Ring Game

by Pete Hautman

  “That’s right,” said Crow. He watched the way Axel’s chewing made his jaw muscles pulse up his temples, all the way to the top of his bald crown. The old man had a big head, which suited the rest of his body. He must’ve been a monster when he was younger, Crow thought. He still looked like he could eat nails.

  Axel put down his fork. “But you don’t much like him.”

  “I wouldn’t want to go fishing with him. But if he was in the boat, I wouldn’t jump out.”

  “Then how come you introduced him to Carmen? You know how impressionable she is.”

  Sam pulled off his baseball cap and whacked Axel across the shoulder with it. “Dammit, Ax, he’s been tryin’ to tell you he didn’t do nothing.”

  Axel looked at his shoulder, then back at Crow.

  “But she’d never had met him if it wasn’t for you.”

  “That’s right,” Crow admitted. “He followed me and Debrowski over to your taco stand, and then he introduced himself. I think he was trying to convert her.”

  “Convert her to what?”

  “He was involved in some sort of church.”

  “He doesn’t strike me as the church-going type.”

  “I don’t think it was the church-going type of church. Anyway, Debrowski and I took off. We were trying to get rid of him, actually.”

  “You left him with Carmen.”

  Crow sighed. “I didn’t know he was going to want to marry her. Besides, what was I supposed to do?”

  Axel set his jaw, leaned forward, then rose up to his full height of six feet four inches, his bad knee popping. He said, “I always liked you, Joe. You’re a straight shooter.” He walked to the door and looked out through the screen toward the sunset. “Unlike my future son-in-law, who I wouldn’t trust to piss out the right hole.” Axel opened the door and stepped out onto the porch.

  Crow turned to Sam and said in a low voice, “Carmen isn’t his daughter, is she?”

  Sam shook his head. “Ax is kinda funny on that point. See, him and Sophie, they’re shackin’ up. So in his head, it’s like her kid is his kid.”

  “Axel and Sophie are living together?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Crow smiled. “They must be driving each other nuts.”

  Sam lit a cigarette, tipped his chair back, propped his feet on the table next to his plate. “Sometimes I think they already done it, son. She’s what they call a fate accomplished.”

  Later that night, Axel and Crow sat down to a game of cribbage, a dime a point. Sam had made the cribbage board from the valve cover off an old Ford 289-cubic-inch V-8. The pegs were fashioned from cotter pins. Axel was up five bucks, which was fine with Crow. He’d be better off losing, considering Axel’s touchiness. Sam watched for a while, drank a few more beers, made some unwelcomed suggestions, then tottered off to bed.

  “He likes his juice,” Axel said.

  Crow nodded in agreement. He had mixed feelings about Sam’s drinking. Sometimes he thought that his father would be better off if he gave it up. Other times, he couldn’t imagine it. Maybe an alcohol-free Sam wouldn’t be Sam anymore. He might become somebody else. As for himself, Crow suspected that he’d been a more interesting person when he’d been using. Funnier and more relaxed. According to the CA and AA people, such thinking was both fallacious and counterproductive. Nevertheless, Crow still had those thoughts, though they didn’t come as often these days. Crow now thought of Sam as the family drinker. As long as Sam drank, Crow didn’t have to. If Sam clambered aboard the water wagon, Crow might have to jump off to make room.

  “Never could understand it.” Axel had been nursing the same Budweiser since dinner. “I drank that much beer I’d be pissing all night long.”

  “This didn’t used to be an island, you know.”

  Axel picked up his newly dealt hand, frowned at his cards. “You ought to be more respectful. He is your old man.”

  “Yeah, maybe. He’s old, anyway.”

  “All the more reason to be respectful.”

  “He ever tell you how he came to buy this place?”

  “He said you and him came into some money.”

  “Yeah. I was going to buy a cabin up here. Next thing I know, Sam goes and buys one.”

  “And you’re complaining ’cause he stole your idea? Seems to me it’s a good deal for you, kid. You hang out for free and when he dies you get your cabin after all.”

  “I suppose. But sometimes I wish I had something of my own right now. You know. You’ve got your business at the fair, and Sam’s got his place in St. Paul. Me, I’m living in a rented duplex and playing cards for a living.”

