Watch Me Go

by Mark Wisniewski

  And the longer this question bothered me, the harder it was to wait, because, dammit, I just wanted to be with Tug. I considered going to look for him but then remembered his father’s old rule for Tug when Tug was a kid, the one about there needing to be a stay putter, and, with this rule in mind, I sat still longer and waited.

  And it was this rule of Tom Corcoran’s that caused me to stay put for what seemed to be well more than half an hour.

  Tug’s back there making the deal, I then thought. He’s got to be.

  And then I stayed put yet another half an hour beyond the first, and I knew so because the odds board said so.

  And then, after gazing at the trees well beyond the odds board and even beyond the backside, I stood.

  I wished I could run down to the ground level and out onto the concrete apron and hop the chain-link to take a shortcut across the homestretch and the infield, and maybe, with the track now fairly empty of patrons and workers and security, I could get away with this, especially if I jogged, but I thought: No.

  You’re an owner now.

  Act like one.

  And I walked up the concrete stairs that led out of the grandstand, past the betting windows now abandoned by bettors and tellers, the IRS window abandoned, too, and then I took the escalator down, walking quickly down it as I did.

  And I walked quickly to the turnstiles as well, then past them, The Form Monger, of course, gone, pretty much everyone gone. Only the pockmarked guy who sold beer at the burger stand was there, just now getting into a rusted old Chevy parked several spots away from the familiar Corcoran family pickup, and the sight of the pickup assured me Tug was indeed on the backside, that, no, he had not taken my sixty-plus grand in winnings and skipped town, and my confidence in Tug as well as my humoring myself for having ever let a worry like that cross my mind helped me walk as gracefully as a young woman could along this unkempt side of the old steel blue grandstand. I was on the wide asphalt lane that hugged the far outside of the clubhouse turn, headed for the backside, following Tug’s recent footsteps, I was sure. And I again thought about jogging, but again thought no. Tug wouldn’t have gone to the backside alone if it hadn’t been for the best. Maybe he’d figured that, without me with him, he’d save us money on Equis Mini’s haggled-over price, what with how obviously fond I was of Equis Mini and all that.

  And again, I trusted Tug as I walked. If nothing else, I believed he was smart.

  But when I reached the backside, I went up and down all the shedrows twice, but there was no sign of him. Worse, I came upon Equis Mini being given a hose bath by a hand in shade thrown by an oak, and I asked this hand if he’d seen Tug, and this hand shrugged, then ignored me more coldly than the hose water must have felt, making it clear he was resolved not to talk to me anytime soon. And Equis Mini wouldn’t look over at me; he just kept shifting his weight from both left hoofs to his right, and trying to chomp the hose and letting his tail swat at a stubborn twitch in his hide. And then, after I left Equis Mini to keep asking around about Tug, I saw Arnie DeShields near the shedrow fifty feet away—not his own barn, curiously—at least as far as I knew—and he, too, ignored me and quickly ducked back inside, and then, when I stepped inside, neither Arnie nor Tug were anywhere, as if they had left through some back door or were hiding crouched in the feed bin, and no one in that barn would answer my questions about them. It was as if somehow neither Tug nor Arnie had been there all day, or they both had and no one wanted to think about that, let alone talk.

  But this reticence wasn’t like the one I’d endured there the day after Tom Corcoran had disappeared. This was something new, with its own kind of opaque sheen. Certainly it made me more queasy than the one about Tom had. Were the barn hands here today quiet because they knew I’d slept with Tug? But how would they have known—unless Tug had told them? And why would Tug have said anything about that? Why on earth? And if for some reason he had, what would this mean about his deepest true feelings for me?

  Then all I could think was: Go home. I knew the Corcorans’ house wasn’t my home, never had been, really, but for me it now served as the next closest thing, and I felt compelled to be there. Tug could be sitting in the kitchen, or, at the very worst, napping on the couch. Maybe he was hiding the sixty grand in some cranny up in his room?

  But even as I imagined Tug doing these things, I didn’t feel good. I did not. If Tug had been worried when his father had told him he’d worried too much, I now had to admit that I, alone here on the backside, was worried, too.

  And all I could do now to fight this worry was run, so then there I was, doing it, more or less jogging across the backside’s gravel parking lot. And it wasn’t long before, over the railroad ties, I was running undeniably. Again the ties challenged me but I didn’t care; I tripped and fell once but kept on. And then, just after the first prick of perspiration through my scalp, it occurred to me that, now, this time, this evening, with today’s sun still not quite gone from sight, the longer I ran the more I worried, to the point that it now seemed possible everything would turn out opposite of the way things were supposed to be. Tug and I, I realized, were supposed to be together. He, the responsible Corcoran, was supposed to return. And Equis Mini was meant to be ours to bathe, not some stupid, tongue-tied barn hand’s.

