by Tom Kakonis
Maybe she was. Maybe this stilted conversation, uncharacteristically initiated and sustained by her, signaled a gradual ascent out of miseried darkness. And maybe now was the moment to disclose the next faltering—and probably final—step in his muddle of a plan (if anymore it could even be dignified as such). Had to be done sometime. Better sooner than later. “There is one thing,” he said, watching her from the corner of an eye. “Not for you to do but to, well, understand.”
“What’s that?”
“There was this security guard today. At the gate where I handed out—tried to hand out—the leaflets. He told me about some bars in the neighborhood. Where the Norse employees hang out. It was his thought I might have better luck trying there.”
“Bars?”
“Yes.”
“Workingmen’s bars?”
“A bar’s a bar,” he said with the false bravado and shaky authority of the man who seldom frequented one and who, apart from the occasional social cocktail, drank nothing at all.
“Not that kind.”
He made a slack-limbed shrug. “They’re all that’s left.”
An alarm came into her eyes, first real animation he’d seen there in a long time. “Surely you’re not thinking of going to them?”
“That’s exactly what I’m thinking,” he said, but without much enthusiasm and even less confidence.
“By yourself?”
“Who else would do it?”
“Places like that, you don’t belong in them, Marsh. You could get in terrible trouble.”
“Nevertheless, I’m going,” he said stubbornly.
“When?”
“Tomorrow night, probably.”
The animation he’d seen, or thought he’d seen, was gone suddenly from her eyes, a faraway drift in its place. Better that, he supposed, than hysteria, or more of the pleading to consult the police. He’d been mistaken to believe all those fine, brave words about eased burdens and renewed strength, but he wasn’t sorry to have his own brave declaration out in the open, said. One less conflict to deal with. Enough ahead tomorrow.
The subject evidently dismissed, another silence settled over the room. This time Marshall could think of absolutely nothing to put into it. Fortunately, he didn’t have to. After a moment of it the phone jangled, and he came up out of his chair saying, “I’ll get it,” a needless offer since she remained motionless, gazing blankly at the carpet. In the kitchen he lifted the receiver, said an interrogative “Yes?”
“Marsh? That you?”
“Yes.”
“Chip here. How you doing?”
“Okay.”
“Hardly recognized your voice. You sound kind of down.”
“I’m fine, Chip.”
“Listen, wanted to let you know I wasn’t able to get to the library today. In-laws popped in unannounced. But I haven’t forgotten it, though, that little research project we talked about the other night.”
Which was more than Marshall could say of him, his last thought of Chip Magnuson having something to do with a loose resemblance to the Norse Viking. “Doesn’t matter,” Marshall told him. “I was able to remember it after all.”
“Great!” the Chip voice came booming back at him, full of an ebullience underlined by no small relief. “How’d you manage that?”
“It’s a long story.”
“One I’d really like to hear. What do you say we sneak out for a drink?”
“Now? Tonight?”
“What better time?”
“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea, Chip.”
“Sure it is. Do you good.” Voice dipping to confidential zone, he added, “Wouldn’t do me any harm either.”
On reflection, it didn’t seem all that bad, a reasonable excuse for an escape from the constrictive gloom of this house. “Hold on a minute,” Marshall said and, covering the phone, he called into the next room, “Lori, it’s Chip Magnuson. He wants me to go out for a drink. Would you mind?”
“Rehearsal for tomorrow night?” was her reply, caustic but spiritless. “Trial run?”
Marshall sighed. “Question is, do you mind?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“I don’t mind,” she said curtly. “I’m tired anyway. Going to bed.”
To Chip, he said, “All right.”
“Sensational.”
Chip suggested a spot, Marshall agreed, they rang off. He put up the phone and went back into the living room and positioned himself behind her chair, searching for a graceful exiting line. None came to him.
Aware of his presence but addressing the floor, she said in a voice gone limp with a weak blend of exhaustion and contrition, “I’m sorry I snapped at you, Marsh.”
