The Last Kind Word

by David Housewright

  Life shifts, doesn’t it, I told myself, as the days pass and circumstances change. If I had remained in St. Paul with Nina, my life would have continued unaltered. I would never have given Josie so much as a passing glance, much less a thought. Yet I came up here at the behest of the ATF and now I found myself thinking of her affectionately, thinking of her in ways that invited disaster.

  You’ve got to get the hell outta here, my inner voice warned me. Get out before you do something that you’ll have to keep secret for the rest of your life.

  EIGHT

  I woke early, went upstairs, and cleaned up as best I could in the bathroom without disturbing Josie, then snuck back downstairs again. I found the ingredients and made coffee. While it was brewing, I rummaged through Josie’s refrigerator, where I found eggs and shredded Swiss cheese in a plastic pouch. There were hash browns and breakfast sausage in the freezer and onions in the cupboard. I chopped the onions and sausage and fried them up. When the sausage was no longer pink, I added the browns, seasoned them with salt and pepper, and cooked them until they were heated through. I took the mixture off the heat, added the shredded cheese, and stirred the ingredients together until the cheese melted. I poured the mixture into a brownie pan and made four indentations with a spoon. I cracked open the eggs and poured them into the indentations without breaking the yolks. Afterward, I put the pan into the refrigerator.

  While I waited, I explored Josie’s home. It was neat and tidy, or at least neater and tidier than my place. For someone who claimed she didn’t read, Josie had a surprising number of books, including a volume of poetry by Carol Connolly, the poet laureate of St. Paul. She had a lot of framed photographs and posters on her wall, too, most of them of Paris.

  I heard Josie stirring upstairs, so I preheated the oven. When it reached 350 degrees, I popped the egg dish inside. Twenty minutes later I called to her. Josie came into the kitchen wearing a pale blue terrycloth robe and nothing else that I could see. Her face had been washed, but not her hair, which stuck out at odd angles.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked. She didn’t seem surprised by my presence, just annoyed.

  “I didn’t know how to get back to the cabin, so I slept on your sofa.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  I filled a coffee mug and set it on the table. She sat down across from it and took a sip. “This is good,” she said.

  “Of course it is.”

  She drank it with both hands. “Last night—did we?” she asked.

  I fought the impulse to tease her. “No,” I said.

  “I didn’t think so.”

  I carved out a square of the egg dish with a spatula, slipped it onto a plate, and slid in front of her.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  “Breakfast.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Try it.”

  “I said I’m not hungry.”

  “I need you to eat.”

  “Oh, you need me to eat, do you? Like suddenly that’s the most important thing in your world.”

  “I need you to feel better than you do now.”

  “Why?”

  “If we’re going to spend the day together I don’t want you to be all cranky because you have a hangover. Now eat.”

  She did, reluctantly taking a forkful and then another. “Dammit, Dyson,” she said. “This is delicious. You cook better than I do; you make better coffee…”

  “I’m practically perfect in every way,” I said. I was quoting Mary Poppins, but Josie didn’t catch the reference.

  Nina would have, my inner voice said. She wouldn’t have a hangover, either—she knows how to drink. And if she did have a hangover, she’d still look terrific. She doesn’t even own terrycloth.

  Don’t you forget it, I told myself.

  We ate together in silence. To break it, I mentioned the photos and posters of Paris on the walls.

  “The one of the Eiffel Tower is my favorite,” she said.

  “It looks even better at night,” I said.

  “You’ve been to Paris?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Couple years ago.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “Very much. I didn’t really see that much of it, though. Just the tourist stuff.”

  “Can you speak French?”

  “A little. I’m better with Spanish.”

  “I want to go to Paris so bad. After this is over … Have you ever thought about going back?”

  “Many times.”

  Josie drank her coffee and ate her breakfast. The air vibrated with all the words she left unsaid.

  You have got to get out of here, my inner voice told me yet again.

  * * *

  It took Josie an hour to get dressed. It was an hour well spent, I decided but didn’t say aloud. Twenty minutes later we returned to the cabin on Lake Carl. We found the old man sitting at the picnic table on the deck. An impressive display of empty beer cans was already arrayed in front of him despite the early hour, and the way he kept adding to it, you’d have thought his stomach was on fire.

  “Where the hell have you been?” he wanted to know.

