I said, “I think it’s time to make a quick trip to see a man about a bear.”
My father, Pete O’Hanlon, was third generation Irish/American. His granddad arrived at Ellis Island in the late 1800s and
settled in New York until a brother talked him into moving to Minnesota, a land ripe with opportunity for hard-working men.
The Korean Conflict was in full swing when my dad hit seventeen, and he lied about his age in order to follow his best friend into the Navy. I’d always had a sneaking suspicion that his patriotism was an attempt to avoid the rampant alcoholism passed down from generation to generation, all the way from Ireland. As it turned out, my father couldn’t run far enough or fast enough to escape his genes, and the bottle found him anyway. He was honorably discharged with a purple heart, a bum knee, and an unquenchable thirst for firewater.
Often my father didn’t appear inebriated, but it affected his memory. When I was a kid, he’d forget to pick me up from friends’ houses, or from school when I had to stay late. Once, when I was fourteen, he dropped Coop and I off at Valleyfair to ride the rollercoasters for the day and forgot to come back for us. Eddy finally showed up at ten-thirty that night, and boy was she pissed.
He missed birthdays, school activities, and sometimes entire days at a time. He was always very apologetic, and each time he promised to never let it happen again. And it didn’t, until the next time, and the time after that.
After his Navy stint, Dad worked on the Mississippi as an able-bodied seaman, a deckhand on various towboats. That was until his leg got so bad that he had trouble navigating the decks. Then he worked on loading and unloading barges at numerous shipping terminals up and down the Twin Cities corridor.
When he finally quit all together, he bought the Leprechaun, a run-down bar in Northeast Minneapolis. He was in devil’s heaven, his beloved booze surrounding him all day, every day.
My dad worked hard to turn a profit, and he really tried to curb his alcohol consumption … until That Night—as I’d come to think of the horrific evening that ended mom’s and Eddy’s sons’ lives and nearly did me in. I still find it hard to look at the jagged scar that starts near my navel and ends just above my right hip bone. If Eddy hadn’t literally held me together as we waited for help, three people would have died that night. Eddy had been my lifesaver in so many ways.
Dad struggled mightily for a long time after that, juggling single-handedly raising an in turns rambunctious then withdrawn then out-of-control kid while running the Leprechaun. He turned to Eddy, my mother’s closest friend, for help with me and then focused his attention on the bar and the emotional relief he found in Stoli, Jack Daniels, and Brennan’s Irish.
Dad and I have a love/hate relationship. I love him, and he loves me. I hate what alcohol does to him, and he hates the fact that I’m an unrepentant lesbian. We try not to talk about either of those issues; when we do, one of us usually storms off in a week-long huff.
This was one visit where my problems had nothing to do with either touchy topic, and I knew he’d jump at the chance to talk about his days on the water.
Coop and I lowered Dawg to the garage floor near midnight, and we all piled into the pickup once again, Dawg tucked between us.
I pulled up to the curb half a block from the bar and cracked a window for Dawg, who, after a halfhearted whine of protest at being left behind, flopped across the bench seat. We strolled to the front door of the Lep and stepped back into another era.
My father decorated the walls of his bar with items he’d collected from a lifetime on the water, including old buoys, cracked oars, and faded pictures going all the way back to his own father’s logging days. Dark, exposed beams ran the length of the low ceiling, and a hand-carved wooden bar stood along one side. Lights mounted at intervals on the walls gave the interior a comfortable but not quite cozy feel. Tables were scattered throughout, and three booths at the rear were empty. Cigarette smoke and beer had long ago mixed together to form the familiar aroma bars achieve after years of use and abuse. For the most part, the clientele were blue collar, hard-drinking, hard-working, honest men and women.
I’d spent many hours here as a kid and tended bar as an adult, and I was well-known to most of the regulars. As soon as the door shut behind us, one of the men at the bar, a Paul Bunyan with a beard gone wild yelled, “If it ain’t Little O’Hanlon!” He hiked himself off his stool, and squashed me in a bear hug. “How ya doin’?” He ruffled my hair, and in a blink I was twelve again.
