The Mentor

by Pat Connid

  “There ain’t no Mrs. McGaha, you idiot,” he said. “I’m Carroll McGaha. But nobody calls me that.”

  “I bet.”

  “Everybody calls me ‘Smokey.’ And I don’t want you getting anywhere near Harry up there. He eats the bugs that try to eat my house.”

  I couldn’t help it and said: “Your house is made out of brick, Smokey. What kinda bugs you got out here in the sticks?”

  “The eaves are made of wood. Those goddamn carpenter bees dig big holes in them and every year I gotta take a ladder up there fillin’ in holes,” he said and suddenly smiled a wide, broken smile. “Harry doesn’t let them do that. Harry eats them.”

  Impressively floating backwards toward his car, Pavan said, “Your spider eats bees, sir?”

  “Can I just ask you about your van?” I asked.

  Smokey looked at us and, now that we weren’t talking about Harry, the bee-killin’ spider, he wasn’t much interested. “Sold the van six weeks ago. You’re outta luck, son.”

  “No, we don’t want to buy it. We bought it already… from the guy you sold it to, Smokey.”

  “Go talk to him, then.” He went inside, and the screen door slammed behind him.

  “We don’t know where he is, Smokey. We don’t know who he is.”

  It was quiet for a moment and I looked up uneasily at Harry. I felt we were being watched, either by the spider or the old man.

  “How d’ya not know who he is?” Smokey finally said through the screen. “You bought the van from him.”

  “Listen, I get the feeling we’re distracting Harry here a little. It’s hard to be on bee-watch when you got guys jabbering around you. Might be hard for him to hear… you know, the buzzing and stuff.”

  The front door closed with a slam. I turned to Pavan who had not taken his eyes off of Harry, the bee-slayer.

  Looking across the street, the neighborhood snoop was driving her garden trowel into a patch of dirt but her eyes were still on the both of us. I waved again and smiled wide.

  “Maybe granny remembers who came over to see McGaha about the van. We could ask.”

  Pavan backed a few paces then turned, heading to the driveway.

  “I wish I’d never seen that spider, man. I know I’m gonna dream about that big sumbitch tonight,” he said, then groaned. “Man, I wish I’d never seen that thing.”

  The garage door suddenly jerked and rattled, and Pavan jumped three feet mid-air, running about five steps before he stopped and turned. The wood panels creaked and crackled as it opened; the door’s overhead motor sounding like a bulldozer’s engine.

  Smoky was standing there when the door came up, again leaning on the butt of his rifle.

  “What is this all about?”

  I stepped forward and shook his hand. “My name’s Dexter and this is Pavan. We have your van now but the guy who we bought it from, we don’t feel so good about.”

  “Why don’t you ask him, then? Why ya bothering me?”

  Looking at Pavan, I nodded. Pavan said, “We looked up the records on the van and it says that you sold the van to Dexter.”

  “So?”

  “That means the guy you sold it to,” I said, “he’s not listed, then. He could have used your vehicle in a crime or something. Better we come knocking rather than the police, I would think.”

  Smokey looked to me, then to Pavan. Then he looked past my friend and frowned.

  “You, what’s your name, again?”

  “Pavan, sir.”

  “Pavan? What kind of name is Pavan?”

  “It’s, uh, it's a first name, sir.”

  “What?” he said. “Okay, Pavan. Put your fist up for me.”

  “Okay.” He did.

  “Take your middle finger and point it to the sky, for me.”

  “Okay.”

  I turned and saw just beyond Pavan that the woman gardening tossed her trowel down, stood, brushed off her knees and stormed into the house.

  “We better go inside and talk about this,” Smokey said. “She’s probably calling the police.”

  “Police?” Pavan said looking over his shoulder.

  “Yeah, I’m not supposed to talk with her. Court order. Can’t even wave.”

  “Wait. Did that look like I just flipped a nice, little old lady off?” Pavan said following me and Smokey into the house.

  “Yeah," the old man said. "You don’t got a court order.”

  Smokey reached the door and hit the doorbell button; the bulldozer motor firing up again and it grew darker by the second as the door came down.