  Axel sorted through his cards. “You keep dealing your opponents shitty cards like these, kid, you’ll do fine.”

  “The point is, I wish I had my own island or something.” Crow felt awkward now, with Sam gone. He wasn’t sure why he was saying this to Axel.

  Axel selected two cards from his hand and threw them into the crib. “Of course, I don’t need good cards to whip your rookie ass. Back in the merchant marine I was cribbage champ three years running.”

  Crow added his two cards to the crib. Axel cut the deck and Crow rolled the starter card. A jack. “Two for his heels,” Crow said, moving a cotter pin forward two holes. He hadn’t played cribbage in years, but its strange rules and customs and language had quickly come back to him.

  Axel grunted, squinting at the jack with his straight eye. The other eye stayed on Crow, who could not imagine how a guy could make sense of the world with eyes pointing two different directions. Axel emitted another grunt, then laid down a card, calling it out. “Four. Sam and me, back in our heyday we used to make our living playing cards. Best times I ever had.”

  “It must’ve got old or you’d still be doing it. Ten.”

  “I was the one got old. Fifteen two and a run of three.” Axel pegged five points. “Why don’t you buy yourself a little business? Get yourself a stand out at the fair?”

  Crow laughed.

  Axel gave him a sharp look. “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing,” said Crow.

  Axel stared at him, his eyes catching light from the flyspecked lamp hanging over the table. “Don’t talk out the side of your mouth to me,” he said, his voice sharp.

  Crow sat back, startled.

  Axel said, “Don’t give me this crap about you want your own island then laugh at my piece of dirt.”

  “Sorry!”

  Axel was shaking his head. “Jesus Christ, Joe. First you fix up my little girl with that son-of-a-bitch Hilton, then you laugh at what I do.”

  Crow laid down a three. “Eighteen and a run of four. And I told you, I didn’t ‘fix them up.’”

  Axel frowned as Crow pegged four. “Whatever. Look, I believe you when you say you didn’t do it on purpose. Everybody makes mistakes. When I was your age I did some pretty dumb-ass things myself. Just don’t treat me like I’m an old cocker doesn’t know what’s what. I don’t need you walking on my eggs.”

  “Okay.” The hell with respectful, Crow decided. Axel might be his elder, but he could be an elderly ass. “I won’t walk on your eggs anymore if you’ll lay off me about Hyatt Hilton. It’s not my fault if Carmen’s stupid enough to marry the guy.”

  “Carmen is not stupid. And she didn’t go looking for the guy. Somebody brought him to her.”

  “Fine. Okay. I give up. I was the matchmaker. I went out of my way to introduce Hyatt to Carmen for the sole purpose of making your life miserable. I confess.”

  Axel lifted his eyebrows. “Good.” He laid down a ten. “Twenty-eight.”

  “Thirty.”

  “Thirty one.” Axel pegged two. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “What exactly do you do? I mean, besides playing poker.”

  Crow laid down his last card, a ten, and pegged a point for the go. He hated that question. He didn’t really know what he did anymore. The last time he’d been able to answer it had been a f
ew years ago, when he’d been working as a small-town cop out in western Minnesota. He’d gotten fired from that job and hadn’t seen anything resembling a paycheck since.

  Everyone who asked him what he did got a different answer.

  “Well,” he said slowly, “this weekend I’m hanging out with a drunk, who thinks the world is made out of car parts, and a cockeyed, cribbage-playing taco-seller with a bone up his butt on account of he needs to blame somebody for a situation he can’t do a damn thing about.”

  Axel glared, then his mouth fell into an open grin, and he began to chuckle. The chuckle enlarged into a laugh. His face, always ruddy, bloomed deep red, and his green eyes filled with tears. Crow watched, astonished. Axel was not a man who laughed easily, and certainly not like this. It was all the more bizarre because Crow didn’t think that what he’d said was funny. He’d been genuinely angry. Within a few seconds, Axel’s laughter took on a wheezy quality, and he started coughing—big, gasping coughs that sounded as if his chest was filled with Jell-O.

  “Are you okay?” Crow asked.

