Saving Marty

by Paul Griffin

  “I understand, Mom, no problem.”

  “I’d be there if I could.”

  “Did Dad ever play live radio?” I said.

  “What?” she said. “Why?”

  “Because if he did, his guitar already got through it once. A broadcast, I mean, tens of thousands of people listening. I’m scared, Ma. Pal and I have this chance to do something. Something real, you know? What if I mess it up for her?”

  “You’ll be just fine. You’ll be great.”

  “Sure. Thanks.” I started out.

  “He played live on the university station,” she said.

  That stopped me. The university station covered a huge area, into Ohio and West Virginia. Big stars dropped by there all the time.

  “He was making a name for himself, not even trying to. That’s why he was so easy to watch up there. You could tell he was playing for fun. Folks were starting to pack the bars to see him—college kids mostly. He wasn’t much older than they were, but he was older, you know? He had gravity. The kids put him on the radio for a whole hour, primetime. Just him and his guitar. He was . . .”

  “Just plain true?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Somebody in Detroit got wind of him—a record producer. Marty was supposed to go up there, but then things turned worse with the war, and he felt he had to, you know, go over there instead.” Her voice had become so soft, I almost couldn’t hear her. “That man,” she said. “That man.” She snapped to. “All right, that’s enough now. Go help Double before he breaks his other knee out there in the dark.”

  “Mom?”

  “For heaven’s sake, Lorenzo, what?”

  “Thanks. For letting Marty stay, I mean.”

  “Go on now,” she said.

  Outside, the stars were sharp and winking, and it felt like a good night for prayers. I put one up there for Loretta Frietas, that she’d make the volleyball team someday.

  20. STRAWBERRIES, NUTS, STRAWBERRIES

  We had four weeks until the Pittsburgh Jamboree. We spent three going through Pal’s notebooks. She’d filled a dozen with her songs over the years, but none felt right to her. “I’d lose my mind if I could find it,” she said. “I need Fro-futti.”

  We hiked downtown to Carmela’s Confections. Pal slumped onto the bench out front with Bella while Marty tried to follow me inside. “Nuh-uh,” I said.

  “Oh, let him in a minute for the air-conditioning,” Mrs. Carmela said.

  “Thanks, Mrs. C.” I got Pal her parfait and s’more swirls for me. Mrs. C gave me a bowl of vanilla too, for Marty and Bella.

  They cleaned that up quick.

  Pal was less happy with hers. “I wanted strawberries-nuts-strawberries,” she said with her mouth full. “This is nuts-strawberries-nuts. You get it wrong every time.”

  “I’ll bring it back,” I said.

  “I’m practically done with it by now anyway.”

  “Exactly.”

  “When we get rich I’m gonna have an ice cream parlor in my house,” Pal said. “You?”

  “Cherry-red surfboard.”

  Mrs. Branchinelli called to us from across the street, “Renzo, help me here a minute?” She struggled to manage her walker and a plastic shopping bag heavy with a frozen turkey—so I thought.

  “Where you headed, Mrs. B?” Pal said.

  “John Mason’s office. Hello Bella. Marty, you’re getting big.”

  “Why do you want to go to Mason’s?” I said.

  “Don’t make me talk about it,” she said, a mess of tears. “Whatever you do, don’t look in that bag.”

  Her tabby cat was in there, dead.

  “Whoa,” I said.

  “It was Keeth. Mrs. P’s and Q’s was sunning herself on the porch when that half a wolf charged from the woods. He plucked her from the stoop and shook her to bits.”

  “Ma’am,” Pal said, “let’s call my dad, and he can talk to Mason.”

  “I’m going whether you all come with me or not.” She rushed her walker to the showroom window of John Mason’s real estate office. I peeked between the SUPPORT OUR TROOPS and PROUD TO HIRE VETERANS stickers on the glass, and there he was, phone in one hand, cigarette in the other, pacing. The man was a reminder to stand up straight. Cigarette fumes rose off him like the devil’s mist.

  Mrs. B rapped on the window.

