Prodigal Sons

by Mike Miner

  The mustache did a pretty good impression of Blondie’s entrance but his sea legs weren’t as sturdy and he nearly fell over. This didn’t help Blondie contain his merriment. Pam rolled her eyes and looked at the ceiling.

  “Is there anyone else back there?”

  The boys looked at each other but didn’t say anything. Not that they needed to. Their guilty looks answered the question.

  “Come out from back there whoever you are.”

  Tommy came through the doorway looking at the floor.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  Tommy kept looking at the floor. Like maybe there was a trapdoor hidden there that she could escape through.

  “Are you guys doing whippits again?”

  Lousy poker faces. They looked at the ceiling, at the floor, everywhere but at Pam.

  “Fred, you are completely fucking useless.”

  Blondie didn’t argue.

  “How am I going to get everything prepped for tomorrow?”

  The kids didn’t have any ideas.

  “Do you need some help prepping?” Matthew asked.

  Everyone looked over at him. His feet were on the table, a half-empty bottle of beer in his hand.

  “What?” Pam asked.

  “Because I could help you out.”

  Again she said, “What?”

  Matthew wondered if he should start over.

  “You know how to bake?” Pam was incredulous.

  “I know how to prep.” Matthew stood and wiped his hands together.

  Confusion took over Pam’s expression, wrinkled her brow, twisted her lips. Matthew took off his jacket and dress shirt, put them on his chair and walked into the back in just his undershirt. After a little while, Pam followed him.

  “Are you drunk?”

  “Not right now. Where’s your cooler?”

  She showed him. He saw that she used the same system as his father. The racks were the same. There were only so many ways to get dough ready to bake. Tommy walked into the back room too.

  “I’m Matthew by the way. This is Tommy. Short for Tomiko.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  They got to work. After watching for a bit, Tommy began handing trays to Matthew as he needed them.

  “Where’d you learn to do this?”

  “My family’s in the grocery business back east. We had a bakery.”

  “You don’t do it anymore?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t have to tell you it’s a tough racket.”

  Pam’s expression softened for the first time. It helped. He guessed her to be about five years past her prime. Then again maybe this was her prime. He wondered when his prime was.

  “You got that right. How about a cigarette break?”

  They all went out the back door. Pam smoked Old Golds. Matthew didn’t mind. Tommy had one too. Pam’s ash blonde hair was pulled into a pony tail. She studied Matthew and Tommy with green, thoughtful eyes.

  “Where you folks headed?”

  It was nice to be around folks who used the word folks. He exhaled a cloud of smoke and pointed vaguely east.

  Pam nodded. “Nowhere in particular.”

  “That’s about right.”

  They smoked as the wind rearranged the sand and took the ashes of their cigarettes away. Matthew wondered what moves the Red Sox were making in the off season and if the Yankees were outmaneuvering them like they always did. This might be the most boring place on earth, he thought. No wonder the kids were doing whippits on their shifts.

  “How long you staying?” Pam asked.

  Tommy looked at Matthew.

  “Not long.” He chucked his cigarette butt.

  Pam cleared her throat. “You two have plans for dinner?”

  “Nope.” They were almost done, he saw.

  Tommy bit her lip.

  Pam smiled before saying, “Maybe you two’d like to come over.”

  He squinted at her, then at Tommy.

  Pam made a gesture toward her shop. “Pay for the labor and all that.”

  “Sounds good,” he said.

  “So what’s the story with you two?” Pam and Matthew were alone in her kitchen.

  “Kind of tough to figure, huh?”

  “She seems a little young for you if you don’t mind me noticing.”

  He smiled and took a sip of the white wine she kept in a box in the fridge. Tommy was down the hall taking a shower. “She is. I don’t mind you noticing. We’re both kind of on the run.”

  Pam touched his wedding ring. “What’s the story with this?”

  “Usual stupid old story. Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy runs away with young, Asian sidekick.”

  She giggled. The wine had turned her cheeks red.