  “What’s the musket there for, Smokey?” I asked.

  “This?” he said and tapped the rifle with an open palm. “For snakes in the back yard.”

  “No snake-eating spiders back there?”

  The door came down, turning the garage pitch dark. Smokey sighed and said, “Not no more, no.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Smokey crossed the kitchen, tugging the shade open to let some light slip through the window. Every corner of his home was packed tight with something: furniture, knickknacks, dishes, fixtures… I don’t normally get very claustrophobic—frankly, I prefer tight spaces— but this guy’s home was making it a little tough to breathe.

  He handed a pickle jar to Pavan.

  “What flavor is it?”

  “Cherry,” Smokey said in a raspy voice. “Heckfire, there’s a cherry floatin’ in, for gosh sakes, boy.”

  Pavan tipped the jar of clear liquid toward his mouth and sipped tentatively. Then he shivered like a dog trying to dry off after falling into the pool.

  “Bah-DAMN,” he said. “Fuck a duck.”

  “Now, I don’t tolerate no swearing in my house, now.”

  “No, no,” I said. “It’s Swedish. He said he wanted another drink.”

  “Don’t look Swedish. You Swedish?” He asked Pavan, but I don’t think my friend could hear temporarily.

  “Nah, he’s got this disc… one-hundred sixty-two languages. How to ask for a drink and where the john is.”

  Pavan finally said, his voice crackling at its edges: “That’s right, sir. No mean to offend.”

  “Well,” Smokey said, smiling. “You finish that up, there’s more where that comes from. I have a brother that’s got a still. Lives about ninety minutes from here, but I stop by and grab a box of jars every month or so.”

  “Moonshine,” I said as he handed me a jar. “It’s like we’re living in the thirties or something.”

  “You should be so lucky,” he said.

  Pavan said to me, a little shaky: “Look at my face. My lips still there? I can’t feel my lips, man.”

  Smokey looked at me, squinting, as he noticed my earbud to the CD player. “What’s that wire coming out of your ear? You deaf?”

  “No, sir. Listening to the races at Belmont. I’ve got a fin on a Chestnut in the ninth.”

  “Oh? What’s the name?”

  “Name, sir?”

  “What’s the horse’s name?”

  “Uh, Barely Legal, sir.”

  “Hmm,” he said and eased himself into a chair. “That does sound like a bit of a gamble.”

  We were sitting at the old man’s kitchen table. Even with the shades up, the clutter made the place feel wrapped up like a tomb.

  I put the jar he’d handed me down on the table, tapped it toward Pavan. He looked at it and gave me a painful expression.

  “Can you tell me about the guy who bought the van from you?”

  Smokey tossed about a quarter of his jar back like he was cooling off a glass of sweet tea.

  “Newspaper printed it,” he said, shrugging, “and they put it up on the Interwebs, they said.”

  “Internet,” I said. “Sure.”

  “This guy calls me and sight unseen, he buys it,” Smokey said and drummed the table with his thick fingers. “Didn’t even haggle on the price.”

  “Good thing.”

  “Well, I raised it about three hundred dollars more than it was w
orth expecting a bit of haggling,” he said and tipped another dose back. “Nope. Paid full price.”

  “Awful nice of him.”

  Smokey stepped forward. It was like watching a production of old clockworkings, wobbly arms and legs working through worn-grooved patterns.

  He walked toward the sink, then lifted the glass jar he'd been drinking from and poured a little of the clear liquid into the black dirt of a small green, leafy plant. Under his breath, it sounded like he'd said something sweet to it.

  “He had to come by at exactly one that next day to get it,” he finally said, turning toward me and leaning on the sink. “Exactly. I remember that very clearly. Not noon, not two. Exactly at one.”

  Pavan said, “I don’t think I feel very good.”

  Smokey leaned over and tipped the remainder of his glass into Pavan’s. “You’re just thirsty is all. That’ll do ya.”

  I urged him back on track: “So, meeting's at one.”

  “Yeah, but I had an emergency doctor’s appointment the next day. One o’clock.”

  “What was wrong with you, Smokey?”

