by Steve Amick
Previously, Von had always thought of Miki as being ridiculously jolly, but all that before had been nothing compared to the way he grinned and laughed his ass off now. He hugged Carol and called her “Mother” several times in a row, trying it out, then switching to “mama-san” like he’d made a side-splitting joke. Suddenly, he grew wide-eyed, like he’d just remembered something, and detached his arm from around Carol and scrambled back into the camper. He tripped on the little steps and then inside, unseen, started bumping into things, moving crap around. It sounded like he was trashing the place.
Von looked at his wife. She was just shaking her head, smiling wryly. It was like she had no stake in this, like she was just watching a movie, some foreign comedy she only understood in snatches.
Von couldn’t stand it. “Jesus god, what the hell’s he doing in there?” The guy seemed almost dangerous now, being that big and out of control.
Brenda rolled her eyes, covered her mouth, giggled, not at all like herself. Girlish. The saki was getting to her. “Oh jeez,” she said.
“Maybe,” her brother said, “he’s got a really large, unwieldy engagement ring in there.” Marita shoved him sideways, knocking him off his footing. She was giggling now, too, though she’d passed on the saki on account of the baby.
One of the side screen windows slid open and Miki pressed his face against the screen. “Please pardon, but the system is built into the console! It is not portable, the system!” Whatever the hell that meant, it seemed to truly distress the boy. Then his face was gone from the window.
Von caught his son’s attention and repeated this, “It’s not portable, the system . . .” Jack burst out laughing and Von grinned, trying to remember when they last shared a laugh like that.
Miki’s face reappeared in the small sliding window and again he spoke earnestly through the screen, bending low to be heard. “But I am hoping it will reach, the system!” Then his face was replaced with a tiny audio speaker and there was more scrambling. Von heard the opening notes to something familiar he didn’t quite place, a slow, unreeling kind of music box ditty, and more scrambling and bumping as Miki fumbled and careened back through the door, dragging a cord behind, down the little steps, playing out the slack. In his hand, he held a microphone.
“Karaoke and saki,” Jack said. “Of course! And here I’ve been trying not to think stereotypical thoughts about the guy . . .”
Miki’s lids hung low, his lip curled. “Wise . . . men . . . say . . .” He was suddenly Elvis. Flawless, gliding sideways, graceful and suave, toward Brenda, he began serenading her in a perfect, quavering tenor. “Only fools . . . rush . . . in . . .”
Jack whistled through his teeth with two fingers. “Whoo-whoo!” he said. “My man, Miki!”
“But I . . . can’t . . . help . . .”
Brenda blushed, covered her face. She looked like a teenaged girl, she really did. Von didn’t remember her looking like that even when she was a teenaged girl.
“Falling in love . . . with . . . you.”
Standing on the picnic table, Carol clapped and hooted.
It was hard to believe. This was going to be his son-in-law. All this right in front of him—this goofy serenading Japanese giant, this pregnant Guatemalan girl who seemed to want to change everything, and this wife of his who saw no problem with any of it and didn’t hesitate to stand on picnic tables and spectate—this was it. This was the future. This was the lot they’d drawn.
Jesus god . . .
Well, there wasn’t much he could do about it. Nor did he guess he should do anything about it even if there was some way to meddle. He knew what Carol would say if he cornered her later: was there some other potential mate they’d had in mind for Brenda? There was not. Had they ever even pictured her marrying anybody? They had not. Not honestly. She wouldn’t have been the first old maid among the vonBushbergers, that was sure. So what was the loss if she married this guy? There was some consolation in the idea of gaining another egghead around the place. He doubted there was a family-operated orchard anywhere in that whole part of the state with the sort of scientific brain trust it looked like he was going to have now, right on the premises. Because certainly, they wouldn’t be living in Japan. No way would his daughter spend all those years—and all that tuition money—earning an education that would prepare her to eventually run the family business and then just chuck it all for some foreigner. She was wiser than that, he was sure.