“You didn’t snap.”
“I don’t mean to be that way.”
“I know you don’t. You’re not.”
“Go ahead, now. I really don’t mind. Truly.”
“I won’t be long,” he said, backing toward the door. Didn’t quite make it.
“Marsh?”
“Yes.”
“Will you do something for me?”
“If I can.”
“Will you at least think about it?”
“About what?” he asked, a stalling tactic, the reference for it transparent.
“Tomorrow night. Going to those places.”
“I’ll certainly think about it,” he lied. Another of those loving lies you tell, but only half a one this time, for he knew the unpleasant, not to say dreaded, prospect of searching rude bars was not going to be far from his thoughts in the next twenty-four hours.
Ten minutes later, Marshall stood in the entrance of the agreed-upon meeting spot, glancing about with the studied nonchalance of a stranger at a party. Not that there was much of a party going on in here: handful of presentable-looking people sitting quietly at the bar, a few handsome couples in booths, soft lights, softer music. None of the rowdy, raucous commerce you’d associate with a saloon. Who said these places had to be intimidating, or hostile?
A flagging arm hailed him from a booth near the back. As Marshall approached, Chip’s fleshy Nordic face opened in a big welcoming grin. “Hey, young man, step into my office.”
Marshall slid into the opposite seat, as directed. “How’d you get here so soon?” he asked, genuinely curious, for Chip lived over on the other side of the country club, spacious new house, sprawling lot, all of it paid for, it was rumored, with his wife’s money.
“Federal Express. Guaranteed instant delivery from too much family togetherness.”
“I can appreciate that.”
“No, you can’t. You’d have to be there, hear the old boy rant and puff, do the Gee, boss, you’re great number.”
“Well, you’re out of it for a little while anyway,” Marshall said, his sympathy for these happy domestic problems wafer thin.
“For which I have you to thank. Owe you a drink. What’s your pleasure?”
“What’s that you’re having?”
“J.D., rocks.”
“Which is?”
“Jack Daniels over ice. Where you been, boy?”
“Out of touch, I’m afraid,” Marshall said ruefully.
Chip did his best impression of earnest solemnity. “Listen, I understand. All you’ve been through.” He elevated the signaling arm again, and a cocktail waitress appeared, pert young girl with a veritable cascade of blond ringlets framing a face that seemed mostly mouth, the full, moist lips painted a fire engine red. Chip’s features, pliant as Silly Putty, shifted back into easy grin. “How’s about one of these for my friend here, sweetheart? Maybe do another myself.”
“Coming right up, Chip.”
Away she sauntered.
“Former student of mine,” he offered in explanation of the familiar address.
“Another bright girl?”
“Let’s just say she had a firm grasp of the material.”
After the drinks were served and sipped, Marshall’s caut
iously, Chip set down his glass, squared his hands on the table and, assuming his empathetic therapist pose, said, “So, tell me what all you’ve been up to.”
Marshall told him, commencing with the purely accidental unraveling of the bumper sticker mystery late Friday night and concluding with the dismal results that solution had produced only a few short hours ago, reconstructing the almost surreal events and encounters and conversations of the three days between in fulsome detail, conscious of his own verbosity, the professorial taint again, but powerless to contain the bitter rush of words. Oddly, it seemed to help some, getting them said. Even to an overage satyr. Just as oddly did it occur to him he was not unhappy to be here, uncomfortable not in the least. The mellowing ambiance of a bar. Maybe tomorrow wouldn’t be so impossible after all.
“Where’d you say this factory is located?” Chip asked him.
“Cicero.”
“Hmm. Not exactly your upscale suburb.”
“So I discovered,” Marshall said and, stretching the Cicero boundaries a bit in the interest of heightened drama, he added, “We nearly got mugged there. Or worse.”
“Those less than friendly blacks yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“You were lucky.”
