The Risk Pool

by Richard Russo

  “He’ll go to jail?”

  “Almost certainly.”

  “For long?”

  “Probably not. And probably not for a while. The insurance companies are wrangling and the medical people are involved. It’s been six months already and it may be another year before it comes to trial. The other bad thing is that he’s been arrested twice in the meantime, the last time two nights ago. I just got him out on bail yesterday.”

  This didn’t make sense. “Why haven’t they taken his license?”

  “They did,” F. William Peterson said. “This is your father we’re talking about, remember?”

  Unfortunately, that did make sense. In fact, I had forgotten the way he operated. To take Sam Hall’s license proved only one thing—that you didn’t know him. If you didn’t want him to drive, you had to take his car, not his license. And while you were at it, you’d have to take his friends’ cars, too. And even then, you’d only be making it more inconvenient for him. He had a lot of friends.

  “All of this is off the record, by the way. A young colleague of mine is the attorney of record. Your mother ever found out I was involved …”

  I drew my index finger across my throat. He shuddered.

  We just sat and looked at each other for a minute, and suddenly we were grinning like a couple of conspirators who shared important inside knowledge, or perhaps even affection.

  Finally, we stood and shook again. “Damn, it is fine to see you, Ned.”

  I said it was good to see him, too. “You better get on over there,” I told him.

  Outside in the street, we shook hands a third incredible time, and suddenly he said, “How you fixed for money?”

  I was very glad he asked. “Actually …”

  “Right,” he said, and handed me a twenty.

  “I don’t know when I’ll be able to give it back,” I warned him.

  “What difference,” he said. “You’re here. That’s the main thing.”

  I shoved my hands in my pockets, because he looked for all the world like he wanted to shake on that too.

  “You better call by ten-thirty. That’s when she goes to bed,” he said, flushing red in the gathering darkness.

  I said I’d remember. “Any idea where I can find him?”

  “Try right around the corner on Glenn. The Night Owl. If not there, Greenie’s. If not there …”

  “Right,” I said.

  “By ten-thirty,” he said. “You’ll … shave, of course.”

  I shouldered my duffel bag and we parted. At the Four Corners I stopped and looked back up the street and saw that he’d stopped too and was waving. I waved back.

  The Night Owl had been called something else the last time I was in Mohawk. I tried to remember what, and couldn’t. But I was pretty sure it was one of the few bars my father hadn’t frequented. Standing outside, I suddenly felt weak, partly from not having eaten in a while, but mostly from being spooked. The possibility that I might not recognize my own father swept over me again, and along with it a wave of nausea. I propped my duffel bag up against the wall of the tavern and sat on it for a minute or two until the low dusky sky turned honest black. From inside came the clack of billiard balls and the occasional volley of deep-throated male laughter. He probably wasn’t even in there, I told myself. In fact, I probably had a long night ahead of me. I not only wouldn’t find him here, but I’d have to hit Greenie’s and the High Life and The Glove, and the Outside Inn, and he wouldn’t be at any of them. He would be someplace like The Elms on the outskirts of town, too far to walk with a duffel bag in the dark. Or maybe he was even farther off than that, in some new favorite place in Johnstown or Mayfield or Perth, or someplace on the Saratoga road where bars grew out of the surrounding woods like native flora. Maybe he would be out at The Lookout, the first of the bars he took me to with Tree, that afternoon in October when I’d gone to the beach with the Claudes. He could be anywhere, and it was doubtful that F. William Peterson, of all people, would know his precise whereabouts.

  I was just getting to my feet when a blue pickup with a tiny camper balanced on the back pulled up at the curb and Wussy got out. He looked exactly the same, a little heavier maybe, and wearing what could well have been the same shapeless fishing hat, still full of bright hooks. “Sam’s Kid,” he said right off, as if he’d left me in this precise spot an hour ago with instructions to stay put till he got back.

  We shook hands. “The rockhead inside?” he said.

  I told him I’d been just about to go inside and find out.

