by John Smolens
“You’ll have to use my car, but I need it by one because I have errands to do.”
His mother turned and gazed hard at him. He lowered his head to the job of cutting his pancakes. “Well, I really need my own wheels,” he said. “I got a little saved up, so I’m going to stop by Arnie’s and see what he’s got for sale. I was thinking one of those downsize trucks.”
She crushed out her cigarette. “You’ll need a job if you’re going to go buying a truck. So you go see your father.”
“That what this is all about? Dad’s going to get me a job?”
She picked up her cigarettes, then seemed to think better of lighting another one so soon. “I’ll tell you one thing, Sean. I don’t know the whole story, but it’s fortunate that they gave you an honorable discharge. Otherwise he couldn’t help you.”
He was surprised that she had mentioned it at all. But then he realized that this was how she was different from his father. They would all ignore something, until his father would suddenly explode over it. But his mother would slowly, methodically chip away at it as though she were working on a piece of marble with a hammer and chisel.
“There’s nothing in my record,” he said. “They cut a deal. Because of this other guy—he’s from Minnesota but his old man’s got some kind of connections in Washington. They let us out on a medical discharge, so nobody came out looking bad in this, including the army. And that’s what’s most important. The one thing the army’s really afraid of is newspapers, CNN, and all that stuff.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” his mother asked.
“The army’s like everything else: It’s how it looks, not how it is.”
With resignation she began to work a cigarette out of the pack.
“This job,” he said. “Let me guess: summer cop.”
“Something wrong with that?”
“I’m not sure I’m ready to put on another uniform.”
Now his mother came to the kitchen table and placed her hands on the back of the chair across from him. “You go down there, Sean, and you talk to him.”
“I’ll be standing out there in the village in July, writing parking tickets and—”
“Don’t.” She raised her bony hand and slapped the top of the table. “Don’t start that. Hear?”
POLICE CHIEF BUZZ GAGNON leaned back behind his desk and rubbed his enormous belly. His blue shirt was so taut it might have been a balloon. “Bet you’re a little disoriented,” he said, “just getting back from Italy, huh?”
“Everything’s in English,” Sean said. “Street signs, everything. Amazing.”
Buzz dropped his head back and laughed, revealing gold in his molars. Then he looked at Sean’s father and actually winked. “Those Italian girls, Sean, they as hot as they look in the movies?”
“You betcha,” Sean said, kissing his fingertips. “Belle donne de Italia.”
“Sophia Loren,” Buzz nearly shouted. “I think the first time I had a tingling in my pecker was when I saw her in a movie. That’s back when films were in black and white, Sean, long time ago.” Suddenly he rested his forearms on his desk. “But it was that Gina Lollobrigida that really got to me. I don’t know what it was about her, but she just looked, you know, ready.”
Sean glanced at his father, who was sort of smiling. It was the porcelain smile his father reserved for the captain, kind of up hard at the corners of the mouth, which brought out a little dimple in his chin.
“I’ll tell you the truth,” Gagnon whispered in total earnest. “When they were putting me under for my double bypass last year? You think your life flashes before your eyes—your wife, your kids, your dog, whatever.” He shook his head solemnly. “All the way down to zero I was seeing Gina. She was wearing this low-cut dress, kinda snug at the hips? Cripes, I thought, I deserve to die!” Laughing, he leaned back again, causing his chair to creak dangerously. His face and his bald dome turned crimson so quickly that Sean wondered if the man was going to have another heart attack right there. When he caught his breath, he looked at Sean’s father and said, “Sure, Frank, let’s put him on days to start.”
Sean’s father stood up immediately. “Fine,” he said, heading for the captain’s door. He took Sean by the upper arm and began to usher him out of the room.
“So tell me,” Buzz said, just as Sean had his hand on the doorknob. “You were in for, what, about a year? Discharged a little early?”
“’Fraid so,” Sean’s father said. He nodded toward the file folder he’d placed on the desk. “It’s all there, Buzz. Medical reports, everything.”
