by Alton Gansky
“I can take him, Ronster. I can take him good.”
The man began to slip from his stool but before his foot could touch floor, Ronny had removed a Louisville Slugger from beneath the bar and pointed the business end between the two men.
“This ends now, gentlemen. First guy to throw a punch goes home with a goose egg on the side of his head courtesy of me. Got it?”
No answer. The two men eyed each other. If a fight broke out, then Mikey, who had more sheets to the wind than New Guy, would be sobering up in the emergency room. If he hadn’t been so certain of that, he might have let Mikey lay a couple of roundhouses to the young guy’s noggin.
“I ain’t kidding around here, gentlemen. Once I crack a skull, I have to fill out a great deal of paperwork with the police, and I don’t like paperwork. Cool it. Cool it now.”
“All right, Ronster. I’ll step away, but if this pencil-neck geek gives you any more grief, you let me know. I’ll take him outside and school him in some manners.”
“I’m ready, old man.”
“Go sit down, Mikey.” Ronny tapped his friend’s chest with the bat. Mikey backed away.
New Guy sat down and took his glass in his hand. “I’d have killed him. He can’t be serious about taking me.”
“Don’t fool yourself, friend. Before Mikey took up drinking, he did some serious boxing. Had promise. I seen him put more than one man on the mat.”
“What? Fifty years ago? I did some work in the ring myself. How do you think I got this ear?”
“You gonna finish that drink or try to dry it up with all yer talk?”
The customer knocked back the drink in a single gulp. “Answer your question?”
“Yeah, now I got one more. You know how to work a door?” Ronny kept the bat in his hands, ready for action.
The man looked at the door. He got the hint. Slipping from the stool, he started for it, then stopped and sighed. He returned to where he had been sitting. Ronny saw him catch a glance of Mikey, who had yet to take his eyes off the stranger.
“Look. I’m sorry. I’m new in town and I’m not used to sitting around bars. You’re right. I lost my job last week and I’m trying to find work. I guess the depression and the booze got to me. How much time until closing?”
“Five minutes.” Ronny eyed the man. Something didn’t feel right. He watched as the man reached for his wallet and removed a ten and two fives. The bills were folded in the middle, the ten resting inside the fives. He dropped the bills on the counter.
“Buy Mikey another and keep the change for yourself.” He tossed the bill on the bar, returned his wallet to his back pocket, then inserted his hands into his front pockets. Ronny could hear keys jingle and paper rustle.
“No hard feelings.”
“Thanks.” The man waved at the handful of customers clinging to the last few moments in their home away from home, then exited the bar.
“That guy was weird, Ronny-boy. You should have let me pop him one.”
“Weird is right. He bought you another drink.”
“Did I say weird? I meant friendly.”
Ronny snatched up the bills and studied them. The ten looked real. He massaged the paper. Felt real. Since he’d already closed out the register, he shoved the bills in his wallet. It was his bar; he could do what he wanted. A man can’t steal from himself.
“Don’t dawdle, pal. That door over there is going to be locked in five minutes and all of you are gonna be on the other side.” . . .
“Are you going to tell him tomorrow?” Myra snuggled deeper into the crook of Tuck’s arm and rested her head on his chest. He gave her a squeeze and felt thankful for the feel of her, the smell of her, the sound of her. Somehow, he always felt more alive when she was around.
“Tell who?”
“You know who. Dr. Celtik. Your favorite flight surgeon.”
“First, that’s today. It’s already Tuesday, kiddo.” Tuck fixed his eyes on the old black-and-white movie showing on the TV.
“Okay. Are you going to tell him?”
“I don’t know. Haven’t given it any thought.”
She patted his stomach. “That’s your avoidance mechanism. Don’t think about it.”
“Oh, I see. You got a psychology degree while I was at work?”
“Nope, but I do have a Mrs. degree in Benjamin Tucker Junior.”
“I don’t want to tell him. He’s one of those by-the-book guys. A little something like this could make him uneasy.”
