Fresh Kills

by Bill Loehfelm

  When I stubbed out my cigarette in the ashtray, he did the same with his cigar. He patted my shoulder before he took my arm again.

  “You’re a good man,” he said.

  I nodded and led him inside.

  As I eased Fontana down next to his teary-eyed wife, I noticed another group had arrived. Three large men, enormous really, all shoulders and bellies, about my father’s age, stood at one end of the casket. There was an entirely different air to them than the other furtive groups huddled around the room. They didn’t seem to care how much space they took up. They laughed, and didn’t care that their laughter echoed around the room and into the hall, if they were even aware of it. They didn’t whisper. They kept hitting one another.

  I cast a quizzical glance at Julia, who was across the room with her friends. She caught the question and was on her way to me when the priest walked into the room. Even the big guys went quiet and sat down. Right in the front row, across the aisle from Julia and me. They bowed their heads and folded their hands immediately, as if loath to have been caught doing anything else, though the priest had yet to even reach the front of the room.

  The good father went first to Joe Sr., who shook his hand and pointed out my sister and me, alone in the front row. The priest came to us, bending to kiss my sister’s cheek, shaking my hand, introducing himself as Father McDonald.

  He asked us to bow our heads and he rested a soft hand on each of us, imploring the Lord to look after our young souls in our time of grief and sadness, and reminding us that though we had lost our father and mother in this life, we were still His children.Our parents would be waiting for us with open arms in the Afterlife, he said. I wondered if I would have to take an elevator or the stairs from Heaven to Hell and back again. I pictured my father and the Devil. My father complaining of the heat and Lucifer wondering if God had outsmarted him again by burdening him with this trying soul from Staten Island. My sister must have noticed my grin because she bumped her knee hard against mine.

  After the Amen, Father McDonald lifted his hands and went to the front of the room. I watched him as he thumbed through a Bible full of bookmarks. I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to see Jimmy and Rose taking the seats right behind me and Julia. Rose blew me a kiss, smiled at me, her eyes sad. I twisted in my seat and shook Jimmy’s hand. He held on for a while after I was ready to let go.

  “Jimmy and Rose,” I whispered to my sister as I turned back around. “Friends of mine.”

  “I know,” she said. “I remember Jimmy.”

  When Father McDonald asked all gathered to bow their heads for the prayers, I felt Jimmy’s hand on my shoulder again.

  As the prayers went on, I snuck glances around my sister at the trio across the aisle. After a while, she’d had enough. She leaned close to me, speaking in a barely audible whisper.

  “Dad’s friends,” she said.

  I stopped looking, but her answer only made me more curious. I’m sure Father McDonald’s words were moving and beautiful, and maybe even sincere, but I didn’t hear them. I couldn’t stop thinking about the men across the aisle from me. When he was done, I did regret not paying more attention. There may have been something worth stealing for my own little speech the next day. But I forgot about that as soon as Father was done and everyone rose from their seats.

  Jimmy caught my elbow in the aisle. “Sorry we were late, bud.” He tilted his head at Rose. “Herself takes forever getting ready.”

  “I’m just glad you made it,” I said.

  “Of course,” Rose said. She offered her hand to Julia, ignoring Jimmy. I was guessing she did a lot of that. “Rose Murphy,” she said. “Pleased to meet you.” She glanced at the coffin. My father’s friends were lined up before it, waiting to pay their respects. “I’m terribly sorry. But I know you two will be okay.”

  “Thank you,” Julia said. “We’re surviving.”

  Rose patted Jimmy’s arm. “I’m getting in line,” she said. “Save you a place?”

  “Yeah, definitely,” Jimmy said. “But gimme a minute with the bereaved here.”

  “I’ll wait with you, Rose,” Julia said. “When we’re done, I can tell you embarrassing stories about Jimmy.”

  “Lovely,” said Rose, offering Julia her arm. Julia took it and they made their way to the casket.

  “So, how’re you doing?” Jimmy asked.

  “All right,” I said. “Better today.”

  He looked around the room. “Molly?”

  I looked away, shaking my head. I knew he understood to leave it at that, and I loved him for it. I’d tell him everything later, maybe over a few laters: Molly, Virginia, Purvis. But for the time being, I kept my silence, and my eyes away from him, watching my father’s friends. The last of the three knelt at the casket while the other two waited off to the side, respects already paid. One of them checked his watch. It made me nervous. I didn’t want them getting away from me.

  “Who are those guys?” Jimmy asked.

  “Friends of my father’s,” I said.

  “Wow.”

  “I know.”

  “Talk to them?” Jimmy asked.