Still, he wasn’t exactly ready to hop up on the picnic table and cheer. But actually, the whole thing sort of made him chuckle, watching Carol there, carrying on like a true Elvis groupie.
40
SHE AND REVEREND GENE were out on the lounge chairs, talking over iced coffee. They had the kitchen windows open wide so they could hear Dave Brubeck drifting out, but it wasn’t cheering her much. She’d told him a little of what was going on, the nonsense with the neighbors, and how her dad was behaving, it seemed to her, like a real dick, making the whole situation worse, the dumb stunt at the Spartan store with the spicy sausages . . . She was hoping the old guy would have some advice for her, some tips on something she could do to smooth things over. A plan of action. But he just kept sipping his iced coffee, nodding a little, and gazing out at the river, the boats moving drowsily from one lake to the other. She wondered if he was even listening.
“I believe,” he said finally, “the Lord expects us to discover what each of our own individual strengths and unique opportunities are, and then use those strengths and opportunities to make things better between us. To connect us all.”
It sounded a little lame. “I don’t know that I have anything you’d call strengths. I’m still trying to figure that kind of thing out. Like, I have no idea where I want to go to college or what I’m going to—”
He shook his head. “Don’t overthink this, Kimberly. You work at the fudge shop—who doesn’t like fudge?”
She had to turn and look at him. What was he saying? “So just take them some fudge? That’s the answer?”
“It’s an answer. It makes you you. Marks you as an individual, separate from your dad. His actions and deeds are his, not yours. He’s maybe going to have to figure out what’s right on his own. How to be a good neighbor, do the right thing. In the meantime, you can start making your own relationships with the world, following what you decide is right. What’s right for you, who you are.” His eyes twinkled. That was a nice thing about older people: that twinkly thing actually happened sometimes when they smiled. “For instance,” he said, “let’s say you decide that you more enjoy the jazz records of an old man, less the flash-in-the-pan barkings the other kids try to tell you are so great—Brubeck, not Beck—well, then so be it. That would be you being you, having your own opinion. Hold your head up, darn it!”
She loved that he knew Beck. Probably he’d just peeked in her CD binder once and couldn’t actually name one single Beck song, and really, she liked Beck fine. Beck couldn’t really be lumped in with the kind of things she knew he meant, those overnight one-hit wonders, usually rappers, that she knew in her heart were mostly hype and that she only listened to out of peer pressure. But still, how cool was he for even knowing Beck? Definitely much cooler than her own dad, despite being like a hundred years older.
“I can’t tell you,” he said, “how many times it’s mentioned in the Bible: Unto thy neighbor give fudge.”
“You’re a weird guy.” She giggled, but knew he was right. “Really, really weird.”
41
ON JULY 5, ON THE WAY BACK UP NORTH from his annual escape to Canada, passing through Ludington at about twenty-hundred hours, Roger Drinkwater spotted one of vonBushberger’s trucks and had an idea. A big idea. They were pulled alongside a fruit distributor, unloading what he assumed was probably the first run of sweet cherries, which meant they’d be heading back up to Weneshkeen as soon as they were empty.
He’d been thinking how ineffectual his Operation: Nozzle Muzzle had been, in the long run (a
few days of peace, but the missing jet-ski parts were soon replaced) when he saw the orchard truck from home and it all came together in a moment. Or at least most of it did.
He pulled off 31 and drove the two miles to Lake Michigan and parked his car along the dirt road, within view of the public beach and a long sandy spit that he did his best to memorize. It probably wasn’t enough of a landmark, he decided, so he opened the trunk and got out a diving buoy and line of nylon rope he used to teach marine rescue and walked out to the spit. The only good anchor he could spot was a large piece of driftwood that unfortunately was already occupied by a young couple nuzzling and watching the last of the sunset. He decided they were just teenagers and told them to get up. The boy looked alarmed but got immediately to his feet. “Come on, Kristie,” he said, helping his girlfriend up.
“You can have it back in just a sec,” Roger told them, tying the line to a place well below the fork in the driftwood. A hunk of sun-dried beech, it looked like. Sturdy. “Okay,” he said. “You can have your bench back. Resume smooching.”