  Keeth materialized from the dimness and lunged at us. I forgot the glass was there to protect us, and I might have screamed louder than Mrs. B.

  “Gah!” Pal said.

  “John Mason, come out here, you horrible man!” Mrs. B said. “And you keep that Keeth inside!”

  “That’s not Keeth,” he yelled through the glass. “That’s Katrina!”

  “Keep her inside too then!”

  The dog snuck out with him of course. We hid behind a giant plant pot full of weeds and cigarette stubs—and no plants. Bella hid with us, but Marty wanted to play with Katrina. I latched on to his collar, and he dragged me toward the dog.

  Katrina dragged Mason toward Marty. The dog snarled and gnashed.

  Marty went to his belly and peed on Mason’s porch.

  Mason pulled a half-eaten candy bar from his pocket and threw it into his office. Katrina went after it, and Mason shut the door. He eyed Marty. “Why are you walking around with a leashed pig?” he said.

  “Never mind that,” Mrs. B said. “Show him, Renzo.”

  I opened the shopping bag.

  The old buzzard peered in. He frisked his dirty jean jacket for his glasses. He looked less like an evil land baron and more like a construction worker who should have retired twenty years ago. His pants were patched at the knees.

  “Why do you have a dead cat in an Applebee’s bag?” he said.

  Mrs. B described Keeth’s treachery, the slinking and pouncing, the flying fur and blood, blood, blood. Meanwhile Mason hosed Marty’s pee off the porch. Marty tried to slurp from the water jet until Mason squirted him in the eyes. “I’ll give you three hundred dollars to walk him to the butcher for me,” Mason said.

  Mrs. B finished up her sermon with, “So if you can’t train that Keeth to stay the hay off people’s property, he’ll meet my shotgun next time.”

  “Did the dog have a gold stripe between its eyes?” Mason said.

  “How should I know?” Mrs. B said. “It all happened so fast—”

  “And it wasn’t at least twice the size of Katrina in there, was it?”

  “Just about her size, I should think.”

  “Then it wasn’t Keeth,” Mason said.

  “Well, it was one of your dozen wretched dogs,” Mrs. B said.

  “Didn’t say it wasn’t. What do you expect anyway? They’re dogs. They roam.” He nodded at Mrs. P’s and Q’s, what was left of her. “That’s your housecat, you say?”

  “Was,” Mrs. B said.

  “Then you ought to have kept it in the house. Tell you what, people like you tick me right off. Here I am bringing in construction jobs, keeping this place from turning into a ghost town, just barely, and you all come to nag me about a cat? And you,” he said to me. “Keep selling grainy fruit the way you all been doing the past few years, and your mom will be begging me to buy her out. Tell her she should come to me now, while I’m still inclined to make her a generous offer.”

  “We’d rather starve than sell to you,” I said.

  “Then starve,” he said.

  His driver pulled up in a monster truck. Mason brushed past me, talking over his shoulder as he went. “You got a mouth on you, boy. I ought to call your daddy and—” He stopped himself. He must have remembered my father was dead and a war hero on top of that. He turned around and looked like he was about to say sorry. He didn’t, but he was. I saw it in his eyes, that same squinty look Double got when he talked about my dad. “I knew him, your pop,” he said, his
voice quiet.

  I was too stunned by his change of heart to ask him, how?

  How did you know my dad?

  Tell me something I don’t know about him.

  Tell me why my mom grits her teeth every time I bring him up.

  Mason caught himself being soft. He scowled and climbed into his truck. It shot blue fumes at us as it vroomed away.

  Mrs. B dabbed her eyes with an Applebee’s napkin. “I’ll need help burying Mrs. P’s and Q’s.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. I tucked the bag under my arm.

  “Don’t squoosh her, now,” she said.

  I whistled for Bella, and she came running. “Where’s Marty?” I said.

  Pal pointed him out at the trash can. He was offering his hoof to a pigeon for a shake.

  “That dog makes friends wherever he goes,” Mrs. B said. “I wish I could be like that. That pig, I mean. That pig.”

