On Bear Mountain

by Deborah Smith

  “Jesus God,” Goots said, when he opened the garage door and saw the Mercedes. Laughing and muttering praises in German, he peeled off several hundred-dollar bills from a wad in his pocket and looked at Quentin. “You want to bring me more?”

  “Yeah.”

  Goots hesitated. “Listen, call me a fool, but I have to say something. Your papa wouldn’t want you to do this.”

  “You gonna tell him?”

  The icy tone in Quentin’s voice settled on the slow, heavyset Goots like a layer of warning. He never prodded a problem that was not his own. He liked peaceful larceny. His smile returned, beneath shrewd eyes. “I say nothing. What you do with your life is between you and your papa.” He shrugged.

  Quentin walked back home with the money in his pocket, his knees shaking and vomit rising in his throat. De minimus non curat lex. The Law does not concern itself with trivial matters. He hoped not, because he was a car thief now. Not a dreamer like Papa, who was turning into one of his own stark, skeletal works of metal before Quentin’s eyes. Now Quentin would be just a guy looking out for his family, finding patterns that needed to be broken.

  He told Mother that Goots had promoted him to assistant machinist at the shop and given him a hefty raise. He told her he knew about her job at Siccone’s, and he wanted her to quit. He could cover the difference with his salary increase.

  She looked helplessly relieved. She hated working for Siccone, and had lived with the fear and shame of anyone finding out. Quentin’s help was a necessity, now, she couldn’t deny it. He’d made good on his promise to maintain his grades while he worked, so what harm was there in a promotion from kindly old Goots? She was worn out, lonely, depressed all the time. Richard’s deepening despair terrified her. Sometimes they talked on the phone for hours at night, her trying to soothe him, to encourage him.

  The world was closing in on her. “I’ll have to thank Mr. Gutzman,” she said with tired dignity.

  “No need,” Quentin answered with a strange little smile. “He’s getting his money’s worth.”

  From then on, Quentin stole cars. He was good at it. He gave his mother as much money as he could without making her suspicious. The rest he stashed in his room. Carla found out about his thieving through a girlfriend of Johnny Martin’s. She was scared for him, but also excited. He handed her a hundred-dollar bill and she forgave him for everything.

  He lay in his bed at night wishing he never had to shut his eyes. When he slept, he had nightmares about being shot in the street. He wrote a long letter to his parents, telling them everything and asking their forgiveness, then sealed it and hid it among the military novels and war-history texts that filled his bedroom bookcase. This was a recent fascination of his — men and machines of destruction, their heroics, their epic ideas, their honorable deaths saving God and Country. His grandfather had died in World War II, a hero.

  Not a car thief.

  • • •

  Quentin walked outside Goots’s shop — the legitimate body shop — during a break. He was soaked in sweat. Speckles of black paint dotted his jeans and T-shirt. He rinsed his face at a water faucet outside the garage. His father drove up in the truck.

  Quentin straightened slowly. Papa was in his early forties, now, and starting to go gray at the temples. His face had weathered the hard years like a craggy rock. All the softness had been eroded from his features. His eyes were as cold as steel. “Get in,” he said. “There’s somebody I want you to meet.”

  For a minute, Quentin didn’t move. Papa had driven down in the middle of the week, with that look on his face, to make him meet somebody? He felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. Something was very wrong, here. Then he tossed back, “Yeah, whatever you want, it’s not like I’ve got a job,” and climbed in the truck without another word.

  Papa didn’t speak again during the drive. His old plaid shirt and khaki trousers were flecked with tiny burn marks where his cutting torch had cast flecks of hot metal. His hair was singed around the front. He must have walked out of the warehouse on short notice.

  Quentin steeled himself for trouble. He was dimly aware of traveling through Brooklyn communities better or worse than their own, a landscape sometimes dominated by black faces, sometimes by white, bleak or comfortable, the uneven terrain of a sprawling city that engulfed people. Finally Papa turned through the gates of a huge cemetery so crowded with tombstones and small mausoleums that there was hardly any room for the living to walk among them.