“Fred,” I gasped as I pounded him on the back both in greeting and in an attempt to make him put me down. “I’m good. How’s Viva?” His wife was recently diagnosed with breast cancer.
I was deposited on my feet. He said, “Mama’s holding her own. The chemo’s done and now the docs are doing radiation. They say things are looking pretty good. She’s a little lopsided, but she’s alive. That’s all that matters to me.”
“You tell her to hang in there. Dad here?”
Another swat of his big paw slammed my shoulder like a sledgehammer. “He’s in back, I think.”
I excused myself and dragged Coop along the length of the bar, past four other customers I didn’t recognize. Johnny, the bartender, was caught up in conversation with two patrons. I led Coop through a swinging door at the end of the bar that opened into a bright kitchen. Seeing no one, I went to another door that led into the main liquor storeroom. A set of narrow, steep stairs descended into a cellar used to store wine and excess booze. I hollered down the stairs, “Dad!”
My father’s voice echoed. “Shay? Be up in a minute, honey.” In less than that, he limped up the worn wooden steps with a case of alcohol on his shoulder. At sixty-five, my father was still a handsome man, and again I wondered why he hadn’t remarried after my mother’s death. But deep down I knew his love for her and his pain over her death held him at arm’s length from any woman who entertained thoughts of ending his bachelorhood.
With a heave my dad swung the case of bottles off his shoulder onto a stainless-steel counter. He hugged me, dwarfing me with his burly body and squeezing me with arms that were still rock-hard. He pulled back and stared at me with wide-set green eyes, mirrors of my own. “What are you doing here at this time of night?”
Before I had a chance to answer, Dad released me and caught a glimpse of Coop standing in the doorway behind me. “Nick Cooper, long time no see. You still a vegetable muncher?”
Coop laughed. He’d always gotten along with my dad, especially in the smoking department. That was his saving grace, because my father usually didn’t have time for what he termed pansy-assed vegetarians, who, in his book, were barely a step above flaming fags, as he liked to call all homosexuals, occasionally including his own daughter.
“Yeah,” Coop said, and gave my father his lopsided grin.
My father’s thick, red-fading-to-white hair was freshly shorn, and I was happy to see he was taking care of himself. “What brings you to my neck of the woods?”
“We were wondering if we could hit you up with some questions about shipping on the Mississippi.”
Hoisting the box of booze back to his shoulder, he said, “Sure. Give me a minute to put this away, and I’ll meet you in a booth in back.”
Coop and I settled ourselves in one of the empty booths. Coop lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. A state-wide smoking ban had gone into effect, but my father couldn’t be bothered with something as trivial as forcing his patrons to smoke outside. I was waiting for the cops to slap a fine on him, and then I’d sit back and watch the fireworks from a safe distance. The old man was hard-headed as hell. Some claimed his kid was the same way, but I was too stubborn to agree.
The low tones of an old sixties classic trickled through the speakers dangling from the ceiling and mixed with the quiet drone of conversation.
Dad spoke with Johnny for a minute, and then my father proceeded to restock the storage area under the bar. Johnny mixed up a Fuzzy Navel I knew was meant for me and popped th
e top off a Bud earmarked for Coop.
He meandered to the booth with drinks in hand. “Where you been lately, Little O?” Johnny always made me smile. He’d started working for my father before he’d been legal to drink and kept the job as he made his way through college. I told him, “Been busy, you know how people want their caffeine fix. How’s school?”
His brown eyes gleamed at me. “Same old, ya know? Another year and a half.”
I nodded. Johnny was a hard worker and more dependable than most. My dad appeared and slid into the seat beside me with a tumbler of clear liquid I knew was vodka, his late-night drink of choice.
Johnny wandered back to his realm behind the bar. My father lit an unfiltered Camel and exhaled a blue-tinged cloud of smoke. “What do you want to know about the river?”
I cleared my throat, and the end of Coop’s cigarette glowed bright as he took another deep hit. Some help he was. I said, “We’re trying to track down a shipment that’s supposed to be going out tomorrow night. We’re hoping you’d have some insight as to which company would most likely store the goods we’re looking for.”
