by Jim Powell
Alvin’s funeral fell on the anniversary of the other one, sixteen years earlier. It was the first time I’d been to a funeral on that day since then. Although I suppose you could say there’s been a funeral every year. This year it was a shared funeral. My thoughts were on the one I was missing, that I always missed.
I mind that it happened in summer. I’ve always minded that. When branches are bare, when twigs snap in two on tombstone streets and frozen leaves shatter beneath the footfall, death belongs. You can’t complain when it comes calling, when it comes to claim its own. Golden days, with crops ripening in the field, and berries there for the picking: these things are the properties of life. They should have been ours, and theirs. We had the pawn ticket in our pocket. We were going to redeem the promise made of dreamland, with hallelujahs and hosannas. Illusion, illusion, it was all illusion. The dream was snatched, and every leafy summer road led nowhere. One step back. Two steps back. I’ve lost count.
What it did, I think, was to neuter us, Marcie and me. Something holds us back all the time. We crouch behind cut-outs of ourselves. We don’t lay our feelings on the line. We take care. We are too aware of how quickly, how unexpectedly, life can unravel. We watch what has happened to others. We see roads that are dyed red with the blood and entrails of elk that have mistimed their leaps between the juggernauts, and we do not leap. We respect the juggernauts of this world. If required, we will worship them.
When we buried Roseanne and Bobby, we buried pieces of ourselves. It’s the other reason Marcie goes to Colorado, in my opinion. She goes to mourn lost pieces of herself. And of me. Human tissue and body parts, scattered on roads I now fear to travel.
When Alvin was buried, I stayed on a while in the cemetery. There was a wake back at his granddaughter’s place, but I held my own wake there. In a corner of the graveyard, a young boy was picking wild flowers. He’d been there throughout the ceremony, keeping a respectful distance. Now he approached, flax and black-eyed Susans in hand.
‘Was that Mr Ballard you were burying?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Did you know him?’
‘No. I heard my pa talking about him.’
‘Pretty flowers,’ I said.
‘My pa tends the graveyard. I always pick flowers when there’s a burial.’
‘To put on the grave?’
‘Yeah,’ said the boy. ‘I like to do that. Sometimes there’s no one here except the minister. It’s not right.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Dexter,’ said the boy.
‘Well, Dexter, why don’t we go put those flowers on Mr Ballard’s grave.’
10
‘The fact is,’ Nelson said, ‘I could have been congressman for this district. That opportunity was open to me. I turned it down.’
‘We know,’ said Mike.
‘You know?’
‘You already told us.’
‘A dozen times,’ I said.
There were just the three of us in the bar that evening. It was a Monday night in late August, but that was still poor business. Marcie was on her way back from Denver. It was Steve’s night off. I don’t know where the other regulars were. There was no passing trade.
Nelson was not a man to be deterred from a repeat performance of his monologue, even when there were no audible shouts of ‘encore’. So we began to get the story again.
Nelson’s political career went back to his days at college, where he’d been the brightest star in the political firmament, according to Nelson. Before you start getting the idea that he was some big shot at Yale or Harvard, I should mention that this was a small Methodist institution near Seattle, where the political firmament was usually obliterated by cloud cover. After college, he moved somewhere close to here and started work as an administrator in a local housing project. Before long, he had risen like yeast in the Democrat hierarchy and, according to Nelson, was regarded as the big high flyer in the state. Ten years ago, the Democrat bosses allegedly approached him and asked him to run for Congress. Nelson nobly passed on the chance, claiming he could serve the community better in other ways. That’s the gist of the story. The full version takes up to two hours to recite. I haven’t got that sort of time to spare. Nor, frankly, the interest.