“A little thing? You’ve had recurring nightmares for a year, honey. It’s not a little thing.”
“It doesn’t affect what I do.”
Myra didn’t respond. Tuck said, “Aren’t you going to tell me how it’s my duty to tell the doc?”
“No one needs to tell Commander Tucker what his duty is, certainly not his wife. Besides . . .”
“Besides what?”
“No matter what I tell you, I lose. If I encourage you to reveal the dreams to Bob and he grounds you, then I’ll feel responsible. If I tell you to keep it a secret and they send you back up and something goes wrong . . . I’ll feel responsible. So I’m going to take the safe road and leave it all up to you.”
Tuck kissed her on top of the head. “I married above myself.”
“Boy, you got that right.” Myra sat up. “I’m going back to bed. Come soon. I don’t sleep well without your window-shaking snoring.”
“I don’t snore.”
“Ha. How would you know? You’re asleep when you do it.”
Tuck watched the thinly draped form of his wife pad barefooted across the carpet. Her form in the dim light provided the exclamation point to his earlier statement: he had married above himself.
“Don’t forget to rinse the coffee mugs. Chocolate is hard to clean when it has dried.”
“Yes, Master.”
Myra disappeared into the bedroom and Tuck returned his gaze to the television. On the screen, a commercial had replaced the movie. Tuck closed his eyes, leaned his head back, and tried to drive out the nightmarish vision that stained his memory.
They were stubborn ghosts, not easily exorcised. He needed help to evacuate the still stinging emotions, and watching TV wasn’t cutting it.
Tuck rose from the sofa, took the two mugs into the kitchen, and rinsed away the brown cocoa residue. He then moved into a bedroom that he had converted to an office and turned on the banker’s light perched on his desk. It put out just enough light. From one of the shelves in the built-in cherry bookcases, he removed a Bible and opened to Psalms.
Since his return from the failed mission, he had sought comfort from the Bible. Each time he did, he realized how far he had wandered from the faith. At first, he blamed God for it all. But time had dissolved some of the initial bitterness, and Tuck had begun a slow flight back to belief.
In the wee hours and after a soul-dicing dream, he needed some comfort and wisdom.
He opened the book and moved the pages, letting his eyes fall wherever chance put them. He had no destination, just a hunger.
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
The room provided a perfect reflection of his mind: dim and full of shadows. Still, a faint light refused to yield to the darkness.
He read psalm after psalm, but the sense of despair would not leave. Tuck felt as if he could see the end of his world from where he sat.
He closed the Bible, went to bed, and watched the clock count off the minutes to dawn.
Mikey hung around longer than the others, ostensibly to help Ronny clean the bar, but the bartender knew his friend was nursing the last drink of the night. He couldn’t blame him. Ronny had a home with a wife and a warm bed; Mikey had a studio apartment with no one but the occasional cockroach to share the space.
Ronny swept while Mikey placed chairs on the tables to make
room for Ronny’s broom. A bead of sweat ran from the bartender’s temple and dripped to the floor.
Mikey saw it. “You’re workin’ too hard, Ronny. Not much in this world worth sweating over — certainly not a little dirt on the floor.”
“I ain’t workin’ any harder than I did yesterday. Don’t know why I’m feeling so winded. This is nuts. Feel like I ran around the block.”
“You feelin’ okay? It ain’t your ticker, is it?”
“Nope. Heart is fine. I just feel a little light-headed and warm. You know.”
“Yeah, I know. I feel the same way if I go too long without a drink. You back on the juice?”
Ronny shook his head. “Haven’t had a drop in two years. Not a single drop. Me and the booze are on the outs forever.”
“Good to hear.”
Mikey’s words carried the same sincerity as one smoker telling another how proud he is of his friend’s determination to desert the flock.
Ronny stopped sweeping and took several deep breaths. “You know what? I’m gonna call it a night. Finish up that glass you been tending. I’ll come in early tomorrow and finish this.”
