At End of Day

by George V. Higgins

  “Didn’t occur to me, I might wanna be a cop. Until one night last November, I don’t know why, everything just got to me. I’m still in college, second year at U Mass Boston, transferred over my Northeastern credits, year before. Not that there were that many—if I hadn’t dropped out, I would’ve flunked out.”

  He creased his forehead. “That night it just dawns on me. I know exactly what I’m doin’. Hadda face it—just spinnin’ my wheels. Either I just wasn’t cut out for college or I wasn’t ready for it. Either way, didn’t matter. I was doin’ a shitty job of it.

  “So I figured if I told him that, then for sure he’d go along with what I was gonna tell him I therefore hadda do next—stop doing it. Because that was one thing that he’d always harped on to us—‘if you’re gonna do a thing—I don’t care what the hell it is, mow a lawn or build a bridge—do the damned thing right. Never do a thing so that later when you look at it, you can’t be proud of it.’

  “Wasn’t tellin’ him I’m stupid. We both knew I wasn’t—I just hated school, is all. There I am, I’m twenny-one, already two years behind when I should be graduatin’. Still livin’ at home, pickin’ up a few bucks fixin’ cars at Hagan’s Getty, workin’ three nights a week over Watchguard Security—Peter put me onna switchboard, dog-watch weekend relief, and usually I get a couple more nights, sometimes more, doin’ the patrol rounds for some regular, called sick or something. Plus what I get for fillin’ in here, takin’ deliveries ’round inna truck, old people and shut-ins, Sweeney’s too cheap to hire full-time help. Like I do everywhere I work, generally makin’ myself useful doin’ things for people, need someone to help out.

  “So, I’m makin’ a few bucks here and there, you know? Nothin’ steady—which I could have if I wanted, all I hafta do is ask; Peter’d hire me in a minute, told me he would, many times, this’s ’thout me askin’ him, go on permanent at Watchguard. But you know, I don’t say this, but what I think when he says it? ‘Right. Who the fuck wants that? Drivin’ around all night inna snow and rain, gettin’ outta the car and shakin’ doors at factories, shinin’ flashlights inna windows, spendin’ my life doin’ that? Ahhh, I do not fuckin’ think so.’ Although that is how Peter started out, I mean; his first job with them was checkin’ doors, seein’ if they’re locked secure, all that kind of boring shit, and I do hafta say that it’s done all right by him. But still, I mean, that was also okay for him then—it isn’t okay for me. Now. I got better things to do. This I know.

  “The trouble is,” Naughton said, “or at least the trouble was, then, it was that it was beginnin’ to look to me as though I didn’t know—I couldn’t tell you exactly what they were, you know? Those better things I had to do. Looked to me as though I was mostly goin’ nowhere, fast. Gettin’ older, gettin’ heavy—which I was then, back last fall, packin’ weight on like a bastard; beer’d started gettin’ to me; hadn’t started workin’ out—and still I got no more idea what the hell I’m doin’ ’n I did when I was twelve.”

  He shook his head and smiled ruefully. “Wasn’t all that easy,” he said, “admittin’ that stuff to myself. I always been the type of kid when I was growin’ up, if I tried ah play some sport and found out I was no good? An’ no matter what I did, how long I played or practiced I was never gonna be? Like hockey—found out I was a shit hockey player and stopped playin’ it. And now this particular light last November, I finally see it—this college thing of mine’s beginning to look like the first thing in my life I ever did where I been at it long enough to see that not only am I no good at it, can’t play this game at all—I don’t really want to. I just don’t give a shit.

  Rascob pursed his lips and frowned. He shook his head. “Not really, no, I don’t,” he said. “I don’t follow you at all.”

  “Oh,” Naughton said. He looked worried. “Aw right then, maybe this’s what I’m sayin’—this college thing of mine was beginning to look like the first thing in my life that I ever did where I’d been at it long enough to see not only am I no good at this, can’t even play the game—I don’t really want to, I don’t give a shit.

  “This’s all new to me. It was like it was a game I was in, all right? But I’m playin’ by myself. Maybe playin’ with myself.” He laughed. “But that night I could see, which I could not see before, that if I lost it, as I knew I was going to, it was gonna finish me.

