River of Heaven

by Lee Martin

  “So about my car,” Mink said. He took a last swallow from his milk shake, slurping at it through the straw.

  “You ready?” Cal said, and Mink told him he was.

  It could have been like that, Cal says to me. It could have been this one kind turn done a man down on his luck, nothing anyone would really take count of and nothing to come of it except whatever lies on the other side of goodness.

  “So I took him over to Edon and introduced him to Herbert Zwilling,” Cal says. “I let Mink follow me over to Edon, and sure enough he had a blown gasket, and he was right; it was going to cost more to fix than the car was worth. Herbert Zwilling had this Plymouth Volare. An old 1979 model, faded maroon, the paint gone down to the primer in spots. Duct tape holding the upholstery together. A red steering wheel cover. I remember everything about it, Sammy. Mink let Herbert have his Pontiac for junk and threw in two hundred fifty bucks in cash for the Volare. I found out later that was going to be his getaway car; that was the car he was going to drive out of Chicago after bombing the Sears Tower.”

  Cal stops here. He takes in a long breath and then lets it out. I suspect he’s reliving it all, wondering, as he must have again and again, how things might have been different if he hadn’t stopped to pick up that penny, if he hadn’t paused just long enough for his life to bump up against Leonard Mink’s. Here we are still sitting in my living room. I think for a moment how funny time can be, how it can wash over you in a second and then a fistful of years and all the people in them can turn to air and leave you gasping for breath, dazzled at the far end of what you swore to be your solid purchase on this planet spinning beneath your feet.

  “I wasn’t in on it,” Cal finally says. “I’ve already told you that. Mink and I became drinking buddies, and he finally told me he meant to bring down the Sears Tower, and then before I knew it there we were in that feed supply—me and him and Herbert Zwilling and Mora Grove—and Mink had that rifle.”

  He wanted ammonium nitrate, and he wanted Herbert Zwilling to sell it to him, but Zwilling was holding out for more money than Mink was willing to pay. “I believe he was going to do whatever it took to get it,” Cal says. “Only Mora Grove—she was Herbert’s bookkeeper—she was back in her office, and she saw Mink walk in with that rifle, and right away she called 911. That’s how we came to be holed up there, Mink threatening to kill us all.”

  “Why were you there the second time, Cal?”

  “Like I said, I knew what Mink was up to. I was there to warn Herbert Zwilling.”

  Cal knew trouble was coming because the night before he’d been at the VFW with Leonard Mink. Cal had a place out in the country, and sometimes it got pretty lonely, and he went into the VFW to have some company for a while. “It was just me and the wind and the coyotes all mournful in the night,” he says. “I didn’t have anyone to do for. No family at all.”

  I can’t help myself. I say, “You had me, Cal. You had a brother.”

  For a good while, it’s so quiet in my house, I can hear the gears working in the clock on the wall and Stump’s little grunts as he settles into sleep on the floor beside my chair.

  “You’re right, Sammy.” When Cal finally speaks, his voice is small. “I’m no kind of brother. What else can I say?”

  “Say what you’ve come to say,” I tell him, and then I wait.

  He was feeling the old misery inside him that night. “It’s just that time of my life, Sammy. You know what I mean, don’t you? That time when you can see more of it behind you than you can ahead? I was taking stock, you see, mulling over the things I’d done, all the ways I’d come up short and let down the people who’d meant the most to me. I was thinking about the way it used to be here in Rat Town. There was you and me and Mom and Dad. I wasn’t even here when he died. That’s how long it’s been. I just read about it in the paper.”

  “You could have come back when you saw about Dad. It could have been that easy, Cal. Anytime, you could have come home.”

  “It wouldn’t have been that easy, Sammy. Trust me.”

  So this misery, the gloom that comes from knowing most of your living is done, and what’s worse, a good portion of it has been made up of things you regret. And nothing to do but carry it with you through the rest of your days. So it is with me and my brother.

