Blind Spot

by Tom Kakonis

  At the bleat of the shift whistle Buck came clambering down the ladder at the end of a catwalk linking the five stands and joined Waz, waiting for him by the Dumpster. They started for the closest exit, a hundred yards away. “Get ’er ironed out yet?” Waz asked, alluding to whatever mechanical failure had occupied his friend’s day.

  “Got ’er runnin’,” Buck said, “but it still ain’t quite right. Sure could use Harp here.”

  “Old Harp’s sittin’ on the banks a the Mississippi reelin’ in walleye or whatever it is they catch up there and soakin’ up brew. Like we’re gonna be doin’, minute, least that brew part anyway.”

  Buck, wasted from eight hours of pretzeling himself into the hot mill’s tightest corners and crevices, had all but forgotten the mysterious urgent invitation. Now that it came back to him, he said, “Only got time for one, remember.”

  “Even one go down good, ’long about now.”

  Halfway to the exit Lester caught up with them. His round face was fixed in a vacant Plutoish grin, and in his eyes there was a giveaway sheen. They walked stoop-shouldered, all three, and their uniforms were splotched with grease, sodden with sweat. Sweat limpened their hair, glistened their brows. Waz mopped his with a damp kerchief. “Jesus fuck,” he grumbled, “gotta be hun’red twenty degrees in here.”

  “Yeah, well, air condition ain’t all that high on management’s priority list,” Buck drawled. “Last I heard.”

  “So you better get to like it, Wazzer,” Lester said impishly.

  Waz regarded him with weary irritation, like some pesky buzzing fly, forever out of reach. “I do it, Cock, same as you. But I don’t got to like it.”

  “What you need’s some substance to abuse. Chill you out.”

  “Huh, chill like you, I s’pose,” said a thoroughly disgusted Waz. “Be on everything but skates. That what you recommendin’ here?”

  “Ain’t so bad. Keep ya warm in winter, cool in summer. Make the day just rocket on by. Why, feel to me like I just punched in. Go another eight, I had to.”

  “Yeah, fry your brains too, poppin’ all them doodies. No, thanks. I’d rather sweat.”

  “Oughta get yourself a cushy job,” Lester suggested. He pointed at a string-thin fellow slouching against a wall by the exit up ahead, buttonholing a couple of departing workers. “Like Jimmie Jack there. Lookit him. He ain’t sweatin’.”

  “Don’t know the right people, way he does.”

  “It ain’t who ya know, Wazzie. It’s who ya blow.”

  “Blowin’ maybe your style. Ain’t mine.”

  “Ain’t your luck. Mine either. I tell ya, he’s so lucky, Jimmie, he sit on a wasp, he come up shittin’ honey.”

  “Bee, numbnuts. You mean a bee. Wasps don’t give honey.”

  “Whadda they give?”

  “Stings.”

  “Okay, a bee, then.”

  As they approached the door, Jimmie pushed off the wall and sauntered toward them. His uniform was spotless, trousers still held a crease, and he was indeed unsweated. A pearl stud glittered in one ear, matched his wide, starched smile. He hailed them with a high-handed wave. “Yo, grunts, what’s shakin’?”

  “Shakin’ ass outta here,” Lester replied for all of them.

  “ ’Bout that time, huh.”

  “Hope to lay a loaf in your lunch bucket, it’s time.”

  “Speakin’ a which, time,” Jimmie said, lifting a wrist, displaying his watch, “take a scope at this.”

  Lester and Waz stepped in for a closer look. Buck hung back. “Holy shit,” Lester exclaimed. “That a Rolex?”

  “Ain’t no Timex.”

  “You pushin’ ’em?”

  “Might be I could rustle some up, you boys.”

  “How much?” Waz wanted to know.

  “Deuce and a half put one on your arm. Go to a, like, jewelry store, set you back an easy ten long.”

  Buck, who normally avoided conflict and seldom initiated it, was just bushed enough, impatient enough, to remark acidly, “ ’Stead of your bargain-basement store, huh. Back of an alley. Or somebody’s truck.”

  He stood half a head taller, so Jimmie looked up at him carefully and the viper smile never left his pocked face. “Hey, man, lighten up. Get a vice. It’s a deal I’m offerin’ you here.”