  “I am serious about this. If what I decided to do that night last November was try to tough it out as usual, keep on going just the same, until the fuckin’ game was over, sooner or later, maybe when I’m thirty, I would get a fuckin’ piece of paper—and what would that paper say? To me it would say that I’m some kind of Energizer fuckin’ Bunny, lots more like me inna store; I kept on going ’til I got it. And why did I do that? Because that’s what I fuckin’ do—I keep on fuckin’ going. Even though there’s no point in it; got no idea of where I’m goin’, anything at all, except that when I get there I know very fuckin’ well ain’t gonna mean one fuckin’ thing.

  “In other words,” Naughton said, “for the rest of my life I am gonna be an asshole. With a college degree.” He rearranged his features, scowling again, and reflected on what he’d said. He inhaled deeply and exhaled. “Well, I didn’t wanna be that,” he said. He nodded, and snuffled. “Yeah,” he said, with satisfaction, “I think that covers it. I think that’s what I mean.”

  Rascob nodded, pursing his lips. “Well, okay,” he said. “So now if I follow you, that’s the night that you decided to become a cop.”

  “Well, yeah,” Naughton said. “I mean—kind of. I didn’t have that exactly in mind. I didn’t have anything exactly in mind. All I knew was that I hadda stop goin’ to college, pretendin’ I’m doin’ something meant something. And that I hadda have something I could actually do, and want to do, you know? Not something where I’m gonna get up every mornin’ the rest of my fuckin’ life, sayin’ ‘What am I gonna do today? Oh yeah, I forgot. The same thing I did yesterday. I really do wish I was dead.’

  “So,” he said, “I tell this to my father, right? I go downstairs and there he is, it’s Sunday night; he’s got the night off, and he’s watchin’ football. Last game of the day, West Coast. Cowboys at Chargers, I think—I’m not really sure. He’s really into it. ‘Football’s what I do now’—he will tell you that—‘now I’ve gotten older.’ Meaning all he does is sit on his ass and watch young guys play ball—which he does not want you to mention.

  “He used to play a lot of golf, a fair amount at least. I wouldn’t say he was a fanatic, exactly—he didn’t have those orange balls so he could play on snow when it got good and crusted over. But as soon as the ground thawed, and the wind dried out the turf in March, the early part of April, so you could hit an iron shot ’thout tearing up a foot of sod and they’d then let you on the course, he wasn’t going to sit around and wait for them to get the cups and flags put in; he’d be out there. His hours were so crazy he had trouble finding partners who weren’t on the force, and for some reason the guys on it he liked well enough to play with always seemed to be on different shifts. At least that was what he said—myself, I think from other things he said it was more he didn’t want to get too close to guys either under him then or might be over him someday. ‘Do not want to hafta miss an easy putt, or ruin my career.’

  “So he played in pickup foursomes but for his regular competition he more or less relied on us. I don’t mean Mom—Mom does not like golf, and Lady Caroline is not the kind of woman who’s been known to change her mind about things. So it was us. Ed played a lot with him before he went off to Notre Dame, and even Eileen now and then, too, although she gave the game up early—she said she wasn’t good enough to make it worthwhile staying with it. Same thing as me and hockey. Dad said it meant she didn’t like it well enough to concentrate, and learn to play.

  “But me, I used to play with him a lot. When I was in high school, summer vacation, I’d go a round with him two-three times a week. We both got to be pretty good, real competit
ion for each other—which’s how you get good. I had distance on him—I was young, and playin’ sports—flexible, you know? But the short irons and the greens—he had the finesse. It got to be a ho-hum thing when we broke a hundred; at least one of us’d do it once or twice a week.

  “My junior and senior years we had this sort of a campaign we were on; how many different public courses we could play. In addition to George Wright and Franklin Field, and Putterham Meadows. Wollaston and Ponkapoag, Sandy Burr and South Shore, D.W. Field in Brockton; I think we only got to about six or eight, mainly because there were a couple of them we liked so much we kept going back to them. Ponkapoag, they got two there; number one course was our favorite. Very pretty set of links. But crowded? Jesus, lemme tell you, it was crowded. Otherwise I think we would’ve gone there all the time.

