Red Shirt

by A. J. Stewart

  I walked away. It was tough going. The mass of humanity was being forced forward and I was a salmon swimming against the stream. I could see why most of those salmon died in the attempt. It was hard work. I reached an area where store-made tortilla chips were stacked in a pyramid and a guy in a sombrero was making guacamole to go as if this was now a Thanksgiving staple, and I looked across the stream of people and saw the FBI agent. And more importantly, he saw me. He was wearing the same dark glasses, and he adjusted them as he tried to cross the river toward me.

  I kept moving toward the exit, which was actually the entrance, and I got plenty of dirty looks for my trouble. New England was a place where traditions held firm, and one such tradition was that you didn’t go against the stream in Stew Leonard’s. I saw that the special agent had given up on getting across and was cutting around the cheese stand to head me off at the pass.

  He didn’t make it. I got to the entrance and was hit by the cold, but I didn’t stop. I broke into a half walk, half jog, striding hard across the lot, dodging cars looking to take my spot. Snow was accumulating underfoot and it was starting to get slippery. The parking lot had been salted in anticipation of snow, but it wasn’t helping me.

  I reached my car and looked around for the FBI man but couldn’t see him. I didn’t wait. I got in, and ever so slowly made my way out of the lot and onto Westport Avenue. The traffic was heavier than it had been earlier and it was slow going, but I kept going until I reached the Saugatuck River, but before I crossed it I turned off and headed north, until I came to a building site on the river bank. It was deserted, the builders’ tools having been laid down for Thanksgiving, or possibly until the spring. I pulled into the empty lot in front of the buildings and waited.

  I waited about five minutes. Then I saw a car not unlike my rental, a bland anonymous vehicle. It pulled into the lot beside me, and Special Agent Jeffrey Prager got out.

  I got out, too. I walked over to him.

  “Did you get it?” he asked.

  “I did.” I held up the gym bag for him to see.

  He gave me his movie star smile. Unlike mine, his really did look like a matinee idol. Leo Morris had always been a good-looking guy. He pulled off the aviator sunglasses and hugged me.

  I hugged him back. He might have played a cop on television, but he’d never play a more important role than that of an FBI agent from Boston.

  “What’s with the sunglasses?” I asked.

  “It’s the little touches that sell the part,” said Leo.

  “You were wearing them when you came to the Pickerings’. It was nighttime, dude.”

  “The audience sees what they want to see. Plus, I didn’t want your bad guy to get too good a look. He might see me in something on Broadway someday.”

  “I don’t think he’s the Broadway type.”

  “So when did you get this crazy idea, anyway?”

  “My fiancée gave me the name of an FBI guy in Boston. When I realized that doing the bad guys the favor of getting rid of an FBI investigation was the only way I could sell them on leaving Brett alone, I figured it was worth a shot.”

  “So he’s a real agent?”

  “Oh, yeah. I knew they’d check that. It’s easy enough to do.”

  “Does he look like me?”

  “Like you say, the audience sees what they want to see. A G-man’s a G-man. The real agent Prager doesn’t have any facial hair and he’s got that haircut you’ve got there, so from a distance, or from inside a pantry, you all look the same.”

  “You always could see the plays ahead of everyone else.”

  “Just got lucky, but I couldn’t have done it without you.”

  “As long as Coach is okay, you know. I didn’t do much.”

  “You impersonated an FBI agent. That’s a federal crime.”

  He smiled again. “Only if you get caught.”

  We hugged again and then he walked around his car to leave.

  “What happened to the convertible?” I asked.

  “Didn’t fit the part. It’s the little touches, man.”

  I smiled.

  “Don’t be a stranger,” he said. “Seriously.”

  “If you’re ever in Florida.”

  He slipped into his car, pulled back, and with a wave out the window was gone. I tossed the gym bag on the passenger seat and got in, fired up the heat, and pulled out after him.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Everyone was back home when I got to the Dunbars’. The kids were watching television and the adults had congregated in the kitchen. Mrs. D and Kerry were pouring over cookbooks while Ray made eggnog. Coach was sitting at the kitchen table with Sally. I wasn’t expecting to see Sal there, so I gave him a frown. He gave me one back, but with him you never knew if it was just his regular face.