  “Shove your deals,” Buck said, and he spun on his heels and strode away.

  Waz took off after him, but Lester remained. “What’s chewin’ on his ass?” Jimmie said.

  Lester shrugged. He was still staring at the watch, shaking his head admiringly, properly dazzled. “There anything you can’t get ahold of, Jimmie?”

  “Name your commodity. Anything to order.”

  “Wouldn’t mind havin’ one a them Rolies myself.”

  “I dunno. You do got some other paper out there yet, an’ you know I gotta see some green on it by Sunday, no later. You ain’t forgettin’ that?”

  “Oh, yeah. I’m workin’ on it.”

  “Attaboy,” Jimmie said, laying a spindly arm on his shoulder. “C’mon, let’s slip over the Greek’s. I’m bookin’ my orders there.”

  In spite of its somewhat ostentatious name, the Norseman Lounge and Supper Club was in fact nothing more than a long, rectangular, badly lit, unpartitioned barn of a room with a line of graffiti-scarred wooden booths along one wall, bar on the other, and a couple of pool tables in the back by a portal offering an unwanted peek into a supremely dingy kitchen that served substantially more burger, slaw, and fries plates than anything approaching suppers. It was located about a quarter of a mile down the road from the entrance to the Norse Aluminum plant, within sight of the gigantic sign depicting a heroic Viking warrior bearing shield and spear that was the company’s trademark, and from whence came the tavern-eatery’s name. Since its clientele consisted almost exclusively of Norse employees, it was busiest during those hours immediately before and after the plant’s thrice-daily shift changes, during which times, as now, it was jammed with rowdy men in soiled blue uniforms chugging beer and booze, raising a raucous din of whoops and shouts, and blueing the air with smoke. Presiding behind the bar, mein dour host, was Nicholas Last Name an Unpronounceable Clash of Vowels and Hard Consonants, a squat swarthy surly man whose filthy apron girdled a middle of such corpulent bloat he was known, unsurprisingly, as Skinny Nick, or sometimes simply The Greek. Three waitresses scurried about frantically, or at least two of them, stout and uncommonly homely, did. The third, a tall, twentyish woman outfitted in black velvet killer heels, fishnet hose, pink hot pants, push-up bra, and with a tower of orange-tinted hair and lipstick the color of freshly drawn blood, was reputedly the owner’s favored squeeze of the month, which perhaps accounted for her sultry lassitude and her notorious inability to get orders straight or make proper change. It was the former giving her trouble right now as she stopped by a booth near the back and inquired around a wad of gum, “What is it you fellas drinkin’?”

  For answer, Waz pointed at the label on one of the many empty bottles on the table.

  “Oh, yeah, Buds. So, you want a couple more?”

  “Buck?”

  Buck was pulling on a cigarette, gazing worriedly into some private middle distance.

  Waz said his name a second time.

  “Huh?”

  “You do another?”

  “Okay. One more.”

  “Don’t s’pose you could clear off these dead soldiers,” Waz suggested to the departing waitress.

  “Get ’em when I come back,” was her impudent reply, sashaying away, trim hips swaying.

  Buck expelled a fretful gust of smoke and resumed their talk. “This is not what I want to hear, Waz.”

  “Hey, don’t I know. Like I said, though, it’s pro’ly nothin’, but I figured I oughta tell you.”

  “Tell me again. When was it happened?”

  “Day we come over to your place.”

  “Last Sunday.”

  “Right.”

  “And it was where?”

&
nbsp; “Up on the East-West.”

  “This guy in the wagon. What’d he look like?”

  “Shit, I dunno, Buck. Didn’t get much of a look at him. Was Della doin’ all the gawkin’. She’s the one first saw the poster in the window.”

  “So you didn’t actually see this poster yourself?”

  Waz squirmed uncomfortably in his seat. “Well, yeah, I seen it. Not real good, though.”

  “And?”

  “What?”

  “C’mon, Waz. You know what I’m askin’ here.”

  “Tell ya the hones’ truth, I don’t know if it was the same kid or not. For sure, I mean.”

  “What’s Della think?”

  “Della don’t know dick. She seen too many soaps on the TV.”

  “She been talkin’ to anybody else?”

