by G. M. Ford
Deep in thought, Corso had his nose about two inches above the grease in his plate when he heard shoes squeaking his way. He looked up. Ruth had abandoned her newspaper at the other end of the counter and was moving his way with the kind of splayfooted shuffle relegated to those whose lives were spent on concrete floors.
“It finally come to me,” she announced. “You’re that writer guy. One come to town to clear up that bank robbery deal.” She shook her head. “I mean I knew you wasn’t from around here the minute you asked me if you could still get breakfast this timea day. Everybody round here knows we do breakfast twenty-four/seven.”
Corso smiled and stuck out his hand. She took it. “Frank Corso,” he said.
“I’m Ruth Hadley. And you want to know about Nathan Marino…well, you maybe ought to start by askin’ me.”
“You knew Nathan?”
She leaned her elbows on the counter. Gave him a wink. “What if I told you Nathan used to work here?”
Corso went back to sopping up egg yolk. “No kidding,” he said.
“Used to bus dishes.” She pointed at the pair of polished-steel doors. “Right back there in the kitchen where Myron is. Myron,” she called. No answer.
“Afternoon shift. Four till closing,” she went on. “Showed up every day like clockwork. Worked hard.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Four or five years before he got…you know…”
“Blown up.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Guess that makes it darn near six or seven years ago doesn’t it?” She threw Corso a lopsided grin. “Time flies when you’re havin’ fun.”
Corso held up a finger. “Let me guess,” he said, raising his pitch two octaves. “Nathan was a nice boy. Quiet. Kept to himself.”
“Now how’d you know?” Ruth asked right on cue.
“That’s what the neighbors always say about serial murderers. After the guy’s been captured and the authorities have been digging up the backyard for a week, that’s when the TV stations send people out to see what it was like living next to a cannibal. The neighbors always claim he was just the sweetest boy.”
Ruth was nodding thoughtfully. “Why do you suppose that is?”
“I think…you know…no matter how crazy you are…if you’ve got a couple fifty-five-gallon drums filled with body parts hanging around your apartment…I think maybe a low profile…easy come, easy go kind of attitude might be the order of the day.”
The notion made sense to Ruth. “Well…Nathan was a nice young man.”
“I’m sure he was.”
“Liked to read his little Western books.” She gestured toward the kitchen with her head. “Out back there in the summertime.”
“How long was he here?”
“Oh…a year or so. Called up one morning…said he was taking a job doing something else…I don’t remember exactly what.” She smiled. “That was like him though. Call and tell you he was done. Not just leave you hanging like so many of them.” She turned her head and eyed the kitchen area again. “Myron,” she bellowed. Still no response.
“He’s probably out back smokin’ one of those cigarettes of his.” Her face softened. “I worry about him. He’s got this nasty cough won’t go away.” She read the question in Corso’s eyes. Waved his wonder off.
“Myron’s my old man. We bought this place from old man Kilmer back in ’78, when it wasn’t much more than a shack.” She looked around, taking in everything, the stools, the booths, the ceiling; her eyes got as shiny as the stainless-steel walls. “Had in mind leaving it to our girls to take over and run after we was gone, but they got no interest in running a diner…” She made a disgusted face. “Whole idea of running a diner is just way beneath their collective dignities, if you know what I mean, so I guess we’ll just sell it and head for the sunshine like everybody else.”
“Back in the midseventies in Seattle, there was a sign on the interstate asking the last person leaving town to be sure and turn out the lights.”
“Getting that way around here too,” she said. “Nothing left around here but old-timers like Myron and me. Kids all grow up like ours…get out of school and move someplace else first time they get a full tank of gas.”
Corso used his hands to lever himself up from the stool. He pulled his wallet from his hip pocket, extracted his debit card and handed it to Ruth, who straightened up, patted herself down for her order book. He stretched as she squeaked back down toward the register, then followed along. “You got any deep dark secrets about Nathan Marino you want to share with me,” Corso asked as he ambled along in her wake.
She shook her head as she spindled the check and jabbed at the cash register.
“There’s no secret. He was just a quiet man with his own ideas. Different drummer type. Maybe a couple of ants short of a picnic, if you know what I mean. And if there was some deep dark secret, it sure as heck wouldn’t be secret anymore. Between the Staties and the Feds and the local yokels, they must have interviewed just about everybody in town. Everybody had their chance for fame and fortune. If there was something there, somebody would have spoken up.”
Corso swiped his card, punched in his code and waited for a bank on the far edge of the continent to confirm that he was indeed possessed of $7.16. For some reason or other, he found the process insulting.
“How much longer are you and Myron going to be slingin’ hash?” he asked as he signed the receipt.
She checked the room and gave him a conspiratorial wink. “You heard of Burger Barn?” Corso indicated it was news to him. She leaned in closer and lowered her voice. “They’re buying us out, lock, stock and barrel. Gonna tear it down and build one of those drive-ins of theirs.” He watched her eyes as they morphed from sadness to hope. “We got us a hell of a deal on a place in Fort Myers,” she said. She looked around again. “Kinda deal you gotta know somebody who knows somebody else, if you know what I mean.”