“I suppose so. The way I define luck anymore.”
“Taking your wife along, that was pretty risky.”
“How was I to know?” Marshall said, more defense than question. “Who ever goes to Cicero?”
“Not me, that’s for sure.”
“Well, I won’t make that mistake again.”
“You should give it some thought yourself.”
“What are you saying?”
“She may be right, you know. About those bars.”
“You’re suggesting I don’t check them out? Forget about the whole thing?”
“Not the whole thing. Just the bars part.”
“What other options do I have?”
“There’s still the factory. At least it ought to be safe in there.”
“I already told you,” Marshall said, an edge of exasperation in it, “they won’t let me in.”
Chip lifted his chin in a deliberative tilt, pinched a cleft into it. “Okay, we’re a couple of intelligent people. Let’s put our heads together, find an answer to the riddle. There’s got to be a way to get you inside this sanctum sanctorum of the aluminum industry.”
Interesting, his choice of pronouns: our heads but your person on the chopping block. Riddles are always more diverting when there’s nothing at stake, nothing to lose. “And what would that be?” Marshall asked.
“You say there’s a fence around the building?”
“Two of them. Both tall, with barbed wire at the top and guards patrolling inside. Climbing it would be out of the question, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Okay, strike that one. How about at those shift changes? Mobs of people, right?”
“There were a lot of them, yes.”
“All right. What if you were to get yourself outfitted in factory worker duds. Find some at Sears, no doubt, or a Kmart, whatever it is they wear.”
“You mean try to pass myself off as one of them? Slip in with a crowd?”
“Why not?”
“Because they go through those gates single-file. Past a security guard. Coming in, they probably have to show some kind of ID. It would never work.”
“No,” Chip reluctantly agreed, “I expect it wouldn’t.” He was silent a moment, scratching his scalp puzzledly, though with a care not to disturb its cunning camouflage of sparse hair. And then a spark came into his eyes and with a Eureka finger snap he declared, “I’ve got it!”
“So?” Marshall said, softening the skepticism as best he could. At least someone was trying to help, or giving the appearance of trying. More than could be said of anybody else.
“Here’s what we do. We tell them you’re a researcher. Doing a sociological study.”
“What sort of study could I possibly be doing at a factory?”
“Shit, I don’t know. Behavioral patterns in the work force. Aspirations and anxieties of the lumpen proletariat. We’ll think of something. Put a colon in the title and it’ll sound scholarly.”
“And who is it we—I—tell this tale of research to?”
“Executive types. It’ll wow ’em. They’re always dazzled by us scholars. Flash your Ph.D. and they’ll swoon.”
“But that’s the problem. I can’t seem to get to any of these executive types.”
“So we send ’em a letter. Put the college seal on it. Make it look official.”
“I don’t have that kind of time, Chip.”
Chip shook his head slowly. “Fall term coming up in another week or so, guess you don’t at that,” he said, voice subdued now, all the creative zeal gone out of his eyes. “You ready for that, by the way?”
“What choice is there? Bills have to be paid.”
“Leaves only those bars then, right?”
“Looking that way.”
“You don’t want to talk to the police first?”
“Police think I’m a lunatic.”
“You know, I’d offer to go with you,” Chip said weakly, eyes lowered and fixed on his glass, “if it weren’t for the in-laws and all.”
“I understand.”
“Marsh?”
“Yes.”
“Sorry I couldn’t come up with anything.”
“That’s all right. You tried. You listened.”
“I want you to know I admire your, well, courage. Everybody does. You’re a helluva lot stronger than I could ever be.”
Marshall merely looked at him, said nothing. It was one of those empty benedictions that only serve to confirm your isolation, seal your loneliness, and to which there was no adequate reply.
PART FIVE
“You’re really going?”
“Yes.”
“Even after everything you said happened yesterday?”
“Which was nothing. Nothing conclusive, anyway. That’s why I’m going.”
