Gringo

by Cass J. McMain

  “There’s my boy.” Kiki smiled his huge smile and slapped Daniel on the back.

  Daniel took up a position behind the bar, and prepared for the next three hours. “Yep. Your boy.” For now, he thought. But just for a while. At seven, he was his own man again. Free to head home and do whatever. Watch TV and sleep probably. Possibly. Until midnight, of course. Because at midnight, he’d be wide awake.

  At midnight, he would belong to Gringo.

  Chapter 35

  He sat back on his heels and looked at the flowers. His back ached a little, even from this small bit of work. It was not like the old days. Daniel was surprised by how tired he was. It should have taken ten minutes to mow that tiny lawn, but it had taken him a half hour. That was after he finally found the lawnmower in Ellie’s wreck of a garage.

  The search for the mower was probably why his back ached, more than this little flowerbed, he realized. The two hours he spent digging around in the garage, hunting for the equipment. There had been a time when he’d owned a state-of-the-art lawnmower, one that almost pushed itself. One that damn-near mowed the grass for you. He’d had weed trimmers, feather-light and quiet, along with shovels so sharp they melted the ground like butter. But that was before. Now he owned almost none of it. In fact, outside of one lonely shovel, he didn’t own a single gardening tool. He didn’t even have his own trowel. His small yard was nothing but weeds and dirt. That was also not like the old days. He hadn’t so much as glanced at anyone’s garden since he’d quit doing it for a living. It hurt too much. People didn’t understand that. It was amazing how much things could change.

  Daniel looked at his fingernails with thick black dirt under them. The sight was familiar – and that hurt, too. The whole experience had been painful. He’d almost had tears in his eyes when he picked up the plants for the job. Two six-packs of flowers was all he’d bought, and he’d felt like he was carrying lead weights the entire way to the car.

  Not like the old days. No, not at all. He heard Ellie come out onto the porch and he quickly wiped a mixture of dirt and sweat from his face and hands and stood up, looking at her wispy hair dancing around in the breeze.

  “What’dya think?” He gestured around, pointing. “Looks better, yeah?”

  “Oh, Daniel. Thank you. That does look much nicer. Those are lovely flowers.” She stepped off the porch and approached the mailbox. “Pansies, right?”

  “Pansies,” he said with a nod. “Jolly Joker Pansies, to be specific.”

  Ellie shook her head. “Jolly Joker. Funny names, they come up with. Thank you again. This looks so nice, now I don’t even want to move.” She stuck her tongue out with a strange, childish grin. “Of course, I’ll still have to, I know. But yes, this looks much nicer. I can’t tell you how much help you’ve been to me. Come inside for a while, wash up. I made some lemonade.”

  He nodded and handed her the spoon she’d given him to use after his search of the garage had turned up empty on trowels. “I’ll be there in a minute. Let me put the lawnmower away.” When she turned to go, he didn’t move toward the mower but stood instead, just looking around. Gringo lay under the old tree, watching him.

  The ratty-looking tree had put leaves on, and now looked better. More like a tree. Still, there were a few branches that were not showing signs of life. Daniel sighed, knowing he’d eventually offer to climb a ladder and prune the dead parts out.

  “But not today,” he said. Gringo’s ears twitched at him and Daniel smiled a little. “You hear me, dog? No more today.” He’d done enough, for now. He took the lawnmower back to the garage and snarled as he tripped over a pile of wooden crates. Where the hell had those come from? He’d cleared a path to get the mower out, but it was as if the junk had grown back somehow, or crawled there, as though it was alive. He grunted and stacked the crates to the side and fitted the mower into its place.

  Ellie was waiting for him at the kitchen table. She slipped a straw into a glass of lemonade and handed it to him. “Thirsty work, gardening.”

  He nodded and sipped. “Good lemonade.” He held up his glass to hers in a toast, and when they clinked together Ellie smiled broadly.

  “I used fresh… oh! You’re bleeding. Look. What did you do?” She grabbed his wrist and twisted his arm, almost spilling his lemonade. “Look there. Let me get you a bandage.”

