“Any number. Warren Wang for one.”
“The pudgy kid?”
“Him. Not that he’d be my first choice to look at over the turkey every Thanksgiving for the next forty years, but he was nuts about her. She wouldn’t give him the time of day, and he was too chicken to try the hammer. Speaking of which, I told Rose we’d be there by seven-thirty. Get that box of meat.”
When they were settled in the cab of the Dodge, Marlene cranked the engine, but did not immediately put the truck into gear. “I ought to warn you. I’d kind of hoped that we could make this a pleasant evening, for the kids’ sake if nothing else, but there are tensions chez Heeney.”
“He’s a drunk,” said Karp.
“Hmm, not really. He’s a drinking man, and while I know you think it’s the same thing, it’s not.” She paused to reflect. “Here’s an example. This afternoon, we were in their kitchen making potato salad and coleslaw, all of us, chopping stuff, and we were having a good time. There was a little radio playing oldies, and Rose and I were singing along, and Dan and Lucy were making wisecracks. The boys and Lizzie were underfoot, trying to help. It was, you know—jolly. Everyone was getting along, it was real life. The old ladies were sucking on cheap Italian white, just enough to get a little buzz. Because of the radio we didn’t hear the car pull up. So they just walked in and it was like a switch went off.”
“Who ‘they’?”
“Heeney. Red, they call him. And the son Emmett. A clone of Dad. The pair of them look like the guys the IRA sends by when you’re getting too cozy with the Brits. It was amazing. I was facing the door when he walked in and he stood there for a second just looking. He had the weirdest expression on his face, like how could a bunch of people be having such a good time if he wasn’t there, like it was a betrayal or something. Then Lizzie spotted him and they both mobbed him, Lizzie and Rose. Dan didn’t move. Then Red kind of eased away from the females around him and said kind of in an aside, but clear enough, ‘My other daughter,’ meaning Dan. He has this big mop of curls and Red and the other kid are buzz cuts, like the Marines. So he goes over to him and gives him a hug and grabs him around the neck and yanks his hair. He yells something like ‘Get the hedge clippers.’ All jolly he-man fun. But Dan was mortified.”
“I can’t wait to meet this guy,” said Karp. “I thought dads yelling about kids’ hair went out in the sixties.”
“Not apparently in southern West Virginia. Anyway, he sucked all the air out of the room.”
“Sounds charming. I’m really looking forward to this now.”
“No, he is charming. He’s Irish after all. But besides that, the guy manages to combine the worst features of fascism and communism. It’s quite a show. You’ll see.”
She pulled up on a sandy shoulder and honked. With shouts the Heeney men descended on the truck and unloaded. Karp appreciated the accuracy of Marlene’s description. Emmett was a big, shambling kid with a football tackle’s blocky build. Red Heeney was red in face and bristles, with the shape of a beer keg and a pair of bright blue eyes set to play continuously the message I’m nobody’s fool. He clasped Karp’s hand in a he-man grip and engaged him in conversation as they hauled stuff down to the beach. It was more of a monologue than a conversation. Heeney complimented Karp on the accomplishments and loveliness of his womenfolk, the excellent qualities of his sons, queried him about his former athletic prowess and his present profession. This was done with a certain amount of self-deprecating humor, but Karp, who was a skilled interrogator himself, understood that the man was laying charm.
Karp had no idea why, but he suspected that charming was instinctive in Heeney. The man was a natural politician. Like most of his type he had also to be the center of attention and the man in charge. He organized the picnic with somewhat more energy than picnics need to be organized, but with such good nature that no one except Daniel was offended. The fire was made, the burgers and hot dogs sizzled thereupon, games were organized and played aggressively, without sparing the feelings of the younger members of the party, whom Heeney encouraged not to be crybabies. Throughout, can after can of beer vanished into the mouths of the three Heeneys. They ate; Red Heeney presided. They all learned a great deal about his opinions, and about the union election he was contesting, the iniquity of the mining companies, the corruption of the administrations of Robbens County, of the state and federal governments, of politicians generally. Karp had to admit that the guy was at least an amusing blowhard. He found it oddly relaxing not to have to say anything. He often had to say a lot at work. Summer’s blue dusk descended; some pale stars made their appearance through the humid overcast.