  A shrug. “Didn’t know at the time. I’m old so I got bits falling off of me all the time. But, I was supposed to head in the next day… blood tests or something. I was a bit toasted when they called. But,” he said and walked to the fridge, tapping a couple sheets of curled paper held down by a collection of state welcome-center magnets. “Right here I wrote it down: one o’clock. Doctor Haverson’s. Wrote it down.”

  “Okay.”

  “So, this guy he says he can’t budge on the time. But I can't miss the doctor's visit. So, if I want my price, I just sign the slip over to him, and he’ll take it down to the DMV to process it. Wants me to leave it in the glove box. Keys on the front right tire.”

  “I see,” I said.

  Smokey turned from the fridge. “I came home, and the van was gone.”

  Pavan looked a little green but, heroically, he took a sip from the glass in front of him. He shook again but not as violent as before.

  “How’d he pay you? This mystery guy?”

  Smokey coughed and it rattled in his chest like a tympani dropped down a flight of metal stairs. He said, “That’s the funny part. I agreed to the one o’clock drop and he says ‘fine, take a looksee in your mailbox.’”

  I asked: “He said ‘looksee’, Smokey?”

  “I’m paraphrasing. Trying to keep the story short, get to the payoff. You don’t want the set up to be too long, son.”

  “I see.”

  “Used to do a little performance in my day,” Smokey said, leaned back and popped a crumpled pack of smokes from his pocket. “Had a little fellah that would set on my lap, I stick my hand up his behind and make him talk without moving my lips.”

  “You’re a ventriloquist?” Pavan squeaked, face reddened.

  “Nope,” Smokey answered quickly, flicked a cig up to his lips. “Midget named Andre. French guy about three and a half feet tall.”

  “Sir?”

  “He quit because I wouldn’t trim my fingernails, so we broke the act up, and I joined the army.”

  I stared at Smokey, who was straight faced, and my smile grew. He looked back but didn’t blink once. Finally he said, “That was a joke, boys.”

  “Wow,” Pavan said and spit out a cherry pit, which hit a groove in the table and, amazingly, jumped right back at him and into his hair. “I’m not following any of this.”

  I stood up and went to the man’s fridge, which was just as cluttered as his house. A lot of fresh fruit, surprisingly. Probably for the moonshine. I saw a can of Coke in the door and nabbed it.

  Smokey watched me and a smile pulled to his lips as he hit lit a hand rolled cigarette. I stood near the screen window above of the sink—not a big fan of smoke, unless I’m the one dragging it in. As a kid, my father used to smoke cigars. In the summer, I’m not kidding, he’d smoke in the car and since the A/C was running, we weren’t allowed to roll our windows down. Parts of my summer childhood vaguely resembled ten minutes after last call at a country bar. And not in any of the good ways.

  “So you go looksee at the mailbox—“

  “And right there, in the mailbox, is an envelope of cash,” Smokey says and blows out a tower of haze. “Exactly the amount I’d asked for.”

  I watched Smokey for a moment as he eyeballed Pavan, who was swaying a little. My friend didn’t look terribly unhappy, mind you. It just looked like some of the operational staff on his upper floors had simply made an early day of it. I’d seen that look a hundred times but rarely at ten o’clock in the morning. Noon maybe.

  “Makes you sorta wonder,” I said, testing the waters.

  “Yeah,” Smokey said and shot me a look. “If he had the time to drop off the money, why didn’t he just go ahead and sign a copy of the title for me?"

  He nodded. “You didn’t bother asking.”

  “I had an envelope of cash, son. And I needed it, that’s why I was selling her. You see that’s an empty garage now. I don’t have no car now… but at the time, I was coming up short quite a bit.”

  Pavan said, “I think I’m hallucinating a little… I think.” He closed his eyes.

  “He may have had a little much,” Smokey said. “How much does he weigh?”

  “How would I know?”

  “Dunno, these days. Thought you guys might be ‘partners’ or something.” Smokey did the air quotes with his bony fingers, the cigarette in his right hand bobbing like a conductor’s baton.

  “He’ll be fine,” I said. On cue, Pavan fell face first onto the table, his brow hitting a plate full of little metal shavings, most of which flew in the air a short distance and landed in my friend’s hair.