Bullshit, according to the alternative version of events propagated by Nelson’s wife or, to be precise, his ex-wife. Stephanie lives in the town of thieving bastards next door, which makes her an unreliable witness. Marcie sees her from time to time, having known her since they were both kids. Marcie says that Stephanie says the story is true up to the point where Nelson was being pressed to accept the nomination. This seems alarming in its own right, if you ask me, because it means that the state Democrats couldn’t find a better candidate than Nelson to run for this district, which makes you wonder what the others were like. Amongst them, a person I probably voted for, come to think of it.
As Nelson’s candidature was about to be announced, someone investigated the charity he was running at the time and discovered a shortfall in the accounts of a million bucks. Secret bank accounts in Nelson’s name were found in strange places. Some private dick started digging into his life at the charity’s behest, and the long and short of it was that Nelson was allegedly paying the rent on a flash apartment in another city, in which lived a semi-clothed nightclub singer who doubled up as chairwoman of the fringe organization that had pushed for Nelson to be the candidate. To be clear, I’m not saying that this actually happened. It’s what the ex-wife said.
You couldn’t make this up, I said to Marcie. I couldn’t, said Marcie, but Stephanie might have done. By her own admission, she’d resigned as president of Nelson’s fan club soon after she married him, so couldn’t be regarded as impartial. Nelson wasn’t prosecuted. According to Stephanie, the charity decided that a court case would be bad for business. So they made him pay the money back, and he quit his post a few months later with glowing testimonials, which enabled him to get a job running another charity, right here in town.
The story might be true, or it might not. I’ve no idea. Nobody else knows either, at least no one you can trust. So there are two different versions of Nelson. He’s a philanthropist who sacrificed a political career for the sake of his principles, or he’s a crook. Take your pick. Whichever it is, he’s close to setting the world marathon record for boredom, and his chosen venue is my bar.
Gossip’s got spicier since I was a kid, like the food we eat. I think that’s because life has got more bland and we need to compensate. If I’d expressed the opinion to my parents that our congressman maintained a nightclub singer in an embezzled apartment, I’d have been sent to my room and told to rinse my mouth out. Congressmen didn’t do that sort of thing. They had idyllic sex with their pristine wives, prior to going to the Capitol to pass immaculate legislation on our behalf. Congressmen didn’t screw around, and charity directors didn’t have their hands in the till. They were fine upstanding men – I was going to say men and women, but of course there weren’t any women – who devoted their lives to serving the poor and vulnerable, and didn’t screw them in any way at all. My parents’ view doesn’t have much traction these days.
Steve’s the go-to guy in the bar when we want to know what young people think, which we don’t much. He’s twenty years or so younger than Marcie and me; younger than most of our customers. The fact that he’s got two kids himself hasn’t yet disqualified him from this role. Steve says we were naive to believe in the purity of our leaders, and why did we ever think they were better than the rest of us. Marcie and I point out that we never believed that: it was our parents, and their parents, who did. But Steve’s basic point is right: things have changed.
We disagree on how things have changed, though. Steve says that people used to know nothing of the lives of the rich and powerful, but assumed the best. He thinks that these days we see more clearly how they are. Marcie and I think we still know nothing, and now assume the worst. We’re the proponents of perpetual human ignorance. St
eve’s the proponent of greater insight through less deference and more information. That’s another point of disagreement. Steve thinks that more information means more truth. We think it means guesses and lies being disseminated more widely.
All this business concerning Nelson’s past or otherwise got to be relevant that August night, when he and Mike and I were alone in the bar. I need to explain the layout of the place first. When you walk up the few steps from the parking lot to the building, you enter a sort of vestibule. On the left is a corridor leading to the restrooms. On the right is a room with the ironic sign ‘Office’ on the door: not much more than a cupboard, with a desk and a chair, and stacked with boxes of merchandise. Ahead of you are the swing doors that lead into the bar room, the counter facing you. All I do in the office is add up the takings and prepare the banking. I keep the room locked, of course.
Usually, I count the previous day’s takings early in the morning, or else during the lunch hour when Marcie’s in charge. With Marcie away, and Alvin’s funeral, and one thing and another, I hadn’t done the cash for a few days. That evening presented the perfect opportunity to catch up, with a near empty bar room and Nelson in full monologue. I removed myself from proceedings and went to the office. I should think there was getting on for three grand sitting in the drawer.