“Okay. You da boss. I’ll call a cab. I’m a little too lit to be behind the wheel.”
“Don’t bother. You’re not that far off my path. I’ll drop you by your place.”
“I don’t want to be no trouble, Ron-man.”
“Won’t add five minutes to my trip.” The sentence took more out of him than he thought it should. “Let’s get going. I think I’m getting a headache.”
“Whatever you say, boss-man.”
Five minutes later the two had seated and belted themselves in Ronny’s Toyota sedan and headed toward the I-8 freeway. Even at this hour, the wide roadway had too many cars for Ronny’s liking. Such was life in southern California.
The car accelerated along the on-ramp and eased onto the freeway. Overhead, a gibbous Moon added its lights to the yellow cast of the streetlights. To Ronny, the city looked jaundiced. He started to say so, when a pair of bright lights stabbed his eyes.
“Idiot.”
“Who? Me?” Mikey sounded worried.
“Not you. The bozo behind me. Can’t figure out how to dim his high beams.”
“Maybe one of his low beams is out so he’s keeping his brights on. I’ve done that a few times.”
Ronny flipped the lever on the rearview mirror to dim the glare.
“I already got me a world-class headache. I sure don’t need some moron to make it worse.” He looked forward. The red lights of the vehicles in front of him blurred and ran together. Ronny squinted.
Sweat ran down his face. His heart began to race as if attached to the accelerator.
He shook his head. “Man, I think I got the flu bad.”
“Maybe I should drive. I’ve had too much but I can’t do worse than you — look out.”
The warning came too late. Ronny’s sluggish brain recognized the back end of an eighteen-wheeler that looked like a wall before him.
He slammed on the brakes. Except the pedal he slammed to the floor was not the brake — it was the accelerator.
He heard it first, then felt it. The impact plowed the Toyota nose down. Ronny snapped the steering wheel to the right.
He felt weightless for a moment as the sedan flipped. Mikey screamed. Ronny’s head hit the driver-side window then the ceiling as the force of the tumbling vehicle crushed the roof into the passenger compartment.
Noises: squealing tires; blaring horns, crunching of metal; breaking glass; impact thuds of metal to asphalt.
When the car stopped its terrible gymnastics it rested upside down against the concrete divider that separated eastbound traffic from westbound.
We flipped clean ’cross the freeway. It was the second- to-last thought Ronny had. The last one he saved for his wife. . . .
“What happened? I mean, I didn’t cut him off. I couldn’t have. I looked. I know I looked, and I signaled. I signal longer than any trucker. How could I cut him off?”
The truck driver held his hands to each side of his head as if trying to keep his brains from expanding and cracking his skull like an egg.
“Take it easy, buddy. I saw the whole thing. It wasn’t your fault. The guy was all over the road. Nothing you could have done.” Edwin Quain lowered himself to the upside-down car. Behind him, traffic backed up like water at a new dam. Most cars weaved through the lanes, too busy to let yet another accident on a California freeway bother them.
“Are they . . . ? I mean, surely someone has called for an ambulance.” The truck driver was a barrel of a man; gray stubble forested his face.
“An ambulance isn’t going to do them any good. They’re dead.”
“You a doctor?” It was a new voice, younger, cockier.
“Nope. You?”
“Then how do you know they’re dead?”
Quain stood, dusted the dirt from his hands, and looked at a guy who couldn’t be out of college. Even in the dim light, Quain could see his watery eyes and pinpoint pupils. Apparently he’d been having an evening of fun and drugs. “Take a look for yourself.”
He did. Swore, stepped to the concrete barrier, and tossed everything he had ingested that evening.
“I’ll take that as agreement.”
“I don’t believe this. This is horrible. It’s tragic. I’m minding my own business and driving my rig and a man ends up dead.”
“Two people,” Quain corrected. “There’s a passenger.”
The driver leaned against the buttress and began to weep. “Twenty-five years driving open road and not a single accident. Not even a fender bender. Now this.” The tears came in wet sobs. “I had the best record in the company. Now this. I killed them.”