“Won’t you at least consider calling that sergeant…I forget his name.”
“Wilcox.”
“Sergeant Wilcox. Won’t you call him? He tried to help us.”
“Look, Lori, what you don’t seem to understand, what I can’t get through to you, is that there is no help. Anywhere. Only ourselves.”
“I wish you wouldn’t do this, Marsh.”
“Well, I’m doing it. So there’s really nothing more to talk about, is there?”
What he was in fact doing just then was standing hunched over his desk, gathering a fresh pile of leaflets, squaring them busily, meticulously, rehearsing in his head (trying to rehearse, between all these pleading sessions he’d been enduring the better part of the day) the approach he’d take, words he’d use (“I’m looking for a missing boy,” he might begin, straightforward, plain-spoken, blunt if need be), bearing he’d try to project (earnest but unflinching, unbegging). He was dressed the way he assumed you’d dress for a working man’s bar: polo shirt, faded jeans, scuffed sneakers, but his face wore the pinched expression of a man steeling himself against a most unpleasant task ahead. Or a man stalling.
“But it’s not right for you to be going to those awful places,” Lori persisted. “It’s not safe.”
“What can happen in a bar?”
“That’s just the point. You said those men ignored you yesterday. You said that. What more do you expect can happen?”
Difficult to quarrel with that logic. He hadn’t the vaguest idea what to expect. More rejection, probably, more indifference. For a moment he hesitated. Wavered. If there was a way out of this, any way at all, he’d gladly seize it. Leap at it. But try as he might, he couldn’t justify it to himself. Not till every possibility, however remote, was exhausted. “I don’t know,” he said. “Nothing, maybe.”
“Then, why are you going?”
“Because it’s for certain nothing if I don’t try. Look at the c
alendar. Summer’s almost over. Couple of weeks classes begin, I’ll have to go back to work. Time’s closing in on us, Lori. I’ve got to make something happen, and it’s got to be now. Don’t you see that?”
She nodded slowly, and in that small acquiescent motion there was a kind of china doll fragility that moved him enough to fold her in his arms, and they clung together like two frightened waifs lost in a haunted, trackless woods. The blinds at the window filtered the still harsh afternoon light, laid flat seams of it in neat geometric patterns across the carpet. Outside, clusters of birds chattered noisily in the abundant shrubbery alongside the house. “You’ll be careful?” she said.
“I’ll be careful.”
The Ogden Avenue eatery known as the Mouth Trap (which ingenious name was graphically symbolized by a sign mounted above its roof depicting a gigantic toothy cavern of a mouth, wide open, and complete with lapping pink tongue) catered to families with its reasonable prices, hearty portions, chipper waitpersons (as they chose to identify themselves: “Hi, I’m Cindy, I’ll be your waitperson tonight”), and conspicuous absence of alcoholic beverages from its menu. Buck could have used a beer right about now, but he didn’t complain, gulped iced tea instead. It wasn’t as though he was worried anymore, not exactly. Waz’s account of the talk with scumbucket yesterday made a kind of sense, most of it anyway, and he was doing his best to put the whole business out of his head. Accordingly, he’d insisted the three of them eat out tonight, partly to make up for the other night but as much to find a way into another prickly issue that had to be addressed, settled.
They occupied a booth in the back of the place, Buck on one side, Norma and the boy on the other, feasting on burger, fries, and slaw baskets. A departure from Norma’s usual wholesome balanced meals, a little treat. Buck picked at his indifferently, watched her attending to Davie’s every need, adjusting his napkin, helping him with his carton of chocolate milk and the tiny packets of ketchup. Not that this kid needed much help. Wherever he’d been before, somebody had taught him table manners, and, remembering the dull-eyed, gum-popping woman in Elgin, supposed to be his mother, Buck found himself wondering uneasily who that somebody could have been. With some effort, he pushed the discordant thought away, said, “So whaddya think, boy? Chow any good here?”