Signs of Struggle (13 page)

“Lunchtime.”

“Today? He was in here for lunch today?”

I finished the cheese sticks, asked her where Larry lived. The best she could do was, “Somewhere out in the country in a fancy place,” and wave toward the door. The jukebox cranked up. Some guy was singing about keeping his six-pack cold by putting it next to his ex-wife's heart.

She pushed off to wait on some customers who had drifted in. I ate my hendigits and shot a couple of games of pool by myself. When two more hours had gone by without Larry showing, I bade good night to Bunza Steele and left.

I felt a little better about being productive. I had been slothful lately, but after my meeting with Larry and my evening at Shlop’s, I was making better use of my time. Would God be proud of me? Would Ernie? Karen?

For the first time in a long while, I just wanted to go home and go to bed. So I did, knowing I’d be sore in the morning. A tussle can do that to you.

M
y evening at Schlop’s Roadhouse left me introspective— something I try to avoid. What was bothering me was that about halfway through the brawl I realized I was enjoying it. The violence is coming back to me, and I am embracing it. And Schlop’s wasn’t the first time since I’d lost my family, either.

On my way out of Georgia, heading for Iowa, months after the accident that took my family, and just as I was being sucked into Atlanta traffic on I-75/I-85, a kid in a red pickup truck pulled even with me, mouthed an obscenity, and cut in front of me. We nearly collided, but I stomped the brakes, swerved briefly on squealing tires, and threw black smoke from the rear of my vehicle. I dropped in behind the kid as traffic behind me scattered like illegals during an ICE raid.

The kid, blonde with a wispy beard, wore a black knit cap pulled low despite the warm spring day, and a black tank top over a skinny upper body. He flipped me off again and laughed as he surged ahead in the south Atlanta traffic. One of his bumper stickers suggested what his fellow motorists could do if they didn’t like his driving, and the other was an epithet directed at people not from the South. That would be me.

When the red truck exited, so did I.

I followed him down the ramp feeding into the central city, the driver apparently unaware he was being tailed. I trailed the pickup truck into a parking garage near Underground Atlanta, and took a meter stub from the machine. The red truck curled on up to the top level, from cool shadows into warm sunlight. Gotcha was up, wide awake from the turn signals and the truck’s slow movement, eagerly looking out the window.

Now that there were just the two of us on the rooftop, the kid stabbed glances at his rearview mirror as he parked bumper against a wall. I pulled in behind him and blocked his truck, jumped out and strode up to him. He looked irritated, opening his door and starting to get out, fearless facing the old guy. “What’s your problem, dude?”

“Your bad driving and worse manners. Your obscene bumper stickers. You.” I was trembling, but my voice was low and calm. I knew better ways.

“Up yours,” the kid said, starting to get out.

I struck quickly, palm smacking hard into the kid’s forehead, snapping his head back and sitting him down. He blinked, muttered a curse, started out again, contempt on his face. Ready to go, box cutter in hand.

I struck again, palm lower this time, flush on the bridge of his nose. A crack and sudden rush of blood followed. He slumped, blood streaming down his chin onto his tank top, his lap. The box cutter was not in his hand anymore.

“Oh shit!” he said. “You busted my nose!”

I leaned forward, hands on knees, my face one foot from his. “Be courteous in traffic from now on, and remove those bumper stickers.”

The kid looked at me, fear was in his face. I liked that. He said nothing at first, then muttered, his voice nasal and wet, “You’re nuts, man.”

“Don’t forget what I said.” I pulled back my hand, he flinched, ducked back.

I turned, got in my truck, cruised down to the street, paid the minimum fee, and eased back into traffic. I turned onto Peachtree Street until I found an on-ramp, and then once again streamed into northbound interstate traffic, moving fast.

And that was that. I thought it was a one-time thing. Until my set-to at Schlop’s.

Now, the morning after my tussle I was hurting, my ribs in particular. And I had slivers of glass in my hands, so I ran cold water in the sink, dumped in ice, and soaked one hand at a time, drawing the glass toward the surface, removing the slivers with tweezers.

After a shower, I took stock of my situation. Sure, I had stumbled onto a suspicious death, raised a few questions here and there, experienced a death threat, and been assaulted in a bar. It was the Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.” But it had to stop, and the best way to do that was to butt out and let Sheriff Payne do his job. I want peace and privacy.

I stayed home more, ran extra miles and worked out regularly at Mulehoff’s. I lunched now and then at The Grain. I called Payne randomly and left messages, nagging about Larry. The few times he returned my calls, he always said, “I’m working on it, Mr. O’Shea, now leave me, and it, alone.” And so it went.

Every single day I thought about calling Liv Olson. But I did not.

Gotcha and I strolled in the woods in the cool of the mornings after my runs, enjoying the lay of our land. We took breakfast on the deck and messed around with a tennis ball—a boy and his dog. Gotcha likes to pin a tennis ball in her front paws, then get a grip with her teeth on the cover somehow, and peel it off. Scary when you think if you were someone she didn’t like and she had you down between her paws.

If I didn’t go down to Moon’s place for lunch and my five-beer limit (drinking a six-pack might signal a problem), I’d fix myself something at home, have a few cold ones, nap, get up and read for a few hours. Maybe watch some television, and call it a night. Over the next two weeks I bought groceries a couple of times, stocked
my pantry, stopped by the bank. Saw Arvid collapsed on his front steps and honked (he did not respond), and worked out hard eight times.