My father’s bushy eyebrows met in a confused frown as the Camel came to his lips again. He rubbed his other hand on top of his bristly head, and I could hear the faint brush of hair against the palm of his hand. “What kind of stuff’s headed down the river? That’d be the logical place to start.”
“Nuts,” I told him. “Almonds.” I sipped at my drink. It was strong, and it was good.
“What are nuts doing around here? That’s usually a coastal thing. West Coast, I think.”
“We’re not quite sure,” Coop said in a cloud of smoke. Ugh, I was stuck in a pollution sandwich. “We think we have it narrowed down to Ribau Containers, Packer Industries, and the Grizzly Terminal & Dock. At least those are the shipping terminals we could find on the Web that deal with dry goods.”
My dad nodded. “Nice job. Ribau? Probably not. They mostly specialize in grains.” He flicked cigarette ash in the ashtray, picked up the tumbler, and took a swallow. “Packer won’t handle food anymore, only dry stuff like rocks and sand. That leaves Grizzly. They’ve always been a bit shady, and I’m guessing these nuts of yours aren’t exactly a regular shipment, so to speak. Nuts.” He shook his head. “What’s your interest in this?”
Coop and I shot a look at each other. If my father knew what had happened to Eddy, he’d go ballistic. I never knew if it was honest emotion or macho posturing, but if anyone hurt someone close to my dad, he stormed off to confront the source, and sometimes it ended up uglier than it had started. Now that I thought about that, it sounded kind of familiar.
Making things up on the fly was becoming my strong suit. “Coop thinks one of his friends is involved with this nut shipment. The guy disappeared two days ago and no one’s seen him. We’re trying to retrace his steps—before the nuts ship. He told Coop he thought the nuts are being trucked here and then sent off down the Mississippi for resale somewhere else on the black market.”
“Isn’t that a police issue?” my dad asked, stubbing out his smoke.
Tilting an almost empty bottle at my father, Coop said, “Yeah, but my friend ran into some trouble through the Green Beans. He’s on probation. If he’s not mixed up in this, and he’s on a long bender somewhere, great, his probation officer doesn’t need to know about it. If he’s really in trouble, well, I doubt that would go over very well with his PO either. The thing is, he’s really a great guy, big heart, but he’s fallen into some really rough times lately.”
Nice job, Mr. Cooper. My dad could certainly relate to self-
inflicted bad luck.
“Do you know anyone who works for Grizzly anymore?” I asked and held my breath.
The near-empty glass of Stoli rolled slowly back and forth between my father’s palms as he thought about it. “George Unger. He’s in charge of keeping the books now that he’s off the water. I’m sure he’d be able to look up outgoing shipments.”
“Do you think he’d talk to us? Tonight?” I said.
“Tonight?” My father frowned. “It’s almost twelve-thirty.”
Coop said, “Yeah. The sooner we can figure this out for my friend, the better.”
I prayed my father would acquiesce. He stroked his chin, fingertips scraping salt-and-pepper whiskers. “He does owe me from last night’s poker fiasco. Bastard screwed me out of a hundred bucks. It’d serve him right to roust him away from his online poker game. Hell, he’s a night owl.” He stared first at me, and then at Coop. “You sure you can’t wait till morning?”
I said the one thing guaranteed to remove any resistance from my father. “Please, Pops?”
Hi eyes narrowed on me. “Christ. Pull that ‘Pop’ stuff on me and you know I can’t say no. I suppose I can call the marker in.”
_____
The starlit darkness of the night pressed in against the windows of the pickup as we waited in the parking lot of Grizzly Terminal & Dock Company. Out of our sight, the Mississippi silently flowed behind a sprawling, half-moon shaped, corrugated-metal Quonset hut. It reminded me of a gigantic, old-fashioned aircraft hangar. Almost as long as a city block, the building had two big rolling doors that faced us with another door on the far left. We couldn’t see the side of the building that faced the water, but I imagined there’d be docks and more big doors, and various pieces of equipment that would be used for loading heavy objects.