  He held the door for me. “That’s his car, so.…” He was pointing to an ancient battleship of a gray Cadillac convertible across the street, one wheel up on the curb. For some reason it had a white hood. I don’t know how I could have failed to notice and draw the necessary inference, but I had. No doubt about it, I’d lost the rhythm of Mohawk life, forgotten what to look for, how to see.

  “Not that that means anything,” Wussy was saying. “He could have left it there two days ago, forgot all about it and reported it stolen by now.”

  Just inside, I hesitated, grabbing the sleeve of Wussy’s blue flannel shirt. “I hear he’s in rough shape,” I said.

  “Sam Hall was born in rough shape,” Wussy said, apparently unconcerned. “Or did you forget.”

  We were standing in an entryway, between the inner and outer doors, the noise from inside louder now. “You better come in and say hello anyhow, before he spots you.”

  We went in, Wussy making an immediate detour into the men’s room. “First thing I gotta do is pee, Sam’s Kid. Tell your old man it’s his round and I’ll be right there.”

  I heard him before I saw him. There were only a dozen or so men at the long smoky bar, a few others around the pool table, off to the side. My father’s voice, the unmistakable pitch and texture of it seemed to come not so much from the far end of the room as from some prememory, filtered through amniotic fluid. My heart fluttered in the old way, and when I located him through the smoke on the last stool before the bar cornered, I stopped and watched for a second. He was talking to a young fellow about my own age. The only vacant stool at the bar happened to be right next to him, so I slid onto it quietly, jostling him only when I stuffed my duffel bag in between our stools.

  When he turned to see who’d nudged him, his eyes were red and slightly unfocused, but only for a second.

  “Son,” he said.

  31

  It was almost two in the morning when I remembered I was supposed to call my mother. We’d closed the Mohawk bars and were on the lake road, climbing into the dark Adirondacks, Wussy at the wheel of my father’s convertible. For some inexplicable reason we had the top down and it was cold as hell. I was in the backseat, leaning forward between my father and Wussy, trying to take advantage of what little protection the windshield offered against the brittle wind. The dark trees extended out over the narrow road, their top branches forming a canopy, the full moon darting among them, racing us all the way.

  “Shit,” I said.

  What, my father wanted to know. He’d been half asleep, and didn’t know where he was.

  “I was supposed to call my mother,” I said.

  “You can call her from up here,” he said.

  “It’s too late,” I said. “She’ll be asleep.”

  “I’ll call her if you’re scared to,” he offered. “She’s used to being disappointed in me.”

  “Let the kid call her,” Wussy advised. “You’ll get her all worked up and then she’ll shoot me by accident.”

  “I’ll call in the morning,” I said.

  “It is the morning. Before you know it, it’ll be this time tomorrow morning.”

  In fact, the night had just that deliciously out-of-control feel to it, enhanced by the fact that I had no idea where we were headed, though my father and Wussy claimed to. The proceedings had begun innocently enough. I’d told my father that I meant to have just the one beer with him, that I was exhausted and smelly from t
he long trip, that I needed to flop. He was already pretty bleary-eyed and it was my intention to drag him home with me, wherever the hell home might be. Wussy said he was going home himself, after just the one, but then somebody they knew came in and said who’s this, and my father had told him, and then the somebody bought a round to celebrate. This happened several times. Before I knew it, I had three sweating bottles of beer lined up in front of me. They hit me like a shot of adrenalin from a cardiac needle and the next thing I knew I was shooting pool and quarters were lined up in challenge from hell to breakfast. I hadn’t played in a long time, but my first two opponents were my father and Wussy, and by the time they’d beaten themselves I was beginning to get my stroke back. Wussy said so long, he was going home, and so, after traveling nearly three thousand miles, ostensibly to rescue my father from alcoholism, I discovered myself partners with him, the two of us winning beers faster than we could drink them, my father seldom even getting the opportunity to shoot. It took us two hours to leave.