  Cal knew about Mink and the Michigan Militia and the plot to bring down the Sears Tower because that night at the VFW, they were drinking shots of Wild Turkey, and Mink started in on how the government had blood on its hands, started talking about Ruby Ridge and the federal marshals that came down on Randy Weaver. “You remember this story?” Cal asks, and I tell him I do. I remember Weaver, one of those survivalists with a stockpile of weapons and ammunition, and how the feds surrounded his cabin there in the woods of northern Idaho, and ended up killing his wife and son. Mink was pissed off about that, and then there was the Branch Davidian compound outside Waco. The feds set fire to it, Mink said, and killed everyone, killed women and children. “You’d think this country would have learned something from what McVeigh did in Oklahoma City,” Mink said. “But, no, people won’t learn a goddamn thing until we do it again, do it as many times as it takes. You know what I mean?”

  Cal’s head was lit up with Wild Turkey, and he said, well hell yes he knew what he meant, and that’s when Mink started talking about the Sears Tower and that ammonium nitrate and just exactly how much he’d need. “I can tell you’re a man who knows how to stand up for himself,” he said to Cal, and it was the most perfect thing he could have said, considering what he wanted, to get Cal to agree to grease the wheels with Herbert Zwilling. The most perfect thing because somewhere deep inside him Cal was still the boy sitting on the hood of that coupe, listening to Grinny Hines tell him his snappy rayon shirt made him look like a queer. He was still the boy who was by-God ready for action. “You are that kind of man, aren’t you?” Mink asked, and Cal said, “Damn straight.”

  This was the night before Mink walked into the feed supply with that rifle just like Cal had a feeling he might. “You see, Sammy,” Cal says. “I woke up the next morning scared to death on account of what I’d said I’d do.”

  In the midst of the Wild Turkey and the hair-on-your-chest, cock-in-your-hand, fuck-yeah-let’s-get-’em, Cal had said he’d take care of everything. Shit, yeah, he’d tell Herbert Zwilling what was what. “You just leave it to me,” he told Mink, and they kept on drinking.

  The morning, though, cleared Cal’s head, and he could hardly stand to look at himself in the mirror.

  Whenever he got down in the mouth, he went driving. Just got in his truck and hit the road. He’d listen to music—something mournful from George Jones, something jazzed up and sharp as a razor from Johnny Cash, and even opera, no matter he couldn’t make heads or tails out of the words, he could still feel all that sorrow, and sorrow was what he felt, just out driving the morning after he’d told Leonard Mink he’d make sure he got that ammonium nitrate.

  “Sammy, it’s like this. Sometimes the dark gets inside me, and, when that happens, I can’t predict what I might do.”

  He had a revolver, a Ruger Single Six with walnut grips, and when he went out driving the country roads, he took a shot now and then at a road sign or a mailbox just to let off some steam. “Oh, it was a stupid thing,” he says, “but that’s what I am sometimes—a stupid man.” He’d done jail time in the past. Mostly public drunkenness, on occasion an assault charge. Somebody would say something he didn’t like, and look out. “I can be a mean SOB. I know you might not think it to look at me. Good God, Sammy. I’m old and gone to shit.”

  So he was driving that morning, and he found himself going by the Paradise Inn. The Volare was there, backed into a spot in front of room number one. “I pulled in, and I got out and knocked on that door.”

  Mink let him in. He shut the door, and he took Cal by the arm, squeezed his bicep so hard it hurt. “You got it all planned out?” He gave Cal a rough shake. “Do you? You going to get me that fer
tilizer?”

  Cal looked around the room. The bed was made up, the comforter tucked up around the pillows and smoothed out across the mattress. One boot was on the floor at the foot of the bed, a camouflage Army boot, like Mink would have worn in Desert Storm. The mate was on his right foot, the laces untied, the tongue hanging out. The heater was on in the room, and the air was close and it held in Mink’s smells: the steamy, wet towel scent from his shower; the pleasant menthol of his shaving cream; the rich, metallic odor Cal recognized as the one that came from oil, the kind someone would use to clean a gun.

  That’s when he saw the rifle broken down and laid out on newspaper spread across the dresser.

  “Last night,” Cal said. “That was just talk, right? All that stuff about the Sears Tower? That was just bullshit between drinking buddies, right?”

  Mink shook Cal again. “I don’t bullshit, friend. When I say something I mean it.”

  “We were drunk,” Cal said.