  She lived in a mobile home with no wheels. The wind blew hard and the trailer rocked with it. Pam just rolled her eyes, unembarrassed. The smallness of the trailer compared to the vastness visible through the tiny windows was like a joke.

  “So who left who?”

  He grimaced. “She did the leaving.”

  “And then you left home?”

  “Didn’t feel like home anymore.”

  She nodded. “This place hasn’t really felt like home since my folks died.”

  “Sorry to hear that.” That she’d lived in this trailer with her parents depressed him. He looked at the thin carpets, faded paint on the walls. The kitchen was a sink and a refrigerator.

  Her expression soured. “It’s been a while. Mom got cancer, Dad didn’t know what to do with himself so…”

  “No other family?”

  “Those clowns at the donut shop are all I’ve got in this world.”

  “No boyfriends?”

  She rolled her tongue around her top teeth and looked up at the ceiling. “They all seem to grow wings.”

  “Why do you stay?”

  She shook her head. “This is home. I don’t know where else I’d go.”

  “I don’t know where home is anymore.”

  “You’re leaving tomorrow?” Resignation in her tone.

  “Looks that way.”

  She leaned closer, her features blurred by the wine and the dim light. “But you’re here now.”

  Not for long, he thought and wondered what it would be like to have to call this home.

  She was like an instrument badly in need of tuning, an old piano making disjointed sounds. Difficult to find the rhythm. He moved around, from her ears to her neck to her lips, searched her for tender spots, warming her up. When he stopped for a moment to breathe, she turned ferocious, tore both of their clothes off. Skin on skin, rubbing, slapping. The smell of her, the taste of wine on her tongue. Her voice a vocabulary of need, shouting, “More, faster, harder, deeper,” louder and louder, her eyes savored the sight of him, of them, then turned white in ecstasy, eager, desperate, wistful. A seven-nation-army climax would have broken the bed if it wasn’t just a mattress on the floor.

  Afterward, breathless, grateful.

  LUKE 3

  Luke couldn’t sleep. After going twice through all the channels, he got up and went outside. Mark was snoring pretty loud when he shut the door behind him. It had taken him about five minutes to nod off. Pink Floyd still hammered inside the motel office. Luke wasn’t sure if the music was loud or if there was just nobody else for fifty miles making any noise. He walked down to the office.

  The guy was riveted by his book and the music. Luke walked right in front of the counter and the guy looked up, startled.

  “Yo. What’s up?”

  “Is there anything to eat around here?”

  “Not really. Some vending machines around the corner.”

  The guy pointed the direction and with the Floyd music thumping in the background, the scene became somehow sinister. Luke thanked him and walked to the vending machines. An ocean of black watched him on his right and he wondered how Fincher or Lynch might shoot this scene in the film version of his life. Was that what you were left with when you died? The raw
film of a movie and heaven was where you watched it all. You watched your story for as long as you wanted and maybe if you felt like it you watched somebody else’s. So when Luke died he could take a look at this guy’s reel although he couldn’t imagine it being very interesting. He wondered, as he approached the glowing Coca Cola machine, if anyone would watch his life. He pictured people, heavenly creatures, watching him now.

  He punched the Coke button and one rattled out. Gambled on M&Ms being the freshest thing in the candy machine. Popped a handful into his mouth and washed it down with a sip of Coke.

  He heard the rain before he knew what it was. He stood, savoring his Coke and M&Ms, and listened, watching the rain smack onto the cheap roof and cracked asphalt parking lot and the sand. It didn’t sound the same as it did at home. No gutters here, no trees. It occurred to him that bats would probably not be able to fly in these conditions. Although he hadn’t seen any since heading west, none in Las Vegas, he knew somehow that they weren’t through with him.

  Puddles formed quickly and then he could see the force of the rain as drops pelted the surface of the puddles. He pictured the bats falling into the muddy sand, pulled by sudden streams into flash flood ponds, choking, drowning. Luke stood for quite a while and pondered the improbable fact that he was here with one brother chasing after another brother. Somewhere an angel captured it all on film. And Matthew was out there somewhere raising hell, making his own film. Probably a much more interesting one.

