by Steve Amick
Real mature, she thought. Realllllll mature.
Minutes later, they almost crashed carts head-on in the produce section, whipping around between the big bins of piled fruit. Mrs. Starkey. Neither one said hello or even any actual words but both let out an exasperated sort of tsk that sounded, to Kimberly, like something breaking inside her own chest. It was awful.
And it didn’t feel any better when, a few minutes later, they were checking out and her dad kept craning his head to see over to the other register where Mrs. Starkey was checking out, trying to see if she noticed her sausages had been swapped with spicier ones. He acted like he was going to start snickering. Kimberly wanted to elbow him in the gut.
A STRONG WIND BLEW OFF LAKE MICHIGAN, enough to clear the obstacle of the Starkeys’ lakeside house and reach all the way to Kimberly Lasco’s bedroom and whisper through the drapes and shake the birch at the corner of the house. She went to the window, looking out at the dark canopies of the neighbor’s trees making that grass skirt sound, and she thought she heard another sound and saw a light, flickering over toward the access road, a white flash among the shimmering trees. Great, she thought, I’m about to join the ranks of those freaks who’ve seen lights at night . . . Just great. But then she saw it again and was relieved to see it wasn’t in the sky, but lower down. She was looking at it through the treetops and ground cover that bordered the road at the end of the driveway.
It was a camera flash. It had to be. Someone was down at the end of the driveway, taking photos of something.
Oh please, she said in the voice of prayer. Please don’t let it be my dad.
29
HE WASN’T EXPECTING the girl, but it was her, knocking at the kitchen door.
“Okay,” she said, all in a rush, “I know it’s not Thursday, but I’m bored and I just thought I’d pop by and see if you had any questions or problems. And also, well, I was wondering . . .” Her nose wrinkled up: she was either tongue-tied or repulsed. Or both. “How can I put this? Since it seems like you’re maybe not real big on cleaning . . .”
Oh no, he thought. It was true. He did smell. She was trying to tell him he had an old-man odor. She was going to insist, if they were going to continue to work on the computer together . . .
Knock it off, he told himself. Don’t be absurd. She wouldn’t come over here just to tell him he stank. That is, not unless she thought it was a sign he was dying and she was saving his life by pointing it out. But wait—he’d read that somewhere himself, that signs of various fatal diseases, like cancer, can appear in olfactory form, a warning shot across the nostrils. Maybe that was true and maybe he was dying and maybe that’s why she appeared at his doorstep with this message that was difficult to spill.
But she didn’t ask him if he ever bathed. Instead she asked if he would consider hiring her to come in and help around the house a little, maybe do a little cooking, get him groceries, run the vacuum . . . He saw now that she had a bucket at her feet, stuffed with rags, rubber gloves, oven cleaner and the like.
“You wouldn’t have to pay me a buttload. It’s just, I don’t get enough hours at the fudge shop and hey, I kind of like hanging out here.”
He wasn’t sure what to say to this at all, but it sounded so familiar, like the sort of arrangement Ben had been pestering him about for the past few months—someone to come in and help—that he answered, almost automatically, “Yes. That would be fine.”
“Good,” she said, beaming. “Great.” And then, wincing, her nose wrinkled again, her wide mouth spread in a grin, “Did I just say ‘buttload’ to a minister?”
A few hours later, after they split a pitcher of iced coffee out on the deck, gazing out at the river, he stood alone again in his spotless kitchen, wondering what was happening to his life. Even the toaster shone, reflecting his stubbled gray chin. How embarrassing, he thought— Add a missing tooth and a pickaxe and I could play the part of a prospector. He made a mental note to pick up some razors at the Spartan. Retired or not, there was no excuse for poor personal grooming. Especially if he was going to have visitors popping in like this now. There was no reason, he decided, that he had to look like a misanthropic hermit, a creepy old shut-in.