  “Oh, it’s alright, Ellie. Just a scratch. I’ve had worse.” He’d damn near lost a finger once when his so-called partner had fork-lifted a pallet of sod down on his hand by accident. “This is nothing, don’t worry about it,” he said, but she was already out of the room.

  She returned with a box of bandages and a bottle of iodine. “Let me clean that up for you.”

  “God. Iodine? No. That stings. It’s just a little scratch.”

  Ellie pursed her lips. “It doesn’t sting as much as an infection. Now hold still.” She grabbed him and swabbed at the cut. Daniel gritted his teeth and tried to think of other things. All thoughts led back to pain, so he gave up on that and just waited. Eventually Ellie pressed the bandage on and stood back.

  “There,” she said. “Better. Now, sit down and rest a bit and drink your lemonade. You must be exhausted after all that.”

  He shrugged. Yes, he was tired. He was tired because he hadn’t slept well. He was tired because he’d worked a double shift yesterday. Was he tired because of the gardening? He didn’t want to think so, but he knew he was; he could feel the muscles in his knees stiffening up on him already, and the elbow that always bothered him in cold weather now ached all the way through as though tiny miners were digging there with pickaxes. “Oh, well,” he said. Ellie looked at him strangely.

  He finished his lemonade and promised to come back soon. He’d reminded Ellie to water the pansies, but he suspected she’d forget. He’d have to do it.

  Ellie held her hand out, cash folded inside it. “Take this,” she said. “Please. You worked so hard.”

  Daniel held his hands out of her reach. “No, no. It was good exercise for me. Glad to do it.” He avoided her eyes. He owed this much to her, at least. It was a small kindness, after what he’d done. He didn’t know if he’d ever feel he’d set things right.

  She gave him a small hug and he left, the screen swinging shut behind him with a bang. Gringo looked up briefly and then went back to sleep. Daniel paused by the mailbox and reviewed his work again, then looked over at the faded House For Sale sign. He pulled on it, trying to straighten it some, and wiped it off with his hands. Maybe he should try to talk her into getting a better sign. A bigger one, or a new one. One that someone might actually see.

  He crossed the street. Greg was out in his front yard, stabbing at the lawn with an aerating tool.

  “Danny!” Greg called. “Beautiful day!”

  “It is.” Daniel leaned on the fence and surveyed Greg’s lawn briefly.

  Greg took off his hat and wiped at his forehead with his arm. “You look a bit peaked. Working too hard?”

  Daniel laughed. Peaked. The word amused him, sounding sort of like it meant you were on top of everything – at your peak – when it usually meant you were at your lowest. “You could say that. Been pulling doubles at the bar.”

  “Yeah. I thought you might be working extra hours, noticed you were gone more. Hey… what happened to your arm?” He pointed at the orange stain.

  “Oh, it’s just a little scratch. I was doing yard work over at Ellie’s.” He turned and pointed across the way. “See the flowers by the mailbox? Mowed the lawn, too. It’s not as nice as yours, but it’s better than it was, for sure.”

  “Scratch?” Greg looked closer and wrinkled his nose. “What’d you use on it? Is that Iodine?”

  “Yeah… well, that was what Ellie had in the house, I guess. Sort of old-fashioned.” Slightly embarrassed, Daniel peered at his arm. She had certainly been liberal in her application: he looked like an attack victim. “Stung like a bitch.”

  “I should say. Wel
l, it’s real nice of you to help her out that way, you know. Next time, come get me and I’ll give you something a little more modern.” Greg shook his head, laughing. “Iodine. My God. I haven’t seen Iodine in years. My mother used to use it on us. Oh, how I hated it. Whenever I got hurt, I’d try to hide from her so she wouldn’t see.”

  “Yeah. I used to do the same thing. But my mom had Peroxide.” Peroxide was a lot less painful than Iodine, but it still stung. He wondered how Ellie would have reacted if he’d brought out the Iodine when she’d cut her hands on the glass. He was glad he hadn’t. “I don’t think I really needed anything. Sort of an overreaction, I guess.”

