Fire Point

by John Smolens

  “She said you hated artichokes but she didn’t care anymore, so she cooked one.”

  “That’s all?”

  “It was enough. She’s the way she is because of you. So am I.” There was a book of matches on the table, which Sean picked up. He struck one match and watched it burn down to his fingertips before waving it out and dropping it in the ashtray.

  “Why’d you come looking for me?” his father said. Sean didn’t answer. “You come to your father for advice? You picked a fine time. You want advice, I’ll give it to you. Are you listening?” Sean nodded. “Don’t do anything. Hear me? Don’t tell your mother you found me.” His father leaned forward and said softly, “And don’t do anything.”

  Sean got up from the table suddenly. “Advice? You been telling me what to do my whole life.” He put his hands in the pockets of his jacket.

  “Somebody’s got to.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Listen,” his father said, “just forget what I said earlier. Don’t do anything.”

  “I’ll tell you what I won’t do. I won’t tell Mom I saw you.” He started to walk toward the door but stopped. “No, you were right earlier. It’s the first good advice you’ve given me.” His father watched him but then looked away. “That’s right, you might regret it.”

  Sean went outside, where Mary Threefoot was trying to light another cigarette.

  “Soggy matches,” she said. “This rain.”

  He realized he had the book of matches in his pocket. He took it out and lit her cigarette for her. She lowered her eyes as she leaned toward him and drew on the cigarette.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “Sure. Need these?”

  “No. I have matches.”

  For some reason he just stood there. Her gaze wouldn’t let him go. Then he said, “Okay, then.” He stepped out from under the awning, hunching his shoulders as cold water hit the back of his neck.

  25

  A WOMAN PEARLY did a job for years ago had asked him what he thought about while pounding all those nails into her deck. He didn’t know how to answer. You pound a nail, you’re thinking about hitting it square, you’re thinking ahead to the next nail, the next measurement, the next board you need to cut. You think about your work. But it’s work that requires repetition, which he’d come to appreciate. At certain times you get into the rhythm of the work and you forget you’re doing it. And your mind wanders. He thought about things he’d read. He thought about things in the past. It all just comes up out of nowhere and sometimes his thoughts got in a comfortable groove. He liked it in there, his mind. Once, years ago, an old carpenter he worked with got up off his knees after spending a half hour nailing down subflooring, and he said, “Well, that was a good movie.” Pearly knew exactly what he meant.

  He spent the afternoon cutting and nailing the last of the trim in the second- and third-floor hallways, quarter-round molding, which was often called shoe. It was a final detail that was fussy and time-consuming. Nobody except a carpenter really noticed shoe, but if it wasn’t there, everybody would know something was missing.

  When he was putting the last piece in beneath the window at the top of the third-floor stairs, he heard tires out on the wet road. Raising his head, he looked over the windowsill and saw Sean’s white truck pass the house—it slowed down briefly, then accelerated as it went into the curve. Pearly sat back on his haunches, listening to the rain beat against the glass. Hannah was right. He would come to this house again.

  A door opened down on the first floor. “Pearly?” Martin called.

  “Up here.” He finished nailing the strip of shoe.

  Martin climbed the stairs. Since he’d returned from the hospital, there was something plodding in his step, and by the time he reached the third floor, he was breathing heavily. He sat on the top of the stairs and caught his breath, watching Pearly sink the nails with a punch.

  “See that truck, that white truck?” Martin asked.

  “What about it?”

  “It was Sean.”

  “I’m afraid it was.”

  Martin was running his fingers over a knot in a floorboard. “I remember everything.” His voice sounded like it used to except it was deeper, slower. “I remember the whole thing now, Pearly. You know she’s scared, really scared.”

  Pearly hesitated, then nodded.

  “He’s going to come back. She knows it, you know it, and I know it. She talked to me about going to the police.”

  “Is that what you want to do, go to Buzz Gagnon and tell him you remember?”

