by James Boice
“No, no,” Richard said, “I just hadn’t been out here yet.”
“Paying your respects?”
“Paying my respects, yeah.”
“Good, because I don’t want to have to call the search units again. It’s been barely a week since the last time. I’ve been looking for you, I’m glad I found you: After you left, Kirk calmed down and thought more about what you were saying. He thinks you might be onto something about the paint. He wants to see you down at the station.”
“He’s there now?”
“Of course. He’s Kirk. What do you think, he has a home or something? Where’d you park? Jump in. I’ll give you a lift back to your car.”
I was too hard on Kirk, Richard thought. Of course he’d grown more sensible with age and rank. I would have seen that if I had given him more of a chance, if I hadn’t let the grief make me paranoid.
Richard picked up the flashlight. As he straightened, the light passed over the cruiser. The body panel of the front passenger side was smooth—except for one place, where it looked like a dent had been hammered out. It was right up front, near the headlight, right in the stripe of color that went lengthwise across the side of the car. The color of the stripe was blue. The same blue as the guardrail. In the place where the dent had been hammered out, the blue was just slightly darker. Like it had been recently repainted.
All the pleasantness disappeared from Sauer’s face as he saw what Richard was looking at. He put his hand on the grip of his holstered gun. “Hands above your head.” He came around the front of the car, keeping himself square to Richard. “Turn around and put your hands above your head.”
Sauer was reaching behind his back for handcuffs when they heard it. A heavy, choking rumble. Richard was first to see the source of the sound: tearing toward them along the bridge from the distance was a single headlight. It was growing quickly. It was a solitary rider in a leather jacket sitting atop a silver motorcycle. Same helmet. Same leather jacket. Same bike. It was the biker from Inspiration Point. And it was the one who had followed him home from Arnold’s. Richard glanced at Sauer. He did not know what he was going to do. The rider’s right hand pumped the grip, and the engine snorted and roared. The biker kept going right past but slammed a skid turn and came to a sudden stop, filling the air of the bridge with the stink of burned rubber. The engine idled, chortled. There was only one guy around there who had ever ridden like that. The jeans, the jacket, the bike—Sauer and Richard were both standing frozen in confusion and shock, trying to understand if they were seeing what they thought they were seeing—that is, who they were seeing. Finally Sauer said it:
“Fonzie?”
Fonzie waved to Richard to come on, jump on. Richard did not think about it—he ran, jumped onto the back of the motorcycle, and held on. Fonzie peeled out, putting more smoke between them and Sauer. Sauer raised his gun and fired into the cloud. Sparks flew as bullets ricocheted off the pavement before Fonzie and Richard. Over the bike’s engine, the shots he fired sounded small and harmless as Richard and Fonzie sped off into the night.
• • •
THE PLANE FLEW ABOVE THE ocean, toward home. It was a homecoming—the first one. Richie and Ralph, two young men in green army uniforms, their faces still fleshy and formless despite the mustaches they had grown—the faces not of men but old boys. They were somewhere in between, above that ocean, even after the military. It did not seem to bother Ralph, but it bothered Richie. He had expected to feel differently at the end. To have a different face. When he had imagined this day, he had seen himself with a harder face, eyes that were more weary. He thought the army would have given him trials over which to triumph, darkness through which to persevere, a face of granite and steel. All it had given him was Greenland.
He had manned a desk, overseen an administrative supply cache. Unpacking boxes of staplers, tallying inventory of electrical cords. They gave him awards, commendations. His superior officer called him out in front of the whole unit: “The perfect soldier,” he had called him, for taking his desk duties as seriously as those of a Special Forces captain. There was a growing conflict in Southeast Asia, but he had Lori Beth and his little boy living with him on the base. Even if he had put in for a transfer to infantry—which he would not, because he could not bear the thought of putting Richie Jr. at risk of losing his father—he would have been denied on those grounds. His country then was still so sure about its destiny, its righteousness. It was not yet desperate for bodies to throw at an already body-filled catastrophe, though soon it would be.