They started to sit back down. He grabbed the boy by the arm. “But do not—and I mean do NOT, under any circumstances—untie that rope. A life depends on it. Understand? A man could drown.”
He knew it made no sense to the kid but he could tell by the gulpy look on his zitty face that it didn’t really have to. “Understood,” the boy said. He looked like Roger had just enlisted his aid in some brave adventure that would save the nation from Nazis or Commies or alien invasion.
He left the car and double-timed briskly, the overland stride he’d perfected in the SEALs, and got back to the vonBushberger truck just as they were loading in the empty flats. Both the driver and his partner were Mexicans or something, migrant pickers, and when he asked if he could catch a lift back to Weneshkeen, the guy nodded a lot and said, “Sí. Sí.” Still, Roger wasn’t convinced the guy knew what he was agreeing to. More than likely, he’d seen too many bad Mexican Westerns and was just agreeing to anything in order not to get scalped.
It was a long dark ride north to Weneshkeen, and he spent it squatting on his heels on the open bed of the truck, looking back at the tree-lined road tunneling out behind him and trying to think where he would get the materials he needed. Of course, he could do it all in his kitchen. He had the salt substitute and the bleach—that plus time and patience and he’d have potassium chlorate. But by the time he cooked all that up, it could be daybreak. Besides, he didn’t need anything so fancy as plastique.
The wooden pallets moved underneath him and reeked sweetly of cherry juice. The smell took him back to the one summer as a teen that he’d worked picking at vonBushberger’s. It reminded him of bee stings and backache—and an alternative, maybe, for the material he needed.
There was supposed to be a full moon, but it was so overcast, it shouldn’t present a problem. He wondered if they’d had a wet Fourth; if his retreat this year had been unnecessary.
He kept low as they rolled through town, under the streetlights, and then reentered the dark, rumbling north another few miles and turning off at the orchard. He wondered if the migrants had forgotten him back there. They hadn’t stopped to let him hop off in town. It wasn’t surprising, being forgotten. As an Indian, Roger was long used to feeling like others couldn’t see him or tried to pretend he wasn’t there. Still, the fact that they kept rolling only saved him the trouble of pretending to get off and then hopping back on or getting in some big conversation with them and having to cook up some lame excuse for wanting to continue on to the orchard.
He dropped off only as they pulled in at the floodlit sign out front and stayed crouched low till they rattled on, back around the tractor barn, and he heard the truck shut off and ping and knock and the doors bang and the receding lilt of Spanish as they dragged their tired asses to the far meadow and the migrant shacks. He counted to a thousand after the last snippet of Spanish, then moved quickly to the tractor shed. Inside, he waited for his eyes to adjust, though he soon saw everything was almost exactly as he remembered it from that summer some thirty years ago.
He needed containers and quickly found two small thermoses on the repair bench. With one thermos, he slipped back outside and helped himself to probably three cents of diesel from the pump, topping off the thermos and screwing it tight. Back inside, he got some duct tape from the bench and sealed the thermos cap. With the second thermos, he moved to the metal cabinet where they kept the fertilizers, located a sack of Green Thumb, and packed the thermos with several cups. This he sealed, too, and then duct-taped one thermos to each thigh, thinking that if he attached them to his shins, he might kick them loose. At the door, he stood watching the open area between the houses, the floodlit turnaround, double-checking before he crossed it again. There was a small light and murmured voices coming from the smaller house, which surprised him until he remembered: he’d heard the son was married now. But the coast was clear, so he walked back out, passing only briefly through the pool of light, and then down 31 to the nearest access road, where he began his hike due west, to Lake Michigan.
The sun was down now, but he knew from memory that Sumac Point and the inlet into the Ojaanimiziibii were about two and half clicks south. He could just make out the dull glow of that shambles of a lighthouse. The wind was still holding, pulling waves in a southeasterly direction, so this would be a cinch. He could conserve energy during this part and just float.