  “No. That won’t do anything.” Martin took his hand off the floor. “I’m feeling better, I really am. I still get tired, and there’s often the headache. But I’m okay now.”

  “That’s good, Martin.”

  “We got to do something.” He raised his head. His eyes were bright, alert.

  “I’m afraid you’re right.” Pearly got to his feet.

  Martin stood up, too. “What? What are we going to do?”

  Pearly untied his nail pouch and put it on the windowsill with his hammer.

  “What are we going to do, Pearly?”

  “Well, I think it might help if I stayed here at night for a while.” He knew Martin was staring at him, but he continued to look out at the rain as though what he had just said was of little consequence. “I have a roll-away cot I can sleep on. I’ll go get it, grab a bite to eat, and be back here by nine. I won’t set the cot up in your apartment, but near—over on the other side of the first floor.”

  “Then what do we do?” Martin asked.

  “The only thing we can do. We just wait.”

  SALLY WAS WORKING the bar at the Portage that night. Pearly sat down at the far end under the wineglass rack, which he had built several winters ago, using some very nice bird’s-eye maple that had been sitting in a guy’s attic for decades. They had all-you-can-eat barbecue spare ribs on special, and he got his money’s worth. It was a quiet night, late summer, the lull before Labor Day weekend. Over the next month Whitefish Harbor would shift into off-season, a subtle transition that takes years of observation to recognize, not to mention to fully appreciate. Sometime around mid-February, there are brutally cold days where absolutely nothing seems to happen except that snow accumulates, and it has a kind of perfection about it.

  Sally brought another beer and they lit fresh cigarettes. She was keeping her glass of red wine under the bar down at this end and she sipped it as she checked the dozen or so customers spread around in the booths. Her hair was a light strawberry due to the sun, and the skin between collarbone and cleavage was pink and freckled.

  Her son, Jason, came in, wearing his American Legion baseball uniform. He sat down at Pearly’s end of the bar and drank a Coke quickly, then asked for his mother’s car keys, saying he needed to give some of his teammates a ride home.

  “How you do this afternoon?” Pearly asked.

  “Split a doubleheader with Manistique.” Jason was in a hurry, of course. He stood up, pure sinew and taut muscle. Even his tanned jaw seemed to flex. “Went five for nine.”

  “Sign him up,” Pearly said.

  Jason’s glance suggested that he would not end up like Pearly, who was just another regular sitting in the bar where his mother worked. “I’ll bet you played when you were young, right?” he said. “And you’re dying to tell me something like you had a pretty good arm.”

  “Guess I don’t have to bother now, eh?”

  Jason nodded, almost gratefully. Sally handed him the keys and he asked what was really on his mind: “You need me to come back with the car?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m all set.”

  “Okay,” he said, getting off his stool. “See ya, Pearly.”

  “Slugger.”

  They watched him walk up the length of the bar and out the door. “They get antsy by August,” she said. She took a drag on her cigarette before crushing it out. “Maybe he’s starting to wise up. He’s not speaking to his father no
w. Refuses to go see him in Newberry.”

  She took another look toward the booths to be sure everyone was happy, then leaned her forearms on the bar. Her fingers toyed with Pearly’s knuckles. “Could use a lift home after last call.”

  “This must mean summer’s officially over.”

  “I guess so.” She smiled as though the joke was on her. “No more convertibles.”

  “How ’bout I take a rain check?” he said.

  “Got your own summer romance to wrap up before Labor Day?”

  “Nothing like that, I’m afraid. Just a little obligation later tonight.”

  “I never thought of you as a guy with obligations, Pearly.”

  “It’s based on friendship—Platonic love, at best.”

  “Maybe you could come over for dinner sometime this week?”

  “I think that’s the first time you’ve ever asked me to your place—for dinner.”

  “Could be it’s time I did?” In the dim subterranean light of the bar her eyes were large, bright, and liquid. Her mouth seemed firm with conviction, or perhaps it was acceptance—it was hard to tell. “Haven’t seen much of each other lately, not since that hot spell back in June.”

