by Dan O'Shea
“Where is this place Squinty?” Sandra asked. Quentin reached across the table, turned the page to the map.
“Jesus,” she said. “What’s the nearest town I’ve have heard of?”
“Quebec,” Quentin said. “Not quite three hundred miles. It’s about an eight hour drive. It’s all back roads up there.”
Sandra shook her head, smiled. “No thanks, Harold’s right. Too far from a store for me.”
“Don’t know what you’re trying to pull here, Squinty, or maybe you really like humping around the woods playing mountain man, but fine.” Harold took a Mount Blanc pen from his pocket and signed all three copies, slid them and the pen across the table to his sister. She signed the documents, Quentin smiling to himself as he watched her slip the pen into her purse, multi-millionaire already, coming in to millions more, and she has to steal a $500 dollar pen from her own brother.
The waitress dropped off Harold’s drink. As she turned to leave, he grabbed her arm. “Hey, sweetheart, sign these where it says witness and your tip goes up by a hundred bucks.” She signed, using the cheap ballpoint she had in her pocket.
“Congratulations you dumb fuck,” Harold said. “You just screwed yourself out something like six million.”
Quentin got up from the table. “Closer to seven, Harold. I had valuations done, too. Make sure you’ve read paragraph seven. I’m done here.”
Paragraph seven forbid either sibling from ever setting foot on the property without express, written permission.
• • • •
Four days later, Quentin was half an hour south of Frenchville on 161, the last paved road. After that, it is was 15 miles on gravel before the unpaved drive that lead the last two miles to the cabin on the shore of Square Lake.
Quentin remembered another trip north more than twenty years ago, after the first of the money had hit his trust fund. Russia was wide open at the time, Dad heading off, telling Quentin they wouldn’t be able to make the trip that fall, that he’d be in Moscow for close to a year, that there was money just laying around over there and it was going to take at least that long to pick his share of it up.
Quentin made the plans, hired the contractors, paid for every cent of it out of his own pocket. The old man came back for Father’s Day, always a big to-do at the Roberts’ estate in the Hamptons, the kids competing to see how far up they could get their tongues up the old man’s ass, Harold giving him a custom watch, some one-of-a-kind deal he’d commissioned from Patek, Sandra buying him a race horse, the old man getting a laugh about that at least, joking that he certainly got his share of horse shit every day at work, that it would be a nice change of pace to see the real variety.
Quentin gave him a simple wooden box that he had carved himself from a log on the property. Inside the box was a key and a note. It read “I’ve changed the locks. I hope you like it.” The old man giving him an appraising look and saying, “I guess we’ll have to see about that.”
A sailing trip the next morning, at least that was the plan. Harold had the board from the firm out, a few other major players. But at breakfast, the old man stood up and said, “Squinty and I are heading up to the cabin, do a little fishing.”
Quiet on the way up. Quentin and his father often were. One of his father’s lessons, how to be quiet. Important when you were hunting, important in life. The less you said, the more others felt compelled to fill the space with words. Stupid words sometimes, ill-considered words. If you were quiet, everything became your prey.
“Anything you want to tell me before we get there?” his father asked when they were half an hour out.
“No sir,” Quentin answered.
His father nodded, might have smiled a little. But Quentin was concerned. The cabin was his father’s connection to his roots, his escape, the temple to his only passion. Together, they’d made incremental improvements over the years – it has long since had electricity, most modern conveniences. And they had talked about the things they might do. But had he changed it too much? Gone too far?
For Quentin, part of the gift was the risk, was saying to his father that he loved him so much that he would offer up the only place where he had known real happiness in the hopes that his father might know more.
When they rounded the last curve in the drive, his father could see the cabin, could see the garage, the addition to the north side. When his father smiled, Quentin knew everything would be OK
“No more scraping ice off the windows, eh?” his father said. “But that key, that’s to the front door, right? I want to go in the front.” He parked the truck and walked to the cabin.
Quentin followed his father in, stopping behind him while his father took in the new great room, the far wall of windows that opened the entire east side of the room to the lake, the new furnishings. His father nodded his head slowly, then turned, put his hand on Quentin’s head and rubbed his hair.
“The rest of them, they’ll never see this. Can’t remember the last time somebody gave me a gift that was actually for me, not for everyone else’s reaction. Just a box with a key, not even pictures.”
His father pulled Quentin’s head to his chest, and hugged him.
“Wait until you see the basement,” Quentin said.
• • • •
His father died at the cabin. They hunted early, had killed nothing. That was OK. Hunting demanded patience, his father a little winded walking back to the cabin, Quentin thinking nothing of it. They had hunted the south end of the property, so it was uphill coming back, rough country. His father was 76.
The heart attack hit him at breakfast, Quentin scrambling, trying to get to help, doing the math in his head. Call for a chopper, have it meet them in Frenchville. He could have his father there in less than an hour, but his father reached up, took Quentin’s hand, pressed it to his lips and shook his head.
“No time,” his father said, his voice thin and breathless.
“Dad, I can get a chopper –“
His father squeezed Quentin’s hand and shook his head.
“No time,” he said again. His color was fading, going gray.