  “Not yet,” I said. The third man was rising to his feet.

  Jimmy put his hand on my shoulder. “What’re you waiting for, lad?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Go,” Jimmy said, giving me a little push. He walked away, turning before he got in line. Only Julia and Rose remained. “Joyce’s after?”

  I nodded. He patted his jacket over the inside pocket, telling me he was buying. I shook my head. I was so grateful he’d shown up, he’d never pay for another drink in my presence for the rest of his life. He frowned at me, then smiled and turned away. We both knew we could argue all night, without either of us saying a word.

  I shoved my hands in my back pockets and crossed in front of the casket, glancing at it as I passed. My father’s friends looked at me, hands in their pockets, the same sad grin on each of their faces. The largest one, a round giant with a red face under a salt-and-pepper crew cut, his pants hitched halfway up his bulging belly, cried silently. The middle one, completely bald with a gray goatee and glasses, bumped the crying man with his shoulder and nodded at me. The crier wiped his eyes, and his nose, on the sleeve of his suit jacket. The third one, the last to pray, stepped toward me, away from the others. He was the smallest, thick in the middle, but not bulging like the others, and his shoulders were almost freakishly broad. His hair was short at the sides, the remaining blond wisps combed over a large, pink bald spot. He held something in his left hand that he shifted behind his back as he extended his right hand. My hand looked like a child’s in his.

  “George Stanski,” he said. He gestured to the bald man. “Arnie Jackson.” And then to the crying giant. “Weepy over here is Chuck Dugan.”

  “John Sanders,” I said, “Junior.” I shook each man’s hand in turn.

  “We know,” Stanski said. “God, you look just like him.”

  “Only better-lookin’,” Jackson said.

  “You could be his brother,” Dugan said.

  “Anyway,” Stanski said, “we played football with your old man, at Wagner. We saw what happened in the papers. It’s a goddamn tragedy.”

  The other two nodded angrily. Dugan blessed himself with the sign of the cross, to cancel out the swear word. Then he gripped my arm. “They’ll get that son of a bitch,” he whispered. “They’ll get him, the rotten mother—”

  Stanski grabbed Dugan’s arm, pulled it away from mine. “Give the kid a break,” he said. Dugan mumbled an apology then blessed himself again.

  “We were his line mates,” Stanski said. “The four of us, we all started every game together for three years.”

  “We were tight,” Jackson said, crossing his fingers. “Like this.”

  “So where ya been?” I asked. I couldn’t help it. It just popped out. All three blushed and shrugged. I tried to remember if they’d been at my mother’s funeral. I couldn’t. They looked at o
ne another.

  “Jersey, Connecticut,” Stanski said. “Your dad was the only one who stayed in New York.” He shrugged. “Time passes so quick. We all got wives, kids, careers. Like your dad. We all moved on.”

  “Stanski here is a dentist,” Dugan said. “Can you believe that? From knocking teeth out to putting them back.”

  “We haven’t seen each other, in what,” Jackson said, “ten years?”

  “Life, you know?” Stanski said. “It takes up a lot of time.” He looked at the casket. “It’s a shame that it takes something like this.”

  “But we’re here,” Jackson said.

  “And we brought you this,” Stanski said, pulling his hand from behind his back. He held out a photograph in a frame. It was a football team, lined up in three rows. A team picture. And there, in the top row, in the middle, stood George Stanski, Arnie Jackson, Chuck Dugan, and, wearing number 92, John Sanders, Sr. The other three smiled, my father scowled. But I could tell there was a smile hidden behind the scowl. It was in his eyes. My father stood out for more than the scowl, though.

  The others, despite the uniforms and the pads, they still looked like boys. Big, fast, powerful boys, the kind of boy I never was, but boys nonetheless. My father, he was closer to a man than a boy. He stood straighter, taller, regal even, like he was posing for more than a picture. My father stood like a king among his knights, one with the others, but different and alone at the same time. His eyes, my eyes, bore into something just off to the side of the camera. I wondered if it was my mother. I could see her there, out on the cold field, wrapped in his letter jacket, her hair in a ponytail, still a girl. I hoped it was her he was looking at. If he looked at her like that, I could begin to understand why she loved him. I could at least understand how it all began, even though I might never understand how it ended.

  The photograph was old and faded, but I could see the passion in him, the pride, the defiance, and with the sad, hard knowledge of the decades beyond that photo, I saw the violence into which those things would decay. It frightened me, all of that, there, in that one young man. I got angry, jealous, of his friends. That they had known the man in the photo, and I had known only the monster he became. But the feelings faded almost as soon as they rose. It wasn’t their fault, what he had become, how he had changed, what he had lost. What I had gotten from him, in my life, in my blood, and what I had not, and what I had done with my inheritance was mine. No one else carried the weight for it but me.