  “No way. I told her put a lid on it.”

  Buck stubbed out his cigarette. For a moment he was silent, eyes inward turning, sorting through everything he’d heard, the whole distressing tale gone over again and yet again these past three hours. After its first telling he’d got on the horn and called Norma, fabricated a flimsy tale to cancel their evening plans, which, as always, she’d accepted without complaint or question (though with maybe a tremor of disappointment in her voice). That was Norma. And thinking about her now, he leveled his gaze on his friend and said grimly, “I don’t want her sayin’ nothin’ to Norma. You understand that, Waz?”

  “Yeah, sure, I understand,” Waz said, but he had to look away, unable to meet the alarm in those eyes. Still, he felt impelled to add, “But you know Della. Comes to tongue waggin’, she got herself a black belt.”

  “She gonna be at the open house?”

  “She’s talkin’ about it.”

  “Then I got to find a way keep Norma home. She can’t hear none of this. You know how she feels about the boy.”

  “Listen,” Waz said, defensive edge to his voice, “who knows better’n me? ’Bout all of it. Who was it helped you make the connection?”

  “I ain’t forgot. And I appreciate it.”

  Just then the waitress reappeared. She set two cans of Coors on the table and stood there, brows knit, trying to do the calculations in her head.

  “Comes to $3.70,” Waz volunteered, presenting her with a five.

  “Yeah, that’s it.” She counted out two ones and three dimes and handed them over to him.

  Once she was gone, the collection of empties still unremoved, Waz remarked, to lighten things a little, “Dumb twat. Tell ya, drinkin’ here could get to be a thrifty habit, even if you don’t always get what you order.”

  Buck, however, had no interest in the transaction and, following his interrupted train of thought, he nodded significantly in the direction of the bar, where Jimmie Jack, surrounded by a cluster of men, was holding court, grinning, gabbing, now and again jotting something in a small notebook. “Appreciate it,” Buck repeated. “But anything gets done through that sleazeball, you got to worry about.”

  “Hey, I hear ya. ’Course, all’s he done was get your money to the right people, bump you to the top a their list. That’s what he does. Don’t mean you got to like him.”

  “Trouble is, whatever he’s into always got a downside to it. Take that place out to Elgin, where we picked up Davie at. I gotta tell you, Waz, didn’t look right to me.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, for one thing there’s this guy, says he’s a lawyer. Dago, fulla slick talk. Smoke, most of it.”

  “So he’s a dago. You gotta have a lawyer, make things legal. An’ he give you all the papers says it is, right?”

  “Yeah, we got the papers,” Buck said doubtfully. “But then there’s the lady suppose to be the mother, she don’t look like no mother type to me. Look like some washout hooker. Hangs back, lets the wop do all the talkin’ for her. Don’t seem real sad, like you’d think a mother’d be, givin’ up a kid.”

  “So what if she ain’t sad? Nothin’ to you. There’s lots a broads like that, ain’t gonna win mother of the year.”

  “Maybe so. But the boy, he’s all sleepy, like they got him on somethin’.”

  “Pro’ly did. Make it easier on him, goin’ with strangers, new place and all. Easier on everybody.”

  “Still, whole setup seemed, y’know, funny. But I don’t say nothin’. Not gonna spoil things for Norma.”

  “Can see why,” Waz said in a labored stab at commiseration. “ ’Specially after all them adoptin’ agencies you went to, got nothin’ but spook kids, or ones somethin’ wrong with ’em. Five-year wait for a regular white one.”

  Buck didn’t seem to be listening. “Only now, what you’re tellin’ me here…” He shook his head slowly, bewilderedly.

  “Was pro’ly nothin’ to it anyway,” Waz said again, weaker this time.

  “Yeah. Maybe. Except our Jimmie Jackoff there, he ain’t never been in the charity business.”

  “You want me to talk to him? See what I can find out?”

  “Not yet. I got to have some time. Think this through.”

  “I could talk to him. Anything, y’know, slippery goin’ on, we could get your money back for you.”