  And now I found my legs accelerating, maybe because worry was fueling me. I was acting like a Corcoran whether I’d end up being one or not: They, the Corcorans, had all been worriers, all of them second-guessers, too, but primarily worriers, with nothing ever right in their minds, and nothing good ever trusted in as being able to remain good. They were wrong. They were wrong. The Corcorans were wrong about that, but they were also just plain wrong in what they did, and in how they conducted themselves. After all, they argued. They argued a heck of a lot. And held grudges. They kept secrets and pursued familyhood in a business that thrived on greed. They treated love as if it were some privilege you needed to earn, or at least Tom and Colleen had.

  And what about Tug, anyway?

  Could he really love?

  On the other hand, could he really have first assessed me as nervously as he had and not been as bonkers about me as I’d been about him? Could eyes as spontaneous as his lie? Could kisses like that? And the way he touched me, and the way he’d kept me awake talking long after he’d made sure I finished. What kind of guy did that? Who on earth did that with a woman like me unless there was out-and-out love?

  But what I was really trying to ask myself was: Could he really have taken my winnings and run? Could he really, really have played me? I was now jogging so fast I wished he had taken my winnings, all sixty-plus thousand, and driven the pickup so far I could never find him, because that would have been easier, that would have been cake compared with what I feared now, and, yes, fear could be bad; fear nearly always was bad; no human body should ever need to fear, but sometimes there came the kind of fear animals felt, the necessary kind, the honest kind, the kind that’s akin to survival, the kind that makes bees sting and hummingbirds quit humming to zip off into woods, the kind that makes fish, of any size, know when not to bite and instead dart and zigzag toward depth. And it was this kind of fear, my legs now told me, that I, Janette Price, the daughter of the renowned jockey Jamie Price, had inside of me, inside my legs certainly but also now up into the rest of me including my mind and soul and whatever else I was made of, maybe even inside any bits of Tug still carried by me, at least inside any cells of his skin still beneath my fingernails from when I’d squeezed his shoulders, back when his coming had made me come, too.

  And when I reached the hedge of milkweeds, I wanted to sprint to the house as I always had, but such a sprint was pointless—because if he was now in the house, he wouldn’t need me, not as direly as he might if he was where this fear in me sensed he was. And now, here, undeniably on the Corcorans’ lawn, I took the right onto the trail he and his father had blazed, the nar
row one into the woods, my shins and ankles tearing through the thickened berry canes, my feet dodging the fattest roots, and I didn’t want to keep going but then there I was, needing only to duck under a birch log he’d probably cut, and then I was on the inside, letting go of the birch fence and sprinting again, this time over the horse farm, over turf that, dammit, was supposed to be his and mine, wanting to stop on it, needing to cross it, and after I cleared the August-narrowed creek, I was puffing all out, headed toward, yes, a forty-gallon drum, just as I had so many times back in June, except, face it, this wasn’t that drum; this drum was orange, the same orange as that but this one rust-free, this one, you could say, Tug’s and Tug’s only, and everyone at the track knew why Tug had bought it and shown it around. And of course I knew why he’d made that move, too; I knew all about how assertion worked among men whether they gambled or not. And I now guessed what was inside this orange drum of Tug’s, and now it was at most ten feet away, now fewer than four, and I hated how knowledge married you but forced you to keep running, and then I was up against it, this newer, rustproofed drum, my fingers needing to squeeze its rim to keep the rest of me up, because, yes, my fingers were fine and strong and not in the least trampled upon, but breathing was the problem, mine and his, he being this brand-new Tug now just beyond my fingertips, his eyes bulged and tongue swollen horrifically like his father’s had been, and it was clear to me that this strangulation—this one smack in front of me now—was done by the same goons who’d strangled Tom Corcoran, maybe wiseguys connected to The Nickster, and now that this truth was obvious to me, the rush of thoughts flying through me like a herd scared by thunder included one of the last things Tug had told me: “If this Douglas Sharp is innocent, we both probably owe him an apology.”

  And I couldn’t hide now from how I needed to make that apology on my own, how I alone needed to remind anyone who’d listen that accusation doesn’t mean guilt, how one of Tug’s last thoughts must have been that he was leaving a world where enmity was an odds-on favorite to defeat truth.

  Because one glance at Tug assured me there’d be no saving his life, since those goons had not only used wire on his neck just like they had on Tom’s, they’d also obviously snapped his spine while stuffing him completely in. He was a mess is what I’m saying—at first all I recognized were his lips and the uneven wear of the heels of his shoes—and what made the shock of it worse was I still felt this need to know if there was hope, if there was anything I, as the first one to find him, needed to do without pause. There was, when I saw his neck, this flash of compulsion in me to see if the wire had severed more than just skin, but I couldn’t look inside him like that, not in my state then—I could barely get myself to reach toward him. But when I did I took hold of a hand and pulled, as if I had the strength to yank him all the way out and straighten him into standing again on that meadow. The fingers in mine felt cool and limp and careless all the way into the meat of his palm, and it was probably then that I stopped kidding myself about my belief that departed souls speak through starlight—I mean, it was hitting me squarely that everyone knows any star’s light was sparked into being centuries ago, that maybe everything good I’d believed about my father had been lies piled up to protect me.

