by John Smolens
“Where?”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
“What?”
“She in?”
“Sleeping. She’s wiped out. We both are.”
“Ah.” Buzz leaned back slightly. “I can imagine.”
“When she wakes, we’ll come pick it up.”
“Will you now?”
“What’re you saying, Buzz?”
“We’re holding the car.”
“I see.”
“Lot of things in it. Tools with your initials. Lots of your things.”
“So?”
“So we’re going to hold the car and look it over good.”
“You mean like fingerprints?”
“Sure. The crime lab in Marquette is sending a tech guy out.”
“I get it. And blood, and hair, and anything else they can find to pin it on me.”
Buzz seemed uncomfortable and he ran a hand along the side of his neck. “Like I said, Pearly, we’re going to look it over.”
“Jesus. Buzz. You really don’t think—”
Buzz raised the hand off his neck and showed his palm as though he were directing traffic. “I’m just telling you where we’re at with this thing, that’s all.” He had already started down the brick steps toward his car.
Pearly went back in the house and found Hannah standing at the far end of the front hallway. She was in her bathrobe and she still looked half asleep.
“You hear all that?” he asked.
“Enough,” she said. “It’s crazy. What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. Around here they’re the law.”
They stood a long time without speaking.
“I want to get back to the hospital,” she said finally.
“I know. Take my truck.”
“It’s not just that. I don’t know if I can stay here, alone.”
“Why don’t you go back to your mother’s for now.”
“What about you? Could you stay here?” She shook her head. “Guess that wouldn’t look too good.”
“I suppose not.” Pearly started walking up the front stairs.
Hannah came down the hall and leaned against the large oak newel post. “Amazing, they got us worrying about how we look.”
He stopped and ran his hand along the banister. “Call me from the hospital and let me know how he’s doing. I’ll stay here for now. I’m better off doing something that resembles work. Keeps me from thinking.”
She smiled. “You look like shit.”
“I know. People tell me that a lot. Believe me, I know.”
“I must, too.”
“No, you don’t. You look like you just woke up. On you it looks real good, too.”
She reached up and put her hand over his, squeezing tightly, then she let go and walked down the hall, closing the apartment door behind her.
It was like rising to the surface, drifting upward through water, until suddenly there’s air.
There is absolute darkness.
Nothing is certain. Everything seems distant.
Sometimes there is awareness of breathing.
Sometimes there is pain.
Sometimes there are sounds. Footsteps on a linoleum floor. The sigh of a door closing. A telephone ringing.
There is no sense of time.
You drift up. You sink back down.
The state of suspension is so light you aren’t even aware of your body until a hand touches your arm. Your bicep is wrapped in something cool that expands and tightens, then releases slowly, followed by the scratchy ripping sound.
Or your feet are hot and sweaty because they seem to be covered with something that compresses periodically, rhythmically, accompanied by psssh.
Or you are prodded. Sometimes a needle slipping into a vein. Sometimes a catheter.
One voice is familiar. Hers. But it recedes and you drift back down.
SEAN WAS TAKING a piss when he saw from the bathroom window his mother’s car pull into the lot beside the garage. He went outside and down the wooden stairs. His mother was wearing her lime-green pantsuit and she was unsteady on her feet.
“What’re you doing here?” he said.
Her hand floated up, found her sunglasses, which she began to remove; then she dropped her arm.
“You’re blasted,” he said.
“I am not.”
“It’s not quite five and you’re well on your way. You haven’t even reached your yardarm, whatever that means. I never knew what that meant.”
“It’s a nautical term.” She took a little sidestep and caught her balance. “Has to do with the sun and the ship—don’t know, don’t ask me. I was thinking about dinner.”
“Fine.” He held out his hand. “If I drive.”
She surrendered the keys, and as she made her way around to the passenger door, she kept one hand on the car at all times.
They went to the Harborview because in the summer his mother liked to go where the tourists dined, her logic being that if you lived in some berg the tourists flocked to for a few months in the summer, you might as well eat with the same view they do—plus, she had all winter to eat in restaurants frequented by locals. She ordered a vodka tonic; he got a white Russian, thinking the milk would settle his stomach. When she finally removed her sunglasses, he could see that she’d been crying.
“What?” he said.
“It’s your father.” Placing a fist under her chin, she took a moment to control the quiver in her mouth. “He got a call from Dan Schofield last night. It won’t be official until after the next town council meeting, but they’re going to suspend him. He has no real support on that council and they’re going to suspend him and they’re going to do everything they can to make sure he doesn’t get his job back.”
“All because they hired me.”
“This has been a long time coming. It’s—it’s just politics, local politics—somebody always wanting to have a say, wield a little power.” She took a long drink of her vodka tonic, which seemed to fuel her courage. “It’s that bitch and her damn newspaper.”
“Why don’t they suspend Buzz Gagnon, too? He’s chief. He does the hiring.”
“Oh no. Buzz will never hang for this. He’ll tell them that Frank deceived him, didn’t tell him about any of this Italy business. No, Buzz will play this close, but in the end he really wants to see your father out. Be a lot better to bring in some new guy, someone green who isn’t going to challenge him. This’ll insure that Buzz stays captain for a long time, believe me.”