  Buck stuck another cigarette in his mouth. Lighting it, his hand trembled slightly. Anxiety scored his broad, furrowed face, and when he spoke his voice was husky, a confessional voice, pleading for understanding. “Ain’t the money. Don’tcha see, got nothin’ to do with money. It’s Norma. All them years we been married, the one thing she wanted was a kid. Only thing. Only thing I couldn’t seem to give her. All them years tryin’, hopin’. Makes you wonder about yourself. Makes you crazy, Waz. Then along comes Sara, like it’s a miracle, and then she’s gone, never saw her fifth birthday.”

  “Know how y’feel,” Waz mumbled. It wasn’t much, all he could think to say.

  Wrong thing. Buck made blades of his big hands and chopped the air vehemently. “You don’t know! How you gonna know? You ever lost a kid? Listen to her screamin’ in the night? Watch her coughin’ up blood? Watch her die? You ever done that? You don’t know.”

  “You’re right,” Waz said, humbled. “I don’t.”

  Buck softened some. “Now we got Davie, got another chance…you understand what I’m sayin’ here? Norma can’t go through it again. Neither can I.”

  Waz stared into his lap, shaken by this uncharacteristic show of emotion. Run out of flimsy explanations. Out of words.

  And Buck, equally embarrassed, looked down at his watch. “It’s late,” he said. “I gotta get movin’.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  They slid out of the booth and pushed their way through the crowd. Neither of them so much as glanced at Jimmie Jack as they passed the bar.

  If she was puzzled and maybe even a little hurt by the last-minute change in plans (so unlike Dale, always so reliable), Norma was careful not to let it show. Not around Davie. But because all day long she had prepared him for tonight’s special occasion, she had to think of something, some compensatory treat. An inspiration came to her. An hour later they were dining, the two of them, on hot dogs, baked beans, coleslaw, deviled eggs, potato salad, a sweetish lemonade, the hastily put-together feast spread across the metal table on the patio, its awning shielding them from a sun sunk low in the sky but still fierce. Their own little picnic.

  Norma chattered away, making the kind of airy, silly talk adults, alone with a child, will sometimes make. Now and again he responded, but mostly he ate quietly, spooning beans and tilting his head to accommodate the tube of meat and bun to his mouth. Until something seemed suddenly to occur to him, some faint connection, and his eyes seemed to turn inward and he laid the half-eaten hot dog on the paper plate in front of him and volunteered the odd and altogether irrelevant remark, “There was a horse.”

  “A horse?” Norma said curiously.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Which horse is that?”

  “Horse,” he repeated, a note of impatience in the small voice.

  “Wha
t did the horse do?” she asked, indulging him, remembering Sara and how a child’s talk could veer off in strange directions, sparked by some vagrant association.

  “Man on it. Had a knife.”

  “Did you see it on the television?”

  He shook his head vigorously.

  “Where, then?”

  “Was a park.”

  “Merry-go-round horses?”

  “No. Big one.”

  “But there aren’t any other horses in the park, Davie.”

  “I show you.”

  He leaped off his chair and scurried into the house. Returned clutching the pad of paper and box of crayons he used to entertain himself whenever she was occupied with some household chore. The picnic forgotten, he pushed his plate aside and, face puckered in concentration, began to draw. When he was finished, he presented it to her, a childish representation of a horse, head and legs wildly disproportionate to trunk. Straddling its back was a stick-figure man grasping what appeared to be a spear. “There,” he said emphatically, as though his point had been proven. “Horse.”

  “It’s very nice,” Norma complimented him. “You’re a good drawer, Davie.”

  “Was real,” he insisted. “I saw it. By the stars.”

  “You saw the horse at night?”

  Again he tossed his head negatively. “By the stars.”

  “Stars? I don’t understand.”

  “Where the mouse is.”

  For reasons she couldn’t name, this jumble of fantastic images, lifted certainly from dreams or picture books or the television screen, vaguely disturbed her. There were other drawings, done earlier in the day, on the sheet, and so to divert his attention she chose one and with a display of motherly interest asked, “And what’s this?”

  Two figures, one tall, one short, blank circles for faces, stood next to a structure with irregular blocks of windows and rectangular door and tail of smoke rising from its roof, clearly intended as a house. The tall one held a round object easily twice the size of its head. “Sky ball,” the boy said.

  “What kind of ball?”

  “Goes up to the sky,” he explained, pointing at the one above them, pinking in the gradually falling light.