  He was speaking to Josie, not me. She attempted to explain, but the old man stopped her when she got to the part where I spent the night at her place.

  “He did what?” he said.

  “Dad, nothing happened.”

  I reached for one of the old man’s beers. He slapped at my hand and I pulled it back.

  “You spent the night with my daughter?” Technically, it was a question, yet the old man made it sound like a damning accusation.

  “Nothing happened,” Josie repeated. “After he put me to bed—”

  “He put you to bed?”

  “He slept on the sofa in my living room.”

  “And you let him? You let him?”

  Josie’s face expressed a silent apology to me. I smiled it away. Parents, more often than not, must take responsibility for their children, must take much of the credit or blame for the way they turn out. Children, on the other hand, cannot be held accountable for their parents. After all, they have no choice in the matter.

  “I had thought about ravishing her defenseless body,” I said, “but I knew you wouldn’t like it.”

  The old man’s eyes narrowed. “Are you making fun of me?” he asked.

  “Yes, I am. Listen, Dad—has your daughter ever done anything that made you ashamed of her?”

  “No.” He didn’t even pause to think about it.

  “Well, then.” I reached for a beer. This time he let me take it. I popped it open and took a sip. “Moving on.”

  “I can’t stay here,” Josie said. “I have work, such as it is. Do you need me for anything, Dyson?”

  “Not until tonight.”

  That caught the old man’s attention. His eyes swept from his daughter to me and back again.

  “The dark side of midnight,” Josie said.

  “Exactly so,” I said.

  She was gone a moment later. I sat at the table across from the old man. I asked one question—“How’s it going?” His answer was surprisingly long and illuminating. I suspect the beer had something to do with it. Up until that moment I had dismissed him as being little more than an aging hippie. Still, we are all rarely just one thing, and Josie’s father was also a weathered, callused, tired old man, the kind that had worked hard his entire life with every expectation of having something to show for it at the end. Only the paper mill he had given his life to closed, taking the hard-earned pension he had been promised with it—the owners had looted the fund to pay for their own salaries and bonuses. When he heard the news, the old man’s best friend of nearly sixty years put a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

  “He thought his life was all behind him,” the old man said. “Couldn’t see no way of going forward. Didn’t have much of a family, no one to help him out, no Iron Range Bandits. It broke my heart what he did, yet I’ve thoug
ht about doing it once or twice myself.”

  “Except you have a family that cares about you.”

  He nodded and drank more beer. His eyes glazed over, and for a moment I thought he might start weeping.

  “I shoulda done better,” he said. “Taken care of my family. I shoulda done better. They shouldn’t be worrying about me now, taking care of me. That’s not the way it’s supposed to work.”

  “Sure it is,” I said. The reason I had quit the St. Paul cops to take the reward on the embezzler was to give my father a rich and carefree retirement. Unfortunately, he died six months later.

  “Would they be doin’ what they’re doin’ if not for me?” the old man asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Dyson, you gotta do me a favor.”

  “If I can.”

  “Will you promise?”

  “If I can.”

  “Take care of my JoEllen. David, too. All of ’em. Take care of all of ’em. Don’t let nothing bad happen. Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  I meant it when I said it. I just didn’t know how I was going to manage to keep Josie and the Bandits from harm and still do the job I had been sent there to do.

  Dave Skarda emerged from the cabin. He stood in the center of the deck wearing nothing but a thin pair of shorts that were far too tight for him. Back when I played ball, my friends and I would have called them “crowd pleasers.”

  “What’s all the noise?” he asked.

  “He walks, he talks, he wiggles his belly like a reptile,” the old man said. “It’s about time you got up.”

  “Why? Is there somewhere I need to be?” Skarda moved to the picnic table, picked up the old man’s beer can, and took a chug. He returned the can and sat down. “Another day in paradise.”

  “Get dressed,” I said. “We need to sneak over to your place.”

  “What for?”

  “So I can steal some of your clothes and other supplies.”

  “Buy your own shit. You’ve got more money than I do.”

  “I spent most of the money from the Silver Bay job,” I said. I explained what I spent it on and why.

  “That worked?” Skarda asked. “Just switching locks?”

  I looked over at the old man. “He seems impressed,” I said.

  “You are a caution, Dyson. Won’t that be dangerous, though, going over t’ Dave’s place?”