“Where is Dad?”
“I don’t know.” She put on her sunglasses and turned her head toward the harbor. The lime color of her blouse was so summer-cheerful she might have passed for a tourist. Her hands fidgeted in her purse for her pack of cigarettes. “Before he blew out of the house, he was saying he’d quit before they suspended him.” When she got her cigarette lit, she glared across the dining room and said, “You’d think we could get some service here.”
Ever since he could remember, his mother turned regal—that’s what his father called it—when they were in a restaurant. The service was either too slow, or the lettuce was limp, or the soup needed to be hotter. She often tried to use such flaws as leverage for a reduction of the bill.
“He can’t afford to quit, can he?”
“Of course he can’t.” Her voice quavered and it caught the attention of their waitress. When she came to their table, his mother said, “Why don’t you tell me about today’s specials before they’re tomorrow’s leftovers.”
HANNAH CALLED PEARLY from the hospital after ten. She didn’t sound like a nineteen-year-old. Some hard realizations had begun to settle in. This would be her voice for years to come, a woman’s voice, tender, soft, but weighted with worry. She wanted to stay the night in Martin’s room, but her mother insisted that she come home. Pearly told her that was the best thing to do. He didn’t need the truck; he could stay at Martin’s house.
She said, “There’s a lot—a lot o
f details to this. . . .”
“I know: hospital logistics.”
“Keeps your mind off other stuff,” she said. “Mom can follow me over there tomorrow morning so I can drop off your truck, okay? Then I’ll ride to the hospital with her.”
“That’s fine,” he said.
“You find enough to eat?” she said. “In the refrigerator there’s—”
“Who do you think you’re talking to? I found the beer,” he said, which got her to laugh briefly. “And I made a meat-loaf sandwich, which was excellent, by the way.”
“You think they’ll release Martin’s car tomorrow?”
“I don’t know. I’m not counting on it.”
“What do you think they’re going to find?”
“Aside from some of my tools?” he said. “Hair. Actually, both yours and mine . . .”
“But they’re really looking for blood, Martin’s blood.”
“Right.”
After a moment, she said, “If they looked in Sean’s truck—if you could get them to look—they might find it. But it’s too late, now that he’s washed it.”
“Exactly,” Pearly said. “Get some rest. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
After they hung up, he went out into the backyard. In July it stayed light until eleven—the U.P. is so far north, and Whitefish Harbor was near the western edge of the Eastern Time Zone. For several weeks in summer the long days seem just compensation for months of brutally short, dark winter days. Then, too, there was something about the quality of light, the way it lingered above Lake Superior. That broad plane of blue held the last light of day well after sunset. He stood at the edge of the woods, looking down through the trees until the horizon no longer separated lake and sky.
Darkness, he realized, was all Martin had right now.
Yet Pearly envied him.
20
HANNAH WAS BACK in Martin’s hospital room by eight o’clock the next morning. He seemed not to have moved at all during the night, lying on his back, his eyes closed. She avoided looking at the tubes that ran from his arm to the machines. Down the hall she could hear televisions in other patients’ rooms. She got up and shut the door, then pulled the chair up close to his bed. His head was wrapped in bandages. She leaned over him, bringing her face so close to his that she could hear and feel his shallow breathing, and she placed her hands on his cheeks. His skin was stubbled and cool; slowly it warmed until she could no longer feel the difference between her hands and his face.
For the first time last night, she’d tried some of her mother’s Scotch. Her mother poured them, and Hannah winced at its flavor and heat. But when her mother got up after her second and said, “Tonight I’m going to have one more,” Hannah held out her empty glass.
When her mother returned with fresh drinks, she said, “The fact is all these tests don’t tell us anything for certain.”
Hannah took a sip and nodded. “He’ll come out of it.”
“Let’s hope so,” her mother said, leaning back into her recliner. “There’s brain activity. He’s not in a coma, but it may take time for him to—look, sometimes they come in and out of it.”
“If he stays like this, they wouldn’t unplug him eventually?”
“No,” her mother said. “He’s not a vegetable. People these days make living wills, which usually say if it’s a choice between being a vegetable and dead, they want you to pull the plug.”
“If it were me, I would,” Hannah said. But after a moment, and another sip of Scotch, she added, “But I don’t know if I could make that decision for someone else—for Martin, or for you.”
“Well, it wouldn’t be your decision in Martin’s case. You’re not family yet, honey.” Then she lowered her gaze from the ceiling. “I, on the other hand, am family, and I have it clearly written that you are to pull the plug under certain circumstances.”
“You never told me.”
“You never asked.”
Hannah took another sip. “What now?”
“That is the question I ask myself every day,” her mother said to the ceiling. “More tests. And we wait. That’s all you can do.”
ARNIE OPENED THE STATION at seven and he usually came up to the apartment around ten in the morning. Sean was just waking up when Arnie was making a sandwich. “You hear what they’re doing to your old man?” he said from the kitchenette.
“Yeah.”