  “Let’s stop in here and say hello to somebody you know,” my father said when I wheeled his big convertible onto North Main. I had expected him to argue when I asked if I could drive, but he didn’t. The place he wanted me to stop at was another gin mill that had been something else before I left Mohawk. It was called Mike’s Place now. The first person we saw when we came in was Wussy, who bought a round in the time it took to walk from the front door to the near end of the bar.

  “What can I say,” he said before my father or I had a chance to comment. “Anymore, this is home.”

  The bartender turned out to be my old friend Mike, from The Elms, which he’d lost two years earlier in Vegas. He seemed in pretty good spirits, considering. The first thing he did was slap a quarter in front of me and tell me to play the jukebox.

  “Fucking Duane Eddy,” he winked at my father. “The kid must have played a hundred dollars worth of Duane Eddy, in quarters.”

  “Who’s Duane Eddy?” my father said. I don’t think he ever heard music, no matter what kind it was or how loud you played it.

  “So,” my father said when Wussy was in the John and Mike had gone off to pour drinks. “What’s up?”

  “What do you mean?” I said, though I knew what he meant, all right. He meant I hadn’t been in Mohawk in seven years and now here I was, and he was curious about the timing. Not so curious that the question couldn’t wait three hours to get asked, but curious.

  “A little bird’s been whispering in your ear, I imagine,” he said.

  “Not really,” I replied lamely.

  “Nobody’s mentioned my little problems, right?” he said, looking at me the way he used to when we played Liars, or when he wanted to know what the hell was wrong with me.

  “I just got here,” I said. “I haven’t seen anybody yet.”

  He nodded. “They don’t have telephones out there in New Mexico, right?”

  “Arizona,” I said.

  “No telephones in Arizona, right?”

  “Right,” I said. “If there were, you’d have called me sometime, right?”

  “Or you’d have called me, since you knew where I lived.”

  “Or you’d have called my mother to find out my number,” I said. Then it occurred to me that something he’d said wasn’t true. “Besides, how was I supposed to know you were back in Mohawk.”

  He answered the part he was comfortable about. “I don’t talk to your mother. You know that.”

  “Bullshit,” said Wussy, fresh from the men’s room and trailing the unmistakable scent of urinal cakes. “We saw her last year when we went over there to get the pool table. Take it back to New Mexico with you when you go. I’ve busted my balls on it for the last time.”

  “Arizona.”

  “I don’t care where,” Wussy said. “Just take it. Every time the rockhead gets evicted, I get to have my back fucked up all over again. Wouldn’t be so bad if he’d get a first-floor apartment every now and then.”

  My father nudged me. “Everybody should work once in a while, don’t you think? Just for a change of pace?”

  “I’m just glad there aren’t no ten-story buildings in Mohawk,” Wussy said.

  “They got the high rise going up,” Mike said, having drifted back from the other end of the bar.

  Wussy shook his head. “The good news is you gotta be sixty-five to get in there. Sam Hall won’t live to be no sixty-five. There’s less of him every year.”

  “I’ll piss on your grave,” my father said. “After that, I don’t care.”

  “You show the kid your finger?” Wussy wanted to know.

  “What finger?” my father said. His left hand was on the bar, fingers surrounding the tapered stem of his beer glass. His right hand was tucked under his left armpit as he hunched forward, elbows on the bar. It occurred to me that he’d been sitting that way pretty much all night.

  “What finger?” I said.

  “ ‘What finger’ is right,” Wussy said.

  “You mean this one?” my father said, putting his right hand on the bar where I could see it. All that was left of his once blackened thumb was a stub, which stopped just short of where the knuckle would have been. I stared at it stupidly, unwilling to accept the testimony of my senses. Was it possible I had played pool with him for two hours and not noticed? It wasn’t his bridge hand, but still.

  “Could have been worse. It wasn’t his pussy finger, anyhow,” Wussy said.

  “Nope,” my father said, showing Wussy his middle finger.

  “Put that away before you lose it too,” Wussy advised. “Pretty soon you’ll be left-handed.”

  I was still looking at the mangled thumb. “Jesus,” I said, feeling suddenly woozy.