Quentin knelt by the chair, taking his father’s hand in both of his own, holding it to his face.
“What did you learn here?” his father asked. Quentin knew the answer.
“You earn what you hunt. You kill what you earn. You keep what you kill.”
His father smiled weakly and nodded.
“You were the only one that would learn the lessons. You’re sister, well, I indulged her and she is what she is. Your brother, he thinks you earn what you are given. Only you have my heart, know my heart. When you see what I have done, you will know what you must do. I would never insult you by making you a gift of your prey.”
There is a moment when a man is alive and then a moment when his is just a pile of chemicals. Those were his father’s last words before that moment.
A week later, when the trust documents concerning his father’s interests in Roberts Capital were read at the board meeting, his father giving Harold the expected gift, leaving Quentin with a minority interest, it was what everyone had always expected. The handsome prince anointed. Quentin congratulated his brother, accepted the warm wishes of the board members, and then left to hunt the prey that he had scouted for years. The price fixing on the IPO last fall, the insider trading Harold did through the offshore accounts he assumed were his secret, the payoffs he’d made to get his mortgage derivative portfolio upgraded out of junk status so he could unload it on a teacher’s union pension fund when the shit hit the fan back in 2008 – Quentin had collected it all, documented it all.
He met with the board members quietly, privately, one at a time. They all agreed that it would be a shame to see a proud institution like Roberts Capital destroyed because of one man’s greed. Agreed that they were not concerned about their own wealth and position, but rather about their investors, the economy, about America, damn it. The country could not afford another scandal, another W
all Street titan teetering on the brink of collapse. And so they would vote as Quentin wanted, after which he would own them all for having colluded in his act.
• • • •
Two days after the lunch in Boston, it was time for Harold’s installation – a pro forma vote by the board approving his leadership. Harold wanted more ceremony, had brought his portrait to the meeting, a painting he’d commissioned two years ago when he had been named the heir apparent. After the vote, he would have his father’s portrait taken down, moved out of the boardroom to the lobby. A public reminder of the firm’s strength and values, of the great man on whose shoulders they all stood, that’s what he planned to say in his remarks. What he wanted, had always wanted, was his own portrait on the wall at the head of the table in the board room, his own face shining down from the place of honor that had held his father’s face for as long as he could remember.
The king is dead, Long live the king.
The vote went differently than Harold expected. Quentin let him rage for a moment, make his threats. Then Quentin took him aside, explained the vote, explained that Harold’s other option was prison.
“But you’ll go too, Squinty” Harold hissed. “You didn’t report me. You’re an accomplice.”
“Perhaps,” Quentin answered. “But I can always play the role you have cast me in, the defective brother, kept on out of pity, too slow to stay on the lead lap, swayed by the advice of the board to save the company and the country from scandal.” Quentin took his brother’s upper arm in his hand and squeezed, hard. “So, big brother, if you want to play chicken, I’ll play. I’ve got records of what you’ve done, you’ve got allegations. Even if we both go down, you go down harder.” Quentin tightened his grip another notch, his brother giving out a slight yelp. “Besides, needle dick, I can still bench 450 pounds. Which one of us do you think is going to do better in the joint?”
Quentin watched his brother’s face, watched him implode, watched all of the bravado and false strength Harold had lorded him since birth drain away. “You’re my bitch, Harold,” Quentin said. Harold just nodded.
“I need you to say that,” Quentin said, squeezing the arm harder still.
Harold looked up, his eyes red. “I’m your bitch, Squinty,” he whispered.
Quentin released his brother’s arm and patted him twice on the cheek. “Good dog. One more thing. Call me Squinty again, ever, and I’ll rip your heart out with my bare hands just so I can watch it stop beating.”
• • • •
Ten hours later, Quentin back at the cabin, alone, the missing girl from Bar Harbor on the TV again, on the huge monitor over the fireplace. Just to the left, where his grandfather’s portrait used to hang, hung the portrait of Harold. The head of a massive Kodiak bear was mounted just above it. Quentin didn’t hang trophies of every kill, only the most memorable. He had taken the bear from less than thirty yards. With a bow.
Quentin poured a bourbon and sat in the leather chair directly in front of the monitor. His father’s chair. The chair in which his father had died. A chair he had never sat in before until that moment. The girl was still on the screen. Not her high school picture this time. This time she was naked. This time she was straining against the leather straps that secured her wrists, her ankles and her waist to a large wooden x-frame. This time she was on the web cam that streamed a live feed from the basement. The basement Quentin had built for his father, the only part of the project he had done alone, with his own hands.
He remembered his father seeing it for the first time, how his father had wept, how he had held Quentin, how he had said “thank you thank you thank you” cementing a human bond with Quentin that he had only ever shared with his father and with none other. Quentin wondered for a moment if he would be lonely now, lonely again, like he had been as a boy in those years before he had learned to hunt, but he remembered that the greatest predators hunted alone.
He watched the screen. The girl was almost done, had almost surrendered, almost accepted her weakness and the futility of her beauty, the worthlessness of her gifts, the hollow shame of her unearned life. When her surrender was complete, then he would have her.