  Quentin’s puzzlement grew as his father drove down one narrow, paved lane after another, coming to a stop deep inside the forest of the dead. “It’s just a few dozen feet that way,” he said, and pointed toward an area of low, plain markers. Quentin followed him in speechless curiosity, sidestepping flat grave stones. Papa dropped to one knee beside a stone and brushed flecks of mown grass from the beautifully carved surface. Quentin stopped beside him and looked down.

  Jeanne Louise Riconni, the stone read among swirls of carved roses. The dates said she was only eighteen when she died, and that she had been dead for almost twenty-five years. Papa smoothed his large, coarse fingertips over her name. “She was my sister.”

  Quentin dropped to his heels and looked from the stone to his father incredulously. “Why did you keep her secret?”

  “I don’t like to talk about her. It won’t bring her back. She died when I was about your age. She was a saint. The gentlest soul I ever knew, until I met your mother. If you want to understand anything about me, then it’s here.” He pointed to the stone. “I grew up fast, that year.”

  “How did she die?”

  “Polio. She couldn’t breathe. They put her in an iron lung. Like a casket. Only her head showed at one end. I’d sneak into the clinic and sit with her. I didn’t care if I got sick from being around her. She was all I had in the world. Looking at her inside that machine, it was as if she’d been eaten alive. And it wasn’t making her better.”

  “The machine kept her from dying sooner, though.”

  “That’s the hell of it, isn’t it? You never know whether to hate a thing like that, or love it.” He paused, then raised his dark, scalding gaze to Quentin. “I built the bear sculpture for her. She’s the reason I got the commission for it.” Quentin could only shake his head in confusion. Papa’s sister had died a long time before the bear. His father went on, “The lady in Georgia who ordered the bear read about me in a March of Dimes newsletter. I did some volunteer work for ’em in Jeanne Louise’s memory. Repaired leg braces, fixed crutches. They wrote an article and mentioned I wanted to be a sculptor. This lady, Betty Tiber Habersham, that was her name, she saw the article and sent me a letter. She’d lost family to polio. She wanted a memorial.” He explained how that had translated into a sculpture of a bear, but Quentin could barely listen. Where was this leading? The old man had driven home to tell him this story? Was his father a little crazy?

  When Papa finished Quentin stared at him carefully. “What’s going on? Why do you want me to know all this?”

  “Because life isn’t a goddamn choice. It’s a gift, and if you fuck it up there aren’t any second chances. I’ll never understand why Jeanne Louise died and I lived. I decided to earn my life. Did I deserve to live?”

  “Sure. It was her time to go, not yours.”

  “Don’t recite what the fuckin’ priests tell you.”

  Quentin raised both hands in a gesture of emptiness, and suddenly years of anger boiled up. “What do you want from me? You want me to say your life has a purpose and a meaning and you’re doing a great job living the life your sister didn’t get? You want me to lie?”

  His father’s expression tightened into a stark mask. The push-pull of anger electrified the hot air. They stood. “I didn’t come here to talk about me, or even about me and you,” Papa said. “All that matters right now is you. You, and what you gotta take responsibility for before you flush your life down the toilet.”

  “I’ve been taking responsibility for my life
and our family since I was old enough to understand you wouldn’t be around to do it.”

  His father hit him — just drew back a fist and punched him in the mouth. It happened with such power and speed Quentin had no time to react. He sprawled backward over a tombstone, lay still for a minute until his vision cleared, then propped himself on one elbow. He put his other hand to his mouth and wiped blood from his cut lower lip. Papa dropped to a squat beside him and looked at him with merciless intent. “You’re a goddamned car thief,” he said.

  Silence. Quentin didn’t move, didn’t speak, just stared back at him. He tasted his own blood, accompanied by a wave of shame. “How did you find out?”

  “From old friends who know Goots. When you went to work for him I knew what might happen, but I kept my mouth shut. I said to myself, My son has honor. His mother has taught him the letter of the word and I think I’ve shown him the spirit. If Goots offers him the wrong choice, he’ll say no. I gotta let him prove himself. But you didn’t.”