  Axel nodded, still coughing. He waved his hand in a don’t-mind-me gesture.

  Crow found himself thinking how hard it would be, if Axel died, to get that big body down the hill and into Sam’s boat. As soon as he had that thought, he felt ashamed—it was the sort of self-centered, unfeeling thought that he would expect of a guy like Hyatt Hilton.

  Axel’s coughing fit subsided. He thumped his chest, clearing his throat, wiping tears from his fading cheeks.

  “That’s funny,” he said in a ragged voice. “Bone up his butt. Sounds like something your old man would say. I needed a good laugh.”

  “I thought you were going to blow an artery. You scared the hell out of me.”

  Axel gave him a flat smile, his eyes bright. “Yeah, right. Probably scared you were going to have to haul my dead ass off this island.”

  Crow laughed. If Axel detected a hollow quality to the laugh, he didn’t show it. Crow picked up the crib, looked over the cards, threw it down. “No points. It’s your deal.”

  Axel scooped up the cards and squared the deck. “I wanted to ask you something, Joe. That fellow Hilton. I really am worried that Carmen is making a mistake here.”

  “Can’t say I blame you.”

  “I was thinking about having him checked out. You know. See if there’s anything Carmen ought to know.”

  “Like what?” Crow asked. He was afraid he knew what was coming.

  Axel picked up his can of beer, looked at it, set it back on the table. “Like if he’s got a record. You do that sort of thing, don’t you? Find out about people?”

  Crow shook his head. “Not really.”

  “I mean, when you’re not hanging with the old cockers. You used to be a cop. You know how to investigate people, right?”

  Crow shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He did not want to get involved in this. No matter how it came down in the end, somebody was going to hate him for it. He felt a burning in his gut. He’d just come up here to go fishing with his dad, that was all, and now this. Maybe he should simply say “No,” and live with the consequences. At least he’d be done with it.

  Axel, reading the direction of his thoughts, said, “I need your help, Joe. It’s bad enough she wants to marry the son-of-a-bitch, but if she married him and it turned out he was a wife-killer or a bigamist or something, hell, I just couldn’t stand it that I didn’t check him out. You know the guy. You used to be a cop. You know how to find stuff out. Help me out here.”

  “I don’t know,” Crow said, unable to look at Axel’s face. “I’m kind of busy these days.”

  “Look, I’ll pay you for your time. You could at least find out if he’s got a record. What’s that take, a phone call?”

  Guilt smothered anger; there was no way out. He couldn’t say no. The fact was, he hadn’t told Axel the whole story. He could almost smell the incense and old wood of St. Mary’s Church on a Saturday morning, see the red light above the confessional door. He felt like a kid who’d gone to confession and left out his most grievous sin. What was the penance for that?

  8

  Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it,

  —W. Somerset Maugham

  “POLYHYMNIA DESIMONE?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m calling from Drew Chance Productions.”

  “Drew Chance?” She’d heard the name someplace. The voice was familiar, too. “Yes?”

  “Have you ever been on TV, Polyhymnia DeSimone?”

  Polly frowned and tightened her grip on the steering wheel of her eco-green Range Rover. Her instinct was to look around for the hidden camera—a van with tinted windows, or a helicopter. There was a charter bus crowding her on the right. The car in front of her was some guy in a Saturn and, behind her, two elderly women in a minivan. No aircraft in sight.

  Why would anyone want to film her?

  “Ms. DeSimone? Are you there?”

  “Yes. Who did you say this is?”

  “I’m a reporter with Hard Camera. Is it true that you claim to be immortal?”

  “Where did you get this number?”

  “How old are you claiming to be this week? Are you collecting Social Security yet?”

  “I—” Polly’s brow ridged. She brought the heel of her hand down hard on the steering wheel. “Hy, is that you?”

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t reveal my true identity.”

  “You son-of-a-bitch. How’d you get my number?”

  “I got your number, darling. I got all your numbers.”

  “Good-bye, Hy.” She dropped a hand to the console, disconnected the call, then said, loudly and clearly, “Call Rupe.” The phone dialed itself, rang twice, three times. “Answer the goddamn phone, Rupe,” she muttered.