He was seated in his father’s chair, head of his father’s empire, sovereign, too, of this, his father’s secret kingdom, and could feel no bounds to his power, no limit to his will. He saw the girl stop struggling, saw her sag against the restraints and start to weep.
He rose and walked toward the basement door, a colossus astride the puny world of men.
HOW TO LAUNDER A SHIRT
Patti Abbott
I can’t stop thinking about my husband’s new wife.
She must throw his shirts into a dryer because I haven’t seen them hanging on the clothesline. Not once. In fact, the line is wrapped around one of the metal poles behind the house—as if it hasn’t been used in years. I’d like to tell her that line-dried sheets can be awfully nice. She’d be surprised at the difference fresh air can make. Maybe Helene didn’t grow up in a place where you could hang wash outside in the bright sunlight, capturing that scent. I bet she grew up in the city, where clothes hung outside sometimes had to be washed again. Or the feel of them, gritty and stiff, wasn’t something you wanted on your skin.
Helene stands on our porch all the time. Joe never did like putting furniture outside, so it’s empty—just like it always was. The floor still needs painting and has the same loose board as you step up to the door. He said a chair on a porch was an invitation for folks to visit, and he didn’t care for strangers in his house. Nor on his porch.
I said “our” porch when what I really meant was “their” porch. No one ever talks about the difficulty of altering pronouns once a marriage is finished.
She stands there smoking as I did once—burying the butts around the yard as I did too. She’s probably hoping for a car to pass by or watching the brazen crows pick corn from the farm next door. Maybe waiting for an airplane to fly overhead. The days here can be so long that you want to break them up with almost anything. I still remember that—the way a ringing phone or a crop duster became something exciting.
Late in the day, Helene is waiting for the school bus to drop off my kids. I still think of them as mine, of course. Her hair, which is long, wispy, and reddish-blonde blows prettily in the wind. The back of her hand shades her gray eyes when the sun starts to drop to eye-level. I kept my hair short after a few mishaps, so nothing could grab hold of it.
Towels—towels need a dryer with one of those little paper sheets to make them soft. Hang them on the line, and the wind can blow the softness right out of them. It takes a long time to learn which routine works best. Trial and error. But Joe isn’t the most patient man. You’d better get your Ps and Qs straightened out fast where he’s concerned.
Helene wears slacks—the dressy kind with pleats. Joe never liked me to wear— trousers— as he calls them. Said a woman with legs as good as mine owed it to her husband to show them off. I didn’t mind. Well, yes I did mind, but when a request—or an order really—comes along with a compliment attached, what can you do? Joe had a specific skirt length he preferred. Too long, and he said I looked like an Amish woman. Too short and I looked like a—well, you know. Since we didn’t have a full-length mirror in the house, I figured he knew best.
I wonder when Joe started liking pleated slacks. Maybe Helene’s legs don’t draw men’s glances. Despite what he says, it’s just as well that they don’t. That’s one of the tricky things about Joe—he blames you for what happened when you were just following his orders.
Perhaps his new wife—Helene— sends his shirts to a laundry. Maybe that new place on Elm Street in Marine City tends to their things now. Chinese people are known for their skill in laundering shirts. If this is the case, Joe must’ve changed his mind in the last year or two because he couldn’t tolerate commercially laundered shirts in my day. Said the chemicals they used were poisonous—just like that MSG they put in food. Told me the machine that tumbled the cl
othes was filled with other people’s germs.
Joe was very particular about most things, in fact. Like his footwear, for instance. His shoes always had to point north in his closet. Point them east or south and you were likely to spend some time in the closet with them. Forget to insert the wooden trees and well….
Joe worked for—well, he still does come to think of it—the Ford dealer down in Warren. Sales were down to almost nothing that last year of our marriage. I kept telling him I could get a job and he kept doing what he did when he got angry. Now the car business is back on track, I hear. If things had recovered more quickly, it might be me looking for the school bus from that porch.
It’s possible Joe’s invested in wrinkle-free shirts, although that would surprise me. That kind of shirt was around in my day, but neither of us was satisfied with the way he looked in them. They had the sort of sheen that bounced off your eyes and looked like they might melt into your skin if you stood too close to a fire. Actually, I didn’t think they were that bad, but Joe said he lost sales when he wore one. Said, it looked like he couldn’t afford anything better—or that no one was taking good care of him.
I felt my eye twitch as I watched him finish the knot on his tie that last day, wondering if I’d carelessly put too much starch in his shirt collar. It looked so stiff against his neck somehow. Joe’s neck was tender, and getting the starch just right took some doing. I can’t tell you how many fights we had early on over those shirts. I wish I could warn Helene about that. I know it might be unusual but I’ve grown fond of her over time, and grateful for the way she looks after my girls.
Although the laundering of shirts seems like a simple thing, it’s one that comes up every day. The care and maintenance of shirts involves equipment and processes that choke, burn, and electrocute. It’s easy to fall going up and down the cellar stairs with baskets of clothes. One can strangle on a clothesline that twists cruelly on those metal poles. Things you care about like your good coat or the kitten that climbed up on the porch one day can turn up inside a clothes dryer without any warning.