  “But that’s the kind of thing I mean—it didn’t used to be just watchin’ football was all he thought about. But then he ran out of kids. I was the last one in line and the same thing happened to me that’s happened to him and Ed. I got tied up with school. And then workin’ crazy hours myself, all kinds of different places, and after a while, you know, just makin’ the arrangements took up all our time—it just got too hard to do. So we don’t do it anymore.

  “As a result, football’s what he does now, and fall’s now his favorite season—the exhibition games do nothin’ for him, but regular season through the Super Bowl, you know? The TV set belongs to him—get out of his way. All the seniority he’s got, he can have any days off he wants, and so he naturally takes Sundays and Mondays. Three games on Sunday, and”—he shouted—“Monday Night Football.”

  “ ‘Your mother gets the Saturdays, Saturday nights I do things with her.’ Which she then always points out they spend doin’ things he likes just as much as she does—take in a movie, have dinner with friends—the usual boring things guys their age always do, and they actually look forward to it. So I don’t know what difference it makes, who wants to do it, since both of them do, but whatever—means something to them? Fine by me. This’s the way that they think.

  “ ‘Sunday nights I say oughta be what I want to do. What I want to do’s watch ball games. I’m not selfish about this. I’m always glad to have her join me, any old time that she wants, but being a nice guy, I don’t insist.’ ”

  “Does he bet?” Racob said.

  “Hell, no,” the Naughton kid said. “He doesn’t bet on anything, way too straight for that. Ask him and he’ll tell you, ‘Bettin’ is illegal.’ But he’s fanatic, just the same. He’s said a lot of times if they had football all year ’round, he’d probably invest in a satellite dish—thirteen games every weekend.

  “Now I like watchin’ games myself—hey, who doesn’t? This’s America, right? Hafta watch the games. Have a little pizza, drink a little beer, shoot the shit with the guys. Sure, it’s great. But, thirteen? Jesus, be over my limit. Maybe even over his. But I don’t know why he doesn’t get one anyway. He prolly would watch thirteen, if he could, flippin’ back and forth like mad, and he can afford ah fuckin’ thing—makes a hundred K a year, he gets through, overtime and all. But anyway—he’s really into it. If the Patriots’re playin’ that night I decide, college, everything, I think I would’ve waited for some other time to tell him. But they’re not, and besides, this’s important, an important decision I’m makin’ here, I’m gonna tell him about now—more important’n Chargers-’n’-Cowboys. So I interrupt him. And I tell him.

  “ ‘I’m gonna finish the semester,’ this’s what I say to him, ‘ ’cause I’ve gone this far I might as well get what I can out of it. Take the credits so at least I’ll have ’em, have that much, so if someday my thinking changes, I decide I’m goin’ back, I won’t be goin’ all the way back to Square One. I can pick up where I left off. But that’s it. I’m gonna take the finals and then I’m gettin’ out.’ But not to expect too much, you know? Because if I was doin’ good at all, I would not be doin’ this, and gettin’ out.

  “And naturally, well, of course he’s disappointed. He didn’t get his own degree ’til after he’d been a cop a while. Nineteen seventy-three. He’d always wanted college but his parents, they were finely gettin’ their own house, that’s what they’d been savin’ up for, an’ so even with the Edison, when he got out of high school, the money wasn’t there. So for him it was the same thing it’d been for his father—first the service and then when he got out, get married, have a family. That’s what everybody did, everyone respectable that didn’t go to jail. And what’s he gonna do, support a wife and family? Get onna cops, no choice. Easy.

  “So the degree—to him it really meant something—a lot. Went to school nights over BC under this federal law they passed after they decided that the county’d be better if the cops’re educated. So that cops would get degrees. Something like the GI Bill. The government would pay for it, and then if they did go to school, they would then get more pay.

  “ ‘And I’m very glad they did that,’ he said. ‘It’s meant better money for your mother and me, our ability to do things for the three of you, and a lot of other things besides, some of them intangible—it’s good to have that degree. Gives you confidence. Makes you more a finished man. But all the same I also know that’s not the way to do it, you’re juggling your job and your family with the books. It’s not the same experience as if you went full time, concentrated on the books, what it is you’re learning. You can’t get as much out of it, no matter how you try.

  “ ‘But still,’ he says, after I told him, ‘if you don’t wanna do it now, then you don’t, and that’s all that there is to it. What do you think you want to do? Go in the service? Maybe go to school that way?’