  “Aw, heck,” Smokey said as he, and I lifted Pavan back into the sitting position. “Those were my loose staples. Trying to glue them back together so they’d fit in my stapler.”

  “You have a couch not covered in anything weird?” I asked. Smokey thought about it for a second. He then said, “Not really.”

  UP A SKINNY STAIRCASE— made skinnier by tiny, black-and-white photos and shelves cluttered with thimbles and novelty salt shakers and junk lining every inch—Smokey and I carried Pavan to the end of a long corridor.

  At the very end of the hall, the door was open to a storage area: an exercise bike turned clothes hanger, broken furniture, a couple of cabinets, and an ancient Philco radio.

  We slipped into a small bedroom on the second floor. It was a little dusty, but not bad. As we plopped Pavan down, I looked around and took it in.

  “You not really into the latest trends, huh Smokey?”

  He held his cigarette out the door of the room, at the end of an extended arm. His eyes darted from item to item, and he smiled.

  “Son’s room,” he said and in its condition, it was likely the same way the son had left it. I was a little surprised he didn’t mind a passed-out, mop-topped stranger in the bed.

  “He ever come around?”

  Smokey was in profile to me and his pupils went to the corner of his eye, looking my way.

  “M.I.A. during the war,” he said, letting a sad fondness soften his face. The vintage sorrow had grown into some sort of warm memory that the man stored in this room. “He went in as infantry, crazy bastard.” He motioned with his head to leave the room. “That’s logs on the fire, that is. Infantry? Crazy son-of-a-gun.”

  We went into the room at the end of the hall with all the junk and he settled on a couch covered in winter coats. I found an ottoman (I think it was an ottoman under all the sheets) and plopped down.

  The room as dark and cool. Smokey must have had the mother of all duct systems because I expected to be choking with dust but wasn’t. I guess a guy in his house all day might keep it sort of neat. Not me, mind you, but other guys.

  My eyes caught a series of shirts and blazers hanging across a bar, just behind Smokey’s head.

  “You sure got a lotta stuff in here, man,” I said. He looked over h
is shoulder.

  “Ah, that’s my boy Zachary’s stuff.” He took a drag from his cigarette and put it out in his leathery hands, then stuffed the butt into his shirt pocket. I waited for his chest to catch fire, but the shirt was made from heavy material, like burlap or wood chips or something, and whatever spark the butt might have had left didn’t have a chance.

  “You waitin’ for him to come home?”

  “Ha,” he said. “You think I’m a bit crazy. Well… I probably am, a little. But the years’ll do that to you.”

  I said, “Headed that way myself, sir.”

  Smokey laughed. “No use in throwing the stuff away. I’ve outlived my oldest boy and my wife. My daughter doesn’t phone anymore ‘causin’ we had a falling out some years ago. She’s got a family now, better off without me.” He stopped and looked at me. “Usually that’s the part where you’re supposed to say, ‘no, no you should call her, Smokey’.”

  “Not my place.”

  “You think she’s better off without me, then?”

  I rubbed my face, feeling fatigue work its way up into my bones. “I dunno, sir. Within ten minutes of my friend being in your house, he’s passed out in a dead man’s room with a pile of staples in his hair, guaranteed that when he wakes up, he’ll find his brain’s been traded out with a busted piñata,” I said. “If your daughter’s got kids, it’s probably better that they don’t pop by grandpa’s for afternoon lemonade.”

  Smokey laughed again and held both hands up in the air, together. “Ha, she’s got two kids. And they’re both spoiled little assholes.”

  “Whoa,” I said and coughed, laughing myself this time. “I thought there was no swearing in the house.”

  “Just downstairs,” he said. “That was the missus’ rule. Still is. Up here, we be men.” He popped his eyebrows and they looked like two rabid squirrels locked in a mating ritual.

  I noticed that the bar holding his son’s clothes was actually an empty barbell, rested on a weight bench. There were several pairs of pants and shoes on a rack which, I guessed, held some ancient weights. Some of the good iron ones.

  Earlier, I’d seen the exercise bike.

  “You ever think of taking a tenant?”