I did not see Larry. Neither did Payne. Once, in the evening and on impulse, I drove out to Schlop’s and asked Bunza if she had seen him, and she said he had been in around midnight the night before with a “funky looking girl, no more’n fourteen.”

One night I couldn’t sleep. I watched the Red Sox edge the Royals in ten innings in Kansas City, then
Baseball Tonight
on ESPN, and still I wasn’t sleepy. So I gave Gotcha a giant Milk-Bone and drove into town. It was midnight. It was something to do.

I crossed the double arched limestone bridge and parked in front of Bloom’s Bistro, closed down for the night. I began walking, looking in the windows of the shops there on the east side of the Whitetail River. After a while, I crossed over the river and strolled through old, established neighborhoods nestled in darkness among big, leafy trees, looking at houses and wondering what the people inside were like. Did they love each other? Did they harbor petty offenses? Were they happy? Did they have nightmares?

Walking the silent streets after dark in a small town is one of life’s great therapies. There is time for peaceful reflection, or just simple strolling without worrying about being mugged. I finished my walk sometime after one. I went home and slept soundly.

Three nights later, again unable to sleep, I hung out in The Grain, nursing beers and chatting with Horace until he left. Now, just past Last Call, it was only me, an older couple finishing off a pitcher, Rachel, Moon, and a couple of men I didn’t recognize.

The big Indian beckoned me over to the bar. “You seem to be of great interest to those guys at the table by the front door.”

I turned and looked. The two men looked down and began talking.

“They were here last night, too, and the night before. Seemed to be waiting for someone, sipping their beer and looking up every time someone came in the front door. When you came in tonight they quit looking.”

“If they were sexy women, I could understand.” I rotated part way back so I could talk with Moon while checking out the strangers. One man was in his 20’s, chunky build, beer gut, camo t-shirt. His matching pants were the kind with big pockets on the sides of the legs so, if he wanted, he could quickly reach in there for a ham sandwich or a Snickers. He had curly dark hair and needed a shave. The grunge look had moved on and left him behind. I thought of him as Porky.

His thirty-something pal looked tall even when sitting down. He wore Levi’s and an orange Miami Dolphins t-shirt. His head was shaved. So was his face. He looked at me with small eyes over a nose that had been broken at least once. He looked away.

I finished my beer, paid up. “Keep an eye out, Thomas,” Moon said.

“Sounds painful,” I replied, leaving. The two men made a point not to look at me as I left.

I still wasn’t tired so a stroll by the river seemed in order. I toodled down the street and started across the bridge, drawn by the soft shushing of water slipping over the spillway. I was just about midpoint when a car approached from behind. I turned and saw a black Jeep Cherokee stop before crossing. Someone got out and slammed the door shut. It sounded loud over the black water in the quiet night. Peculiar place to get out.

It was Porky. He began walking toward me. The Jeep gunned across the bridge, passing me as I jumped over the curb onto the crosswalk to keep from being run down. It was Flipper, grinning, and not a pleasant grin. He pulled over across the river, got out, and deliberately closed his door. He commenced strolling back across the bridge toward his companion, toward me. My scientific mind calculated stimuli, and I concluded that this might not turn out well.

What was it about this town?

When they were each about fifteen feet away, they stopped. Porky was rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. He displayed a white, doughy belly not completely covered by his camouflage t-shirt. Why have a six-pack when a pony keg will do?

The other man was, as I suspected, maybe six-four, lean. His broken nose suggested he might be a sucker for a left hook. He smacked his right fist into his left palm, over and over.

Of course, I trembled.

I wished I could just go home, absorb a couple of cold Coronas, use my Jennaire to grill a pair of kolbasi, slather horseradish mustard on them, catch the West Coast baseball scores, and go to bed.

“We’re gonna kill you,” Porky said.

“That’s against the law,” I said.

“Fuck you,” he said.

Slowly filling with adrenalin and rage and welcoming both again, I said, “You might be more convincing if you were in better shape. And if you weren’t so stupid. If you want to sneak up on someone after dark, black is the preferred color of professionals, but your white belly would give you away.” I wanted to stall the inevitable, yet, at the same time, provoke them. Make them forget their plan. Make them make mistakes. Maybe make them teedle in their panties and run away. Maybe not.

Flipper, the tall guy, said, “Neither one of us needs to sneak up on you. We gotcha without it. And why aren’t you afraid of
me
? You should be.”

I turned and looked at him. “I’m not afraid of you because you’re with him. Look, I got about a hundred and sixty bucks I can give you now and save us both unnecessary pain. My ego is not tied up in this. I just wanted to grab a little air and watch the river go by.”

“You’re gonna wish you could grab a little air in about five minutes. It’s gonna be mighty hard to come by,” Flipper said, “with a knife in your ribs.”

“We’re supposed to take you out,” Porky said. Flipper told him to keep his stupid mouth shut.

“It’s the truth, and it don’t matter if he knows it ‘cuz he’s gonna be dead,” Porky whined.

Flipper shrugged his shoulders and spoke the generic, “Whatever.” And then he produced a knife that looked like it would be useful if one were preparing to skin a wooly mammoth.

He said, “You know, he’s right, it don’t matter what you know ‘cuz you’re gonna be fish food. The two guys who jumped you at that bar a while back’ll be blamed for your death because you whupped their sorry butts and they wanted revenge. It's all pretty simple. And your hunnerd and sixty bucks is gonna be ours anyway.”

I realized they were serious.
What did I ever do to them?
I wondered, and how did they know about the scene at Shlop’s? I asked them.

“We got paid to know things, paid to take you out,” Flipper said.