  Mink pushed him over toward the dresser. “You see that rifle?” He waited, squeezed Cal’s arm harder until Cal said, yes, he saw it. “You think I don’t know what to do with it? Now either you make sense to your friend, Zwilling, or I’ll have to see how persuasive I can be.”

  Mink shoved him, and Cal stumbled up against the dresser. Mink went to shove him again, and that’s when Cal pulled that Ruger Single Six from his coat pocket. He let his arm swing up and the barrel of the Ruger came up under Mink’s chin, and Cal kept pulling it higher, lifting Mink onto his tiptoes. Cal tightened his grip, and he could tell Mink sensed what might happen. His head went back, and Cal followed it, the Ruger’s barrel still beneath his chin. He watched with delight as the heat went out of Mink’s eyes, and he knew he was in trouble.

  “I could have killed him, Sammy.” Cal’s voice goes flat now in my kitchen as if he’s merely stating the fact he’s turned over in his head time and time again until he’s assured himself it’s true. “I was mad enough to pull the trigger. I was this close to doing it, and I could tell Mink knew it. I won’t lie. I took pleasure from that fact. Then, strange as it was, I heard your voice, Sammy, and it was the way it used to be when we were kids. I heard it as clear as day: Hey, you asleep? And I backed away. I let my arm drop, that Single Six stone heavy.”

  Mink took a step toward him, but Cal managed to raise that Single Six again, and he stopped. He let Cal back his way out of that room, get in his truck, stow that Single Six in the glove box and drive away.

  Cal went to the grain elevator, and he told Herbert Zwilling he was afraid this Ansel King—this man he would soon know to be Leonard Mink—was on his way over there, and Cal wouldn’t be surprised if someone ended up getting killed.

  In the time it took him to finish telling Herbert Zwilling the whole story, Mink was there, and he had that rifle, the rifle that had taken him only a flash to reassemble, and Mora Grove made that call to 911, and in a snap the police were there and then the SWAT team, and Mink said, “Well, folks, it looks like we’ve got us a little situation.”

  Cal stops his story there. He stands in my kitchen and lets the minutes go by.

  Finally, I can’t stand the silence, and I say, “Did you kill him? Is that how Mink ended up dead?”

  “You know the rest, don’t you?”

  “No,” I say, “I only know that Mink ended up dead and everyone else walked away.”

  “The Sears Tower, Sammy. He would have found a way to get the job done. Mink. That’s what people like him do. They find a way. I talked him into letting Mora Grove go, and then it was time to see whether Herbert Zwilling and I were going to make it out or not. I said to Mink, ‘Well, what’s it going to be? I’m tired of waiting, and I’m curious how you intend to get out of this mess. See that SWAT team out there? They’re waiting, too. I think it’s time to play your hand.’ He said maybe I’d like to walk out there with him and tell the police everything there was to tell.”

  I take a breath and hold it, trying to decide whether to ask for the rest of the story, the one I might not want to know. Then I say it. “What did you know, Cal?”

  He comes over to me, gets up close to my face the way I imagine he did in that motel room when he held that Single Six under Mink’s chin. “You want to talk about Dewey Finn?”

  “No,” I say.

  He backs away. “Okay then. And I didn’t want to tell the police what I knew. Still don’t. So there we were, me and Herbert Zwilling and Mink, and Mink asked me if I still had that revolver. I told him no, I’d left it in the glove box of my truck. That was the truth, Sammy. I’d been in such a hurry to warn Herbert Zwilling, I hadn’t given a thought to having it with me when I walked into that grain elevator. ‘I’ll have to see for myself,’ Mink said, and he told me to put my hands against the wall so he could pat me down. That’s when I saw my chance. He was holding that rifle in his left hand while he used his right one to search me, and I swung around.” Here, Cal demonstrates how he turned with his elbow high. “I caught him in the face, and I heard the cartilage snap in his nose. His hands flew up, and he dropped the rifle. I got to it first, and that’s when I put an end to things. That’s what I did, Sammy. I by-God made sure that Leonard Mink never got the chance to do what I’m sure he would have—killed Herbert Zwilling and me. I put the barrel of that rifle to Mink’s head, and I pulled the trigger.”