  “ ‘And I said No, and then I told him. ‘No, I want to be a cop.’ ”

  “Well, what did he say?” Rascob said. “Made you think he didn’t like the idea.”

  “He said,” Naughton said—“well, keep in mind by now it’s pretty late, second one of his nights off, and since it’s Sunday dinner they had daiquiris before, and then the glass of wine with it, and … not sayin’ he’s wasted, now, but then after that he’s had a couple Lowenbraus or so while he’s sittin’ there, watchin’ the game. So maybe, when he’s hearin’ this, he’s not exactly at his best, all right?

  “At first he just sort of gives me this look, like maybe I’d lost my mind. Then he gives me a regular speech. Said, ‘I hope you don’t think you can be a Boston cop, an’ at the same time do the things you do now, with the people you’re doing them with. Using the marijuana; pickin’ up the extra money doin’ God-knows-kinds ah stuff for kind ah people you know you shouldn’t even know, much less hang around with them, doin’ things you shouldn’t do—and don’t think ’cause I keep quiet, I don’t know you do them. Not and be a Boston cop.

  “ ‘You sure you realize what’s involved here? What it is you’re plannin’ to do? Comin’ into my department, it’ll be known you’re my son? You’ll have more people watchin’ you’n David Letterman. You gonna be able to take that? And survive?

  “ ‘You come in as a recruit, you make forty-one and change. But that’s before they take out taxes, all those other little items that you’ve never had to get used to yet, workin’ off the books an’ gettin’ cash under the table.

  “ ‘And the cop pay doesn’t get that much better fast, either, case you might be thinkin’ that. Full salary after three years, least under the current contract, that’s only fifty-two or so; you’ll be lucky if you see seven hundred bucks a week by the time you cash the check.

  “ ‘You sure you can get by on that? Or is it your thinkin’ maybe that you’re gonna live with us ’til the day comes you retire, cut your overhead that way? Like you’re doin’ us a favor. “I’ll be right here, Dad, take care of you, you and Mom start gettin’ simple”—that what you’re gonna tell us we’ll be gettin’ outta this, while you’re moochin’ room and board?’ ”

  Rascob laughed. “My father said the same thing. I was thinking about may
be getting a master’s in tax. ‘Not moving back here, I hope.’ ”

  Naughton, also laughing, said, “I think old Emmett had it all prepared, what to say if this came up. ‘Oh, I can hear it now,’ he says. ‘ “I’ll mow the lawn and shovel snow, put out the barrels every Wednesday and put up the lights at Christmas. Every Sunday I’ll take you and Mom to church, help you up the icy steps. And all you’ll have to do is feed me, keep me warm, at no cost at all to me—oh, and also overlook it when your beer’s all disappeared—like you’ve been doin’ all my life. Never notice I’m here.” Is that what we’re gonna hear? ’Cause if we are, I hafta tell you—I don’t think that’s such a hot idea, you free loadin’ your whole life away. We’re not gonna go for it.’

  “So I tell him, ‘No, that is not the way I’m thinkin’. I’m gonna get myself a place in JP, nice two bedroom condo, I can have a friend stay over, I get lucky over Doyle’s, ’thout those fishy looks from you. Figure I’ll be workin’ nights—nice mornings I can play golf over Franklin Park or maybe shoot out to George Wright, still be a nice easy shot—hey, maybe get you out again, play eighteen there once a week.’ ”

  “Didn’t faze him,” Naughton said. “Didn’t even break his stride.

  “ ‘Yeah, well, you may say that you will do that, and I know you probably mean it. But you haven’t done it yet, and so you don’t know if you can. I’ve got a proud record; I’ve spent years buildin’ it. I will not have you pissin’ on it. Even though you are my son, and I’m proud of you, I don’t want you comin’ onto the force with me if you’re gonna embarrass me, not in any goddamned way. And if you think you’re gonna keep on doin’ stuff onna QT for Uncle Arthur, as you like to call’m—which he is, I know; you don’t hafta remind me—but McKeach is who he is; hangin’ out with punks and all the junior-grade apprentice hoods that kiss his ass night after night, tell him what a great man he is down at Flynn’s over on B Street—then that’s exactly what you’ll do. You’ll endanger my good name.’ ”