Crooked Roads

by Alec Cizak

  As I made my way down the hallway, the spiffy cops came into view. Standing next to them was my wife, still in the pink sweat pants and WWF t-shirt she wore to bed. Dirty blonde hair shooting every which way. Had that look on her face like she was fixed on telling me what my next move was. I felt a relief I ain’t ever felt before.

  SPARE CHANGE

  She pulled it out of her purse. Slowly, cautiously, always looking around, making sure I was the only one who could see it. She said it was a .32. I believed her. Just as quickly as she showed it to me, she shoved it back in between a plastic bundle of tissues and what appeared to be a thin red wallet.

  “That’s why I’m drinking like this, mister.” She chased her words with a shot of whiskey. Her fifth, by my count.

  “You aiming that at anyone in particular?” I said.

  She twisted her face.

  “Boyfriend?”

  “Husband.”

  “Lied to you?”

  “That one’s on the list.” She smacked the bar, gestured for the man pouring drinks to fill her glass again.

  “Ain’t you had enough, little lady?” The bartender must not have been aware of the gun in her purse.

  “Just do your job,” she said.

  He shrugged and dropped another shot in front of her.

  “What’d your old man do?” I said.

  She gave me a long look. Up and down. She shrugged. She’d already showed me the gun. I guess she supposed she might as well hook a story on it. “He wanted five kids,” she said. “I’ve given him three. You have any idea what it takes to raise one?”

  I nodded. I had a son and daughter and ran out on their mother when the bills got to be too much. These days I sent her a little money here and there, but to a lazy thief like me, putting bread on my own table was a task and a half. It’s not that I wanted to hurt my old lady. I had no choice. “Children can drain you,” I said.

  She must not have liked my siding with her. “That’s putting it mildly, mister,” she said. “I went from being the most desirable woman in the world to one of those worn out mamas dragging critters through the mall in search of diapers and socks and lunch boxes and crayons.” She stopped. Long enough to have another shot.

  “Sometimes men don’t notice the sacrifices women make.” Probably should have kept my mouth shut.

  The woman laughed. “If they were giving out prizes for understatements, mister, you would have it.” She raised her empty glass for a silent toast.

  The bartender set the bottle in front of her and walked away.

  I said, “I’ve never won a damn thing in my life.”

  “What do you do for a living?” she asked.

  I could tell she just wanted to sidetrack my interest in the .32. Since she had been so honest with me, I returned the favor. “I’m a professional thief. Gas stations and liquor stores. Nothing too glamorous.”

  She nodded. “Maybe we got something in common after all.”

  I didn’t want that. “Ever been to prison?”

  “Of course not.”

  “If you think life is rough now, just wait till they throw you over the wall.”

  Scooting her chair closer, she put her lips to my ear and spoke in a curt, seething voice. “Try juggling three jobs, three children, and a man that sleeps with anything that’ll give him the time of day. Comes home to me, passes on two, not one, two diseases you can only get from loving, the kind that don’t kill you, just linger there, waiting for the moment you meet someone you might like, and then, pop!, sores all over your mouth. Marked. And I didn’t do nothing wrong. I didn’t do a thing to deserve that kind of punishment.”

  “Ever heard of divorce? Makes these situations a lot easier to deal with.”

  “That sonofabitch’d never go for it. Says I belong to him. We passed on our blood together and he’ll be goddamned to let me be. I tell him he can keep the damn kids if that’s his issue. No, he says, he loves me too much. What about them other bitches? I ask. I don’t love them, he says.”

  She took another shot.

  “I wish you’d think about this,” I said. “You’re still just as pretty as can be, even if you don’t feel it or recognize it, on account of how tough your life has been. All you need is a lawyer, get this situation into the legal system, the right way, that is.”

  She said, “I appreciate your trying to help, mister, but I can’t get away from him. I’ve tried. He hunts me down, smacks me just hard enough to make an impression folks can’t see on the outside.”

  I sighed. In my own way, I had been terrible to the woman who had done right by me. I sure as hell was in no position to judge anyone.

