Saying Uncle

by Greg F. Gifune

  Now Boone had heard the truth too, this time from my lips, and I could only hope it might finally begin to free him from this.

  But here, in the snow and cold, with those dark curtains finally pulled aside, all that remained in that terrible place were the spirits of Uncle and Michael Ring. And just as I could never go to the path in the woods where Angela had been assaulted, just as I could never face that because I had no right, because it was hers to exorcise of its power and not mine, I no longer belonged in this forest either. Perhaps I never had.

  I hadn’t died here. They had.

  * * *

  I found Boone back at the car, leaned against the passenger door, hands stuffed into his jacket pockets. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I didn’t mean that shit I said before.”

  “Yes you did, and it’s OK.”

  “Uncle was like a hero to me.”

  “You think he was anything less to me?”

  “Yeah, well to me he always will be.”

  Telling him that in many ways the same held true for me seemed futile. Boone saw it in simple black and white terms and I did not. Maybe it was all in how you got through the day, slept through the night and looked yourself in the mirror in the morning without losing sight of who and what you thought you were or hoped to be. Maybe those were things so personal they could never be shared or mutually understood, even between old friends. Maybe they weren’t meant to be.

  “I don’t care what he did that day,” Boone said defiantly. “He did what he had to do.”

  “In his own way he was trying to protect us all,” I told him. “But it made everything worse. It made things even harder.”

  “I still can’t believe he’s dead.”

  I remembered Uncle’s eyes, lifeless, sightless; his ruptured skull covered with a towel.

  “You think they’ll catch the guy that killed him?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s a matter for the police, Boone.”

  We were quiet for a while.

  “Even after you left,” Boone finally said, “he was still here. Always talked to me when he saw me around town. He still gave a shit.” His cheeks were flushed bright red from the cold, his eyes wet. “I always thought you did too. Kept thinking you’d come back and we’d figure this all out together, like when we were kids. I always figured sooner or later you’d be back, but…but not like this.”

  “I had to get out of here, Boone, but it was never about leaving you behind. I needed to go when I got the chance, and I did.”

  “I never blamed you for going. Only for never coming back.” He wiped his nose. “We were best friends.”

  I stood there unable to think of anything to say. It was a bit late for more apologies.

  “That’s why I always loved comics,” he said, rescuing me. “They got it the way things should be. Good guys and bad guys. Heroes and villains, you know?”

  I nodded.

  “But then you get older and you figure out there aren’t any such things as heroes or villains.” He turned his attention to the sky now. It had stopped snowing. “There’s only people who do heroic things and people who do villainous things. But either way they’re still just people.”

  “That’s all any of us are, Boone, all any of us ever were. Even Uncle.”

  “You know I still have them?” He shrugged sadly. “My comic books, I mean.”

  “They must be worth a fortune by now.”

  “I’m gonna sell every last one of them first chance I get. Buy a plane ticket and go to California. Start all over again, you know? Maybe do it right this time.”

  I smiled at him. “Can I come visit?”

  “Call first.”

  We both laughed—hard—and despite how inappropriate it may have been, despite the blood and secrets that still remained, and always would, it was exactly what we needed.

  Boone grinned mischievously like he’d done so often years before, his way of letting me know he’d be all right. And I believed him. Maybe because I wanted to so desperately, maybe because he was telling the truth, I couldn’t be sure which.

  “Come on,” I said, “I’ll drive you back.”

  * * *

  I rose slowly from the chair. Uncle’s apartment and everything beyond was deathly quiet, like the world had stopped on our behalf and was awaiting a signal before it resumed.

  His story finished, Uncle squinted at me through trails of cigarette smoke, and for the first time I no longer saw wisdom in his eyes, but fear.

  “Grampy was a mason, right?” I asked.

  After what he’d just told me, the question seemed to catch him off guard, but he answered it anyway. “Yeah. Busted his ass for years. Too bad he died when you were so little, you would’ve liked the old man.”

  “And Grammy never worked?”

  “She took care of your mother and me. She ran the house. That’s work.”

  “What did their parents do? For a living, I mean.”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “You tell me.”

  His features darkened as my point finally sunk it. He was the anomaly, no one else. He hadn’t come from a family of criminals or grown up around it without knowing anything different. He had chosen his life.

  He moved away, dropped his cigarette into an ashtray on his nightstand. “You wanted the truth,” he said evenly. “Now you got it, so don’t make me ask you again. What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to be man,” I told him. “Just like my uncle taught me.”

  13

  It was not quite dark, but it was coming, closing quickly.

