by Diane Munier
“Hazards of illegal gambling activity,” Cabhan laughed, but not really. The hard glint never left his eyes. “Talk to your buddy Clark if you want your money. The coppers took every dime.”
“Not the purse, they didn’t,” Audie said.
“Where do you think the purse comes from? It comes from the winnings. You’ve got the Buick,” Cabhan said, mocking a friendliness Jules knew he didn’t feel. Then he swung his hand toward Jules. “And this one took Lou’s money. You boys had a big payout on yourselves and no kick-up.”
Jules didn’t confirm or deny. They couldn’t prove anything, but he was shocked they were all so connected, and why would he kick-up to Cabhan?
“Who fed you all this bullshit? Redver?” Audie asked.
“We go back,” Cabhan said with a shrug. “Hot Springs? I had twelve thousand burning a hole in my pocket, that’s where I’d head.”
They’d just seen Redver, so Jules knew the information hadn’t been beaten out of him.
“You think Redver throws in with guys he ain’t checked out?” Cabhan directed this to Jules.
“Does Jerry know this?” Jules asked, because that would be worse somehow.
“Redver isn’t a regular guy, if that’s what you mean. His mother was Irish, but the father—I can’t even pronounce it. Some damn Indian. Redver keeps what he does with his bookie under his hat.”
Jules was still stung that Redver had kept his affiliations to himself. It felt like a double-cross.
“That crap about Jules taking Lou’s money, that’s bullshit. We find out the source of that crap…” Audie made a fist.
“I got no problem with a man who knows an opportunity when he sees one. Stan was in Clark’s pocket. Has a problem keeping it in his pants, and I mean that for real. Two counts of indecent exposure. All Clark had to do was lean on him a little.” Cabhan waved a finger too near Jules’s face. “Got in the henhouse on old Officer Blaise—maybe on me. He was looking for that money, that SOB. That was his bailout—with me. See all the shit you caused?”
“That lost cause has it for the horses bad,” Cabhan continued. “But,” and he patted his pocket over the papers folded inside, “he’s all paid up now. So, how about you show me this place?”
Jules already knew Cabhan owned Clark. That was old news. “You ain’t goin’ in the house,” Jules said.
Cabhan turned and looked at him, no humor in his eyes. “You got a death wish, kid?”
William got closer to Jules.
“Uncle Cabhan, bad move. This house belongs to Jules’s wife,” Audie said.
“Wife?” Cabhan stared at Jules, a red flush in his cheeks. “Clark’s daughter?”
“Yeah,” Audie said.
Jules just kept staring. He’d meant what he’d said. No one was going in.
“Oh shit,” Cabhan broke out laughing. “Clark know… about…wife?”
Jules didn’t answer, so Cabhan laughed harder.
“This is great. He’s gonna kill you. He already says he is,” Cabhan laughed, taking a white handkerchief from his pocket and dabbing his eyes. “I get it,” he said. “But your wife don’t own shit.”
“How much for this place?” Jules said, undeterred by Cabhan’s harangue.
“Lad…lad…” he said, all uncle-like. “Twenty thousand.”
“Twenty…” Jules repeated. Cabhan wanted this—the rage, and the story for later—at Mel’s.
Audie said it aloud. “That’s a shakedown, Cabhan. You know that’s bullshit.”
“Life is bullshit, buddy boy. Hasn’t anyone told you?” Cabhan was laughing again. “He’s lucky I don’t say thirty.”
“Sold,” Jules said. Cabhan looked at him, the smile dropping slowly off. “Sold,” Jules said again, and stuck out his hand. “Twenty.”
“You got that kind of money, hotshot?” Cabhan asked.
“I’ll get it,” Jules said, pulling back his hand.
“Just a minute. You know how it is—I’m no fookin’ bank. Work comes up. I ask you to fight again—you fight. For the favor.”
Jules stared for a minute. “I’ll get the money. I like things nailed down.”
“Nailed down?” Cabhan looked around at his friends. “We need to remember that. This mutt don’t pay—he likes the nails.”
They all laughed, except him and Audie. Jules spoke over the noise: “Give me a couple of days.”