  I looked up at the guys; all three of them were teary-eyed, waiting for me to speak. “Thanks,” I said. “I like seeing him like this.”

  “We figured you didn’t have much of him, from back then. He was never big on nostalgia,” Stanski said. He chuckled. “He’d probably thrash the three of us for acting like this, all sentimental and bawly.”

  I stared at Stanski, my eyebrows knit. I looked back at the photograph. It was all there, the blond hair, the mischievous grin. My mouth dropped open.

  “I have this picture,” I said. “My mom must’ve saved it. My sister showed it to me the other day. It’s my father, in a tux, some blond guy sitting next to him. They’re laughing. Looks like a wedding photo.”

  Stanski laughed. The years fell off him when he did. “It’s me. God, you still have that? I was best man at your parents’ wedding.”

  Dugan blew out a long sigh. “Jesus H. Christ. What a night that was. I thought the hangover might kill me.”

  “Do you remember,” I asked Stanski, “what you were laughing at?”

  “For sure. Your mom had just made a crack about your father’s . . .” He didn’t finish; he just blushed. He glanced at the other guys, all of them suppressing smiles. “Let’s just say your mom got him good. Your dad was a good sport about it, though. Your mom got away with saying stuff the rest of us would’ve gotten crippled for.”

  I smiled, blushing myself, proud of her. “I gotta show this to my sister.”

  I looked around. Nearly everyone was gone. Jimmy and Rose had left, gone over to the bar, I was sure. Julia was at the door, exchanging hugs with her friends. “Seems this thing is about over,” I said. “A couple of us are heading up the block to Joyce’s for a drink. Come over with us. I’m buying.”

  The guys shuffled their feet. Looked at their watches. They were waiting to see who would bow out first and let the other guys off the hook. Stanski spoke first.

  “Man, I’d love to,” he said. “But I got a long drive back to Trenton, a morning full of appointments.”

  “Trenton?” Jackson said. “That’s nothing. I gotta go all the way back to Fairfield. And be back in the City by eight.”

  “Boys, we ain’t the men we used to be,” Dugan said, patting his gut. “It’s a goddamn shame.”

  The three of us waited for Dugan to bless himself yet again, then the four of us headed for the door.

  I shook each of their hands on the steps outside Scalia’s. I heard them promise each other a happier gathering in the future as they fanned out in different directions to their cars. I hoped to myself they would do it. I liked the thought of the three of them together. Julia appeared at my shoulder.

  “They’re a great bunch of guys,” she said.

  “They are.”

  “They’re so . . . I don’t know, roly-poly now,” she said. “It’s hard to imagine them the way they used to be.”

  “Not so much,” I said. I showed her the picture.

  “They showed me that when they arrived,” she said. “I told them they should give it to you.”

  “I might take it home.”

  “I think that’s a great idea,” Julia said.

  Stanski appeared out of the darkness at the bottom of the steps. “Junior? You still write those stories?”

  “Not in a long time,” I said, surprised he even knew about them. “They were, you know, kid stuff.”

  “Huh. Well, we all grow up, I guess,” Stanski said, looking up at me. “Your old man, he told me about them once. He got a kick out of them. Anyway. Just curious.” He waved. “See you around.”

  Julia and I looked at each other. “Mom,” we said to each other.

  “The little devil,” I said, reaching into my jacket for my smokes. I felt good. I still had no idea what I was going to say at the funeral, but I was too relieved the wake was over to stress about it. “You ready for a drink?”

  “Who’s that?” Julia asked.

  “You,” I said. “You ready?”

  “No,” she said. “Who’s that?” She was squinting through the darkness, out toward the street.

  Out on the sidewalk, a figure wrapped in black stood in front of the 9-11 memorial, candlelight casting shadows on her face. I couldn’t believe it. My stomach dropped and my heart swelled, filling in the space. The hair stood on my arms. And there it was, I felt it clear as day, lightning in my veins.

  Molly.

  “I’ll meet you at Joyce’s,” Julia said. She squeezed my arm then headed down the stairs, cutting across the parking lot to the corner.

  I waited until she was out of sight before I made my way over to Molly.

  “Whatcha doin’?” I asked, walking up to her. “Out here in the dark.”

  She looked gorgeous, her dark hair down, spilling around her face and shoulders. Her face was all big green eyes and black lashes. I wondered how long she’d been out there. She tilted her chin at the memorial. I saw that Eddie had a brand-new candle.