  That’s it, the end of the story, and it leaves me trembling with the thought of how everything could have gone another way if Cal had been a different sort of man, the kind who would have waited for the world to do whatever it had in mind for him. He would have ended up dead, and I would have been left to mourn that fact and to face the truth of Dewey Finn alone. But that isn’t the way it went. Cal’s in my house. The cuckoo clock in the living room sounds ten. Cal reaches up and gives my cheek a pat. “We had a good time tonight, didn’t we, Sammy?”

  “We did,” I tell him.

  Then he bids me good night and goes down the hall into his bedroom.

  I stand in the kitchen, Stump nosing around on the floor where Cal has walked, recalling his scent. I’m shaken by the story he’s told me, but relieved, too, because what happened in that feed supply has brought him back to me. I warm to the thought that now, after all this time, I might know the feeling of family again, even though I’m not exactly sure anymore what that word means. Cal’s brought me this chance along with the sadness and the mystery of everything he’s carrying with him, everything that eventually—I know this in my heart of hearts—will bump up against the story of Dewey Finn. It’s what binds us now, my brother and me: the secrets we each have, these things that haunt us. Soon we’ll know what they’ll come to mean to the way we live the rest of our lives, and whatever that turns out to be, at least I know Cal and I will be together, brothers from here on.

  I hear him singing now, his baritone voice still off-key. He’s singing one of those old songs I remember him playing on the phonograph when we were boys and he still lived at home, Lefty Frizzell’s “Travelin’ Blues.”

  Stump waddles to the archway that separates the kitchen from the front room and the hallway leading back to the bedrooms. His ears perk up. He sniffs the air. Then he turns back and looks at me.

  “You better get used to it,” I tell him. “We’ve got company.”

  8

  AS MUCH AS I WANT HIM HERE, IT’S ODD HAVING CAL IN MY house. The fact is I’m a man accustomed to living alone. I’ve become good at it. Ask Stump. He knows our routine. Up each morning around sunrise, coffee and toast for breakfast, the Today program on the television. I let him out to have a look around the side yard. If it’s cold, he’s back in a whipstitch, and while I wash the morning dishes he gnaws on his rubber horseshoe. Winter mornings, I let the television play on into the talk shows. I watch the programs where ordinary people show up to tell the whole blamed country about their sins and wounds and deformities. Stump lies on the floor by my chair, and from time to time I ask him if he’s ever seen anything like it, the way f
olks go on. Then there’s lunch to see to, and a nap in the afternoon, and before we know it, the boy delivers the evening paper and it’s time for supper and a walk. This is the way my life has gone for years, and the past few weeks I’ve had Arthur’s company of the evening to make things more pleasant. I’ve been getting used to the give and take of that friendship, and now here’s Cal. I’m glad to have him with me, truth be told, particularly now when I’m afraid of what Duncan wants me to see at the police annex.

  Cal is, as he made clear at the Seasoned Chefs, a whiz around the kitchen, and now he says he’s glad to do all the cooking in return for his room.

  “Sammy, relax,” he says when I protest that I should be the one cooking for him. “I enjoy this,” he says. “It’s what I do, and I’m good at it.”

  He ducks his head and gives me a shy, aw-shucks grin. It’s this sweetness in him that I remember so well from when we were boys, a sweetness under the temper and tough-guy cool he liked to show the world. At his age now, he’s lost the edge of that temper, but then, without warning, it bristles up. This morning he prepares a shopping list, and I tell him I’ll go to Wal-Mart after lunch and get everything he needs.

  “Can’t you do it this morning?” he says, and his jaw tightens. “I want to get to work on a roast for supper. It looks like you could help me out, for Pete’s sake. After all, I’m cooking your meals for you.” He closes his hands into fists and then relaxes them. His fingers open, and he gives me a strained smile, a forced chuckle, and like that he tries to make a joke of this little moment of heat between us. “I guess I’m still on Eastern Standard time. The day seems a little later than what it really is.”

  “I can’t go this morning,” I say, and before I know it I’ve let his brief show of anger prod me toward something I didn’t plan to do: meet Duncan Hines at the Daily Mail office. “I have an appointment uptown,” I tell Cal. “Ten o’clock. Duncan Hines has something he wants me to see.”