  “Well,” she stumbled off her bar stool, “time to set things proper.” She leaned in close once more. “Promise me you won’t tell nobody.”

  I grabbed her arm and pulled her in tighter. “I won’t, angel, I just want you to do me a favor. Think real hard about what you’re fixed on doing. Think about it as you leave here. If you decide on a more, shall we say, legitimate road toward ridding yourself of the bum, leave the gun in the trash can outside, the green one under the Budweiser sign in the window. I’ll take care of it, drop it somewhere they’ll never trace back to you.”

  Maybe she wasn’t interested in being saved, maybe I reminded her of her father, or worse, her husband. She yanked herself away and rushed out the door.

  I didn’t watch her go. I ordered a drink. Then another. Then I settled up, put on my coat and headed for the door.

  Outside the bar, the lid on the green trash can had been moved. My heart beat a little faster. I opened it and looked inside.

  The gun wasn’t there.

  Pulling my coat in tighter, I walked into the night looking for a liquor store to knock over. I got the register at the Bottle Stop, on Forty-ninth Street. The idiot clerk honestly didn’t know how to open the safe. I let it ride.

  I counted the money as I entered a Western Union a few blocks to the north. Just under three bills. I gave the clerk on duty my wife’s address and shoved all the dough across the counter. I used some spare change in my pocket to pay the delivery fee.

  STATE ROAD 53

  One

  “Bud?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Tell Lynn I want to see her.”

  Bud sighed.

  Ron felt bad for him. The entire town knew what was happening while Bud worked the night shift at Liberty Steel. He sounded glummer than usual. Ron figured it was on account of the strike. Bud Gorski couldn’t satisfy his wife and now his bosses refused to pay him what he was worth. Ron thought he was a good guy. He made it possible for Lynn to raise their boys without her having to get a job. Most important, he understood he just didn’t have the gump to give her what she needed in bed.

  Ron didn’t consider himself an especially skilled lover. He figured the demon energy he brought back from three tours in the jungle provided animal attributes Lynn mistook for prowess. Whatever the reasons, he tried to keep things cordial with Bud. He didn’t want to see the twins grow up without their father. Nothing had ever been officially spoken. Bud worked the graveyard shift in the mill Monday through Friday. Two or three nights during the week, Deputy Sheriff Ronald Quinn went to work on Bud’s wife.

  Bud said he’d pass the message. “You going to wait until I’m gone?”

  “Sure thing.” Ron hung up. He went back to his cruiser and started for the north side of town. He radioed the station. Nobody answered. He figured Beth, the night dispatch, had fallen asleep. No big deal. Haggard hadn’t seen any serious crime since the 1930s, before Ron had been born. Occasionally, a carload of teenagers from Gary drifted too far south on State Road 53 and him or Sherriff Dudek would pull them over and remind them, in a manner most friendly, that they couldn’t possibly have any business in a nice town like Haggard.

  He parked across the street from Bud Gorski’s one-story house on Old Ridge Road. It was protected by a thin sheet of painted aluminum and had a small, covered stoop with three
steps leading to the front door. Just like every other house on the block. Ron smoked an unfiltered Pall Mall while he waited.

  Bud stepped out and crossed his snow-covered lawn with a picket sign and lunch pail under his arm. He unlocked the back door to his Chevelle and tossed them in. Then he opened the front and glanced over. From across the street, Ron could see any remaining enthusiasm Bud had for life drop right out of his eyes.

  * * *

  Lynn Gorski answered the door in a pink nightie. She had her dusty-blonde hair up in a beehive. Ron thought of the covers of fashion magazines he had seen at Union Station in Chicago. Women in big cities had already abandoned that style. Didn’t matter. He’d have her hair down and wrapped around his fist soon enough. “Twins asleep?”

  “Of course.” Her voice quaked. “I’m glad you called.” She grabbed his ear with her teeth and slid her tongue around the rim. “Don’t ever make me wait a whole week again.” Her fingers marched down his chest and unfastened his gun belt. She almost let it drop. He caught it and pushed her away.