  Sal held up a biscuit. I knew he was a sucker for the biscuits at Cracker Barrel, but I hadn’t thought he would come all the way to New Haven for one of Mrs. D’s versions.

  “These are the best pumpkin biscuits I’ve ever had,” he said, wasting no time in chomping into one.

  “Oh, Mr. Mondavi, stop it, you’re embarrassing me,” said Mrs. D, who was loving it.

  “I just call them as I see them, Mrs. Dunbar,” said Sal. “How about you, kid?” he said to me. “What are you thankful for?”

  I looked around the room. Everything felt like a trite thing to say, but it was true. There were good times and bad times, but I knew that I would not have had the good if not for the bad. If not for my parents’ deaths, I would not have gone to Florida. If not for losing Lenny, I would not have found Danielle. Life had a funny way of spinning you on your head.

  I looked at Kerry, the sister I never had, and Ray, who made her as happy as she deserved to be. I looked at Mrs. Dunbar, who gave a boy who wasn’t her own everything in her heart and asked nothing in return. I looked at Coach, who, quite simply, had saved me from myself.

  I didn’t answer Sal. The answer was too big and too complex and too simple to be spoken. I just dropped the gym bag on the kitchen table in front of Coach.

  “Compliments of Brett Pickering,” I said.

  Coach looked at me, confused, and then at the bag. He unzipped it, and his eyes nearly popped out of his head. He pulled out a brick of notes and held it up to his wife. I saw Mrs. D put her hands to her mouth and gasp. Kerry stepped over toward her father, looking at the money in his hand, but she stopped before she got there and wrapped her arms gently around my neck, and whispered into my ear.

  “Thank you, brother.”

  Ray put the eggnog in the fridge and, switching gears, he popped open bubbles, which felt both right and wrong. I was glad Coach had his money back. I wanted him to get everything he desired, and I wanted Mrs. D to get her trip to Europe. But I felt like we hadn’t really achieved anything. We were right back where we started. Coach had his money and his hope, which he had at the beginning. We had done nothing more than retrieve the status quo, but as I looked around I realized that sometimes, that is itself, a win.

  Sal beckoned me to him and I leaned down as Ray passed champagne around. Sal clamped his hand around the back of my neck and pulled me close and kissed my cheek. Then he winked.

  “Thank Don Mondavi for me,” I said.

  “Thank him yourself. Send him a postcard from Florida. He’ll get a kick out of that.”

  I nodded and took some champagne and we all looked at Coach. He and Sal stood from the table. Coach was beaming. It was the happiest I had seen him, not just since I had gotten back, but maybe ever. I noticed that he had dropped the money back into the bag and paid it no more attention. A greedy man would be counting it, or even rolling in it. But Coach Dunbar didn’t care about the money. He cared about the peace of mind, and what he saw as his responsibilities to provide for his family, even as an old man. He looked at me.

  “You toast,” he said.

  I wasn’t sure if he was passing the baton somehow, or perhaps I was reading too much into it. Maybe it was
just my turn because I had walked in with a quarter million dollars in cash. But I took every eye in the room, and they looked at me.

  “To family,” I said.

  We toasted family and then Mrs. D gave me a hug that went on for longer than some sitcom seasons, and then Kerry followed, and then Ray came in for a short one and told me that I had done a great thing. I thanked him, and then he quietly asked me if I knew if Coach had a safe, because leaving two hundred fifty thousand in cash on the kitchen was making him nervous. He was an insurance guy, after all, but it was a damned good point.

  He whispered to Mrs. D and she nodded and took the bag away, and then Ray poured more champagne.

  I didn’t have a second round. I was thinking about my toast. About family. About how sometimes you end up in a place with a group of people who don’t just get who you are—they make you who you are. These were such people to me. My family. I had neglected them in my desperation to run away, but I would try to do better. But I also had another family, one that sat in the sunshine and patiently waited for me to arrive.