“It’s too much,” Audie said.
“I tell you what,” Cabhan said, rocking back on his heels. “Got a job coming up.” He added another stick of gum to the one already in his mouth and stepped closer to Jules. “Work shows up—you work. No questions—like before.” He looked at Audie and made his big smile. “For my nephew.”
“I’m not looking for an ‘in,’” Jules said. If he paid this hoodlum twenty, he was more than flush.
“You’ll never be in. That means you can be taken out—no questions.”
Audie groaned. “He’s just shittin’ you, man.”
Now Cabhan spoke over Gorilla. “You’ll work for Audie. He’s up and coming,” he said, beaming at his nephew.
“Nobody touches Jules without answering to me,” Audie said.
“A little soon to be making demands,” Uncle Cabhan warned his nephew.
“Not when it comes to this,” Audie said. “You knock this place down to ten. It’s worth half that. That makes up for the purse you screwed us out of.”
Cabhan laughed. “I don’t owe you shit, kid. Not shit.”
“Those cops gave you your cut and kicked up. And you been leaning on Isbe’s crooked old man. You came off like a fooker…Uncle,” Audie said.
“Watch your mouth,” Cabhan warned.
“Ten. And the Buick,” Audie said, hands on his hips.
“Wait in the car,” Cabhan said to the two with him.
All the fun was out of him now. This was him, the one that had them ambushed that first night at Mel’s, and the one who screwed them over in the fights. He smiled, he made deals, he had dead bodies put in trunks, and he went to New York.
“You work for me,” Cabhan said. “I don’t give. Understand? You give to me. And I say when it’s over.” He was speaking to Audie, but Jules knew it was for him.
A deep breath and Cabhan turned away, walked toward the car, then stopped and said, “We’ll talk about the car…when you decide.” Again, he said this to Audie. “I say who goes and stays.” He walked back to his nephew—too close. “I say.”
Cabhan was punishing Jules for taking that dough without asking him, without giving it over. Jules had to try not to laugh at the thought that he’d answer to this slimy moog in a hundred-dollar suit.
Here’s how it was—the only feet he kissed were Isbe’s. And that’s why he’d pay the twenty—why he would have paid more. For Isbe.
“Two days on this,” Cabhan said to Jules. He went to the car then.
Later that day, Jules was parked on Washington Street waiting for his wife to come out of the biggest building to house a phone company in the world. His eyes were trained on that line of doors other operators were pouring from, denoting the change in shifts.
Somewhere behind his Ford was Audie’s Buick. Gorilla was there to pick up Dorie and Francis. They’d driven separate because Jules was taking Isbe to dinner so they could be alone. Call him selfish for wanting to monopolize his wife’s company, which he was, but they’d see the others later. They were meeting the monkeys and the girls at a bar to watch wrestling on the television set there.
His heart picked up the minute he saw Isbe exit and break away from the crowd. “Jules,” he saw her mouth as she waved, not even realizing he was watching her in the mirror. He leaned over and opened the door, and she was in. He had his arms around her, hand on her leg sliding all the way up to her hip, then reaching in front to snap her garter a little. He was feeling it now, the betrayal that her old man would turn over that deed to pay his debts.
Didn’t they know he knew how to push back? What did they
think it was to be a soldier…with a cause…to live outside for two years…to be big enough and hard enough to last…to learn to listen and react…to hear things no one else would be able to pick out from the sounds around…to hear what was there…to learn to listen for what wasn’t?
These guys who had never gone…who started their little fires and hooted over their little victories…they had no idea who he was. What he could turn into…if awakened. And he was awake.
Blaise was trying to punish her…for going to Hot Springs with Jules…but letting the house go to Cabhan was for him…scorching the earth trying to burn Jules. Well, it would take more than this crap with the house. That was nothing. Wait until he found out about the marriage. He was sure Cabhan would try to break his neck when he heard. That’s okay. He wasn’t trying to hide the best thing that had ever happened to him. At all.
“How you doing?” she asked, after their heated greeting.
“I’m okay. How are you?” he said.
