After catching their collective breath, it was Jack Start who spoke first. “Well, that was the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever done.” He spit lake water from his lungs.
Pudge Abercrombie lay on his back staring up at a heaven teeming with rage. He was laughing, but it was a cold and bitter laugh. “Goddamn, that was the best.” He fished a soggy pack of Marlboros from his jacket pocket and stuck a wet one between his lips. “In our entire lives we’ll never again see waves like this.”
So now, beneath the silvery-blue lights of the lift bridge, in the swampy black water left by Lake Superior, lay the three boys. They stared out at the long canal. They were wet and freezing. Beaten and exhausted. They had a buzz on from the beers. But they had challenged the great lake, and they had won.
It was the pugnacious Pudge Abercrombie whose voice finally cut through the icy storm. “I want to do it again.”
Jack Start turned to him. The wind was in his face. “You’re crazy.”
“No, seriously. I want to go again. I feel unbeatable tonight.”
“I wish I had felt unbeatable last night.”
“I’m not thinking about that,” Pudge yelled.
Jack Start had to scream to be heard over the storm. “Yes, you are. That’s all you’re thinking about…a football game, and a girl. There’s more to life, Pudge.”
Pudge Abercrombie got to his feet and began walking down the ship canal with the look of a man on a mission. A man obsessed. He turned to his friend, the limp cigarette dangling from his lips, the hellish lake framing his visage. “She wanted you to ask her out. She wanted to go to the dance with you. But you wouldn’t ask her…because you’re my best friend.” The words best friend were dripping with sarcasm.
Jack sat up. “Who told you that?”
Pudge looked at Tommy Robek. Then Jack looked over at Tommy Robek. All the skinny kid could do was shrug his skinny shoulders.
“You’re in love with her, aren’t you, Jack?”
“We’re all in love with her, Pudge. But you’re the only one that’s crazy in love with her. You scare her with your craziness.”
“So ask her out, you dumb shit. Do you think a girl like that comes along more than once in a lifetime?” Pudge yelled the question into the storm. “Go ahead, ask her out…I’ll get out of your way.” He turned and started down the canal.
Jack Start climbed to his feet. “You’re being stupid, Pudge. Come back here. It’s not worth it…she’s not worth it.”
Tommy Robek worked his way to his feet. Wiped the sleet from his face. “You guys are just pissed because you lost a football game. Hell, it’s not your fault. Coach Young was fuckin’ drunk.”
Pudge Abercrombie kept on walking, as if the lake were drawing him in. He threw his unlit cigarette to the side. “It is a good day to die!” they heard him shout.
Another monster wave broke over the lighthouse. It raced with a fury up the canal, drenching heart-broken Pudge up to his knees. It was only because Pudge was built so low to the ground that he was able to keep his balance. Then the wave began its violent return to the lake. And Pudge Abercrombie was off and running, chasing the black water. Sprinting toward the light.
The Wave
Pudge Abercrombie chased the retreating whitecaps down the ship canal, running faster than his stubby little legs had ever before carried him. The air temperature continued its assault on the freezing mark. The wind was howling mad. The big lake was black like ink. Crippling waves lashed at the mammoth rocks. But Pudge to the lighthouse was like a moth to the candle. He leapt up the wet concrete steps and tagged the monolith. Then he turned, jumped down the steps, and started for shore.
It is hard to say what was going through his mind that night, what made Pudge make that last run. Perhaps in high school the combination of losing the big game and then losing the girl is about as bad as it gets. Or just maybe Pudge Abercrombie was as crazy as everybody said he was. Either way, from the safety of shore, everything looked fine. Pudge was the fastest of them all. Though he was certainly being foolish, it appeared to his friends as if Pudge were going to once again beat the lake.
But then things began to happen. Strange things. Lights started going off and on all over town. Up and down the hills. The high winds and driving sleet were interrupting power. The Aerial Lift Bridge behind them seemed suddenly transformed into a giant strobe light. And that’s when they saw it. Jack Start froze in horror. Tommy Robek, too, dropped his jaw, his eyes bulging from his head.