  I gave Mrs. D another hug. “I have to go,” I said.

  “It’s late,” she said without conviction.

  “I know, but I have to. I’ll be fine.”

  She hugged me again, and I thought back to Beccy Williams, and the sense of finality I felt about our goodbye. This was not that. This was see you later, not so long.

  Kerry tried to talk me into staying. She said I wouldn’t get a flight out now anyway, and she was right. But as much as I wanted to stay, I wanted to leave more. Sometimes it’s not about leaving someone, but about being with someone else.

  Sally said he should also get going. He had family to see and all that. The Dunbars all thanked him with hugs and kisses. I ran upstairs above the garage to grab my bag. I hadn’t arrived with much but I was leaving with a lot more. Just not in a bag.

  I found Sally out the front of the house. His driver, Philip, dutifully held the car door open on the street. I again had the sneaking suspicion that kid would go far. Mrs. D came to me.

  “You can’t drive all the way to Florida by yourself,” she said.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. “Caffeine and Jackson Browne. That’s all I need.”

  Kerry handed me a bag. “Sandwiches and soda. Be safe.”

  “I will.”

  “Maybe next year you can all come up.”

  “Or you can come down.” I winked. “It’s seventy five and fine.”

  “That’s not turkey-eating weather.”

  I had to agree with that.

  “I love you,” she said, rubbing my back.

  “I love you, too. Sis.” I gave her my matinee idol and she rolled her eyes.

  Coach met me at the car. He didn’t try to stop me. He didn’t ask me to stay. He gave me a hug. That was two hugs in a matter of days. He had saved me, of that I was certain, but hugging wasn’t his way. Suicide runs back and across the gridiron in August heat was his way. Mrs. D had always provided the hugs. But Coach took me and hugged me like his life depended on it. Then he slapped my back and pulled away to look at me.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I owe you.”

  I looked at his aged face, still strong but not the granite of his prime. He had been a shadow when I had arrived back, and now I could see the fire in his eyes again. But I couldn’t think of a person who owed me less than he did.

  “We don’t do debt here. We do because we can. We’re family.”

  There were no tears in Coach’s eyes, but I could hear Mrs. D blubbering away in the background.

  “You were a good boy. You turned into a fine man,” he said.

  “I had some good role models,” I replied.

  It was true. I had been awfully lucky on that score. My first role model had been my father. Before I lost him to the drink, he was my world, and he taught me all he could. What he didn’t know, what I didn’t realize until now, was that the lesson I took from his darkest days was about unconditional love. The love he had for my mother. The second mentor I had was Coach Dunbar. He taught me about work ethic, and how team was everything. He taught me by example that sometimes you help because you can, not because you have to. My third mentor was Lenny Cox. He taught me everything else of value that I knew.

  We waved and I walked with Sally down the driveway to the street. We paused by his town car.

  “You sure you don’t want to come to a New York Italian Thanksgiving?”

  “I don’t think I could eat that much, Sal.”

  “Listen, you can’t drive that dinky car all the way to Florida. The rental return fees will kill you.”

  “It is what it is.”

  “Aach. It is what it is. Listen, go down to the lot in Rye. The kid will meet you there. He’ll set you up with a proper ride.”

  “What about the rental?”

  “He’ll take it back to Westchester airport on Friday for you.”

  “But his car will be in Florida. How do I get it back?”

  “You ask too many questions, you know that? We’ll sell it down there, send him the cash. Okay?”

  “Okay. Thanks, Sal.”

  “Happy Thanksgiving, kid.”

  “Happy Thanksgiving, Sal.”

  Sal got in with a wave like he was the damned President of the United States, and Philip closed the door and got in and drove off into the night.

  I turned and looked at the Dunbars, standing in the driveway. The girls had come out to wave me goodbye, so there were three generations all squished in tight against the cold. They wouldn’t grace magazine covers or walk red carpets to be handed awards. They were unspectacular people doing unspectacular things. And the world would be a better place if it had a few more of them.