“What’s the matter? You’re sad…or mad or something,” she said, tracing over his jaw.
“What? I’m not mad. This is my face.”
“No, something happened. What happened? You get turned down for a job? You’ve been looking? Oh, Jules, don’t worry about it. They’re hiring here. So many people wanted phones during the war—you know? Now—they’re hiring, Jules. It’s good pay—and benefits. Or I can always—”
“No,” he said, too stern. He hurt her a little, and damn, that wasn’t what he meant to do. “Isbe—no. I’ll find work. That’s—mine to figure out.”
She was looking at him, seeing too much, more than he intended to show, that’s for sure. “Hey…how about we eat at my old diner? Still the best cube steak.”
“Sure, Jules. I don’t care,” she said, sitting back a little and looking at him. “I don’t care.” She toyed with his hair and ran her fingers through it. It’s all he wanted… her.
“I love you,” he told her right out.
She was back, kissing him again. Someone behind them beeped, and they ignored it and kept kissing. She pulled back first. “Maybe we should go home?” she asked, and it had some mischief in it.
“We will—count on dat. Let’s get some food.” He took her hand, held it while he shifted, which always made her laugh.
They got dinner, and he went back to talk to the cook and tell him about the dry-up with the radios like that guy hadn’t figured it out. He was leaning on the counter and looked over to watch Isbe for a minute. She had her back to him, a barrette holding her thick hair. At first, he’d been ticked some that he couldn’t be the one to provide her a house. It was a shit attitude, and him being ornery and jealous too, probably, but really, that house meant so much to her. Twenty Gs was what you paid for a mansion somewhere, not a plain-Jane duplex on the edge of town. Cabhan was shit, staking a claim on what he’d stolen from Sal.
What was he willing to do for Isbe? Anything. He knew that. That house was her power—her mother. Even a rock-stupid punk like him knew that. And Cabhan held that? No. No way. That house was priceless. He’d see she had it once and for all. Not her father. Not that bastard Cabhan, not even himself. He’d do whatever he had to, then lay that deed in her name, in her hands.
Period.
Later that evening they were sitting at the bar watching wrestling through the smoke from a lot of cigarettes. The television set was propped high in the corner, well over the shelves of dark liquor bottles lit softly. Isbe was seated on the barstool, and Jules stood beside her, his arm around her waist, fingers tucked a little into the waistband of her skirt. She worked a Coca-Cola, and he had a long-neck brown bottle and was smoking a cigarette. The yelling around them would swell to deafening, then lessen to a soft boil. Audie was arguing with Francis about whether or not these wrestling matches were fixed. Francis insisted they had to be because no one could be that stupid, she said, as these two fat men rolling around in leotards, one of them wearing a black mask over his eyes and the other with hair as long as a woman’s.
“He’s an Indian,” Audie defended him. Gorilla was offended, trying to uphold the raw strength it took to get thrown around like that, and she was scoffing at his reasoning, and they were going back and forth.
On the other side of them, Dorie was on fire bouncing on the red cushioned stool because her guy, Johnny Death, was losing the match. Wrestling really got her going; well, anything did. She was standing on the rungs, making her a head taller than him and Baboon. She was yelling over the crowd, and Bobby was laughing, keeping hold of her so she wouldn’t fall. He loved everything she did; even when no one else was loving it, Baboon was.
“He asks her all the time,” Isbe was saying low, almost too low for Jules to hear. She was talking right in his ear, though, and he loved her that close.
“He never told me dat,” Jules said, meaning Audie had never told him he’d proposed to Francis.
“Maybe that’s because she keeps turning him down,” Isbe said.
He’d asked her more than once? Three times since they’d been home? No way, that moog.
“What about…” Jules nodded his head Bobby’s way. What else didn’t he know?
“No. Bobby tells Dorie they’re too young.”
Jules almost spit his beer out over that. Yeah, Baboon was on the run. How long would Dorie keep buying that? Long as it took to make a baby, probably.
“But he’s going to school on the GI Bill. She’s talked him into that,” Isbe said.
Baboon and school? First he’d heard of this too. Damn. “For what?”
“Architecture,” she said.