In every storm at sea there is one wave that dwarfs all others. The mother wave, if you will. The wave that sinks ships, and destroys homes along the shore. Suddenly and without warning, everything behind the sprinting Pudge went as black as black can get. From the sea to the sky, from the earth to the heavens, there was nothing behind the Duluth teenager but the specter of utter blackness. It took a few seconds to register with the boys, but that blackness was a solid plain of water. It had shape and form. It seemed to possess life. And it was about to possess Pudge Abercrombie.
“Pudge, run!”
“Run, Pudge, run!”
He never looked over his shoulder, never broke stride, but the two boys could tell from the fear on his face that he was reading the terror in their eyes. Then Pudge Abercrombie, star halfback at Duluth High, was swallowed alive by Lake Superior.
The mother of all waves twisted young Pudge like a corkscrew. He was sent tumbling and spinning at the same time. Pudge washed up within ten yards of his friends, who were backpedaling for their lives. For a second, and it was only a second, it looked like he was safe, that he could stand and walk away. But then the wave from hell began its retreat, dragging Pudge Abercrombie with it. The sheer force of the raging water tore the lampposts out of the concrete. In fact, the whole scene seemed surreal, a desperate struggle for life played out in three-quarter speed. Pudge Abercrombie was being pulled into the lake by an unearthly force. It was clear that he was yelling, but his desperate cries for help could not be heard over the roar of the storm and the crashing of the waves. He went literally kicking and screaming. He fought the lake like a man afire, and it looked for an instant that he might be saved by the lighthouse. But it was not to be. The killer wave actually carried the boy up and over the light.
The last thing Jack Start ever saw of his friend Pudge Abercrombie was the boy’s terrified face poking out the top of that wall of water. His mop of dark, curly hair was already frozen white. Icicles framed his jaw. His arms were stretched out to his side, like a bird in flight. Only Pudge was flying backwards, away from the lighthouse, away from life, back into the dark. Slowly disappearing into the raging abyss of black water.
Jack Start and Tommy Robek collapsed in shock, waiting for the next wave, hoping against hope that the big lake the Ojibwa called Gitchee Gumee would sweep their buddy Pudge back up the walkway and spit him out. But the next giant wave never came. On the contrary, there was a sudden cessation of the wind. Whitecaps washed over the lighthouse and the spray of icy water washed over the boys, but it was as if the great lake had gotten what it had come for, and now it was through.
As power was restored to the town, the two boys sat beneath the lift bridge staring into the blackness. They were freezing. Their wet clothes were stiff like boards. Their hair was frosty and hard. The revolving light of the lighthouse swept over their faces, revealing the tears that were spilling from their eyes. Superior, it is said, never gives up her dead when the gales of November blow early. Their friend, Pudge Abercrombie, was never seen again. Well, not on this earth, anyway.
25 Years Later
They were enjoying drinks at Grandma’s Saloon the first time God showed his pudgy face. Grandma’s was crowded that night, people streaming in from the Lakewalk. Every time the saloon door swung open, an end-of-summer breeze rushed in just in time to refresh the smoky joint. Jack Start and an old friend got lucky and found two empty stools directly beneath one of the television sets. Jack threw a copy of the Duluth Newspaper on the
bar. He hung his walking cane on the rail and ordered two beers. The two men lit up cigarettes and caught the score of the Twins game.
Jack’s drinking partner that warm summer night was Old Coach Young. As a much younger man, he had been the head football coach at Duluth High. The last football coach the school had. The kids had loved him, sober or drunk. But the old high school had been closed in the economic downturn of the 1970s. The big red-brick building halfway up the hill was still standing, but it stood empty. Lifeless. Nobody wanted it torn down, but nobody knew what to do with it. Nobody had known what to do with the football coach, either. With shrinking enrollments and closing schools, there were few teaching positions available on the Iron Range. For years the man simply drifted from shit job to shit job, until one day Coach Young became Old Coach Young. He was on disability now, and enough of his former players were still around town to loan him a dollar or two, or to buy him a beer. Besides, the coach knew everybody in town. On both sides of the law. For reporter Jack Start, new again in his old hometown, his high school football coach was a great source.