10
C orso stood still and watched as she thought about slamming the door in his face. He kept a smile welded to his lips and hoped her sense of hospitality would refuse to permit such rude behavior. She looked him up and down, shook her head in disgust. “If you’re gonna be tramping about in this kind of weather, mister, you best be getting yourself some decent gear,” she said, while still holding the storm door in her hand. She pointed to his shoes. “You keep wearing those little loafers of yours and frostbite’s gonna be taking off more than just the tassels.”
Corso shifted his weight from foot to foot trying to maintain feeling in the soles of his feet. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. In the hour since he’d left the Bullseye Diner, the temperature had dropped another fifteen degrees. The snow was sliding sideways in sheets, except now it was brittle under the feet as a northerly wind began to transform the landscape into a solid block of ice.
She sighed. “I guess you might as well come on in,” she said finally. “I don’t want anybody finding you dead on my doorstep.”
She was pushing seventy, a big thick woman with the air of a survivor. Her hair was dyed a shade of brown unknown in nature. She stepped aside, shepherding Corso through a double-doored vestibule and into the front room of the house. What his mother would have called the parlor. The room was upholstered in worn flower prints and smelled of dust. A gas fire hissed as it licked up among the stone logs in the fireplace. Corso watched Oprah’s mouth moving on the TV screen. He rubbed his hands together.
“James called and said you might be coming around. I been expecting you for the past hour or so.”
“I ttttried your daughter first.” Corso shuddered inside his jacket.
She shook her head. “They’re down in Orlando. Got them a time-share down there.” She rolled her eyes. “Take the kids for a week twice a year. Just pop ’em out of school and drag ’em down there with ’em.” Her disapproval settled over the room like a slipcover. She looked Corso over again. “But I suppose the neighbors told you that, didn’t they?”
Corso nodd
ed. “Yes, ma’am,” he said.
She held out a hand. “Let me have your coat,” she said.
Took Corso a couple tries to get the frozen zipper all the way to the bottom. He shouldered himself out of the coat and followed her over to the fireplace, where she hung his jacket from a brass hook on the mantel.
She pulled a plastic bottle of hand lotion down from the mantel, squirted a dollop into one palm and massaged it in before turning Corso’s way again. “So…that what you’re here for, mister? You here to prove that my boy Nathan got himself mixed up in something got him killed. Sell more books. Make an ever bigger name for yourself.”
“Nothing I’ve seen so far suggests your son was anything but a victim.”
She took him in all over again, her eyes running over him like a chill wind. She returned to her seat on the couch and used a freshly lotioned hand to direct him toward the red-and-white love seat on her left.
“It’s because he was different, you know.”
“What was because he was different?”
“That’s how come everybody seems to think he was”—she hesitated—“how come they think he was involved in some way.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He was…Nathan was just outside of what they were used to.” She looked at Corso, hoping for a glimmer of understanding. When a spark failed to flicker, she went on. “Nathan just wasn’t like other kids. With my other children, I mean you look at ’em now and you think back and realize you could see who they was going to turn out to be practically from the very beginning. James was always going to be in charge of something or other. When he was knee-high, he was just like he is now, very serious. Everything had to be in order. Everything in its place.” She made a little dividing movement with her hand. “Hannah…” She shook her head in wonder. “That girl was always Suzie Homemaker. Played with dolls till she was darn near twelve. Never once heard her say she wanted to be a teacher or a nurse or an actress or anything else for that matter. All that girl ever wanted to be was somebody’s wife and mother.” She spread her hands in wonder. “Little Paul used to wear his daddy’s boots and helmet around the house whenever Herm wasn’t using them himself. Never wanted anything more than to work in the mine like his daddy. But Nathan…now that boy was another matter altogether.”
“How so?” Corso prompted.
She thought it over. “He never played with the other children. Not even his sister and brothers. Didn’t like any of the games kids played. He liked to make up his own games.” She checked to see if Corso was listening, then continued. “He had a million of those little toy action figures. He made up his own little world. They all had different names and different voices.”
“What did he want to grow up to be?”
“That was just it,” she said. “He didn’t want to be anything. He just wanted to be.” He face went dark. “What’s so bad about that? Is that something so terrible? Do you have to be ambitious to be a good person?”
Corso shrugged. “No matter what kind of lip service gets paid to the idea of self-expression, our society doesn’t encourage a person to follow his own path. Our society encourages him to get a job. To strive. To be independent and not be a burden on society. If you can find some way to follow your bliss while working nine to five, well then that’s okay. Feel free to have a hobby.”
She was shaking her head. “Nathan was never a burden. He always took care of himself. He never came to us for money or anything.”
“Then why this notion something was wrong with him?”
She leaned forward now, as if she’d been anticipating that very question. “It started way back when he was in grammar school. He just didn’t seem to have any interest in what they were teaching. The school wanted us to have him tested.” She scrunched up her face. “Herm was against it. Wouldn’t hear about any such thing. Took me darn near two years to get him to come around.”
“And?”
“Nathan tested out normal. Not smart, not dumb, just normal.”