My father had gotten a hold of George Unger and successfully conned him into meeting us at the terminal on the southwest edge of the Twin Cities metro area. I had seen George a few times at the Leprechaun when he was playing poker in the back with my father and the other river rats, but that had been years ago, when I was a kid. I vaguely remembered him as a boisterous, friendly man, his face carved with lines from the sun and wind.
He’d instructed my dad to tell us to wait for him in the parking lot, and he’d be on his way after he was finished playing what Dad called another losing hand of five-card stud. George wasn’t known for his luck at much of anything.
The engine ticked as it cooled. Dawg was sandwiched happily between me and Coop, his tummy full of two gas station sausage and pepperoni pizza slices. I absently stroked his floppy ear, and he heaved great sighs every couple of minutes. I was sitting next to a stolen dog and a law-dodger, waiting to talk to the numbers man of a shipping outfit that was known more for what it shouldn’t involve itself in than for what it had. The worst part was the knowledge that the seconds continued their relentless countdown for Eddy’s health and well-being. I hoped, in less than twelve hours, this entire ordeal would be a nightmare ripe for forgetting.
“I need a smoke,” Coop said.
“Outside. You just sucked up at the bar. You have issues, dude.”
Coop flashed his teeth at me and then groaned as headlights shone in the rear-view mirror. “So much for that idea,” he grumbled.
The headlights swept the gravel parking lot as a big, early-nineties Caddy swung around and parked next to us. The lights went out, and we all scrambled from our respective vehicles, except for one suddenly unhappy canine who was getting tired of being left behind.
George looked as I remembered him, with a few years added to a muscular body that was starting to soften around the edges. A comb-over that had seen better days sparsely covered the bald spot on top of his head.
“Little O, been a long time since I laid eyes on you,” George said. “You look good, from what I can see in the dark.”
“Thanks for coming this late, and on such short notice, George,” I said. “This is my friend Nick Cooper.”
The two men shook hands, and George led us toward the front door. Over his shoulder he said, “I was up anyway. And make sure you keep this under your hat. My boss wouldn’t be too happy to hear I was opening up in the middle of the night to pay back a gambling debt. On top of it, there’s been some battles between the terminals around here with one trying to outbid another for shipping jobs, and it’s gott
en a might dirty.” What he left unsaid was that Grizzly was probably the dirty-deal maker.
George unlocked the door and flipped a light switch, illuminating a lobby that had seen better days. Three chairs sported torn brown Naugahyde, and the tan linoleum on the floor was dark with ground-in dirt. The air smelled of diesel, grease, stale cigarette smoke, and something unpleasant that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. We followed George down a narrow hall into a postage-stamp-sized office.
The only chair in the room was behind a desk that overflowed with accounting books and various invoices. A bookshelf across from the desk was so loaded with ledgers and three-ring binders that the shelves were permanently bowed.
George settled himself in the chair and we explained what we were hunting for, along with the story of our hard-luck friend. He plucked an olive-colored register from beneath a stack of papers, tugged a pair of reading glasses from a shirt pocket, and perched them on his nose. It always amazed me how unorganized people had a way of knowing exactly where things are in their piles of chaos.
“One day I’ll get me a secretary,” George muttered as he flipped to the page he wanted. He ran a thick finger down hastily scrawled entries, mumbling to himself. “Ah. Here’s a load of perishables that came in yesterday. Almonds,” he read.
Be still my beating heart.
“Who’s shipping them?” Coop asked.
“Says here Riley Derby Inc. out of Brooklyn Park.” George squinted up over his glasses at us. “Is that what you want to know?”
“Yeah.” I said, nodding, as I tried to repress an ecstatic shout. After all the crap we’d been through, we actually managed to hit some real pay dirt. “When are they supposed to ship?”
George peered through his lenses at the page. “Saturday—tomorrow, or actually I guess that would be today.” He paused to frown down at what was most likely a fake Rolex strapped to his wrist. A real one would have been fenced long ago to support his poker-playing lifestyle. “At 8:45 pm.”
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