  Boone and I hugged each other awkwardly, like the long lost friends we’d been and would soon become again. “I told you I’d never rat. I never did and I never will,” he said. “None of it matters now anyway. It’s over, all of it. Right, Andy? Right?”

  I let him go, searched that sad face. “Right.”

  “Take care of yourself, OK?”

  “You too. Keep in touch.”

  He nodded, if only to placate me. “Sure, man. Definitely.”

  I left Boone at the base of his steps, a lonely and disheveled man slogging toward middle age with something less than grace waving goodbye in the rearview mirror, shrinking into the whiteout as I pulled away. Though equal parts happy and sorrowful, I was glad we’d finally had our moment after all these years, but even after I’d lost sight of him I kept checking, hoping he might materialize one more time, as even then, I knew I’d probably never see Desmond Boone again.

  I drove back through Warden, the temperature dropping as I went, turning the deep layers of snow to ice. The wind picked up, rattled the car with intermittent bursts. The snowstorm was over and a deep freeze was setting in, laminating and glossing over the beauty like a sealant, locking everything down. Even in areas used to such conditions, the cold tended to keep people indoors, the streets relatively empty and traffic to a minimum, and the further I puttered along the snow-covered icy roads the more it began to feel as if I were the last person in a town long deserted. Only the lights had stayed behind it seemed, flipped on in anticipation of the coming darkness, gliding along reflective sheets of ice, peeking at me from gas stations or eateries or convenience stores with each squeaking pass of the windshield wipers.

  One of those lights distracted me, a small blinking neon sign advertising a bar. I pulled over, parked out front and looked the building over: A squat two-story with living quarters on the second floor and a small bar on the first. Faded curtains filled the two tiny windows facing the street, and the initial sign that had caught my attention blinked just above the front door.

  Exactly the kind of place I was looking for. A pit. A place no one cared about where you could go and have a quick drink in the dark and no one bothered you unless you were looking for trouble, in which case the regular patrons would likely be happy to oblige.

  After tossing my hat onto the seat I left the car, sprinted across the sidewalk and entered the bar quickl
y, escaping the bitter cold for a gush of forced heat and the dimly lit recess of the barroom.

  It was exactly what I’d expected: A small scarred bar along the back wall, the backlight reflecting off the mirrored section of wall behind it, a few tables scattered about in the dark, a jukebox, two grizzled regulars propped against the bar, an old phone booth in one corner and a heavyset bald bartender with a rag draped over his shoulder who looked like something out of central casting.

  An old Hank Williams tune played softly from the jukebox, and no one other than the bartender seemed to notice my arrival. He threw a noncommittal glance my way then returned his attention to one of the men at the bar who was droning on about something I couldn’t quite make out.

  I strode across the room and slid onto a stool at the bar. One of the men already there was elderly and had the cracked and weathered complexion of a man who had spent the better part of his life outdoors. He held a glass of amber liquor in his liver-spotted hands, eyes closed and head swaying slowly to the beat of the jukebox. The other was a pencil thin man in his fifties dressed in neatly pressed chinos and a sweater that hung on him like laundry on a line. His thinning hair, dyed an inky black, was combed straight back from his forehead and plastered down with something akin to axle grease, and he wore small tinted prescription glasses that sat low on his long nose. He cocked his head at me then finished what was left of his drink with a single gulp and motioned to the bartender. “One more vodka for the road, Benny,” he said, slapping the glass to the counter.

  The bartender grabbed a bottle of Gordon’s and poured while looking at me. “What can I get you, buddy?”

  “Cutty on the rocks, please.”

  He slid a napkin in front of me, quickly refilled a small bowl on the counter with peanuts then gave me my drink. “Haven’t seen you in here before,” he said through a hint of a smile.

  “Just passing through.”

  The bartender nodded, apparently finding my response acceptable. He opened his mouth to continue the conversation when the old man at the end of the bar interrupted. “Benny,” he said in a gravelly voice, “play it one more time for an old man, willya?”

  The bartender chuckled, grabbed some change from the register behind him and went to the jukebox. Within seconds the same song was playing.

  I sipped my drink, felt it warm my throat and beyond.

  “It’s good to drink,” the man next to me said. “Don’t you think?”

  I smiled and nodded.

  “Especially in the dead of winter,” he answered himself. “Nothing like it. Relaxes you, right? Makes you feel better even if you got no right to feel any better. Helps you forget about all the bad for a while, am I right?”

  The bartender returned and gave me an apologetic grin.

  “Henry,” the man said, thrusting a bony hand at me.

  I shook his hand. It was cold. “Andy.”

  “Good to meet you, my man. Good to meet you.”