ON THURSDAY, when she came for her tutorial, she showed him how to create new files and move files and how to save files and empty files into a sort of trash can, and it led naturally to the subject of his own disordered den. She had a plan that involved plastic storage bins that could be stored in the attic and the basement. She said she’d pick up a few and bring them by next time. “Just organizing it will make this shrink down a lot,” she said, “but we’re also going to pitch one-quarter of it. Deal?” His kids had been laying out just such harsh prescriptions for his messy den and he’d resisted their suggestions. But now, with her staring him down and nodding her head, how could he not agree? She started in on the books that afternoon, reordering the shelves and digging the strays out from under the piles of paper. They had to do it together because he needed to tell her which subjects went with which. “It’s weird,” she said. “These’re all basically your minister books, right? It’s all basically religion and stuff in that area, but still, there’s a lot of different slots when you break it down, huh?”
He agreed it was a very vast and diverse field of study. “Lots of delineation and hairsplitting.”
She was right: with the books all properly shelved, a lot of the clutter on the floor was cleared away. Sorting the rest into the bins would be easy.
Next she announced he was going to work on attachments. He was to compose a practice letter in Word, then send her an e-mail and attach the file. Then he should go online and find an interesting Web site and send her another e-mail with a link to that Web site. Meanwhile, she was going to work on the bathroom. He objected, thinking of the unholy state of the toilet and what else she might find, the stray pubic hairs and other disasters. But she wouldn’t listen to his objections, which he could scarcely make that specific, and so he had to keep it on the “oh, please don’t bother with that!” level.
“When you’re done,” she told him, “you can maybe make the iced coffee.”
Again, they drank it out back. Summer was definitely starting. There was a warm breeze that whitecapped the waves on Lake Michigan, just beyond the river. She took off her long-sleeved shirt, revealing a snug spaghetti-strapped top that, if it hadn’t been deep orange with a decal in the center of a big-eyed cartoon blob and the words Hello Kitty, he might have thought was a slip. It’s just a shirt, he told himself. It’s just hot out.
It was reassuring, feeling the sun on his face, the advent of another season, and he mentioned how it was really starting to get nice out and how he imagined pretty soon she’d probably want to come by less often; that she’d probably want to be out in the sun on her days off from the fudge shop. “So I guess I better hurry up and master the computer,” he said.
She told him there was no rush at all and then she said, “Listen. I don’t want to be pushy—if it’s not a good idea, that’s totally cool—really—but I was just thinking, would it be a problem if I lay out here sometimes?”
He didn’t respond because he didn’t know how to respond. He didn’t know what he was responding to. He wasn’t absolutely certain, in that moment, what she was asking him permission to do. So he said nothing and in the silence, she was already backtracking, waving her hands as if to erase the idea. “Forget it. If it’s not cool, forget it. I won’t do it. It’s just . . . I feel funny doing it at my dad’s house.”
He didn’t like the sound of this—not the use of his own yard, but her reluctance to use her own. He felt compelled to pry. “Is there anything . . . wrong there? With you and your dad?” He made a mental note to ask around about Kurt Lasco. He hated to think that there was something inappropriate happening there, but that sort of thing did happen, as awful as it was, and he’d made a real effort, during the years of his ministry, to put aside his own innate impulse to avoid these unpleasant realitie
s and instead approach them honestly, dead-on. He hated discovering the darkness in people’s lives, but ignoring it was no way to help either.
“It’s not my dad,” she said. “Really. It’s just, uncomfortable. With the neighbors. They’re not getting along with my dad and they have a kid and he’s my age and I just feel funny sitting out in the yard now with him looking at me when they hate us and all . . .”
“I see,” he said, though he really didn’t. But at least it didn’t sound like there was anything inappropriate going on with her dad. That was a relief.
“And plus the view’s no good at home. It’s not like it was when I was little. It makes me kind of sad, how it’s different now.”
He told her that would be fine. She was welcome to use the yard all she wanted, adding that there was a little nothing of a dock out there, too, with a wooden ladder leading down to the water. “There used to be a dinghy moored to the ladder,” he said, “back when the kids were young, but I don’t know if the church has it stored somewhere or if it just got too rotten and was never replaced. I could look into it, if you like.”
She told him not to bother with the dinghy. The yard would be fine, wonderful. “And maybe down on that little dock. But is that okay with the church, me hanging out?”
“Never mind about them. It’s okay with me.”