  “Take it easy, baby,” he said. His gun clanked on the round table in the kitchen as he set the belt on it. Crusted spaghetti sauce stained three of four flower-patterned placemats laid out.

  Lynn stood back. She brushed her hand along her forehead. “I’m cool.”

  “The hell you are,” he said. “Can I get a beer?”

  She nodded at the fridge.

  Ron found a can of Schlitz. He peeled the lid off and tossed the tab into a rubber trash can by the sink.

  Lynn walked toward the bedroom. “I changed the sheets before Bud left.”

  “Probably should of waited.” He took a noisy swig.

  “Nothing we can do about it now.” Lynn stood in the doorway, resting against the frame. Her fingers marched up her thigh, pushing her gown higher and higher.

  Ron finished his beer and approached her, unbuttoning his shirt along the way.

  “How was work?” she asked.

  “Boring.”

  “Same old same old?”

  * * *

  Ron and Lynn lay in bed. They shared a cigarette. She said something about going to Chicago together. He sighed. “You know that ain’t going to happen.”

  She wrapped her legs around him. Running her fingers in the cross-pattern on his chest, then down to the left, where a small chunk had been taken from him when a VC shot him in the side, she said, “You won’t let nobody in.”

  “Lost enough people to know better.” He dragged on the cigarette and passed it. “Besides, you don’t ever tire of telling me how much you love Bud.”

  “I do love Bud. I also love you.”

  “That ain’t even possible.”

  Gunshots exploded down the street. Ron grabbed Lynn and rolled her off the side of the bed. He crawled out to the hallway and into the twins’ room. He woke Sam and Andrew Gorski long enough to help them from their bunk beds to the floor. “Stay low,” he told them.

  When he returned to the master bedroom, he stopped. Lynn stood by the window, holding a Marlin across her naked body. “It’s just the intimidators,” she said. “From Liberty.”

  Ron pointed at the rifle. “That a recent addition to the family?”

  She smiled. “Bud bought it after that preacher was shot in Memphis. While you were gone, you know.” She looked away from him. “He was worried the riots might spill over.”

  Ron took the gun from her. It was loaded. “Careful, baby.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I grew up in Kentucky, Ronald.”

  He realized he missed what she said when he first returned and saw her holding the gun. “Liberty Steel?”

  “They send a truck full of goons every night. Since the union ok’d the strike.”

  “Why ain’t I heard of this?”

  Lynn shrugged. “Not really police business.” She got back on the bed. She lay on her side, tracing the curve of her hips with her fingertips. “Why don’t you put that away?” She nodded to the shotgun.

  Ron asked her where she kept it. She told him Bud’s closet, on the top shelf. “Next to the box of shells.”

  * * *

  Lynn smacked the switch on her alarm clock at 7:10. Ron got dressed while she stayed in bed, smoking. He noticed two holes in the wall, just to the right of the window. Leaning in to get a better look, he stuck his pinky in one of them.

  Lynn rested on her elbows. “They blasted this side of the street three nights ago.”

  “Why ain’t you talking to me?”

  “It’s Liberty Steel, honey. They built every town in Lake County.”

  “You could get hurt.”

  “Bud says this’ll pass when the union gets its way.”

  “I don’t like it.” Ron stuffed his shirt into his pants.

  Lynn stretched her leg out and caressed him with her toes. “I appreciate your worries. Bud’s got it all took care of.”

  Ron kissed her goodbye. He grabbed his gun belt on the way to the front door. He stepped outside just as Bud’s burgundy, rusted Chevy pulled into the driveway. The two men exchanged curt nods. Ron laid tracks in fresh snow, clear across the lawn and street to his cruiser. He got in and started the engine.

  Bud moped along, arched over, like a hunchback, staring at his feet. He seemed more miserable and pathetic than ever. Ron felt like saying something. He couldn’t think of anything that would help.

  Two

  Ron parked his cruiser behind a ground-level billboard with a strawberry lollipop on it advertising Haddaker’s Drug Store. Toward the front of his mind was the notion that he was looking out for the people of Haggard. On the other side was a suspicion that he was just bored. He had been in a stupor since coming home. The only physical excitement he got was from Lynn Gorski. Now he had something resembling a mission. What was damn clear was that nobody else in town cared about the Liberty Steel gun thugs. It didn’t make sense to him. He hadn’t slept since leaving the Gorski house that morning.