“You didn’t catch something over there?” Buzz asked.
Sean waited, expecting his father to say something. The moment hung there, but the captain smiled right through it. “Nah,” Sean said finally. “Nothing the army doctors couldn’t fix.”
Gagnon clapped his hands together once and laughed again.
Sean’s father smiled, too, and it was at that moment that Sean wanted to say something in the worst way, something that would break through the bullshit. But his father reached past him, yanked open the door, and gave his shoulder a little push.
4
THERE WERE EIGHT VEHICLES for sale at Superior Gas & Lube. Arnie Frick was up-front about all of them. He and Sean had graduated from high school together, and with Arnie nothing seemed to have changed, except he’d moved out of his parents’ house and now lived in the apartment above the gas station. And he’d grown a brown mustache that curled right into his mouth.
“Most of these are junk,” Arnie said as they crossed the lot. Overhead a row of red, white, and blue plastic flags snapped in the wind. “The Bronco needs brakes and ball joints, the clutch in the Ford pickup won’t last to the end of the year. This Subaru’s in good shape, if you like that sort of thing.” He stopped at the end of the row, in front of a white Chevy pickup. Sean took a walk around it. The faded bumper sticker on the tailgate read GUN CONTROL MEANS USING BOTH HANDS. “It’s clean,” Arnie said. “This one’s really clean.”
They got in the cab, Sean behind the wheel. He turned the key and it started right up. Sounded smooth. He put it in gear, popped the clutch, and laid a little rubber as he turned out into Ottawa Street. They drove toward Petit Marais. Arnie took out a pack of Marlboros and removed a tightly rolled joint. His hands were grimy from working on engines.
“Don’t light that up in here,” Sean said. “I buy this, my dad’ll smell it right off.”
Arnie tucked the joint back in the pack of cigarettes. “Jack wants twenty-five hundred for it, but I know he’ll take two. You got that?”
Sean didn’t answer. They were out of high school now and Arnie called his old man Jack. Sean had never even thought of calling his father by his first name. He downshifted as they went into a tight curve, then floored it on the straight. He ran it up to seventy-five and fifth gear, then eased up. “What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing. I’d buy it if I had the dough. It could use tires maybe. We can work them into the deal.”
“Put some big ones on there?” Sean asked.
“Yeah, it’ll really look cool.” Arnie turned on the radio. “Good speakers, too.” Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower” was on. He turned it up until the end of the song, then lowered the volume. “So how are those Italian girls?”
“Unbelievable.”
“Yeah, really?”
“Do anything you want.”
“Anything?”
“Long as you pay for it.”
Arnie stared out the windshield, deep in thought. “Not a lot of girls from our class still around. ’Cept a few that got kids. Some of them are even married.”
Sean wanted to ask about Hannah, but he let it go.
MARTIN AND PEARLY walked around the house while a fine mist drifted in off Lake Superior. They were related, second or third cousins through their mothers. The last time Pearly had seen Martin was at least a dozen years ago at a family gathering in Whitefish Harbor. Martin was a Chic
ago relative and usually they were easy to lose track of, but not Martin; he’d come to stay, and had bought the old Pence house. And he wanted Pearly’s opinion.
Pearly flicked his cigarette into the weeds and followed his cousin through the back door. In the kitchen he raised his head and took a long, deep breath—he might have been savoring a fine wine. He exhaled slowly. “Moldy wallpaper, powder post beetle, dry rot, and dead animals.”
“Aunt Jane says you’re the last of a breed of carpenter, the kind that works with a twelve-point handsaw, a block plane, and a folding rule.”
“I didn’t think she cared for me.”
“So what do you think about this place?”
“Might be wise to torch it and start from scratch.”
“I don’t want to do that.”
“Good. You’re a fool, but good. Maybe it runs in the family?”
“Guess so.”
“You’re gonna need help.”
“You offering?” Martin said. “I don’t know that I can afford you.”