  “We rarely do during the summer,” he said.

  Her expression changed; it was neither conviction nor acceptance but something Pearly couldn’t name. “I know,” she said. “But there are only so many summers. Maybe next year things’ll be different.” For a moment she looked sad, as only a woman who is approaching a certain age can look. Pearly considered it an offering. “But anyway, we’ll have dinner soon. You, me, and Slugger.”

  “Why not?” he said.

  A couple got up out of a booth and came over to pay their bill. Sally hadn’t let go of Pearly’s fingers yet. She leaned across the bar and kissed him gently on the lips, and smiled as she withdrew.

  He finished his beer and went out the back door to the parking lot, walking past his truck and down to the fishing shacks by the water. Sunset was earlier every night now. Out in the harbor he could hear the gentle lapping of water against the invisible hulls of moored boats. He watched the darkness and listened. The dark seemed complete and indifferent. It was better than nothing at all.

  SEAN DECIDED ON a gun. He had the perfect gun in mind.

  He went home after eight o’clock, when he was sure his mother would have left for her bridge game. His father kept his guns—three pistols, two rifles, and a shotgun—in a cabinet in the bedroom, but they were registered and the reinforced oak door was locked. Instead, Sean went to the shelves above the workbench in the basement, where there were several toolboxes, each marked with a piece of tape: saw, saws-all, router, drill #1, drill #2. They were all metal boxes except for the one wooden box, marked saw. He set it on the workbench and opened the lid. Years ago his mother had mistakenly backed her car over the original box—she had a long history of crushing things with the car—and his father had built this wooden box as a replacement. By chance Sean had discovered its other purpose.

  He removed the Milwaukee circular saw, which fit into a false plywood floor with a wide slot for the blade. Then he put his hand down through the slot and pulled the plywood up out of the box. A handgun tucked in a white athletic sock lay in the bottom of the box. It was his father’s throw-down, a Smith & Wesson 9mm. It was loaded. It was unregistered. He had no idea where his father got the gun, but he was certain it wasn’t traceable. For years he knew that his father had kept it hidden in his patrol car. The logic was that as long as it was there, it wouldn’t be necessary. His father had never needed to use it.

  Sean put the gun in the pocket of his sweatshirt, which more than counterbalanced the pint of Scotch in the other pocket, and he went out to his truck. In the cab he reached into the pouch on the sun visor and removed the matchbook he had taken from the table in the bar. The cover read:

  THE NORTHERN LIGHTS

  MOTEL & EFFICIENCY APARTMENTS

  STEELHEAD BAY, ROUTE 28

  DAILY - WEEKLY - MONTHLY RATES

  As he pulled out of the driveway, he wondered whether his father was paying by the week or the month.

  The motel was almost to Marquette. Sean drove by the entrance and parked in the rest stop about a hundred yards down the road. He walked the beach back to the motel, the only cluster of lights on the dark road. A steady breeze came off Lake Superior and occasionally a wave would crack and thud, sending a little vibration through the sand. There were only a few vehicles parked in the back lot: several cars, pickups, and semis. It was the kind of place where construction crews holed up while on a job. His father’s van was at the far end. Sean kept to the dark beach along the edge of the parking lot until he stepped up onto the asphalt and stood near the back of the van.

  Through a sliding glass door he could see the room, which had imitation-pine paneling and a kitchenette. The television was on, but it was angled toward the double bed, so he couldn’t see the screen. Sean pulled the bottle of Scotch from the pocket of his sweatshirt and took a drink. He didn’t like the idea of waiting, but he knew if he left, he might not come back.

  He told himself it had to be now.

  This had to be first and it had to be now.

  He saw something move down by the water. After a moment he could see that it was a woman, walking out of the lake naked. She leaned over, picked up a bathrobe, and pulled it on. Then she lit a cigarette and walked up the beach toward him.

  “He’s not here,” Mary Threefoot said.

  “Oh.”