  “Same here.” I took another sip of my drink.

  “Married, I see.”

  I glanced at my left hand and the gold wedding band on my finger, then held it up, smiled and nodded.

  “Me too.” He sighed heavily, raised his glass and gazed at it. “It’s nice to be married. Lot of guys bitch about it but I always liked it.”

  I looked to the bartender but he had slid down to the end of the bar and was chatting with the old man about country music.

  “How long you been married?”

  “Ten years,” I told him.

  “Good for you.” He held his glass up in tribute. “Quite an accomplishment.”

  I touched my glass to his. “How about you?”

  “Twenty-six years, three kids—all grown now, of course. You got any kids, Andy?”

  “No.”

  “How come?”

  Since he was clearly already drunk and struck me as harmless, I let the intrusiveness of his questions go. “We just never have.”

  “Don’t you and your old lady want kids?”

  “One day maybe.”

  “Don’t wait too long,” he said quietly, assuming a more reserved demeanor. “You wait too long and one day you’ll wake up and realize it’s too late. We always think we got all the time in the world, you know? But we don’t, my man. I’m here to tell you we don’t.” He slammed down the remainder of his drink. “It’s like with marriage, you know? Same deal. You figure it just is what it is, right? She loves you and you love her and life goes on. Then it all changes. Just like that. Cut. Fade to fucking black.”

  I nodded as if I understood and turned back to my drink.

  He leaned closer to me and I caught the scent of cheap aftershave. “One day I come home from work, OK? I work security at Danton Industries. You know, they make the really nice replacement windows over in the industrial park? I work security there, front desk, no big thing, but steady, I been there for years. Got a nice retirement plan and everything. My wife and kids never wanted for anything, you see what I’m saying? We weren’t rich but I never let my family go without. If I had to get a second job at night or whatever, that’s what I did, right? One Christmas I stocked shelves at the grocery store—no lie—me and a bunch of zit-covered little teenage pukes. They all laughed at me and shit, stupid old loser stocking shelves, right? But my family had a nice Christmas that year, so I swallowed the shit to give it to them, OK? And I did it gladly, my man. Motherfucking gladly. Why? Because I love my family, that’s why.”

  I swallowed some more scotch, wondering now if one would be enough.

  “So like I say, one day I come home from work, OK? I’m a little early because I got this sinus thing going that won’t quit and I feel like a steaming pile of shit.” The man’s beady eyes grew dark behind the tinted lenses as he angled his glass back and crunched some ice. “Know what I find? Know what I walked into, my man? My wife doing my best friend, that’s what. No lie. I walk in and they’re right there on the fucking couch and she’s gobbling the bastard’s knob like she’s under water and drawing oxygen through the motherfucker.”

  I suppressed a nervous laugh and awkwardly mumbled, “Jesus.”

  He shrugged, put his glass back on the bar. “I turned around and walked right back out. I go out and I sit in my car and I try to figure out what the hell to do, you know? And after a couple minutes my best friend—Reggie was his name—he comes stumbling out of the house—my house, my fucking house—all doing up his pants and shit. He comes over to the car and he goes, I swear to God, he goes: ‘Henry, it ain’t what you think.’ It ain’t what I think?” He laughed joylessly and shook his head, his glazed eyes struggling to remain focused. “So I just drive away because I figure if I don’t, I’ll kill the two of them. You got to understand, me and Reggie, we go back more than twenty years. He’s been my best friend all that time. Bastard stood up for me at our wedding and everything. He’s godfather to two of our kids. And he’s doing Dolores. Come to find out they’d been at it for a couple years. Who knew? Not me, my man, not me. Hell of a way to find out, though, let me tell you. Hell of a way to find out.”

  Thankfully the bartender returned. “You all set?”

  I eyed my drink. There wasn’t much left. “Hit me again, would you?”

  “Me too,” Henry said.

  The bartender frowned at him. “OK, but I’m calling you a cab.”

  Henry waved him away. “Fine, do what you got to do.”

  As the bartender moved off to fix our drinks I tried not to look at Henry directly. He was in such pain and it was so obvious it seemed obscene to notice, like gawking at the carnage of a roadside car accident.

  “So anyway, now I live in this little room over the pool hall down off of Main, you know the one, Tully’s? They rent rooms over there. Nothing special but it’s safe and clean and they got hot water and heat.”

  The bartender returned, set us up and moved away.