“Well, are you having fun?” Marlene asked Karp as they sat together on their blanket, replete.
“Yeah, it’s like watching bears at the zoo. The boys are having a good time.”
After supper, Heeney had organized a base-running game on the beach in which everyone had joined at some time, and the twins and all the Heeneys were still mad at it, the Heeneys now playing drunk and with increasing violence. As they watched, Dan Heeney slid into Emmett like Ty Cobb, knocking him over. A scuffle instantly sprang up, some shoving, some language, thrown blows. Red Heeney dived in and threw some blows of his own. Dan Heeney stalked off down the beach, like a ten-year-old, while the actual ten-year-olds watched openmouthed.
“He’s not having a good time,” observed Karp.
“Yeah, poor kid! Rose has been bending my ear. The sadness of her life: two men she loves and they can’t get along.”
“Why not? He seems like a nice enough kid.”
“Oh, he’s a doll. I offered him a job.”
“What, shoveling dog shit?”
“You always say that, as if that was the only thing we do. No, I need someone to handle office drudgery and also do some basic training. Billy’s up to his ears with all the outside dogs, and I want him to concentrate on the attack work. Lucy is also planning to stay. Needless to say.”
“The plot thickens.”
“Thicker than you think. I happened to mention the other day that I needed someone, and Rose practically sat on my lap until I agreed that Dan would be just right. They’re going back home after the weekend and she doesn’t want him there just now.”
“Because he doesn’t get on with Daddy and the bro?”
“Not exactly. She’s terrified and he’s her baby. Funny, because she’s got Lizzie, but there it is.”
“What’s she frightened about?”
“Oh, this union business. Threats. Someone shot their dog. And the book in the Heeney family is that little Dan can’t quite cope with the real world. That’s part of the problem. He’s really bright, of course, but school bright, which means that he’s more or less stopped thinking that Red Heeney’s opinions are the Encyclopedia Britannica. A guy like Red gets a kid like that and he has to project incompetence in worldly things onto him, just to balance things out and keep the kid subordinate. He’s got book larnin’ but he ain’t doing no real man’s work. Plus the lefty stuff: he’s hanging out with the bourgeois exploiters, he’s going to work for the capitalists in some way or another. Although, it’s not articulated like that. It’s a control thing. Heeney is a decent enough guy, but when he laughs, everyone laughs, and when he cries, everyone cries, or else. Oedipus in West Virginia, the usual.”
“It seems kind of old-fashioned, doesn’t it? Union violence. Working-stiff dad versus college kid. Like something from the thirties. Or a movie.”
“Well, according to Rose, the thirties are still going on in Robbens County. And that family stuff—Christ, I got some of that crap from my folks. College girl, think you know everything . . .”
“Gosh, good thing we don’t have anything like that in our family.”
“Oh?” said Marlene. “What exactly do you mean by that remark?”
“Nothing, dear. There is absolutely nothing in common between the Red and Dan show and the Marlene and Lucy show. Not a thing.”
“You’r
e horrible.” Marlene got up. “I’m getting another beer. Do you want anything?”
“Only your happiness,” he said, so she kicked sand in his face as she departed.
Now real darkness fell. Heeney had, of course, brought all kinds of dangerous fireworks, which he and Emmett now set off, with drunken yells, while the twins vied with one another to see how close they could skip to exploding objects and white-hot missiles, Zak in the lead, Giancarlo following each dare, but in such a way as to constrain his brother from doing something really stupid.
Karp watched all this with a fair calm, suppressing his Jewish-mother instincts as he had learned to do during his many years of marriage to a shiksa desperado. Marlene was in charge of danger chez Karp. Karp was actually waiting for the Red Heeney finale and was not at all surprised at the form it took.