  He pictured Matthew and the girl from Vegas. It seemed too likely not to picture. Matthew’s tastes sometimes ran to the exotic. Female co-stars always complicated the plot. He crouched and leaned his back against the side of the building, the rain a torrent now. He tried to imagine how this would all work out. Where would they all be in a year?

  He went back into the room. The television was still on. Mark was still snoring. Luke splashed some water on his face, took off his pants and got under the covers. Sleep came.

  “Hey Luke.”

  Was it a dream?

  It was pitch black and the voice was close. A match was struck and Luke caught a glimpse of a fat face, thin lips held a cigarette. Eyes looked down at the flame and then squinted up at Luke.

  “You see me?”

  “A little.”

  The face nodded. Then he flicked the match out and there was just the glowing red of the cigarette tip. The voice was familiar.

  “Bear?”

  Luke heard a fluttered movement.

  “You up?” Mark said.

  Luke sat up. Mark was brushing his teeth. He had nothing on but a towel around his waist.

  “I’m up.”

  “You were talking.”

  “What’d I say?”

  “I don’t know.” Mark’s mouth was full of toothpaste.

  Luke rubbed his eyes, shook his head. Light shouted through the windows. The radio/alarm clock on the nightstand read six. “Why are we up so early?”

  Mark spit into the sink. “I figure,” he started brushing again, “morning will be our time to gain ground on him.”

  Luke nodded. That made sense.

  They stopped about twenty minutes up the road at Pam’s Donuts and Ice Cream.

  “That’s a nice fucking combination,” Mark said as he parked.

  They both hopped out.

  “I could fuck up a chocolate covered donut,” Mark said.

  “Okay, chubby.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “What do you mean you don’t have donuts?”

  “The church people ate them.” The kid indicated the Burning Bush Church next door.

  “It’s the name of the place and you don't have any?

  “We only make them on Sundays. For the church people.”

  “You make them once a week? It should be Pam’s Ice Cream and Donuts on Sundays. If you get here early enough.”

  “Sorry, Bud. I just work here.”

  Mark sighed. “I know. Gimme a cup of coffee and whatever this idiot wants.”

  The kid looked at Luke for the first time. He smiled and pointed. “Hey aren’t you the guy who was in here yesterday? Where’s Tommy?”

  Luke gave him a look and said, “Who’s Tommy?”

  “Fucking cute little Asian number,” he held his palm out to show how tall she was.

  Luke made the connection first, “You gotta be kidding me,”

  “Did he say where he was going?” Mark asked. “Did you see which way he went?”

  “Is he in trouble?” The kid backed away from their eager questions.

  “We’re his brothers,” Mark said, “We’re trying to track him down.”

  “Well you should probably check with Pam.”

  “Pam’s donuts and ice cream, Pam?”

  “Yeah. They went home with her yesterday.”

  “You gotta be shitting me,” Mark said.

  They drove through a sort of town to get there. It was like something out of the Mad Max outback. A grid of dirt roads. One-story buildings and not so mobile homes with antennae combined to give the impression of a town sinking into the desert.

  At the house, a shoebox with windows and doors, Mark knocked and Luke stood behind him. The black Jeep Wrangler wasn’t visible. Nobody answered for a little while.

  Mark turned around and faced Luke. “So we think you slept with our brother and we were just wondering…” he whispered.

  Luke giggled. “Yeah, I’m not sure how to put it.”

  The door unlocked then opened. A tired blonde squinted out at them. “Can I help you?” She looked at Mark and then noticed Luke. “Matthew?” She opened the screen door and took a closer look. “Nope.”

  Luke shook his head slightly. “I’m his brother, Luke.”

  “Luke?”

  “I’m his other brother, Mark.”

  “Mark?” Confusion and disappointment split her face.