“A couple guys stopped at the pumps this morning and wanted me to let you know that he didn’t show for work today. Called in sick.”
“He probably has about eight months of sick leave stored up.”
“They’re speculating he’ll call in sick until the town council makes it official,” Arnie said. “What do think?”
“I don’t know. But it’s killing my mother.” Sean climbed out of the sleeping bag, went into the bathroom, and turned on the shower. “I got to see my lawyer today. Remember, I’m the guy who started all this by breaking a goddamned headlight.”
“It sounds like it really started in Italy.”
“If you want to go that route, then take it back to the first time I ever laid eyes on Hannah’s ass.”
Arnie came to the bathroom door. He was eating another one of his liverwurst-and-onion sandwiches. “Tell me something,” he said. “That girl in Italy. How’d you find her? She just happen to look that way? Or you have her make herself look like Hannah?”
“Listen,” Sean said, “you got to eat something else for lunch. The smell of that thing, it’s an insult.”
“You want an insult? Your mother cuts in line at the post office.” Arnie took a big bite out of his sandwich and grinned as he chewed.
Sean closed the bathroom door.
THERE WEREN’T MANY successful businesses in Whitefish Harbor. Few retail stores other than Deitz Hardware, which sold a little bit of everything like a general store, remained open through the winter months. Larsen’s Funeral Home, of course, did a steady year-round business. And Nault & Nault Law, but they didn’t surround themselves with the usual trappings of the legal profession. No secretary, no tony waiting room full of large potted plants. Father and son shared one long room on the first floor of an old sandstone building two doors down from the Portage. Their desks were not twelve feet apart, and only a six-foot-high partition, which Pearly had built, gave their clients a sense of privacy.
When Pearly walked through the door, only Owen III’s desk was visible in front of the partition.
“Funny, I was going to call you,” Owen said. “We’re thinking of putting a door through that wall between the den and living room.”
Pearly sat in one of the two imitation-leather chairs in front of the desk.
A voice—Sean’s—came from the other side of the partition. He said to Owen’s father, “I still don’t see why I can’t just pay for the frigging headlight. I mean, we’re talking about a twelve-dollar item down at NAPA.”
Owen’s father said, “Reimbursement isn’t the point.”
Pearly hesitated, but then said to Owen, “I think I might be getting arrested soon.”
There was silence on the other side of the partition.
Owen’s elbows were propped on the armrests of his chair as he fidgeted with the large silver ring on his right hand. “What, you’re planning on going on a bender tonight? Maybe you want to abscond with another flagpole?” His eyebrows jumped playfully. “Are there any flagpoles left in Whitefish Harbor?”
“This is a little different.” Pearly cleared his throat. “You hear about Martin Reed?”
“Yeah, at the Hiawatha they were saying something about him going to the hospital. What, he take a fall over at that Bob Vila Special you guys been working on?”
“Someone tried to beat his brains out. I’m going to get arrested for it.”
“Jesus, Pearly, this is a little out of your league. Why you?”
“Because they’re going over Martin’s car for evidence.”
Owen folded his hands on the desk.
“But I didn’t do it,” Pearly said. “Sean Colby did.”
There was movement on the other side of the partition. Owen’s father said to Sean, “You stay put.” Then he came into view behind and to his son’s left. His sport coat was powder blue. “Can you prove that?” he asked Pearly.
“Probably not, now that he’s cleaned out his truck thoroughly.”
There was the scrape of chair legs. Pearly turned and saw Sean behind him at the far end of the partition. “What’re you talking about?” Sean said.
“Martin came to the gas station and you two went somewhere in your truck,” Pearly said, getting to his feet. “What’d you use on his skull? He was nearly dead when you dumped him in the driveway at his house.”
Owen’s father began to speak, but it was too late. Sean rushed Pearly and they both landed on young Owen’s desk. Pearly’s arm felt numb from the impact, and Sean punched him in the face several times. Both Naults were shouting as Sean and Pearly rolled off the desk and onto the floor. Pearly landed on top and got to his knees. Sean took another swing at his head but missed. Pearly punched him once in the stomach, and he turned onto his side.
Pearly stood up and young Owen pushed him back around the desk. Both he and his father were shouting at each other.
“Get that one out of here!”
“No, you get yours out of here!”
Owen III kept shoving Pearly in the direction of the front door. Sean was sitting up, holding his stomach. The old man was pointing his finger at Pearly, still shouting.
Until that moment, Pearly never realized that he wore a toupee—it had come loose and slid down over his ear.
When they were outside, Owen III took Pearly’s arm and guided him down the sidewalk. “Jesus, Pearly—what the hell was that?”
He opened the door to the Portage, ushered Pearly inside, and sat him down in the nearest booth. Everyone sitting along the bar turned and watched them with suspicion, curiosity, and, in some cases, amusement, then went back to their drinks and cigarettes.
When he opened his eyes, two women were staring down at him. The oblong of light above them in the ceiling hurt his eyes. They appeared to be mother and daughter, and the girl was crying and smiling at the same time. The mother wore a yellow blouse with little cats on it, and she was watching so carefully, he sensed he was in some kind of trouble.