Marriage, fatherhood, service to his country—nothing he had tried to become a man had worked. All of it was vital, but none of it had done to him what he thought it would. None of it had given him the face. Only one thing would, he was beginning to understand. What was missing, he realized, on that plane, was him—he knew what he wanted to do, but he couldn’t face it. So he had taken no bets on his own talents, his own wits. All he had done instead was be perfect.
Lori Beth and Richie Jr. were with him too on the plane. She was already beginning to show with Caroline. He never told her what the thing was he could not face: Hollywood. Hollywood. As they packed for home, for reentry into civilian life, Lori Beth talked with love about Milwaukee—its schools, which neighborhood they would live in, what Richie could do for work there. Her face glowed. He had said nothing, just smiled. He wanted to be who she wanted him to be. Who his kids needed him to be.
They all took a cab from the airport to the Cunningham house. Inside, his parents and sister went about another day without him, not knowing they all were back in the country, outside the door, and were home for good. Ralph said, looking out the car window, “We pulled it off. I was sure my mom would have let it slip that we’d been discharged. Man, they’re going to flip.”
Lori Beth went inside first with Richie Jr. Ralph and Richie listened to the shouts of joy as she closed the door behind her.
Ralph said, “I’m glad to be home. I’m never leaving again. How about you, Richie?”
“Yeah,” Richie said, wishing to God he could mean it.
“Here we go,” Ralph said, smiling. “Ready?” He opened the car door, headed up to the house. Richie paid the driver, got his duffel from the trunk, and hustled after. Ralph went inside to a new wave of happy shouting. Richie waited a moment, listening from outside. He heard them all: his father, his sister, he heard his overwhelmed mother say to Ralph, “But if you’re out of the army, where’s Richie?”
Lori Beth said, “Well, you know how the army tends to make little mistakes?”
“Yeah, like Korea,” Ralph said. “Well, they’ve done it again. I’m afraid Richie had to stay back to—”
Richie opened the door and stepped inside, dropping his duffel. Never had he had a bigger smile. He spread his arms out wide, his heart growing, growing, close to bursting. He finished Ralph’s sentence:
“Pay the cabdriver!”
His family fell on him, swallowed him up in their arms.
Then the kitchen door opened. Fonzie had heard it all from the garage apartment.
“Red!” he shouted. “Red!” He ran to Richie, put his arms around him. Richie did not know what to do with how happy he was to see his friend—so he lifted him off the ground.
He remembered the weight of the guy then. Not fat—Fonzie was never anything but fit as a drill sergeant—but substance.
Now with his arms around Fonzie again, holding on as they sped through the night, Fonzie seemed slight, almost frail. Middle age had not added the flesh and fat it had to the rest of them. The man must have lost several pounds this week, wherever he had been hiding out from Kirk and Sauer.
The icy wind pulled at Richard’s face. It lashed at his arms. He was putting it all together. It was a hit-and-run. But more than that, it was a hit job. Sauer had tried to kill Fonzie. A cop. He ran him off the road. And Kirk was the one who had ordered it. But Fonzie had survived somehow and—and what exactly? Fonzie was weaving around cars, sla
mming through red lights, narrowly skirting oncoming traffic. They exited the interstate onto a little dark two-lane road. They were outside the city. At last they came to an intersection lit up brightly where Wisconsin Power was doing work on the road and had traffic blocked off and backed up. Fonzie had to slow down so they could get through the intersection, and Richard was able to shout through Fonzie’s helmet and into his ear, “Where are we going?” No response. The engine roared again as they got through the intersection and Fonzie sped up once more.
They went deep into the country, the woods—somewhere around Sheboygan, Richard guessed. He kept looking up, expecting a sky full of police helicopters sicced on them by Kirk after Sauer radioed him with the news. It only got darker.