  Greg positioned his feet and jammed the aerator into the lawn briskly. “Well, better safe than sorry, they say. Keep it clean. What’d you cut it on?”

  Daniel didn’t know. “Probably something in the garage. Lots of junk to get cut on in there, for sure.”

  “Mmm.” Another stab at the lawn. “I’ll bet. Well, you need to take it easy. It’s real nice of you to help her out, but you have to take care of yourself, right?”

  He nodded, then realized Greg wasn’t looking at him. “Yeah. Well, I guess I better get in and get some of my own stuff done. Good luck with the lawn.”

  “Sure thing, Danny. Good to talk to you. Next time you see Ellie, give her my best.”

  “I will. You should visit her; she’d probably really like that.”

  Greg paused for a moment, resting his hands on his hips. “Maybe,” he said. He was nodding when he said it, but Daniel knew what he was really saying was no, thanks. No, thank you. You go do the visiting, and I’ll just let you give her my best. I’m not going over there. Nope, no thanks, no way.

  Why not, Greg? That’s what he wanted to ask. You walk two blocks to visit Mary, three-four times a week. Why won’t you cross the street for Ellie? But he didn’t say it, of course. He just wished Greg luck with his lawn – again – and waved and nodded and went inside.

  Chapter 36

  The barking woke him and he sat up covered in sweat and fury. Barking. God damn this dog and his barking…

  But it was quiet; there was no barking. He fumbled his way to the window and looked out. Nothing there but the midnight moon and the cold March night. But he was sure he’d heard barking. He closed his eyes and concentrated, then went to the front door and swung it open.

  Gringo raised his head from his paws and looked up at him. He’d been sleeping there. He’d been sleeping, and the night was peaceful. Daniel stepped onto the porch and stood, shivering. Silent, all was silent. Not even one bark. He’d dreamed it; he must have. He tried to remember what else he’d been dreaming about, but it was almost all gone. All he had left was unease. He looked down and realized the dog was now sitting next to him.

  “Wasn’t you,” he muttered.

  He looked over at Ellie’s, but her house was dark as dark.

  Chapter 37

  Daniel pounded the tiny nails in, one by one. Ellie had managed to sneak some cash into his pocket after he’d mowed her lawn. When he’d found it there later, he’d decided to spend it on her. New house numbers; her old grey ones were piled by his feet. He stood back and looked at the new ones – all in bright white – and then picked up the watering can and went down to water the pansies around the mailbox.

  Ellie was on the porch waiting for him when he came back up with the mail. “Bless your heart. Come inside.”

  He followed her in and left the mail on the table by the front door. She had lots of mail there already. He thumbed through it briefly, spreading the envelopes out a bit. He recognized envelopes there that he’d brought in weeks ago. “Do you ever go through this mail, Ellie?”

  She shook her head. “It’s all junk. I should throw it away. Come sit down. I’ve been sketching some.”

  She went into the living room and sat on the couch. The coffee table was littered with sketch pads. He sat next to her and picked up one of them to leaf through. Some old drawings: A man sitting. A boy with a toy truck. Her family… He closed the book quickly and picked up another, these mostly of a garden. Here was one she must have just done: she’d drawn her mailbox with pansies around it. “Very good, Ellie.”

  “Oh. I don’t know.” She pointed. “Sit over there. I want to sketch you.”

  He didn’t really want to, but he didn’t have the heart to stop her. So he sat in the chair, an old wing-back with pale yellow upholstery. It was comfortable. Well, not really comfortable, but familiar. Like the handshake of an old friend, maybe, one you haven’t seen in years. But it was comfortable enough, and he sat for a while watching her sketch. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  She laughed. “No. When did you start smoking?”

  He drew a cigarette out of the pack in his pocket and lit it. “First time? I was fourteen.”