After twenty minutes or so, Nelson poked his head round the door and asked if I could pour him and Mike another drink. Sure thing, I said. The barrel was empty, so I had to go change it in the cellar. For some reason, when I left the office, I didn’t lock the door. Laziness, if I’m honest, but there were just the two customers and I would have my eyes on both of them, not that I thought I needed to. By the time I found I had to change the barrel, I’d forgotten about the office. I suppose I was gone five minutes. As I came back up to the bar, Nelson was coming through the swing doors. I assumed he’d been to the restroom.
I poured him and Mike a beer, then went back to counting the take. The take had gone. On the desk was a pile of loose change and no bills. In more than twenty years, I’d never lost a cent, and now this. I sat at the desk for a while, feeling sick to the stomach, trying to work out what to do. I wished Marcie was there. Two heads are better than one, and her head is better than mine in situations like this. I do one of two things. Either nothing – mull the problem over for a while, by which time the opportunity for instant action has passed – or something I regret later.
Whichever way I looked at matters, they pointed in a single direction. Nelson had stolen the money. In theory, there were two suspects. I had known Mike since we were kids and would trust him with my life. Nelson had the reputation of being a thief, had come into the office and seen the cash on the desk, and had been walking through the swing doors when I came up from the cellar. He could as well have been coming from the office as from the restroom. There could be only one conclusion.
In other circumstances, I might have called the cops. I couldn’t see the point. The culprit was sitting in the bar room and the money couldn’t be far away. The question was how to separate Mike from Nelson. Mike solved the problem by getting up to go. When he’d left, Nelson made moves to follow him.
‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘We’ve got things to talk about.’
‘Have we?’ said Nelson. ‘What things?’
‘The money you stole.’
‘What money?’
‘The notes I was counting in the office. The notes you saw when you came to ask for a drink. The notes you took when I was changing the barrel.’
Nelson stared at me. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I saw the notes. There was a big pile of them. Where do you suppose they are now?’ He stood up and spread his arms. ‘Do you want to frisk me? Would you like to say where you think I might be concealing them? You’d need a large bag for those bills.’
‘I didn’t say you had them on you. They could be in your car, for all I know.’
‘OK. Let’s go outside and look in my car.’
‘I didn’t say they were definitely in your car. They could be hidden in the bushes. I don’t know where you put them. What I’m saying is that you took them.’
‘So. While you changed the barrel, I went out and fetched a holdall from somewhere, came back to your office and stuffed it with notes, went outside to hide it someplace, then came back to the bar room as you returned. Is that what you’re saying?’
‘That’s right.’
‘You’re crazy,’ said Nelson.
‘What’s your explanation?’
‘I don’t need an explanation. It’s your problem. Why don’t you ask Mike?’
‘Did he leave the room?’
‘Easy for me to say yes,’ said Nelson. ‘I’m tempted to. But no, he didn’t.’
‘So what am I supposed to think?’
‘You can think what you like. What I want to know is why you jumped to the conclusion it was me. You didn’t know whether Mike had left the room until I just told you. You haven’t asked whether anyone else came in and went out while you were downstairs. You assumed I stole your money. And, before you say anything, I know why you assumed it.
‘I know the stories Stephanie tells. I know she and Marcie see each other. I’ve always presumed that you and Marcie were aware of the rumours. I’ve also presumed that you don’t believe them. Plainly I was wrong. Things that never happened become as much facts as things that did happen. And there’s nothing I can do. Someone invents stories for malicious reasons, and that’s it. Nobody asks for my opinion. Nobody considers my point of view. Things fester in the background until an event like this happens, and then I get the blame. I hoped I’d avoided that here. It seems I haven’t.’
‘This has got nothing to do with Marcie,’ I said.