  “One God.” Rupert Chandra’s creamy voice filled the Range Rover.

  “One Way, One Life. It’s me, Rupe,” Polly said. Her voice, by contrast, was sharp as broken glass.

  Rupe’s voice rose. “Where are you?”

  “Stuck in traffic. I’m sitting in the left lane on the goddamn freeway. Haven’t moved in ten minutes.”

  “Polly, my sweet, the young lady is here, waiting for you.”

  “Listen, Rupe. I just got a call from Hy, pretending to be a reporter.”

  “Oh dear. What did he say?”

  “I hung up on him. We’ve got to do something, Rupe. He’s up to something. I’ve got a feeling.”

  “Please don’t be so negative, my love. He’s just trying to upset you, that’s all. We confiscated all the flyers and destroyed them. In any case, no one would have believed.” The document that had appeared on the windshields of every car in the ACO parking lot during the last Extraction Event had made several outrageous charges against the Amaranthine Elders, accusing them of Satanism, child abuse, consumer fraud, and vampirism. The flyers had also included the obituaries of two former Amaranthines whose immortality had failed them in the worst way.

  Rupe said, “The Faithful are safely in the fold, my dear.”

  Polly could almost see the beatific smile on Rupe’s suntanned features. “I’m not worried about the Faithful. I’m worried about the Pilgrims. We don’t need Hyatt trying to stir things up. I don’t know what he thinks he’s doing, but whatever it is, it’s not for our benefit. We’re in debt up to our ears with Stonecrop. We can’t afford a hit on our cash flow.”

  “Eternity will provide, Angel. In any case, we’ve nothing to hide.”

  “Hide? Eternity? Listen to me, Rupe, I don’t want to spend eternity in court, or talking to reporters, or dealing with the IRS, or in any other variety of hell on earth. If Hyatt is leafletting our parking lot you can bet he’s sending the same materials out to the media. If the spotlight shines our way, it won’t matter if we’ve done anything wrong. They’ll be on us like jackals on a wounded lion. You saw what happened at Waco.”

  “That was another matter en
tirely.”

  “Was it? I don’t think so, Rupe. If one reporter gets the idea that we’re a bunch of satanic child-abusing vampires, we’ll be preaching to a lot of empty seats.”

  The speaker produced a rushing sound: Rupe sighing into the phone. “I wish you wouldn’t talk like that, my love. Let’s discuss it later. In the meantime, would you please just get here and talk to this young lady? I don’t know what to do with her. I showed her the contract, but she won’t sign.”

  “What’s her problem?”

  “She wants to talk to you. Something about her hair.”

  “Jesus, Rupe, do I have to do everything?” The van in front of her had advanced a car length. Polly put the Range Rover in gear and inched forward.

  Rupe said, “You know I don’t like to talk to the actresses, Polly. I don’t even like to meet them beforehand.”

  “All right, all right, I’ll be there. Give her a cup of tea or something. And try to think of something that will scare off our friend Hyatt. Something that will leave a lasting impression. Something to make him feel mortal.”

  Polly hit the disconnect. She could almost see the expression on Rupe’s face—like he’d just swallowed a cockroach. Ordinarily, she would have tried to be more diplomatic, but the traffic and Hyatt Hilton had her on edge. Later, she would give Rupe one of those foot rubs he liked. Make it up to him.

  The phone chirruped. She reached down and turned it off, then cranked the steering wheel hard to the right. She leaned on her horn and nosed in between the charter bus and a new Mercedes—two vehicles whose drivers would not want to risk a fender bender, then forced her way, banging her wrist repeatedly on the horn button, across all three eastbound lanes, across the shoulder, into the ditch, and up the steep grassy embankment. When she reached the top she turned west, following the guardrail toward the entrance ramp she had passed a mile back, her jaw set in a grim smile. Maybe she had all the time in the world, but she damn sure didn’t want to spend it sitting in traffic.

  Carmen, holding the latest issue of Modern Bride, watched Hyatt hit the switchhook, then release it and punch the redial button. Hyatt listened for several seconds, then returned the handset to its cradle. He noticed Carmen looking at him and shrugged.