“I just wasn’t sure how much is your property and where the church’s begins. There’s no fence between here and the church . . . And also, how far down to the water? I just wasn’t clear on any of that.”
“Well, the church owns all of it. If you want to be official. The land and the waterfront and the house. But it’s still my home.” As of today, he thought. Who knows about next week? But he didn’t see the need to admit all that. “I don’t need the church’s permission.”
“But,” she said, “you know—if I’m tanning, I’d be in a bathing suit.”
He hoped he wasn’t blushing. There wasn’t anything wrong with a bathing suit. “I know,” he said, sounding, to his own ears, defensive. Honestly, he hadn’t known—he hadn’t really thought it out, but the fuzzy picture in his mind had been more or less one of her dressed as she was now, in shorts and a sleeveless top. Trying to lighten things up, he said, “The only thing I can imagine the church objecting to is if you fall in the river and drown. I’m not really up to lifeguarding these days. I’m assuming you can swim, you’ll be okay unsupervised?”
“Please!” she said. “I’m sixteen. I don’t need a lifeguard.” She bent her arm, strong-man style, grinning. “Feel that muscle.”
“Okay,” he said, chuckling. “So you’re fit as a fiddle.”
“Go on,” she said. “Feel it! Like a rock!”
But he didn’t feel it. He waved her off and turned away, still chuckling, saying, “Very good, Esther Williams. Very good . . .” rising and clearing away the empty glasses and the pitcher of iced coffee, heading for the house, moving quickly before she could hop up to help. There was a sense of relief at getting away from her, a sense of escape from social peril, and yet, mere seconds later, the moment gone, he felt something hard in his gut like heartbreak, like regret.
30
IT WASN’T AN ETHICAL QUESTION but rather one of logistics that had Roger Drinkwater holding off on his next attack, the move he’d come to think of as Operation: Nozzle Muzzle. The only doubt nagging at him was whether it would be better to hit all the jet-skis at once or space them out as a series of hit-and-run events over several nights. The former plan had the advantage that the targets would not grow increasingly alert with each strike—he would hit them all when everyone’s guard was still down. The latter plan had the advantage of prolonged aggravation—a campaign of attrition. Plus, it would be less physically exhausting for him.
The plan was simple: swim underwater in the cover of night with a socket wrench and remove the plastic venturi nozzle, the thing at the end of the actual jet that directed the outtake of water and thereby controlled the steering on a jet-ski.
The only issue was the nut size. He wasn’t about to carry a whole socket set with him. The first thought was to make a recon swim with a wad of putty, jam the putty over the nut on one of them, and then bring it home and measure the impression. He was planning to do that the other night but earlier in the day, while gassing up his truck at the Mobil, he turned to see, pulled up at the other side of the pump, a minivan plus a trailer with two tangerine orange jet-skis. He looked around. The driver, some mullet-head in winter camouflage warm-up pants, blacks and grays and whites, was across the parking lot, talking loudly and angrily on the pay phone about how his cell phone was “totally fucked.” Roger reached through the window, removed the measuring tape from his glove compartment, stepped over the pump island and made the measurement.
That night, it was moonless and a go. He’d snorkel it, opting for the wetsuit not so much for its warmth but for the black cover it provided—he’d be a kind of wet catburglar. The wrench went into the zippered utility sleeve along his thigh. He stood in front of the mirror on the back of his bedroom door, listening to the frogs and crickets and thinking how much it sounded like he was back on the canal in Rach Soi, about to go out on a mine-clearing recon with his squad buddies, Coots and Miller. He turned to go and at the last minute decided to bring a small black nylon backpack. It would be slower moving through the water with this, but it wasn’t a swim meet. He’d try one and if it went easily, he’d hit them all tonight. And if he did more than one, he’d need the backpack to haul his loot away. (There was no point in polluting the lake further, and besides, they might find the nozzles in shallow water and just reattach them.)
Three hours later, he was standing in his shed in a robe, admiring his war trophies spread out on the floor: sixteen oily nozzles, looking like the foreskins snipped off an army of robot invaders. God, he wished he could tack them up on the outside of the shed. Show them off like the rack of a ten-point buck.