  Quentin slowly wiped his hand on the leg of his jeans. He trembled with disgrace. He still wanted his father’s approval, and when he realized how little that need had changed he was filled with bitter shock. Yet years of pain and resentment boiled out of him. “Who are you to lecture me about honor? You’re a lousy father and a lousy husband. I steal cars to pay our bills. Ma’s always hidden our money problems from you. And you never bother to look that close.”

  He confessed in grotesque detail about the bill collectors, the eviction, the job for Siccone’s. And finally, the worst. “I know you fucked that woman who sponsored you,” he shouted. “I know you did it to get her money.”

  Papa’s rage gave way to a stunned look, then despair. He shut his eyes and bowed his head.

  “Don’t tell me about honor,” Quentin continued into his awful silence. “Just stay out of my business! You’re killing Ma, and I stopped giving a shit about you years ago! Go be a fucking artist and follow your dream, but leave me alone!”

  Silence. Slowly his father stood. He held down a hand. Quentin shoved it away. “I can take care of myself. That’s what you wanted, that’s what you got.”

  His father left him sitting there, walked numbly to the truck, and drove out of the cemetery. After a moment, the sounds of birds and distant traffic filled the ordinary quiet, and Quentin looked around, blinking, dazed, as if just waking.

  He crawled to Jeanne Louise’s grave. There was no victory or wisdom in anything he’d said. He flattened a hand on his aunt’s marker, the only symbol of a long-dead girl who had inspired Richard Riconni to be more than he’d imagined possible.

  “What did I just do to him?” he asked brokenly.

  The silence of the dead was his only answer.

  • • •

  “What a mess. You’re fired,” Goots said the next day. “Fired from the garage, fired as a thief. Fired. I’m very sorry. Believe me.”

  Quentin had just arrived for work, and stared at him as if this were a joke. “What’d I do? Look, about yesterday, my old man came by with a problem, and I had to go. Yeah, I should’ve told somebody I was taking off, but — ”

  Goots waved his beefy hands for silence. “It’s nothing you did. Your papa came to see me last night. Said either I fire you or he’d shut me down. He could go to that goddamned Alfonse Esposito and do it, too. So I have no choice. On the other hand, I respect your papa and I know he’s only looking out for you.”

  “There are other places to work. You know what I mean. I won’t stop.”

  “Have some common sense. You’re not like the others who steal cars. You’re no Johnny Martin. You’ve got brains, you’re going to college. Don’t risk it all. God sent you a message yesterday. An angel. Your own papa. Take the hint.”

  “My old man’s no angel, and it’s too late for me to change.” Quentin walked out.

  • • •

  But in fact, Quentin didn’t steal another car during the rest of the summer or into that fall. Goots had run a relatively secure, efficient operation. Quentin knew of others who were rumored to be just as trustworthy, but he took his time, checking them out. He caught himself thinking Papa would approve of his methodical technique, though he knew the idea was ridiculous. He thought about his father constantly.

  And then the news came. In Father Aleksandr’s darkly paneled office, Quentin was handed an envelope from MIT. As the priest grinned Quentin opened it and read that the university was offering him a full engineering scholarship. He planned to graduate early from St. Vincent’s, and could start at MIT in the spring, if he wanted. A weight eased from Quentin’s shoulders. He was surprised to feel so astonished. Mother’s faith in him, which he had often taken at face value, had been right.

  And if she was right about him, then maybe she was right to believe in Papa, too.

  On that cool October afternoon he waited outside the massive doors of the Brooklyn Library’s main branch, flicking jaunty looks at girls who looked back, mentally daring grown men to cross his path, but in fact so excited behind his cool exterior that he could barely stand still.

  He jostled the switchblade in his pocket like a talisman as he leaned against the library’s towering walls beside enormous, bronze Art Deco doors that had made him feel, as a child, that he was an ant hurrying inside to steal bread crumbs. Now he defied any symbol of learning and power to make him feel ignorant, again. When Mother walked outside the massive building with a heavy book satchel dragging on one thin shoulder and her purse dangling awkwardly around her cane, Quentin leaped to her side. He took the encumbering items from her, dropped them carefully beside her feet as she gaped at him in confusion, then threw his arms around her in an enormous, grinning hug.