  “Gads. That’s young. I was twenty when I started.” She flipped to a new page in the book. “It wasn’t bad for you then, you see. I was trying to look… interesting. Intellectual, I guess.”

  He nodded, watching her hand move back and forth across the pad in her lap. “Did it work?”

  “Oh, sure. Smoking was the thing, back then. I wasn’t pretty, so I had to have something to make me stand out.”

  Daniel looked at her, unsure how to reply. Had he ever seen a picture of her in her youth? He didn’t think he had.

  She made a face, flipped another page and squinted hard at him before she began sketching again. “Age does me that favor, I guess. People assume that I must have been pretty, once. When I was young, you see. But I wasn’t. Age equalizes everyone until none of us look good anymore.” She laughed. “Best camouflage there ever was, right? I’m invisible now.”

  “You aren’t invisible,” he said. But he was thinking of Greg and the funny look he’d had on his face. The look that said she was as good as gone already, so why bother visiting? Tell her I said hi. Maybe she was invisible after all.

  “Do you get along with Greg? Across the street?”

  She paused a moment to consider. “Greg? Oh, sure. He’s alright. Why?”

  “No reason.”

  “Here.” She leaned over and passed the sketches to him. “Which one do you like best?”

  He flipped through them slowly, surprised she’d done so many in such a short time. There were five. “I can’t decide.” He pointed to the two he liked the best: one where he was looking down with his hands in his lap, and one where he was looking off slightly to the side, as though he was watching something outside the window, or out of the corner of his eye. Maybe he had been; he didn’t remember. With his eyes looking off to the side that strange way, it was almost like a self-portrait.

  She tugged these two out of the book and handed them to him. “You keep them both, then. So you’ll always remember me. And I’ll have the others to remember you.”

  He thanked her and took them carefully. When he got home he used magnets to stick them to the refrigerator, and then he stood back and looked at them again, trying to remember what he’d been thinking about when he was looking down so pensively at his lap.

  Chapter 38

  Hector poked his head out from the kitchen and waved his arm. “Danny? You know anything about this machine?”

  “What machine?”

  “Dishwasher, what else? It’s not going right. And the purple light is on.”

  Daniel glanced up from the bar. “Purple light?”

  “The one under the red one. With the little sticker.”

  “I don’t have time for that right now, just… I don’t know. It’s not working at all?”

  “Making a funny sound.” Hector waved his arm again. “Come in here, lookit.”

  Daniel waved at the tickets lined up on the bar. “Can’t leave now. Where’s Bud?”

  “Dunno… he was in the office earlier, but he ain’t now,” Hector said cheerfully. He hovered in the doorway, waiting for instructions, banging out a drum rhythm on the doorjamb wit
h his fingertips. “What should I do?”

  Dammit, Bud. “When this rush is over, I’ll be there. Just do what you can for now.” Daniel sloshed drinks together in a mad rush. When Margie came for her order, he asked her if she knew where Bud was.

  “Just as well you don’t find him, mood he was in.” She dropped off two more drink orders and loaded up her tray as she spoke. “He wasn’t doing anybody any good anyway. I hope he went home.” She picked up the tray, reconsidered, set it back down and leaned over the bar to whisper at Daniel, “I think he was crying.” She picked her tray up and sped off.

  Daniel watched her go and thought about that one. Well, wonderful. An arm went up at the end of the bar, a customer wanting a refill. He made his way up and down the length of the bar for the next twenty or thirty minutes, serving the customers. There was a woman who looked enough like his ex at first glance that his emotions moved to a disturbing double-beat. The jawline, and the way she sat, the way she held her purse under her arm… Then she turned a little, and it became clear it wasn’t her. He was relieved and disappointed at once. It had just been a trick of the light, but he still couldn’t quite meet the woman’s eye when he served her drink.

  And then, suddenly, the rush was over and most of the customers were gone, drained from the bar like water from a bathtub. The woman who looked like his ex was still there, her purse under her arm, her drink half empty. He checked; she didn’t want another. Daniel collected plates and glasses and clinked them into the return racks.