her. “You got to be willing to think.”