  I was about to get in the car when I realized I was still wearing Coach’s heavy warm-up jacket. I dashed over and pulled it off as I went to hand it back to Mrs. D.

  “You keep it,” she said. “We have plenty. And now you’ll be able to dress sensibly when you come next time.”

  I folded the jacket over my arm and walked back to the car. I waved one last time and then slipped in behind the wheel. They waved as I drove away. They were still waving in my rear view when I turned the corner and left them behind.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Dinner time, the night before Thanksgiving. I was usually exactly where I wanted to be, either at home on Singer Island or at Longboard’s. I couldn’t believe how many people were not where they wanted to be. The drive to Rye was a slog. I eventually got to the lot. The kid who reminded me of Chachi was in the little hut, waiting. He didn’t seem put out by having to open up for me, so maybe Sally had sweetened the pot for him. I would never know.

  “Florida, huh?” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Long drive.”

  “Yeah.”

  He looked me up and down the way a tailor does before deciding on a suit. “You need a comfort ride. Not speed. Comfort.”

  The kid didn’t take me to the rear where the junkers lay. Instead, he walked me over to a vehicle that sat black in the night, like a shadow of a shadow. I looked the car over.

  I smiled.

  “2011 Lincoln Town Car,” he said. “Last production model before they replaced it with the MKT.”

  “It’s perfect.”

  It was perfect. If you ever plan on driving all the way down the east coast of the United States, I highly recommend one. It accelerated with a slow burn, like an ocean liner, and had a similar turning circle. It was no zip zap, get-around-the-city type of car. It was designed for the long haul. And despite the miles on the clock having reached the hundreds of thousands, it ran smooth and soft, like a water bed. It was wide in the cockpit, and I found a radio station to my liking as I headed out on I-95.

  The George Washington Bridge was its usual nightmare, but I was relaxed and happy. I had somewhere to be and, yes, I wanted to get there. But I was a long way from home and anxiety wasn’t going to help, so I got in my lane an
d stayed there, and then crossed over into New Jersey and enjoyed the view of the Manhattan skyline, and then the traffic opened up a touch on the Turnpike.

  I called Danielle as I passed the turn off for Trenton. She said she was sitting on the back patio alone, watching the lights of Riviera Beach play across the Intracoastal Waterway. She was happy I was coming home, but the cop in her was concerned about the long drive. I told her I was stopping regularly and would see her at lunchtime.

  I ate my sandwich on the outskirts of Philadelphia and made decent time to Baltimore, and then it all slowed down again until south of DC, when it really opened up and the hour got late and the Town Car hit its rhythm. I sped through Virginia and got gas as I entered North Carolina. I felt like a country song, headed home to my baby. I thought of the snowbirds who would ply this route in the days and weeks after Thanksgiving, like geese headed south. They would be envious of my ride. Perhaps one of them would buy it in West Palm.

  I started getting tired outside of Fayetteville, North Carolina. I cranked up the music and shot another can of Coke, and I stopped once more just on the side of the road to wake up and refresh.

  I made it to a little place called Switzerland, South Carolina, before I fell asleep at the wheel. There were few cars about and the road was nothing more than a tunnel of light twenty feet ahead of my car. I had the music blaring and the window down to get air on my face, but my lids took matters into their own hands and closed gradually, and then, after a couple of false starts, they shut completely.

  It was the rumble strip on the side of the freeway that shot me awake. At this point I-95 was the Jasper Highway, and two lanes headed each way were flanked by a thick forest of trees. I woke to find myself speeding along on the grass edge beside the road, slowly but definitely angling down into the dip where the massive trees waited to end me. For some reason I turned the wheel rather than braking, and that might have saved me. The headlights pointed back up to the tarmac and I launched back up onto the road with a thud. It was then I planted my foot on the brakes and I came to a skidding stop right in the middle of the two southbound lanes.