  “No big thing,” my father said, flexing the other fingers on the right hand, the thumb stub bowing forward in awkward concert with the others. “Little accident last summer is all. Some dumb Polack forgot to hold on to a four-hundred-pound pipe.”

  “Jesus,” I said again.

  My father shrugged. “You don’t really think you could beat me at eight-ball if I had all my fingers, do you?”

  “I’m going home,” Wussy said.

  “So go,” my father said. “You’re always promising, but everyplace I go, you’re there.”

  “Take care of him, Sam’s Kid,” Wussy said, pocketing his change from the bar. “He’s a dangerous man.”

  “Are you still here?” my father wanted to know.

  “Not me,” Wussy blew him a kiss. “I’m history.”

  When he was, in fact, gone, my father ordered us yet another beer. Our agreement to have just one was a couple six packs defunct, not even worthwhile as a pretense anymore. “So,” he said. “You figure on staying around for a while, or what?”

  “I guess,” I said. “First thing is to find a job.”

  “That’s easy,” my father said and called to Mike, who rejoined us. “I got your new day bartender,” he said.

  Mike looked me over. “I could use one,” he admitted. “A good, clean-shaven, short-haired bartender is something I could use come Monday.”

  “There you go,” my father said. “You know how to make a Manhattan?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  He shrugged. “You got till Wednesday to learn. Otherwise it’s just drawing beer from a tap and pouring shots. Stuff a hotshot college graduate should be able to figure out.”

  He cuffed me then, pretty hard, too. Which made it official. I was home.

  “You’re telling me I don’t know where the Big Bend is,” my father said in feigned disbelief.

  Wussy paid him no attention. He handled my father’s convertible with the kind of ease that suggested that this was not the first time the driving had been relegated to him.

  I was not only drunk, but lost. I’d been okay until Wussy turned off the lake road, then turned again. Two turns was all it had taken to disorient me completely.

  “All I’m telling you,” Wussy said to my father, “is that i
f I stopped the car and let you out right here you couldn’t find your way back home in two days with a map.”

  “Your ass,” my father insisted. “You missed your turn, I’m telling you.”

  “Right,” Wussy said. “I missed my turn.” He kept right on the way he was going, though.

  “How come you never go home when you say you’re going to?” my father wanted to know. It was puzzling, I had to admit. We’d gone to two more bars after Mike’s Place, and at the second one, there was Wussy again at the end of the bar, big as life.

  “It’s a good thing for you I don’t,” Wussy said. “Be just like you to take your kid up into the mountains his first night back and the two of you never heard from again.”

  “Can you get something to eat in this place?” I said, suddenly ravenous in the cold night air. My eyes were streaming now. It felt cold enough to snow, April or no April.

  Wussy looked over at my father. “If you aren’t too particular, I guess.”

  My father was still convinced we were going the wrong way. “Lake George has all kinds of food,” he said. “That’s where we’re going to end up if we stay on this road. We’ll be there just about in time for a late breakfast.”

  “What’s this up here?” Wussy said, slowing down, pointing to a building set back off the road in a clearing. At the dirt road turnoff, our headlights swept across a carved wooden sign nailed to a tree. “BIG BEND HUNTING LODGE” it said.

  “Son of a bitch,” my father said, running his fingers through his hair, which was standing straight up from the wind.

  “I never heard you,” Wussy said. “What’s this place? Lake George?”

  My father shrugged. “What can I tell you? It’s not the way I go to get to the Big Bend, that’s all.”

  “The fact that we got here proves that,” Wussy said, pulling into the large lot. There were only three or four other cars besides ours, and the place was dark except for a “Carling Black Label” in one window. “Welcome to the Happy Hunting Grounds, Sam’s Kid,” Wussy chuckled.

  We all got out and felt our way in the dark toward the big porch, the lodge itself nothing but a vague outline against the dark trees, which moaned high up in the wind. On the steps it occurred to my father to ask me something. “You aren’t married are you,” he said.