Corso detected something ironic and nearly mocking in her tone. “How’d your husband feel about that?” he asked.
She wagged a finger Corso’s way. “That’s the funny part. Here Herm was worried and all that they were gonna say his boy was some kinda…and I’m using Herm’s word here, not mine…some kinda retard and when they don’t…when they find out he’s just a regular kid like everybody else, that’s when, all of a sudden, far as Herm’s concerned Nathan can’t do anything right. Not from that day to this.”
“Why do you suppose that was?”
“You know, I’ve thought about that. I think as long as it was possible there was something wrong with Nathan, Herm kinda felt like he didn’t want to be picking on anybody with a disability, but the minute those tests come back normal”—she snapped her fingers—“then it was like, okay…if there’s nothing wrong with this boy, well then he’s just lazy, and if there’s anything my husband can’t and won’t abide, it’s lazy.”
“Was he?”
“Was he what?”
“Was he lazy?”
She frowned. “Not at all. He worked hard all his life. One little job after another, but he was always employed.”
Corso stayed silent for a moment. “So how come he never found himself. Never found anything he wanted to pursue?” he asked after a moment.
“He wasn’t looking?” she said. “Do you have to be chasing something to be happy?”
“I guess not,” Corso said.
“My Nathan was a dreamer,” she said. “To him a job was just something you did because you had to. Something to spend time at so’s you could spend time at your own things.”
“Which were?”
“He liked to read and watch old black-and-white movies. He liked to play with his cats. He was really fond of sitting down by Harris Creek…out behind that house he rented…just sit there all day dreaming his dreams.” She leaned forward. “I don’t want to make it sound like he was perfect or anything. He had his scrapes growing up.” She caught wind of Corso’s next question. “Boy things, growing-up things.” Her tone made it obvious the subject was closed.
“Doesn’t sound like a bank robber to me,” Corso said.
Her eyes misted over. “Of course it doesn’t,” she said.
“What’s his father think now?”
She made a rude noise with her lips. “Herm don’t think much at all anymore,” she said. “Since this…since all of this…he spends his days and nights down at Charlie’s Bar.” She nodded toward the door. “Down at the junction. You passed it on the way up here.” The muscles along the side of her lower jaw rippled with tension. “Bunch of his old buddies from the mine hang out there all day and night. You want to know what Herm thinks, you’re gonna have to go down there and ask him yourself.”
11
F rom the look of it, Charlie’s Bar and Grill had occupied its present location prior to the invention of pavement. The cracked and yellowed ceiling undulated overhead as Corso crossed the floor toward the bar at the back end of the space. He threaded his way among the dozen or so wooden tables and chairs filling the center of the room. On the left, a pair of pool tables, their felt tops worn slick and shiny, had attracted a small crowd of players and onlookers.
The real action was on the right, where an old-fashioned shuffleboard table elicited whoops and hollers every time somebody sent one of those little metal discs sliding along the hardwood toward the far end. The clicks of colliding discs and the dull thud of pieces falling from the table were occasion for a rowdy buzz from players and onlookers.
The tops of the windowless walls were lined with neon beer signs. Storz, Stotz, Schlitz, Pabst Blue Ribbon…must have been fifty of them, some of which Corso had never seen before, others he knew to be long defunct.
Corso bellied up to the bar. He watched as the bartender cleaned off one of the tables over by the shuffleboard machine and returned with the dirty plates and glasses balanced in one hand. He moved lik
e he was walking barefoot on broken glass. The guy set the dirty place settings in the sink and turned on the water. His age was tough to gauge. Sixty plus anyway. Thinning hair combed straight back. Wrinkled dress shirt and a little bolo tie.
“Help ya?” he asked without looking up.
“How about a Pabst?”
“Can, bottle or draft?”
“Draft.”
The guy dried his hands on a small white towel and picked up a clean glass. The line coughed air and spit foam as he began to fill the glass. He spilled out the foam, waited for beer to appear from the tap and filled the rest of the glass. He found a paper coaster and set the bubbling glass in front of Corso. “Buck fifty,” he said. His eyes were red and watery. He had a small mustache, neatly trimmed but yellowed here and there by nicotine. From four feet away, he smelled like an ashtray.
Corso pushed a five-dollar bill onto the bar. “I’m looking for Herm Marino,” he said.
The bartender picked up the five and pushed a button on the old-fashioned cash register. Kerching. He flicked his eyes to the right, toward the guy sitting alone down at the far end of the bar. Big bulky guy with hands the size of waffle irons. Last of the flattop crew cuts, combed straight up. He was staring into a fresh beer like he was afraid it was going to escape and smoking an unfiltered Lucky Strike.
Corso left the change on the bar and sidled over to the end. He slid onto the corner stool and set his beer down. “You Herm Marino?” he asked.
All he got was a short, sideways glance. “My name’s Frank Corso. I’m a writer. I’m doing some research on what happened to your son.”
Marino took a long moment to process the information.
“Don’t waste your time,” he said finally. “He’s not worth the effort.”
“Why’s that? He was your son, wasn’t he?”
“He was a bum.”
“That’s not what I hear.”