The fireworks ended, the exhausted boys and the little girl collapsed on the blankets with their mothers. Emmett and Red sat together, Lucy and Dan a little distance away. A Coleman lantern had been lit. By its light, Karp observed that Red Heeney had switched to sucking from a pint bottle. Emmett was still guzzling beer, and tossing the empties upon a large pile of the same, punctuating the night with tinny clangs at remarkably short, almost metronomic intervals. Heeney began to sing. He had a fine voice, a dramatic tenor, a whiskey tenor actually, but pleasant. He sang union songs, “Joe Hill” and “Dark as a Dungeon” and “Spring Hill Disaster,” in which his family joined, and also, to Karp’s surprise, Marlene and Lucy, and then Irish ballads and rebel songs, “Kevin Barry,” “Four Green Fields,” and others more obscure. Then Marlene and Lucy did “Rose of Tralee,” like angels in harmony, which made Karp happy, but which took the center of attention away from Heeney, who replied with an angry “Come Out Ye Black and Tans,” at the end of which he flung his empty pint arcing into the night.
“You’re not singing, Karp,” he declared. “I can’t sing. I can’t carry a tune.”
Heeney stuck out an accusing finger, a digit like a center punch. “Nah, you can’t sing ’cause you’re a fuckin’ lawyer. Lawyers got no songs. You know why?” He thumped his chest. “ ’Cause they got no hearts. No songs, no hearts. Isn’t that right, Karp?”
“Maybe we have little small ones.”
Rose said, “Red, it’s late, maybe—”
“Shut up!” snarled Heeney. “I’m talking to my pal, the lawyer. Let me tell you what the law is. The law is nothing but the padding on the hammer the rich uses to bash in the heads of the working people. They don’t care to see the blood and the brains, oh, no, they’re too delicate for that, so they disguise it with lots of words, and they get a bunch of pimps and make them judges and lawyers to confuse the people so no one knows they been robbed. Property is theft, did you know that, Mr. Lawyer Man? That’s what your lawyer is, a conveyancer of stolen property. But when some poor boy steals a crust of bread, oh, that’s when the majesty of the law gets all riled up and grabs him and throws him in the dungeon, because property is sacred once it’s legally stolen.”
“Sneakers,” said Karp.
“What?”
“Sneakers, is what they steal. Expensive sneakers. Or gold chains. Or designer jackets, those are big now. Now that you mention it, I have not once locked up a poor boy for stealing a crust of bread. I’d like to, of course, but in twenty years the opportunity has never come my way.”
Heeney got up on his knees and leaned over the lantern. “Oh, smart guy. You wouldn’t be so smart if I punched you in the nose, would you? Huh? Smart Jew lawyer. Huh?” He held up his fist to demonstrate the punching apparatus.
Karp didn’t move. He said in a calm voice, “That would be an assault, Red. That would be against the law.”
“Fuck the law and fuck you!”
“You’re drunk, Heeney,” said Karp in the same tone. “Settle down.”
“And you’re fuckin’ yellow, Karp,” Heeney said, staggering to his feet. “Get up, you fucker. Fuckin’ Jew lawyer. I can take you, drunk or sober.”
Heeney put up his fists and lunged forward, kicking over the lantern. Rose uttered a little scream and grabbed at her husband’s arm. He flung her away with a curse. Instantly, his two sons were on him, Emmett tackling him to the ground, and Dan dropping onto his chest and securing his arms. Rose snatched the lantern out of harm’s way, and the three Heeneys rolled and heaved on the ground, grunting and cursing. Marlene could see Rose was crying and, in a low voice, said to Karp, “I think the party’s over. Let’s scram.”
Which they did, leaving all their gear to be gathered tomorrow. As they walked away, Karp noticed Lucy flip aside a bat-sized length of driftwood. She had been going to wade in with that if the bunch of them had jumped me, he thought with a shock. He didn’t know whether to be ashamed or proud.
4
“WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU, NOW?” asked Marlene unsympathetically. She was bustling around the kitchen, fully dressed, having already done an hour or so of work. He was elbowing at the table, robed, unshaven, grainy-eyed, head on fist, eyeing a bowl full of raisin bran and wondering whether to make the irrevocable commitment to pour milk in it.
“I’m crapulous without having been gloriously drunk,” said Karp. “It’s unfair. And if you want to know, I’m feeling unmanly.”
“Oh, yeah, what a pussy! You didn’t coldcock a helpless drunk. I’ve lost all my respect for you.”
“Real men drink themselves into oblivion when they have a problem and take it out on bystanders.”
“When life hands you a lemon, make lemonade,” said Marlene, who was in fact making lemonade and handed him a lemon to demonstrate.