“I got to tell you something. Aunt Jane called me from Florida. She wants me to send the bills for my labor down to her.”
“She does? Why?”
Pearly shrugged. “Maybe we really are a family of fools? Between the mortgage and the materials, you’re going to eat up that inheritance quick. With the two of us working you might have a chance to fix this place up.”
“I want to have an apartment on each floor,” Martin said. “I’ll live here on the first floor and rent the second and third.”
“What you need first is something to get rid of the cats, and that smell.”
“I aired the place out yesterday, but it could be weeks before it’ll be inhabitable.”
They went to the front door, which was swollen in its jambs. Together they yanked it open, and cool, damp lake air drifted into the hallway.
Pearly walked down the brick steps and crossed the front yard to the sidewalk. “Secret potion,” he said, leaning into the bed of his Datsun truck. Amid the toolboxes were two white plastic bottles of Clorox. “It’ll take several doses over a few days, but once this stuff soaks into those old floorboards, you’ll be able to breathe in that house again. And whatever cats are still alive in there will clear out pronto.” He handed Martin one bottle, then grabbed the other. Starting toward the house, he said, “Don’t worry, I kept the receipt.”
In the front hall Pearly removed the cap from the bottle and walked down toward the kitchen, sprinkling Clorox on the floor. Martin did the same, working his way into the living room.
“This is not work to be done on an empty stomach,” Pearly said.
“Absolutely.”
“You still like cudighi?”
“Cudighi!” Martin’s voice echoed through the rooms. “The U.P.’s the only place I’ve ever had it—the only place anybody’s ever heard of it—and it was always one of the main reasons for coming here to Aunt Jane’s. They still make them at the Hiawatha Diner, don’t they?”
“Best Italian sausage this side of Ishpeming,” Pearly said, and Martin laughed. “You just bought this house so you can spring for the cudighi sandwiches.”
HANNAH GOT OFF the school bus and walked uphill from the village. It was drizzling and she had the hood of her rain slicker up over her hair. By the end of the first block she realized the vehicle approaching from behind was not stopping, was not turning, but was just crawling along behind her. She glanced over her shoulder once, looking past the edge of the yellow hood; it was a white pickup, ten yards back. She looked forward and kept climbing the hill. There was one group of boys who cruised Whitefish Harbor in a van, but she didn’t recognize this white truck. When she walked faster it kept pace.
The houses above the village were old, some with clapboard, asbestos, or aluminum siding, many with their front doors opening right onto the buckled concrete sidewalk. When Hannah reached the end of the block, she paused, and the truck stopped behind her. She turned around but was unable to see through the reflection of the windshield, the wipers slapping back and forth.
The truck began to move forward, a front tire rubbing against the curb, and through the rain-streaked window she could see Sean sitting behind the wheel. At first she thought he was in a military uniform, but then she realized that it was a policeman’s hat he was wearing. He rolled down the window a few inches and said, “It’s really starting to come down. Want a lift home?”
It was beginning to pour. “What are you doing here?”
“Well, technically, I’m on duty for another half hour or so, but with this weather there’s not a lot of parking tickets for a summer cop to write. It’s too early in the season—tourists won’t show up till after Memorial Day.” With his hair shaved close to his head, he looked innocent, even pure. His jaw seemed beefier, but his mouth still did this little thing at the corners that always suggested that he was sharing a private joke with her. “Come on,” he said. “You’re getting drenched.”
This was true; her slicker was worthless and she was beginning to shiver. She went around the front of the truck and got in the cab. “You’re supposed to be somewhere in Italy, aren’t you?” She pushed the hood back and wiped wet hair off her face.
“Came home early.” Sean let out the clutch and the truck moved slowly up the hill.
“Why?”