  It was his father’s terry-cloth bathrobe and the sash was tied loosely, so that he could see an ample portion of her breasts sway with each step. She stopped and raised her head toward the sky. “Since the rain passed it’s cleared. Stand back there and you can see the Milky Way.” Sean looked up, too, but he couldn’t see the sky because of the spotlight at the back of the lot. “Here.” Her hand took hold of his forearm and gently she pulled him around the corner of the building. There was grass underfoot and it was very dark. Overhead was a wash of stars. “See?” she said. “That haze, it’s all stars.”

  It was too dark to see her face clearly. “Where is he?”

  She walked away from him and sat down on the grass, cross-legged. “Why?”

  For a moment he was angry. He wanted to tell her it was none of her business. But then he walked over to her. “When’s he coming back?”

  “Who knows? He only left a little while ago. But then maybe he isn’t planning on coming back at all.”

  “He made plans for years,” Sean said. “Too many. This afternoon I got the sense that he’s quit making plans.”

  “He learned that from me.” She drew on her cigarette, the ash glowing. “Why don’t you sit? You can see them better.”

  He sat on the grass, which was still damp after the rain.

  She leaned toward him, an arm extended, and said, “Whatcha got there, huh?” Her hand felt his sweatshirt and slipped inside the pocket holding the pint of Scotch. She laughed as she removed the bottle. “Ah, you brought the firewater.” She unscrewed the cap, took a drink, then held the bottle out to him.

  His eyes had adjusted to the dark and he could see her better now. She looked younger than at the bar. He couldn’t see the pockmarks, and her cheekbones were wide and high beneath large, sad eyes. Her voice was pleasantly reedy. He took the bottle and tipped it up to his mouth.

  “Standing there by his van, you looked like you had a lot on your mind,” she said.

  “If his van’s here, how did he—”

  “He took my car,” she said. “He does that sometimes. I didn’t understand at first but then I figured it out. When he wants to go to Whitefish Harbor, he uses my car so he won’t be recognized.”

  “What’s he do?”

  “Sneaks around without being noticed? My guess is he spies on your mother.” She crushed her cigarette out in the grass and flicked it into the darkness. “But I think that tonight he might have gone to meet her.”

&nbs
p; “Who? My mother?”

  “Maybe he has another girlfriend?” Mary laughed as she took the bottle back from him. “Yes, your mother.” She said this as though it was obvious. “I got out of the shower and he had just hung up the phone. He said he had to see someone, and he took my keys and left.”

  “He was drunk.”

  “Isn’t everyone?”

  “My mother’s at her bridge game.”

  Mary shrugged and took a drink. Handing the bottle back, she said, “Maybe.”

  “How old are you?” he asked.

  “I’d say about halfway between you and your father. It surprise you, me and him?”

  “I just don’t think of him as a man with . . . with a girlfriend.”

  She laughed again. “Well, you are his son but you’ll get over it. You want to know how often we have sex, that it? Not very. Not often at all. He just likes the company while he drinks. And of course I like that he buys the drinks.”

  “You’re afraid he’ll go back to my mother.”

  “Afraid? Why would I be afraid of the inevitable?”

  “My mother said she never wants to see him in the house again.”

  “We all talk a good game. What are you afraid of, Sean?”

  She unfolded her legs and lay back on the grass, her hands clasped behind her head. The bathrobe had opened, exposing her left breast, but she didn’t seem to notice or care.

  Sean realized the bottle was in his hand and he took a long pull. “I am not afraid.”

  “I see. But tell me, why’d you come here?”

  “I made up my mind.”

  “Good for you.”

  He put the bottle in her hands. Her fingers held his for a moment, then she let go.

  “And I bet I know what you decided,” she said.

  “You do?”

  “I could tell this afternoon at the bar.”

  “How?”

  “It was in your eyes as you left, when you lit my cigarette.”

  “What was?”

  Her hand came up and touched his face. “Whatever it is that makes a son angry at his father. What were you going to do if he was here, kill him?”

  He didn’t answer.