Removing his shoes, he jammed them down in the pockets of his khakis, tying the laces to his belt loops as an added precaution. Stepping into the lake, he took off the nylon windbreaker with the Weneshkeen High Whos logo and, tying knots in the sleeves and cinching up the hood, held it over his head and slammed it down hard, forming an air pocket. Making an air bladder was nothing—any kid he taught on Drownproofing Day at the junior high every year could manage that much.
It was a gentle ride and he kicked to some extent, just to correct his course, but for the most part, he conserved his energy and worked it all out in his head. He had to stay focused.
Very quickly, he’d closed the distance to Sumac Point and he was right under the lighthouse. From here on in the cruise was over. Now it was warrior mode. He let the air bubble out and threw the soggy windbreaker up on the rocks, then untied his shoes from his belt loop and threw them up there, too. No one would come across the clothes that night and if he didn’t get back to collect them, it would mean he’d been found out already anyway.
There would still be a few Fudgies out on the riverwalk and even though it would be hard to see him down in the water, he knew he had to be careful. He chose a frog kick till he passed the first pilothouse, then went for full stealth swimming, gliding along the riverbank, taking it slow and gentle so as not to break the water too loudly. It was tricky, because he couldn’t go too deep for fear of hitting a snag, some old stump or deadhead, and the effort was already hitting him in the lungs. Easy, he told himself, no chuffing and huffing like an old man . . . But God, this was so much easier when he was a kid—even considering the occasional overhead round from an AK-47. At this point, he’d probably swap a few enemy guard towers for a pair of twenty-year-old lungs. One of the times he slipped through the surface for a grab of air, he heard a snatch of conversation—something about David Letterman—and it seemed so close, it was disorienting, like he’d slipped up and come up in the middle of a storm drain in the center of town or something.
But then there was the inner pilothouse, the hunched shape of Walt DeWalt or Keith Nuttle up there, checking out for the night—a little late, it seemed, but this was the end of a big boating holiday—and he went down again and squirmed through the narrows and he was in colder water now, back where he belonged, in the other lake, Meenigeesis.
He surfaced again, went under again, surfaced again, long enough to see his intended target was right there, docked right where he wanted it. And then next time he came up, he was right in the shadows of his own dock and he edged along it, out of the lake, and
crossed his front yard, bent low and barefoot. Hugging the side of the house, he slipped around back and let himself in through a sash window in the rear that no longer quite locked.
He knew he was dripping all over the floor but he ignored that. Without turning the lights on, he stepped to the kichenette, avoiding the window, and wolfed down a very mushy banana. Grabbing the Ziplocs, he filled one with beef jerky for later and duct-taped the whole thing to his chest, keeping the opening free at the bottom so he could still get at it. Now, he told himself, was a good time to be an Indian—or really, later, when he had to pull the duct tape off. Less body hair was sometimes a boon.
He wanted liquids but didn’t want to risk opening the fridge because of the light. Moving to the rear of the house, he unlocked his gun cabinet and, setting the bird gun aside, took out a box of shells. Prying several open, he poured the black powder onto a flyer advertising his Schmatzna-Gaskiwag® jerky. He wished he could remove the pellets but that seemed far too difficult. Opening a fresh Ziploc, he then peeled the first thermos off his leg and dumped the fertilizer into the bag, followed by the powder from the shells. Zipping it sealed, he squished it around, mixing it. Next step was the base. He unlocked the back door and eased it ajar, listening. Nothing. Still keeping low, bouncing on his heels, he scurried the short way to his shed, located the half-empty jar of putty he’d used to fix the porch windows, and poured the mixture from the bag into the jar. He removed the second thermos and topped off the concoction with diesel, stirring it with an old paintbrush handle until it began to congeal and set. He didn’t want it to harden completely, just become a little more malleable, a little more adhesive, and he counted thirty more seconds before he screwed the lid on, cutting off the oxygen. He popped the whole jar back in the Ziploc and sealed it. There was the long-handled Bic lighter on the workbench, the one he used for the hibachi, and he grabbed this up and thought for a second about how exactly he was going to do this.