Richie had tried to resume the life he had lived before he and Ralph joined the army. He took a job his father got him. He and Lori Beth shopped for homes that had enough room. But within days he fell into a hole the likes of which he had never known and never would again. He was seeing his future—it consisted of two lines: one faded and one bright. The faded one was the one where he should have been. The bright one was the one where he was. And he couldn’t connect them. But he knew he should, he had to. It was his obligation as a living being. But he felt like he never would. One day he could not go home—he stayed out all day, late into the night, drinking, feeling the despair that he would never be who he should. He was in a dive bar, alone and working on going out of his mind, when Fonzie walked in. He’d been all over the city, checking every bar for him. Fonzie tried to get him to come home. There was drunken rage. Richie took a swing—his sucker punch connected on the side of Fonzie’s head. He knew at once the mistake he had made. But he did not apologize—he swung again. Fonzie dodged, pinned Richie down on the pool table.
“You’re okay,” he said into Richie’s ear. He was almost cooing. It did not conceal his anger at being hit. He let Richie up. “You’re okay,” he said again.
“I can’t live like this,” Richie was saying. He was almost crying. “I can’t go around living my life pretending I’m happy all the time. It’s no good, Fonz.”
“I know. I know. You’ve been living your life for everybody else. You’ve been the perfect son, the perfect student, the perfect father—”
“The perfect soldier.”
“Perfect friend. Now’s the time to take responsibility for your own life. You gotta do what you want to do, Richie.”
“It’s not that simple. Lori Beth has her heart set on living in Milwaukee.”
“Lori Beth has her heart set on living the rest of her life with you. Don’t sell her short. She’ll back you on anything you want to do. We all will.”
Richie knew he was right. But his being right meant that what Richie had to do would be hard. He had to finally turn and face that thing he couldn’t: Hollywood. He said, “You’re single. You don’t know what it’s like to have people depending on you each and every day.”
“I’ll be fair with you, okay? I don’t have a wife and kids. But if I had yours—I wouldn’t let nothing stop me.”
“You know, if I decide to go out there, I know I can make it.”
“There is no doubt in my mind. I’m already behind the movie theater, waiting to sneak in to see your first flick.”
Days later, Richie’s bags were packed again. He stood in a coat and tie in his parents’ living room. Lori Beth and Richie Jr. waited for him out in the yard. Lori Beth had agreed that they had to give Los Angeles a chance. Fonzie had been right—she was all for it. She had been so enthusiastic about settling down in Milwaukee only because she thought it had been what Richie wanted. Richie had just told his parents and sister the news when Fonzie came through the door.
“Hey, Richie,” the Fonz said, almost shouting, holding something in his hand. “I got ’em.” He was energetic, almost as excited for Richie as Richie was. He slapped them against his palm then handed them to him. “First-class tickets to Tinseltown.”
Richie took them, read them. “Fonz, I can’t afford first class.”
“Sure you can. It’s on me. I got ’em from Yolanda down at the travel agency. One more date and you’re going to Europe.” He looked over his shoulder, out the open door, at everybody waiting. “Well,” he said, growing serious, uncomfortable, “I guess this is it.”
“Fonz, listen. I’m a writer. Or at least I hope so.” He reached into his jacket pocket, took out a letter. “I wrote this to you this morning. Because I knew that when we were face-to-face like this, well, I might not be able to find the words.” Fonzie tensed. His eyes locked on Richie. He looked almost angry, Richie thought. He looked almost the way he used to, before they were friends. His hands were in his pockets, and his shoulders were slack. He was quiet, his jaw grinding, his body twitching in that restless way it did, like he could never get comfortable. “How do you thank someone who’s been everything to you?” Fonzie turned away, looking at the floor, like he didn’t want to hear it, couldn’t handle hearing it, but Richie kept going. “Your brother. Your protector. I just don’t know how I could ever say that.”
He looked back up at Richie and shrugged. “I think you just did.”
Richie went to put the letter back in his pocket. But Fonzie reached out and took it from him. Looking Richie in the eyes, man to man, he put the letter to his chest.
“I just want to tell you,” Fonzie said, whispering, struggling to get out the words. “That I love you. Very much.”