“What?” Jules looked at his friend, all wrapped up in Dorie at the moment. Architecture? Jules knew he wanted to build things, but they weren’t talking bird houses here.
Jules took a drink of his beer, then a drag on his smoke. He didn’t like it—Baboon and school. No good for him. Baboon—never a serious thought. Architecture? Why did it bother him? Cause damn. An architect? And the GI Bill? He didn’t want to think about all that bullshit. You used anything from the government, and they owned you. He’d put in enough with those moogs. They’d taken enough of his hide.
When Isbe left to use the restroom, Jules moved onto her stool and leaned over to talk to Baboon. “You goin’ to school?”
He was laughing, holding on to Dorie’s little waist. “C’mon, Johnny!” she was yelling at the box up there.
Bobby was smiling big. He was clean-shaven and his hair was pretty tamed under his hat. He didn’t take it off inside around the ladies. He liked to push it, Bobby did. But he grinned at Jules. “Guess so.”
“You didn’t say.”
“I just…Isbe tell you?”
“Yeah. She just told me.”
“It’s a good deal. We risked our lives for it, man—the money for school. I don’t know. I bomb out, it ain’t my dime.”
Dorie was listening, apparently. “You won’t bomb out. I’ll help,” she said. What did she know about architecture?
Bobby just squeezed her, his cheek against the small of her back, his hat rising a little as he grinned again at Jules. This guy was so in love it was coming out of his eyeballs.
“Listen to me,” he said, just for Jules’s ears. “Audie told me about it.” That would be the house. “My uncle…has a guy. Appraises high. You got the VA, man. Don’t be stupid.”
Jules was looking at him. They were getting what you call it…domesticated. He wasn’t sure he liked it. Mostly he was embarrassed for all three of them. But as soon as Isbe was back on their stool, his hand was on her ribs, and he pulled her in close as he could.
She leaned in willingly and kissed him. “What?” she said.
He was looking at her smiling, but his brain was all over the place.
Why do that? Why go high? There was no end with Cabhan. “Just thinking of you,” he said to his wife. It was all about her.
Maybe he’d go to the phone company. Maybe he’d see what it was about.
&nb
sp; “I’ll look into that job…at Ill Bell.”
She smiled, and he loved being the source of it. She started to drink his beer then, and he waved to the bartender for a glass and poured her some.
She chugged it pretty much. “If you got that job…why couldn’t I stay on a little while too?” she said. “We could work together sometimes if our shifts lined up. We could lay aside some good money, Jules.”
She’d been thinking this out. And she was trying to fortify herself with the beer.
“I thought we talked about this,” he said, wiping some foam at the corner of her mouth with his thumb.
“We did. I just think if both of us worked before babies came—you know?”
What he wanted to do, had always done, was push. Push for his way. He’d yield if he didn’t care, but with her, he cared. Maybe too much. Maybe caring too much made him too much like his old man. He didn’t want that to show up—the old man. “Isbe…let me see first. Let me see what it’s about.”
“Sure, Jules.” She lifted her glass, and he stubbed his smoke in the ashtray and lifted his brown bottle, and they clinked a little.
“To us, Jules,” she said, giving him a kiss.
“Us, baby.” He drank from his, and she drained hers. Then they kissed again.
“What babies?” he said.
“You want kids,” she said, like it was a given.
He did. Someday. Right now, he wasn’t inclined to share this woman. His woman. “Sure.”
The noise around them swelled again, and he winced a little, and she laughed. He still didn’t like loud noises. He never would, maybe.
“Jules…what we do…getting yours together with mine…makes babies.” She took another drink and wagged her eyebrows at him.
He laughed, his arm around her, pulling her in so he could kiss on her ear. He knew it drove her crazy, and just her wagging her brows and mentioning their love life got him going.
“When we get home…over the rainbow, baby,” he whispered.
She laughed, her hand on his cheek. “Hey Jules… what about God? You believe in God?”
Right now, with her…yeah. Maybe he really did. He’d always known God was real. Always had. But he hadn’t considered liking Him before. Now—if things went well—maybe they’d talk.