He smiled. “Missed this weather, so I got discharged.” He was heavier and there was something about the way his shoulders and arms moved under his pale blue shirt that suggested he’d been working out, perhaps lifting weights. “So now I’m what I never wanted to be: my father’s son.” His laugh was strange, eerie, and she thought of the sound some dogs make when they’re startled—a high-pitched yip. “But after the army my mother’s cooking seems better than it used to be,” he added. “So it sort of evens out, you know?”
Hannah’s fingers gripped the door handle. The rain was now pounding on the roof of the cab. “How did you get discharged early?” she asked.
“What?” He nearly had to shout.
“You were discharged early. You arrange that yourself? Or your parents do that for you, too?”
“Look, I’m home,” he said. “I was in nearly a year and now I’m back.” He pulled over under a maple tree a block from her house. Beneath the canopy of leaves the rain wasn’t as loud on the roof. “I know—” he began, but then stopped. He wasn’t shouting now. He leaned toward her and spoke softly. “I know last year was hard for you, and I wish—I’m sorry about what happened. I really am. It’s just that I . . .” His lower lip was actually quivering, and it was for real. His eyes were misting up. “What do you want me to say, Hannah? Tell me.”
She yanked the door handle, hurting her finger. The door opened and she climbed out. As she started walking quickly away from the truck, she looked down and saw that she’d broken the fingernail on her middle finger and it was bleeding. She crossed the street and when she was out from under the tree the rain pounded on her skull. She didn’t bother with the hood but just broke into a run toward her house.
5
“I SAW HER,” Sean said to Arnie.
They were at the Portage. Sally was working the bar and she probably knew they were underage, but she left them alone as long as they behaved and stayed near the back door.
Sean waited but Arnie didn’t say anything.
“She was walking home in the rain. She looked real good.”
“Christ,” Arnie said.
“What?”
“You stupid or what? You fool around with her, she gets knocked up, the parents get all involved, and you end up in boot camp. Besides . . .” Arnie sucked foam off his mustache, then said, “Besides, she’s seeing some guy.”
“What guy?”
“Dunno. He’s older. Hear he’s from Chicago. They come into the station for gas sometimes. He has this old Mercedes that he lets her drive. I hear he’s bought that old house they were going to knock down. His name’s Martin something.”
“How
much older?”
“Thirty, maybe. Hard to tell ’cause he’s got this shaved-head thing going for him.”
The next day Sean drove by the house. An old Mercedes and Pearly Blankenship’s rusty Datsun were parked out front. The sound of a hammer and the whine of a power saw came from inside the house. Piles of rubble and scrap wood filled the yard. Sean drove by several days in a row. He never saw anyone. He just heard them at work.
It was easier to see Hannah. He knew her routine. In the morning she walked from her house, down through the village to the school bus stop. And about three-thirty in the afternoon she got off the bus and walked home. He remembered how much she liked to walk. The first thing he had noticed about her was her stride when she came into study hall late. She handed Mr. Talbot a hall pass, then walked up the second aisle to her desk. From the back of the room Sean could see that every boy in the room had looked up to watch her. It was a warm fall afternoon, Indian summer, and she was wearing a white blouse and a long orange-and-yellow skirt. The skirt was an Indian-type thing that wrapped snuggly around her hips, which moved with ease beneath the fabric. Some girls developed hips and breasts quickly and they walked awkwardly, as though they didn’t know how to control everything. But Hannah strode gracefully to her seat, and when she sat down it seemed to be a relief to the boys in the room.
Late one afternoon, when he was driving back to the police station at the end of his shift, he saw her on the beach at Petit Marais. She was about fifty yards ahead of him, but he recognized her walk immediately. She carried a burlap sack over one shoulder and leaned forward to balance its weight on her back. He knew she was collecting stones, which she sold to Althea Briggs, the old woman who ran a secondhand shop in the village. He got out of the cruiser and followed, staying up on the road, where he was concealed by bushes and trees. After about a half-mile she headed up the beach and crossed the road. She went up a short drive and into the front door of a small cabin. He had no doubt that this was where Martin from Chicago lived.
So he started driving by both the old house and the cabin.