But he knew better than that. This was the sort of proud moment you celebrate alone. So he ran a stringer through them all and hung them, temporarily, inside his chimney, until he could dispose of them in a better way.
And then the next morning, figuring he’d already had his exercise, he slept in. There was a little noise at first, very briefly—just enough to cause him to roll over—as the first ones out hopped on their rides and screamed out into the lake, arrow-straight, with no controls and then the others must have caught on, because it got very quiet again. He imagined he heard grumbling, swearing, yelps, teenaged whining, but that might have been something he dreamed. If there really were such noises, they weren’t loud enough to wake him. He was exhausted, after all. He’d had a big night.
JON HATCHERT, THE NEW SHERIFF, was standing on Roger’s porch the next morning. Other than his useless bathing cap suggestion, Roger hadn’t had much previous interaction with the guy, but it was rapidly adding up to enough for him to form an opinion. Hatchert seemed to take that cop look a little too seriously, with his well-manicured mustache and crisp shirts and swagger. Like it was part of the mandatory uniform. Plus, he asked a lot of insulting questions, finally arriving at this one: “Isn’t it interesting that you’re one of the very few residents on the lake we didn’t hear from this morning? Not a peep out of you.”
“Could that possibly be, Sheriff, because I don’t own a jet-ski?”
“Possibly. Which is very suspicious, by the way. You better believe I’ve taken note of that fact.”
“The fact that I’ve chosen not to pollute the lake and abuse my neighbors, that puts me under suspicion? Hey, I don’t water-ski or blast rap music either: you wanna get out your handcuffs?” He was starting to think the little pissant wasn’t just annoying but possibly mentally deficient.
Looking past him, he watched Janey Struska moving along the water’s edge from around near the old Willoughby place. He took it she’d been instructed to look around for the nozzles—as if some kid might have stashed them in a woodchuck hole or they’d
washed ashore—and she looked pretty halfhearted about the task, resenting the dumb deputy jobs, or maybe she knew better, that it was a waste of time. She was moving with that sort of roll-walk, that cop thing, with the hands on the utility belt. She’d grown into a solid hunk of woman, tall and unapologetically curvy, and he admired the way she carried her weight with a confidence he didn’t see in many white women. Bikwaakaazo gi-diyenh, songan bemossewin was the phrase from his Uncle Jimmy Two-Hands—he wasn’t quite sure what it meant. Something about the rump.
When she arrived at the porch, standing just behind her new boss, a step or two down on the stoop, Roger dropped the poker-face Indian thing suddenly and intentionally, for her benefit, and made a big show of greeting her, letting this jerk see they went back, the two of them. After a few niceties, he asked her, right in front of Hatchert, “Say, Janey, you see your old boss much anymore?”
The corner of her mouth seemed to twitch. She knew what he was up to with this, he could tell. “When he’s not out on his boat or out in his shed, making those braut links.”
“Next time you do, tell him I said hello and we all miss him. Everybody.”
With that, he turned and went back inside. End of interview.
31
THERE WAS THE MAIN HOUSE and the little house and the other house: this is the way it was with the vonBushbergers. For four generations, the head of the family and his immediate family had lived in the main house. When a son married, he moved into the little house. When the next married, he moved into the other house. When the father died and the eldest son took over, he moved back into the main house. The system had always worked out just fine.
All three houses were painted the same color, a dull yellow, almost white, like a lemon meringue made when you were running low on lemons. It was called “Clear Dawn Yellow” and the label on the can said “Manufactured by the Beavans Bros. Paint Co. of Union, S. Carol.” And the address was pre–zip code. The problem was, the current holding company no longer made Clear Dawn Yellow, on account of the lead content. Apparently the color had been a favorite for henhouses in the South and traces of lead had shown up in the yolks. Roy Kunk, at the hardware store, was trying to locate a “passable” substitute, was how he put it, but Von was not convinced. All three houses could use a touch-up, but “passable” did not cut it. “It’s either what it is,” Von told him, “or it’s not what it is.” Besides, he couldn’t see why they’d stop making the stuff just because of a little lead, a few dull-witted chickens. It made no sense, considering they had a whole damn lighthouse right out there on the point crumbling radioactive material into Lake Michigan and nobody gave a hoot about that.