  Behind Marty was the Army recruiting office. A sign hung in the window.

  THERE’S STRONG . . .

  AND THEN THERE’S ARMY STRONG.

  21. BAD FRUIT

  Sunday morning while Mom was off at church and Double was at the hospice playing cards with his war buddy, I was in the orchard with lots of fruit to pick before Pal came over for rehearsal. We still hadn’t settled on a song, and the Jamboree was six days away.

  Mason was right about the fruit. Put a slice on your tongue and it was closer to sandpaper than silk. Marty didn’t mind. He gobbled every last peach I tossed him when he wasn’t pestering me to throw his slimy ball. Finally he conked out next to Bella in the grass. He was four times her size now. I didn’t let him sleep long in that June sun. His fur thinned on his snout, and he burned easy. I took him inside and slicked him with aloe. He kept trying to lick it off my fingers.

  My hands were greasy, my arms scratched from picking. I filled the sink and cleaned up. I couldn’t stop thinking about the other thing Mason said, that he knew my dad. And the way he said it. He was sad and something else. Disappointed?

  My eyes went to the angel statue Mom kept in the windowsill.

  I’d seen it a thousand times, but now it looked different. She seemed to be watching me.

  I picked up the statue for a closer look. It was cheap plastic. The angel’s smile was painted on crooked and a little too red.

  I had a hunch now, why Mom felt so betrayed.

  22. THE ANGEL

  Dear Lorenzo,

  Your mom will keep these letters safe for us, and when you’re older, say ten years from now, we can read them together. Then you’ll see the things I’m seeing over here in a world so distant from Maple Clutch, so different, so much the same. And I’ll better remember this place and how it’s changing me.

  That’s important, the remembering. It’s what we build upon as we try to become who we’re meant to be.

  Everything I see here amazes me, and, yes, some of it scares me. The things people do to each other. The things I’ve done.

  Better I tell you about the good. I’m still not sure I believe in the heavenly choir, but I do know an angel on earth. Her name is Hana.

  She lost everything in the war. Her home, her husband, her children. She comes to the clinic to donate blood. She travels at great risk with all the fighting going on over here. She knows we can never have enough blood on hand.

  Her blood. It’s all she has left, and she gives it away.

  Lorenzo? Hana makes me want to believe in miracles.

  23. THE SMOKESCREEN

  ...believe in miracles.’”

  I’d read that letter dozens of times since Mom gave it to me a couple of years earlier, when I turned ten.

  When Dad wrote, “The things I’ve done,” I always thought that meant he’d killed someone. Army medics carry guns to defend themselves. But maybe he was talking about Hana, the angel who made him want to believe in miracles.

  Marty watched me. He rested his head in my lap and trembled, reading my fear.

  Did my father fall in love with Hana?

  My bicycle was found parts and screeched on the uphills. So did I. I was wheezing when I got to Mason’s. He was known to work seven days a week.

  He was there all right, on the phone, worn-out boots on his desk. I knocked on the glass. He coughed smoke when he saw me. He came to the door but didn’t open it. “What now?” he said.

  “It’s about my dad.”

  He sucked his cigarette like it was a milkshake straw and breathed smoke out his nose. He opened the door and held it for me. “You comin’ in or not?”

  “Is the dog here?” I said.

  “Which dog?”

  “The one who wanted to eat my pig.”

  He looked around the office. “I guess not. I never know what they’re up to. They’re dogs.”

  “Born to roam,” I said.

  “Hey, that’s right. Sit. You smoke?”

  “I’m twelve.”

  “Oh. I thought you were fourteen.” He took back his cigarette box. “So?”

  “How’d you know him, my father?”

  “He worked for me from time to time, painting apartments and such.”

  The cigarette fumes in there made me want to hurl. “Was he the type to be unfaithful to his wife?”

  “What the hay are you talking about?” Mason said.

  I showed him the letter.

  He read it. “This doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Then who is she, this Hana lady?”

  “A blood donor, like it says there. How am I supposed to know?”