The television set flickering above them was tuned to KDUL-TV. Home of the Minnesota Twins. “Get this, Coach,” said Jack Start, hoisting his first beer in twenty-four hours, “that cheerleader I interviewed, Miss Grand Tetons…she has an identical twin.”
“Whoa! Do you mean to say there’s four of those puppies?”
Jack Start spit laughter across the bar. Wiped his mouth. “I said identical.”
The Twins were playing the Red Sox. The sound of the announcers could barely be heard above the buzz of the bar.
“I remember their mother was a real looker,” the old coach said in his deep, gravel voice. His gray-white hair was combed straight back, revealing the severe redness of his face. He carried the thick arms of an ex-athlete, and the overlapping belly of a lush. “A real looker,” he repeated.
Jack Start nodded his head in agreement. “You know, I always wondered back then if you guys really looked…I mean, you teachers.”
The coach laughed. “Kid, there was a lot more than looking going on back then.”
“Really? Someday you and I are going to have to have a long, long talk, Coach.”
It was a little past 9 p.m. They were waiting for the baseball game to end so that the local news could begin. It was the top of the sixth inning. The Twins were down one run to the Red Sox. Jack Start and his old coach ordered two more beers. And that’s when it happened. It wasn’t fast or flashy, it was just alien. Unexpected.
With a Red Sox batter at the plate, the TV signal went fuzzy. Then it faded away. Nothing but snow and static. When the picture cleared again, some guy was sitting at a desk talking into the camera. It looked like public-access cable, or like a cheap video taped in an old house. The strange man smiled, a truly engaging smile, and said, “Hi, I’m God.” The man paused for effect. Then he held up a tacky little nameplate that read: I’ M G OD. He added, “Don’t worry about the game. There won’t be any more scoring again until the pitching change in the eighth inning.”
He was a fairly handsome man, in a slovenly sort of way. A heavyset guy who had a round, happy face, with thin brown hair on a receding hairline. There was something mischievous in his smile, but nothing malicious. A benign comedian. He was wearing a blue work shirt. The kind of guy who would fit right in at Grandma’s Saloon. The messy desk he was seated behind looked as if it were located in a spare bedroom, or maybe a room in the basement. The background was cheap wood paneling, the kind installed to hide the holes in the wall. An old Hamm’s Beer sign could be seen over his shoulder. In other words, it could have been in any one of a thousand homes in Duluth. In fact, the whole scene was no frills, no airs, North Shore Minnesota.
“This is the first of what will be seven appearances,” the man who claimed to be God said into the camera. “It is a new millennium.” Then he cracked up. “Millennium…God, I love that word.” He caught his breath. “So anyhow, the time has come to review where you are at as a people, and where you are going. And, quite frankly, if at the end of our little chats I don’t like what I see, I’ll probably flood the whole damn planet, starting with Duluth.” He began laughing. “No, seriously, that was a joke.”
Jack Start and Old Coach Young were staring intently at the television screen, the image of God filtering through the haze of cigarette smoke. A hush fell over their corner of the bar as the bartender and the patrons surrounding them strained to hear the message, apparently being delivered from heaven.
God opened a desk drawer, pulled out a pack of Marlboro in the box, stuck a cigarette in his mouth, and lit up. He blew a long puff of smoke at the camera. He coughed, a nasty smoker’s cough, and then cleared his throat. “I think it’s fair to say that you people eat too much, you drink too much, and you watch too much television. And you better cut it out.” He extinguished his mostly un-smoked cigarette in a dime store ashtray. “Oh yeah, and on that religious thing…the Jews are the only ones that got it right.” He started laughing again, an infectious laugh if ever there was one. “Again with the jokes.” He stuck up his hand and waved to the camera. “Anyway, I’ll be seeing you.”