  “And Dolores and Reggie, they live together now. In my fucking house. The house I paid for
, that one. The two of them live there and eat off my fucking dishes and sit on my fucking furniture and fuck in my fucking bed. Nice, huh?” He grabbed his drink like a man dying of thirst and took a long gulp. It seemed to calm him a bit. “So I take my time, you know? I take my time and I think and I think and I think about what I should do. I think and I think and I figure, hell, I got to do something, right? I’m a man. We’re men, right, Andy?” He raised his glass again. Unsure of what else to do, I clicked mine against it in agreement. “If a man don’t do what he’s got to do, what he’s got to do to still be a man, to still feel like a man, then something dies in you, you know what I’m saying? Something dies. And I’m here to tell you, my man, once it dies it don’t come back.”

  The song on the jukebox ended again, and only the faint voice of the bartender, who was now on the phone at the other end of the bar, filled the dead space.

  “Give you a perfect example,” Henry continued. “A couple years ago I’m watching this show on TV, right? One of them ones where people catch shit on tape, you know those? So in this one, they got this couple and they got this kid, just a baby, like one or something, in there. Still sitting in a highchair and can’t talk and shit. Well both of them work so they hire this broad to watch their kid during the day, right? But after a couple weeks the kid’s acting all weird. Kid was all happy and shit before they hired this broad and now the kid’s crying all the time and acting all scared and shit, especially when they leave him with this broad. But the broad’s all nice and lovey-dovey and shit with the kid when the parents are there, and supposedly she’s got all these good references and all that, right? Well the parents, they decide to buy this camcorder and to set it up without this babysitter knowing, OK? So they do it and when they get home they play the tape and they see what’s really been going on while they’re at work every day. So on this show, they show this fucking tape, and let me tell you, my man, it’s some of the most fucked up shit I’ve ever seen. This big fat broad spends the day hitting this poor kid in the head with wooden spoons and slapping him across the face—really fucked up beatings she’s giving this kid—but she knows how to do it so it don’t leave any marks, OK? And they show this shit right on the TV show, the kid’s all screaming and crying and shit and this cunt’s whacking him around. Defenseless, trusting, beautiful little kid.” Henry stared down at the bar, his upper lip trembling with anger. “So I’m watching this and all I can think of is my own kids, right? I start remembering when they were that age, all little and helpless and shit, and how if anybody did that to them I’d fucking kill them. I’m watching this show and I’m seeing what this broad’s doing and I want to just beat her fucking face. Now I ain’t never hit a woman—that’s pussy-ass shit, you ask me, no real man hits women—but this bitch, let me tell you, my man, I wanted to just hold her down with one hand and punch her fucking face out through the back of her head with the other one. And if I did, I should get a medal for it, far as I’m concerned, because any asshole that can do that to a little kid ain’t worth a pinch of shit in a snowstorm in my book. They deserve to die. That twat deserved to die.” He shook his head and seemed to remember I was sitting next to him, listening. “So anyways, they show the parents again and they’re all weepy and shit about how they can’t believe it and how this broad betrayed their trust and all this. So they show this tape to the broad herself and she starts crying and saying she’s sorry and all this, and you know what they do? They call the cops. The guy, this yuppie pussy, he calls the fucking cops. They show him when he’s talking about what happened, and you can see in this guy’s eyes, he wanted to kill the bitch. He needed to do something. And calling the cops ain’t it. This bitch came into his house and attacked his kid. He needed to do something. You see what I’m saying? But he called the cops and they arrest the broad and you know what happened? A whole lot of nothing, that’s what. This bitch gets put in some program for anger and abuse and all this shit, and she has to pay some fines and court costs and that’s it. She don’t do any time or nothing. So then they switch back to the parents, right? And this guy’s talking about the injustice and all that, but you can see what’s really going on in this guy. Even a yuppie wimp like him knows something inside him is dying. He knows he should’ve just dug a fucking hole in his backyard and killed the bitch, but he knows he didn’t and he knows he never will. Heaven, Hell, the law, prison—there’s a whole lot of things to be scared of, my man, but don’t none of it matter if you can’t live with yourself no more, am I right?” He paused long enough to take another drink. “We ain’t so far outside those caves as we like to think, Andy, know what I mean? And you know what? That ain’t such a bad thing. It’s like in nature. Animals do it right. One of them threatens the herd they take the motherfucker out. Out. They thin the fucking herd. No bullshit about it, they don’t make no big deal over it, they just do it. Know why? Because it’s what’s got to be done, it’s the nature of things. And none of them get in the way or tell them they’re bad or what they should or shouldn’t do. No consequences. You see what I mean? No consequences because it ain’t about should or shouldn’t. It’s about what’s right and what’s got to be done sometimes. Hey, it’s not always pretty and neat and tidy, right? But what in this world is?