  “You could find out,” I said. “You know people.”

  “What people?” Mason said.

  “Army people, the veterans you hire.”

  Mason frowned. “You about to cry?”

  “No.”

  “Ah sheesh,” Mason said. He pushed me a tissue box and lit another cigarette, and now he had two going. He tap-tap-tapped his phone screen. “I’m sure my buddy over there at the VA jobs program has nothing better to do on a gorgeous Sunday morning than dig up your dad’s file and try to connect him to somebody named Hana from twelve years ago.” He nodded to a model of a condominium complex spread over a table by the window. “Go look how nice all those brand-new condos are gonna be on that perfectly fine land you people are wasting on peaches, for goodness’ sake. Go, and let me look into this.”

  The model was detailed, right down to the tiny plastic people frozen midstride in the streets. He wanted to dam the river and build a mall where it ran now. Even the hills were gone, everything just flat.

  I sat back in a chair. As bad as the smoke was, the air-conditioning was nice. I hadn’t slept much the past few nights or months really, and I conked out. I was too tired to dream. When I woke, the clock was forty-five minutes ahead.

  “Uh-huh,” Mason said into the phone. “Wait, say that again. . . . Uh-huh, that’s what I thought you said. . . . Uh-huh, yup, uh-huh.” He tossed the phone onto his desk.

  “You find her?” I said.

  “Uh-uh.”

  “What was all that about then? ‘Say that again,’ and all that?”

  “Small talk.” He lit a cigar now.

  “Mr. Mason, you’re a bad liar.”

  “How dare you?” he said. “Folks say I’m a good liar. Look, all I learned was what we already knew: Your daddy was a hero.”

  “Then why’d you seem disappointed in him yesterday, right before you got into your truck?”

  “I’m disappointed he’s not still here.” He puffed so much smoke, I could barely see him. “Marty Ventura worked hard, no goofing off, had a nice smile too. Genuine, know what I mean? He was honorable. Forget about this Hana idea.” Mason slapped his desktop. “You don’t need to be fooling around with this stuff. It’s in the past, see? Be in the now, or however those fruitcake hipsters
say it. Be a man. When I was your age I didn’t have any daddy around either, and look how I turned out. And I certainly wasn’t lollygagging on a Sunday. Get a move on and go find yourself some work. Wasting half my day on a loafer. And you’re welcome.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Close the door behind you before you let the dog out,” he said. “I’m just kiddin’, but I like the way you jumped there.”

  I walked my bike down the porch steps. Maybe there was no cheater’s tarnish on my dad’s Bronze Star, but I wasn’t any closer to uncovering the secret that fed Mom’s anger all these years. Mason was right, though. Did I really want to find out my dad wasn’t a hero after all? It was best to let it all lie.

  I looked back over my shoulder as I rode off. The Army recruiter was peeking through the window. He nodded hi to me, and I pedaled away fast.

  24. FINDERS KEEPERS

  I skidded into the barn in time to meet Pal for rehearsal, except she wasn’t there.

  I headed for the house.

  Bella was out on the porch.

  The side door was open, the inside knob mangled with tooth marks.

  “Marty?” I called out back. “Marty!”

  Ninety degrees that day, and I was cold all over.

  I rode downhill so fast, my feet came off the pedals. Pal was running up the driveway. “I was coming round the bend,” she said, short of breath. “He was down the road, heading for school. I’m calling to him, chasing, he breaks into a run. This pickup U-turns, cuts him off, he cowers. Three boys jump out, haul him into the truck bed.”

  “Taylors?” I said.

  “Plus the one with cut-off sleeves.”

  The Taylors’ was ten minutes by bike if I didn’t crash.

  “Renz, wait, you can’t go up there by yourself!”

  The Taylors lived by the incineration plant. The air smelled like meat forgotten on the grill. Weed trees overgrew the long switchback driveway, all uphill. I’d have thrown up if my stomach wasn’t empty. I followed where trucks had worn dirt stripes through the cheatgrass.