The picture faded to snow and static. Then a Red Sox batter could be seen flying out to deep center field. The Twins had apparently retired the side. One, two, three.
Jack Start took a long swig and then dropped his empty beer mug on the bar. He wiped the froth from his lips. Stared up at the baseball game. “What just happened here?”
Old Coach Young shrugged his shoulders. “Some guy interrupted the Twins game and said he was God.” He dwelled on the idea as he sipped his beer. “I’ll bet it was one of those Volkswagen commercials.”
“Where was the Volkswagen?”
“They never show it at first. It’s a high-concept ad.”
“Oh, please,” begged Jack Start. “Did he look familiar to you?”
“Who?”
“The guy who played God.”
“I think he might have been on a TV series. I know I’ve seen him before.”
Jack Start was having a flashback. “He made me think of Pudge Abercrombie…I mean, you know, what Pudge might have looked like had he lived.”
Old Coach Young smiled, a rueful smile. “Ole Pudge… I haven’t thought about that kid in years.”
“For years I couldn’t stop thinking about him.”
“That’s right, you were on the ship canal that night, weren’t you?”
Jack Start was suddenly drowning in his watery memories. A year earlier he had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He had lost two wives to divorce, and two jobs to alcohol, but nothing haunted him more than watching his boyhood friend wash out to sea. “Yeah, I was on the canal.”
“Who else was there?”
“Tommy Robek.”
“The skinny kid. What ever happened to him?”
“He was killed in Vietnam.”
The coach shook his head. “That fuckin’ war.” He sucked on his cigarette. “So you’re the only one left alive?”
“Yup, I’m the only one left alive. I should have given the damn ball to Pudge.”
“Say what?”
“Nothing.”
The two men went back to their beer and their baseball, as did the rest of the bar. But a strange feeling had descended over the room. Something of a pall. There seemed to be more thinking going on than talking.
“Are you going to the reunion?” the coach finally asked.
“I didn’t go to the ten. I didn’t go to the twenty. Why the hell would I go to the twenty-five?”
“Because she’s going to be there.”
Jack Start felt his heart stop. After being fired from the only two newspapers in the Twin Cities, and then being diagnosed with MS, he’d had an overwhelming desire to return home. Somewhat of a calling. “How do you know?”
“She’s divorced from the governor, for Christ’s sake. It’s all over town. She’s driving up from St. Paul,” the coach went on.
“I think she has one son.”
The veteran reporter exhaled into his beer. “Yeah, that’s what I need in my life right now…a forty-three-year-old ex-cheerleader with the governor’s kid.”
“Maybe that is what you need.”
“I don’t think so, Coach. I’ve got plans.”
The old coach rolled his bloodshot eyes. Snickered in his beer. He looked up at the television set, still a touch of the teacher in his voice. “Do you know how to make God laugh?” he asked. He answered his own question. “Tell him your plans.”
Jack Start, too, looked up at the television set. He could see his reflection staring back. He raised his empty mug of beer in salute. “Here’s to God and all his lovely plans.”
The Red Sox made a pitching change in the eighth inning.
Then the Twins scored two more runs to win the game. The next morning, in a box above the fold, the following article appeared on the front page of the Duluth Newspaper:
WAS GOD ON TV?
In a blatant violation of federal law, a man hijacked the KDUL television signal of the Minnesota Twins game last night and claimed he was God. The man, a white male, approximately forty to fifty years of age, with thin brown hair, took over the signal from 9:10 p.m. to 9:13. His height could not be determined, but he appeared to weigh over 200 pounds. He was wearing a blue jean shirt with a small red Levi’s label visible on the right pocket. About halfway through his talk he lit up a Marlboro cigarette. What was most peculiar about the unauthorized television event was that the man made no attempt to disguise himself…
Twin Cities Noir Page 17