  “We’re sorry to bother you, Pam,” Luke said, “but we need to ask you a few questions about Matthew.”

  Pam wore a thick, cotton bathrobe which she pulled tighter around herself. She smiled strangely, snorted and nodded but didn’t move. There was something attractive about her, something in her eyes, in her grin, but it seemed in the process of being overwhelmed by sadness or loneliness. A desperation that would soon give way to acceptance or bitterness. Luke knew the look. Half his father’s employees had it, the ones who couldn’t find a better job.

  “Pam?” Luke said.

  “C’mon in. I’ve got some coffee.”

  She threw on jeans and a sweatshirt. Mark and Luke sat at the kitchen table and looked around. Not much to see. Four empty wine bottles next to the sink.

  “He did mention his wife.” Pam poured the coffee and sat down. “He said something about her leaving him. Is that not what happened?”

  “More or less,” Luke said. He took a sip of coffee. It was excellent. He took another sip.

  “Did he say where he was going?”

  Pam shrugged. “Not really. East was all he said.” She took a sip of coffee and her eyes glimmered at a memory. The beginning of a smirk on her lips.

  “How was he doing?” Luke asked.

  “He seemed fine to me.” The smirk on her face grew.

  Mark had moved over to the empty wine bottles. He fingered one of the necks. “He drinking?”

  Pam clicked her tongue. “What of it?”

  Mark smiled and picked up the bottle he’d been playing with. Luke had a flashing image of Mark smashing Pam across the face with it. “That would be the reason the wife left.”

  Pam scrunched her nose. The smirk turned grimace.

  “Near as we can tell, Matthew hasn’t stopped drinking in the past week, maybe longer.”

  “How about this girl,” Luke said, “He still traveling with her?”

  “Tommy?”

  “That’s her name?”

  “Short for Tomiko.”

  “He’s still traveling with her?”

  “Yup.”

 
; “Anything between them?” Luke asked.

  Mark shot him a curious look. Luke shrugged back at him.

  “Not according to Matthew. Not that I noticed. She’s just a kid. Nice kid.”

  “Nice kid traveling cross country with an alcoholic on the bender of a lifetime. Sounds great.”

  “Not when you put it that way.”

  “What way would you put it?” Mark sat down at the table with Pam. Mark reminded Luke of their father, the way he used his size and voice to intimidate.

  Pam sipped her coffee. She put it down and licked her lips. “I bet she’s having a time. A hell of a lot better time than she was having before she met your brother, I bet.”

  “I bet.”

  “They still driving that black Jeep Wrangler?” Luke asked.

  “Yup,” Pam looked at Mark. “You guys better watch it or you might wind up having some fun yourselves.”

  Mark looked over at Luke. “We done?”

  “We done.”

  Back on the road, Mark said, “That chick give you a weird vibe?”

  “I guess.”

  “She gave me a weird vibe.”

  Luke turned to look at his brother. Mark’s face was a mask of perplexity. Luke watched the open road and tried to see it through Matthew’s eyes. They had picked up the scent, now they just needed to stay on the trail.

  MATTHEW 7

  He said his name was Lee. They picked him up next to a broken down Toyota pickup. The “To” and the “ta” were painted out so the tailgate just said, “yo.” It seemed like a good enough reason to help the guy out.

  He had an enormous round head covered by a black skullcap. His short, wide body was covered by a blue pea coat. He had smooth, Egyptian features, caramel colored and just the beginning of a Pharaoh’s beard on his chin. Tommy made a noise when she got a good look at him. She seemed impressed. The closer Lee got to them, the wider he appeared. The sleeves of his jacket had no slack in them.

  “You need a lift?” Matthew asked him.

  Lee had a big, easy smile. The loop earring in his left ear made him look a bit like a pirate. “I wouldn’t mind it, Man. You folks headed into town?” His voice was resonant, full of bass notes.

  Matthew shrugged. “We got nowhere to be for a while.”