“Thank you,” he said, and mimed an epiphany. “Gosh, I think . . . I finally understand that saying.”
“Good. Now cheer up. It’s a nice day, you’re on vacation, so vacate!”
“Even though we have a dual system of criminal justice, one for the rich and one for the poor?”
She stopped her squeezing and turned to face him, hands on hips. “Oh, please! You’re not telling me he got to you with that drunken ramble?”
“But it’s true. I got up this morning and I was thinking obsessively about the congressman, how to get him, strategies, how to slowly weave the web, laws I could use, pressures I could put . . . and then it hit me—okay, let’s say I do get him. Realistically, the best outcome is, he does eighteen months, most in a minimum security prison, and then a halfway house. Then he runs again as a victim of racism and takes 80 percent of the vote. I mean, what’s the point?”
The answer (if she knew it) did not come then, for the screen door crashed open and Giancarlo burst in. He grabbed two doughnuts from a box on the table and announced, “Zak shot a crow. We’re going to nail it to the barn.”
“No, you are not,” said the mother.
“Yes, Dan Heeney says that’s what they do in West Virginia.”
“Fine, if you’re ever in West Virginia, you can nail all the crows you want, but not here.”
Giancarlo snatched up a table knife and stabbed it into Karp’s bowl several times, while laughing maniacally.
“What are you doing?” cried Karp. “Stop that!”
“Guess what I am, Dad.”
“An idiot?”
“No, a cereal killer. Mom, can we tape the crow up?”
“Get out of my sight! Shoo!” Marlene yelled. The boy departed, hooting.
“He took the last two chocolate doughnuts,” Karp said. “Two, not one.”
“They always take two, for the other one. I think it’s sweet.”
“But if each one does it, then they have four, and there isn’t any left for me. It’s not fair.”
“Could you pout more pathetically when you say that?”
Karp obligingly twisted his face.
“Charming,” cooed his wife. “And incidentally, that answers your problem with the criminal justice system. Life is inherently not fair.” Marlene emptied ice from a bag into the two-gallon thermos. “And another example is, I have to
go to work in the hot sun while you gorge on doughnuts.”
The sun was indeed hot. Marlene lugged her jug of lemonade into the shade cast by the barn and set it on a rough plywood table, on which there already stood a miscellany of tin and plastic cups. Then she strolled through her small kingdom to declare a break. Billy Ireland was behind the barn working a big shepherd named Lars on the spring lead with Alex Russell. The dog was in a harness attached to a long lead fastened to a thick baby-carriage spring bolted into the wall. Russell was agitating. He came from hiding around the corner of the barn and snapped the dog in the face with a burlap sack. The dog leaped at the sack and grabbed it, at which Russell dropped it and retreated around the corner with every indication of extreme cowardice. The dog killed the sack, snarling and jerking it around. Marlene waited until the exercise was over before she approached. Ireland took the dog off the chain, snapped on a light lead, and sit-stayed him.
“How’s he doing?” she asked.
“Coming along. A good dog. Nice and varminty with the sack.” Ireland took in Marlene’s tube top and cutoffs, adding, you are a fine-looking woman and I would boff you in a second were it not for the fact that there are lots of fine-looking women and not that many good training jobs for ex-felons and so I will wait until such time as you actually grab me by the dick before going further. But with his eyes, not aloud, which just suited Marlene, who got the message clear enough and thought (as she liked to do), I am so bad.
“There’s lemonade,” said Marlene, and walked away, feeling the eyes of both men on her. Past the greenhouse and the garden, through a wooden gate to what was once the pasture of the former dairy farm, a dozen flat acres of close-mowed grass. In a near corner of this field, her daughter was running their young mastiff Gringo on a fifteen-foot lead. She was giving the dog the most basic lesson, which was paying attention to the handler on the other end of the lead. As long as the dog trotted along at Lucy’s left side, all was well. But when he turned to investigate some interesting object or scent, or stopped or lagged, Lucy did a sharp about-face and walked rapidly in the opposite direction, allowing the slack in the long lead to yank taut and digging the little spikes of the pinch collar into the dog’s neck. Marlene watched this a few times, until Lucy spotted her and walked over, with Gringo showing his class by, for once, not having to be dragged along.
Absolute Rage Page 7