‘I know that. Marcie’s too smart to make the sort of accusation you’ve made without a shred of evidence. Your trouble is, when Marcie’s absent, so is your brain.’
This was not going the way I’d expected. Nelson sounded so outraged, I was close to believing him. However, I didn’t believe him. There was no other explanation for what had happened. Crooks and liars like Nelson get away with it because they turn on the tap of righteous indignation so convincingly. I’d fallen for that sort of con in the past, and I wasn’t going to fall for it again. It didn’t alter the fact that I had no idea what to say or do next. It turned out that Nelson hadn’t finished.
‘I’ll tell you three things,’ he said. ‘The first is that I am never coming back to this bar. The second is that, if I find you’ve been repeating your accusation to anyone, my lawyers will trash you. The third thing is that, before I go, you have the liberty to search me and my property for the cash. I will turn out my pockets. I will strip naked so you can see how many bills are stuffed up my backside. I will dismantle the car for you. Say what you want me to do.’
None of those things, for a start. I didn’t think they’d be on offer if I was going to find anything. Unless it was bluff and bravado on Nelson’s part. For some reason, I didn’t feel inclined to call his bluff.
‘I’ll get a flashlight,’ I said. ‘Let’s see what we find in the bushes round the parking lot.’
‘Listen, you moron,’ said Nelson. ‘Someone took your money. I’m not accusing you of inventing the story. If there’s a bag in the bushes, it proves nothing. Anyone could have put it there.’
I couldn’t argue with that. We glared at each other for half a minute or more.
‘If that’s it,’ said Nelson, ‘I’ll be going. It was good while it lasted.’
When he’d gone, I fetched the flashlight and searched the bushes on my own. I combed them four or five times and found nothing. I also checked my office from top to bottom. The money wasn’t there. I had the brainwave that Nelson had put the notes in a plastic bag and left them in one of the cisterns in the restrooms. He hadn’t. The evening ended at two in the morning with me short of three grand, one of my best customers, and any clue as to what had happened.
I barely slept that night, and felt awful the
next morning. Marcie was due back late in the evening. I wanted her back that instant, even if I was going to get chewed off. Someone needed to make sense of it for me. I needed to talk about it. I also needed to be careful: I took Nelson’s threat of lawyers seriously. Mike came in after work. Since he was the only other witness, and the one regular I could trust to keep his mouth shut, I decided to talk to him. I gave him a full account of the previous evening, missing out Nelson’s possible backstory. I didn’t know if Mike was aware of the rumours.
‘Shit,’ said Mike.
‘Exactly.’
‘I’m glad you didn’t think it might be me.’
‘I’d never think that for a minute, Mike.’
‘Or else I’d have to find another bar too.’ He smiled.
‘Sorry, Mike,’ I said. ‘My sense of humour’s gone AWOL for the moment.’
He pondered the story for a while. ‘I can’t make sense of it,’ he said. ‘I’m not surprised you came to that conclusion. Although . . . ’
‘Although what?’
‘If one of us had done it, it was a hell of a chance to take. Nelson’s not poor. Why risk his job and a criminal record for a few grand? How could he know how long you’d be?’
‘Except,’ I said, ‘that – if it was him – he’s got away with it, hasn’t he? Takes it. Puts it somewhere on neutral territory, goodness knows where, then challenges me to prove it was him.’
‘That’s a lot to improvise in a few minutes.’
‘How long was he out of the room?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Mike. ‘I wasn’t paying attention. I’d say a minute or two. It could have been three or four, I suppose.’
‘Who else could it have been?’
‘Search me,’ said Mike. ‘No, don’t. I haven’t got anything up my backside, I assure you. The answer I want to give is Franky because, when anything happens that shouldn’t, he’s the first person who springs to mind.’
Mike knew Franky as well as I did. The three of us had been in the same class at school, the same group that did things together, then and afterwards. Mike had been cordial to Franky since he’d come back, but he’d put a distance into their relationship.