“Nonsense. They killed themselves.” Quain looked over the tangle of metal that had once been a pretty decent car. He felt satisfied. No doubt about it: he was getting better.
“Smells like a brewery in there,” College Boy said.
“They were drinking?” the trucker asked.
College Boy nodded. “Oh, yeah. Big time. Trust me; I know the smell of liquor.”
Quain shook his head. “I bet you do.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Go back to your puking.”
Quain started toward his car.
The trucker drew a sleeve across his damp face. “Hey, where you going? I need your information. The police will want to talk to you.”
“I know. I’m going to get my ID. I can’t do anything for the men in the car.”
“Oh. Yeah. Good idea.”
He walked along the freeway. He had thought far enough ahead to pull over after he passed the wreck. If he had parked behind it, he could be stuck for hours. From behind him, a distant and shrill whine of a siren cut through the night.
Quain slipped into his car. Waited a moment, then started the engine. A moment later, Edwin Quain drove down the road again.
Behind him, two men rested in death. One drunk and too full of the sauce to hold his tongue, and one a bartender who dared raise a bat in Quain’s direction.
That twenty was quite a tip and the bar a good proving ground.
NINE
Doctor Bob Celtik leaned to the right, resting his elbow on the arm of his desk chair. His casual thanks-for-stopping-by-for-coffee pose didn’t fool Tuck.
“And what about Gary? Is he still plunging headlong into adolescence?” Bob’s voice reminded Tuck of a radio DJ: deep, smooth, silky. It didn’t fit the fifty-five-year-old medical man.
“Yup. He had a birthday yesterday.” Abruptly, Tuck changed the subject. “Bob, let’s bottom line this.” Tuck spread his legs and leaned forward, not feeling as confident as his pose suggested. “What did the shrink say?”
Bob leaned over his desk, opening a colored folder to scan the pages inside.
“I’m assuming you’ve already read that, Bob. Just say it.”
“Most indicators are good, Tuck. Dr. Be
nnack states that you’ve shown the proper journey through grief. Your emotional state is stable and your social interaction indicates good mental healing.”
“You’re dumbing this down for me, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. I am. The fancy terms won’t mean much to you.”
“So if I’m doing so well, then what’s stuck in your craw?”
“The dreams. You’re still having the night terrors.”
“Nightmares. Let’s not exaggerate their intensity or their frequency.”
Bob met Tuck’s eyes as if the doctor could read thoughts printed on the gray matter. “When was your last night terror . . . nightmare?”
Lie. Just tell him a lie. You wouldn’t be the first astronaut to fudge the truth about a medical matter.
“Last night.”
“And?”
“And what? It was just a dream. I’ve had them before and I might have a few more. Dreams are just dreams.”
Bob shook his head. “No, Tuck, they’re not just dreams. What you went through would drive most men mad. You’re military. You know the effects trauma has on a man. When I did my psych rotation in med school, I met World War II vets still grieving buddies lost in battle.”
“I’m not them.” The words came out hard as bricks.
“No, you’re not. You’re Commander Benjamin Tucker Junior, Navy jock pilot, three-time veteran of Shuttle missions, and hero to the world. You’re also made of flesh and blood; your brain is made the same way as the rest of us.”
“You’re washing me out?”
“No. You’re still part of the astronaut corps, but I’m taking you off the flight roster.”
Tuck didn’t flinch, but his jaw tightened like a clamp. “This is an overreaction, Bob. You know it is.”
“I know no such thing. You know as well as I do —scratch that — you know better than I do that space travel is not the same thing as flying a plane. If we were just talking air flight, I’d tell you to keep seeing the psychiatrist until the dreams disappeared, but I’d let you fly. Shuttle missions put you in space for days. You sleep up there. I have to think of the rest of the crew.” He paused. “Of course, it’s all academic, really.”
“It’s more than that. It’s personal.”