  He caught the sheriff just before lunch, asked him if he was aware of the truck full of rifles spitting bullets on Old Ridge. “Nope,” said Sheriff Dudek. The old man twisted the toothpick in his mouth round and round and lowered his eyes.

  Ron had done enough interrogation work in the war to know when a human being was lying to him. “Gorski house’s got holes in it.”

  Sheriff Dudek laughed. “I thought you was plugging them holes!” He looked back at Gretchen, the daytime dispatch. She obliged with a giggle.

  Ron said, “I don’t think this is something we can shrug.”

  The sheriff stepped closer. He inflated his chest and nodded up to face the young deputy. “Things happen, as you’re well aware, that the law don’t have any say regarding.” He turned to walk away. “Get on them roads. Write some tickets and make us some money so we can have us a nice Christmas party.”

  The sheriff stepped into his office and slammed the door. As Ron made his way out of the station, Gretchen stopped him. “You’re fortunate to come back in one piece, Ronald,” she said. “Don’t be stupid. Not now.”

  He thanked her and left. While he ate a hot dog and soft-serve cone for lunch, watching icicles melt off the gutters of the Dairy Queen in downtown Haggard, he decided he would chase the truck by himself and arrest the whole lot. “I like to see them suits cross 53 explain themselves.” He thought of Rio Bravo, his favorite movie when he was a kid. He thought about how John Wayne might have handled the situation.

  He almost fell asleep, waiting there in the dark for the truck. The sound of a larger vehicle, struggling in the cold, cut through the country silence. He sat up to crank the ignition on his Ford. A blood-colored Dodge Power Wagon rumbled past him. He turned the key but the engine wouldn’t fire.

  “Dammit!”

  Guns went off down the road. Glass broke, women screamed, and doors opened and slammed. Ron got the cruiser started and tore out from behind the billboard. His wheels spun on packed snow. He straightened the car and flipped his sirens on.


  The Ford roared up behind the truck. There were four men in the back wearing potato sacks over their heads with half-dollar-sized holes cut for their eyes. Two of them aimed their shotguns at Ron. The thug closest to the cab beat on the rear window and motioned for the driver to step on it. The muffler coughed black smoke as the Dodge mustered speed. It continued on Old Ridge and nearly tipped as it veered right, onto State Road 53.

  Ron put his foot on the gas and the Ford threatened to fly past the truck when he whipped the steering-wheel. The pick-up fish-tailed its way over the ice-coated bridge connecting Haggard and Gary. There were no rails and the men in the back braced themselves for the possibility of going over the side and plunging into Lake Arthur. Ron slowed down. The truck gained a mile on him by the time he was across.

  He chased them up 53, passing white fields outside of Industry Row, where nine companies employed most of the labor in Lake County. Smokestacks curled smog into the sky twenty-four hours a day. The entire town smelled like rotten eggs.

  A Gary Municipal flashed its sirens and zoomed in front of Ron. The driver tapped the brakes, forcing him to pull over. The officers stepped out of the cruiser and approached him as though he were possibly on the wrong side of the law, dancing their flashlights across his windshield. He opened his door and nudged his way out with his hands raised.

  He recognized the officer who had been driving. They did basic together at Fort Harrison, down in Indianapolis, in ’67. They spent the Summer of Love crawling through mud while their drill sergeant called them maggots. “What’s going on, Calvin?”

  “At ease, soldier. We ain’t going to do you like you do our folks any time they wander into Haggard.”

  Ron lowered his hands. “Just don’t do me like you did that Italian girl at the funhouse in Kokomo.”

  Calvin laughed. “I’m unaware of any such activity, nor would I say shit about it if I was.” He kept his flashlight aimed at Ron. “What you doing this far north?”

  “I was hoping to apprehend the men in that pick-up that passed here a few minutes ago.”