  “What is it?” she asked breathlessly, looking at him wide-eyed, her question magnified by her glasses.

  He stepped back. “I’m going to MIT next spring,” he answered.

  Her eyes gleamed and filled with tears. She shrieked, then hugged him and held him. But what began as a joyful moment quickly turned desperate. She held on, and began to shake, then sobbed into his shoulder. Quentin was so startled he began to say Mother? Mother? and to pat her on the back.

  She tried to calm herself, choking down soft sounds of misery, shivering. “Sorry, sorry, oh, sorry,” she managed. “It’s not you. I’m so happy. It’s a dream come true. But . . . I wish your papa were here. I wish . . . I’m so worried, Quentin. Something’s wrong.” Quentin grabbed her satchel and purse, then guided her along the plaza in front of the library. “Sit down, take a breath,” he urged, and they sank down on a bench. “What’s going on?”

  “He didn’t call last night. And I’ve been trying to reach him all day.” She bent over and quickly wiped her eyes with the hem of her pale blue sweater. When she straightened she grasped Quentin’s hand and shook her head. “I’m sure it’s nothing. I don’t want to ruin this moment for you. Really.”

  “It’s okay. Tell me more about Papa.”

  “He’s been so depressed. Since the summer his ability to see some hope for the future has evaporated — he’s changed, Quentin, he’s lost a spark that kept him going. Always before, no matter how much he agonized over his work and his career, no matter how often he felt success was impossible, he still believed in what he was doing. But lately he seems to have given up. Given up.”

  Quentin listened to all this with a sick knot growing in his stomach. He had done this to his father — he had punished him, broken him. And he’d never wanted to do that. “I’m going to borrow a car and drive up there tonight.” He paused, then, “I can get a car from Goots.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “Would you mind if I went alone? I’ll even spend the night there. Hang out with him, talk to him. We’ve got some issues to settle. Just the two of us.”

  She squeezed his hand and studied him intently. Anxiety merged with restored hope, and he watched the color creep back into her ashen face. “If you could do that,” she said softly, “I would cons
ider it as worthy of celebration as your scholarship.”

  “I’ll talk to him. I promise.”

  “He told me he’s thinking of coming home.”

  Quentin grew very still. “You mean, quitting?”

  She nodded. “And God forgive me, I want him to quit. I never thought I’d say that, but I miss him so much and he’s worked so hard up there, alone — it hasn’t been good for him. If we can just get him home we’ll take care of him. He’ll find some other place to use as a studio, and we’ll get by. It could be a new beginning. He’s just so isolated up there.”

  Quentin held her gaze without wavering. The scholarship was a prize he could hand to his father as proof Riconni men had a future in the world. Both of them had a future, and the past could be put aside. He stood. He felt sure of himself, and almost lighthearted. “I’m going to bring him home,” he vowed.

  • • •

  He arrived at the warehouse just after dark, driving one of Goots’s personal cars, a sleek red 1959 Corvette. “For good luck,” the German had beamed. “College boy.”

  Ahead, the glimmer of yellow streetlights around the warehouse filled Quentin with anticipation, although he could see no light from the warehouse windows. Papa was probably huddled under a lamp at his drafting desk. Papa’s truck sat in the parking lot.

  Quentin repeatedly pressed the buzzer at the side door, but there was no answer. Frowning, he circled the building, trying the mechanisms on a pair of enormous roll-up doors, checking another side entrance, finding everything locked. He went back to the first door and spent five minutes jabbing the buzzer uselessly.

  Goosebumps scattered down his spine. He began to list all the possibilities. Someone had picked Papa up for dinner. Papa was sound asleep in the small living area he’d built, and simply didn’t hear the buzzer. Papa was deep into a sketch or a model for some sculpture, and was ignoring all visitors.