by Bryan Gruley
Joanie ignored the job offers pouring in while she worked on the Blackburn story. One night after deadline I sat her down with some Blue Ribbons and nacho chips, and we decided she should go to the Chicago Tribune to cover the police beat.
“All right,” she said. “But not until we’re done here.”
“OK, boss,” I said.
A few days after she left for good, I was named executive editor of the Pilot.
One afternoon, I walked up to my father’s old tree house. Under my arm was his Bell amp; Howell movie projector. In my pocket was the key to the closet I had never been inside.
The reels of film, fourteen in all, lay in cardboard boxes on the closet floor. I hung a bedsheet in the garage and aimed the Bell amp; Howell. I ran every reel through it, or tried. A couple of them, rotting, disintegrated in my hands. Others shredded as they fluttered through the projector. Most were movies of Soupy and me and my other buddies playing at Make-Believe Gardens. I’d forgotten how Dad used to run up and down the rink trying to get all of us into the frame; one time he slipped and fell on his face, and we all laughed. Other films showed some grainy images of women and men having sex. But no boys.
I dumped all of it, including the projector, into an oil barrel behind the garage. I doused it with kerosene, lit it, and stepped back in the wet snow to watch it burn.
“Hey, Gus.”
I looked up to see Darlene standing at the corner of the garage, wearing jeans and a denim jacket over a hooded sweatshirt. She walked up and stood facing me on the other side of the fire, a brown paper sack under her arm.
“What are you doing?” she said.
“Not much. A little spring cleaning.”
We didn’t say anything for a few minutes. I could feel her looking at me. The celluloid sizzled and spat.
“Brought you something,” she said. She walked around the fire and held the bag out, smiling. She hadn’t smiled like that at me in a long time. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Even Mom couldn’t fix her this time.”
I looked inside the bag and saw the tattered remains of Eggo. Darlene must have retrieved it from Horvath Road. I reached inside and touched the scrap of black electrical tape clinging to the thumb. I looked up at Darlene.
“What?” she said.
“I don’t know, Darl. Sometimes, I swear, I wish we’d just brought him back and drowned him in the lake.”
“No, you don’t.”
“What the hell.” I took the bag from her and tossed it on the fire. “I won’t be needing that anymore.”
“Gus. You can’t quit hockey.”
“I know. But I’m done playing goalie. Time to fire pucks at other people’s heads for a change.”
We stood there a little longer. The fire quieted until I could hear the melting snow dripping off the garage roof.
“Want to get out of here?” I said.
“Yeah. Want a ride?”
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Document creation date: 25.08.2012
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