Then, with one last look back, and still holding Richie’s letter to his heart, Fonzie walked out the door and was gone, leaving Richie alone with nothing, just his whole life—and his family’s—in his own hands.
• • •
BUT HIS FRIEND WAS NOT dead. His friend was alive. Richard could now tell him all the things he had never been able to say. And he could hear all the things Fonzie had never told him. He could not wait to hear about what had happened all these years. He could not wait to know his friend again.
Fonzie cut off the winding country road onto a dirt path so narrow Richard did not even see it through the wall of trees until they were already on it. Fonzie lowered his head as far as he could, and Richard did the same, otherwise one of the low-hanging branches reaching out across the path would have hit them. They pulled up to a cabin secluded by trees. There were no neighbors. The bike stopped and the engine cut off. It huffed and then was quiet. It was completely silent except for the engine cooling down and the wind rustling the evergreens. Fonzie got off the bike without a word, looked at Richard through the black visor of his helmet, then headed inside. Richard got off the bike too. He rubbed his arms to bring some warmth back into them.
There was a car parked behind the cabin—Richard could see its tail end sticking out. It was too dark to tell what kind. The windows of the cabin lit up as Fonzie turned on the lights inside. Richard followed him, feeling like he was in a dream.
• • •
HE ENTERED THE CABIN. HE was struck by the Permanence of the place, the solidness of the heavy wood furniture, the large wool rugs. There were built-in bookshelves—Richard noticed lots of Joan Didion, some E. M. Forster, Bright Lights, Big City, John Updike’s new Witches of Eastwick. There was a hi-fi stereo system installed on one of the shelves, with records stored in a space below it. Even the walls felt like they had always been here and would be here for good: they were finished, recently so, judging from the scent of paint, and hung with framed art—motorcycles, mostly, and Edward Hopper–like images of midcentury American scenes: gas stations, diners. The fireplace still had gray, burned-out logs in it.
“Is this where you live?”
Fonzie did not answer. He stood in the middle of the cabin with his helmet on and his back to Richard, who stood just inside the door.
“I knew you weren’t dead,” Richard said. “I just knew it. It all just didn’t add up. Losing control and crashing? No way. I never believed it for a second. Not for one second.”
Fonzie took off his helmet and Rich
ard stopped talking as Fonzie turned to face him.
“Mrs. Sealock?” Richard said.
• • •
DISAPPOINTMENT CRUSHED RICHARD. FONZIE WAS still dead after all. It was almost worse than when he had heard the news the first time.
She yanked a chair out from the table. It screeched across the stone floor. “Have a seat,” she said. He sat. She put the helmet upside down on the small wooden table then filled a glass with water and put it in front of him. He drank it all at once. She was standing there watching him, pulling the leather gloves off her fingers. She unzipped the leather jacket, peeled it off, revealing a white tank top, delicate shoulders. She tossed the jacket over the back of a chair and jammed the gloves inside the helmet. She went to the fireplace, put in some fresh logs, some newspaper, started a fire.
“You’ve stumbled into a real mess, Richie. You have no idea how big.”
Her voice was plain, and worn-out. The last time he had seen her she had seemed tired, but now her voice was completely stripped of all its full-throated richness and musicality. All of her warmth was gone, replaced by focused rage.
She came over again to the table. Behind her the fire grew quickly into bright, wild orange flames. Her normally perfectly styled hair was tangled and matted on her head. She wore no makeup. Gone was the straight posture, the eager graciousness. She was boiling with resolve. Her eyes were seeing Richard, seeing behind him, and through him, within him—seeing what she was going to say to him. She smelled like gasoline and leather and cold air. She went to the record player, squatted before the albums, and began sorting through them. He watched the side of her face. It was hard to believe there had ever been a smile on it. She seemed to be listening to something in her ear, an irritating sound. Her eyes blinked rapidly. She sucked on her lips. She breathed heavily, impatiently, like breathing itself was an unjust obligation. He watched her shoulder blades move beneath the fabric of her shirt, the muscles on the backs of her arms. Who the hell was this woman?