  Even so, I kept holding Tug’s hand and pulling, and something in me, the lover, I guess, must have kept clinging to the chance that your heart can stop beating yet your ears and brain can still work, because then there I was, whispering out loud, actually trying to communicate, but I screwed that up, too, since all I could manage was one word, and that word was “Baby.” And just after I said it I remembered him asking me never to call him that, so then there I was, wishing he’d been dead and gone long enough not to have minded, which then had me cussing myself out, meanly, almost viciously, using words adopted by pretty much only the most callous of gamblers—probably because there was no way I was set to say anything like good-bye.

  Epilogue

  “TEN MINUTES,” the guard said, and now here was Jasir, quickly stepping inside this small bright space yet just as quickly gone still, well held together across the table from his father.

  And here were those same skinny arms of Jasir’s, not folded like they’d been on that sidewalk in Brooklyn, no longer protecting him as they had then, just poised in wait at his sides, his back parallel to the door, his right hand behind him even after the door had clicked shut, his left adjusting his purple baseball cap, which was too big on him anyway.

  “That woman who just left—she your attorney?” he asked.

  “She’s an angel,” Deesh said.

  Jasir nodded. “I got eyes, man,” he said. “I could see she was fine.”

  “Not what I’m saying. She just came here to help. I mean, help get me the hell out of here.”

  “Really.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “How?”

  “Gonna testify that no way did I kill the jockey. ’Cause the killer offed another dude while I was in here.”

  And Jasir loosened up enough to move his arms, but only to set his hands on his hips, wrists now flexed but again gone still, as if he needed to steel himself to reconsider his prospects as Deesh’s son.

  Finally, he said, “You need more angels than her.”

  “No doubt, man,” Deesh said. “But it’s a start. You know how it goes, man: People scared, but as soon as they see it’s cool to step forward, they start stepping forward so much they form a line.”

  Jasir kept on standing, still like that.

  “And then a crowd,” Deesh said.

  “Yeah, but on TV they’re saying you’re set to plead guilty to keep your ass off death row.”

  Deesh sighed with his cheeks puffed out, now sure, with no more thought needed, that he would definitely plead innocent until the day he took his last breath—and he’d keep pleading innocent whether they put him on death row or not.

  He asked, “And you’re gonna believe them without asking me first?”

  And it was here, finally, that Jasir glared angrily, and, worse, he had turned pointedly away from Deesh, facing a corner of the small white ceiling.

  “Okay,” Deesh said. “Understandable.”

  And Jasir said nothing, just glared like that.

  And while Jasir took his time doing this, letting them both feel the room’s smallness and also its unrelenting brightness, Deesh tried to conjure things a father should discuss with a grown son, things like how, yeah, when you finally get down to it, you’ve got only yourself, so you might as well let yourself be your own best friend. Things like how fishing is just an excuse to miss the coziness of your home, but how, mostly, it’s the people you miss, and how after the people are gone, it’s the apologies you remember, theirs and yours both, and how maybe, more than anything, you shouldn’t be shy about forgiveness. How a room as private as this wasn’t a bad place at all for any abandoned son to let loose of his resentments.

  And with these things and more at the ready inside him, Deesh said, “I’m sorry, Jasir.”

  And there were Jasir’s fingertips, on his side of the small white table.

  “For what?” he said.

  “Jasir—”

  “Don’t call me that. Don’t call me that stupid-ass name. Fucking Courageous One. That is just bullshit.”

  And now Jasir was yelling about all sorts of things, starting with his belief that fame as the son of a killer was worse than not knowing who your dad was at all, letting Deesh hear how his words sounded when his harshness burst out. He was yelling at Deesh loud enough that the guard could possibly hear, certainly loud enough that Deesh figured saying he was sorry a second time was pointless and probably even a bad idea, because any brother knew that saying it even once could be damned near impossible, and that hearing it more than once was not what a brother lived for—a brother just wanted to be heard.

  So you had to just sit fo
r a while, with your newly grown-up son who was this ticked off. Because sitting with him without saying a thing was gold. It was letting him know you were there to absorb his shit in case he still needed to get more off his chest, and that meant more than pretty words because it said, Yeah, yeah, right, I messed up, but I’m staying here to respect you if nothing else.

  And Deesh’s sitting like this with this brother who was also his son meant doing what his own father had failed to do. It meant saying, We’re it—we’re in the same thing, and it was a lot, Deesh thought, like being part of the knot of brothers at the end of a fast break stopped by a hard foul, where there was always then arguing and finger-pointing and cussing and shouting, where every mind focused on whether or not what happened broke the rules, on who initiated contact and who needed to get tough, on who needed to quit being a prick who was just out there trying to knock guys down, on what, really, the latest rules said—but then, Deesh remembered, they would get back to the actual game, with the fouler and the guy who’d taken the hit wordless and back out there, everyone again trying to win to hold the court, again zipping no-look passes on breaks as freakishly as they could, and as they’d run it all melted away—all the anger and hurt, all the shock there was in yet again learning that muscle and bone and ego and skin were far more tender than you’d thought. There was always, Deesh remembered, something uplifting about this resumption of play, about these two wounded brothers having abandoned argument to continue on.