  “Danger is my middle name. ’Course, my first name is Avoid, and At All Costs is my last name, so … Anyway, I don’t think the cops are looking for us that hard. Considering how many people know we’re here, they could have scooped Dave and me up with a butterfly net by now.”

  “In that case, bring back some more beer, will ya?”

  * * *

  Skarda did not live in anything a city boy would call a neighborhood. It was just a string of houses between the county road and the forest. We parked the Jeep Cherokee in his driveway. Skarda’s place had a woman’s decorative touch, yet there was no sign that a woman actually lived there. He opened some windows and went to the refrigerator. He found a couple of Leinenkugels. It wasn’t Summit Ale; still, it was a damn sight better than the swill the old man drank. Skarda led me to the deck on the back of his house that had a nice view of a stream that cut through the forest.

  While we drank the Leinies, Skarda told me his story. It wasn’t particularly original. He was merely another casualty of the housing crisis. His company laid off ten percent of its workforce. Then another ten. Then another, until his seniority could no longer protect him. He had a couple of weeks’ salary coming, plus what seemed at the time to be a generous severance package. Then there was unemployment. However, Skarda also had mortgage payments, car payments, credit card bills, health care payments he now had to make himself because he lost his coverage when he lost his job, plus gas, oil, and insurance for the car, phone, cable, trash collection, utilities, electricity, and groceries.

  “When we needed a new car, I got credit,” Skarda said. “Never had no trouble getting credit for anything, and when we reached the limit on our credit cards the company just raised the limit. Then came the depression—don’t fucking tell me it’s just a recession.

  “Liz was wonderful,” Skarda said. “She never got depressed, at least not that I ever saw. Not even when we were wondering how we were going to pay this bill or that bill. She figured it would all work out somehow. Gradually, though, as things became more serious, more precarious, and I was spending more and more time going out with Roy and Jimmy, going out to the bars and the strip club, watching Claire perform, getting drunk—it was all my fault, I know that. One day Liz up and left. Walked out of the house. Didn’t pack. Didn’t say anything. Just walked out. I called her parents and spoke to her over the phone. I begged her to come back. She said it would be better for both of us, easier if we went our separate ways for a while. Not a divorce. Just—it was just until things got better, she said.”

  “Do you think things will get better if you steal?” I asked.

  “Money was our only problem. The lack of money. I get money, she’ll come back.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing. Instead, I asked to borrow Skarda’s facilities. We went upstairs, found clothes and bathroom supplies, and packed them in suitcases. I laid out a change of clothes on Skarda’s bed. Afterward, he went downstairs while I took a shower. I’m told that aboard U.S. naval vessels sailors are allotted only two minutes of fresh water. Anything beyond that is considered a “Hollywood shower.” I showered like I was a three-time Oscar winner, long and lavishly.

  While I rinsed my hair, I made plans that would get me on the road by tomorrow afternoon. Afterward, I dressed and made myself look pretty. I left the bedroom and walked to the carpeted staircase. It was while descending the staircase that I saw Skarda. His back was to the sliding doors that led to his deck. His hands were up. There was a frightened expression on his face. I didn’t blame him for the expression. A man was standing in front of him and pointing a handgun at his heart. I would have been afraid, too.

  I crept down the staircase as quietly as possible. To his everlasting credit Skarda did not look at me, did not speak. He just stood there listening as the man said, “I’m sorry, Dave. I really am. I need the reward money.”

  I crossed the living room, coming up behind the shooter. Along the way, I picked up a long-nose lighter that Skarda had used to start the logs in his fireplace.

  “You know how things are,” the shooter said.

  I grabbed a fistful of his hair and yanked backward. At the same time, I jammed the working end of the lighter against his throat.

  “Drop the gun,” I said. I gave him an extra-hard poke. “Drop it.”

  He dropped the gun. It bounced against the carpet. I shoved him hard away. His knee hit the edge of a chair and he fell. I picked up the gun, a double-action, 9 mm SIG Sauer. Nice.

  “Oh no,” the man said. “Oh no.”

  It was the first time I got a good look at him. It was the bartender I had met at Buckman’s roadhouse the night before. Skarda came close and shouted a few obscenities at the bartender. I thought he might kick him a few times while he was down, but he didn’t.

  “I’m sorry,” the bartender said.

  “Yes, you are,” I said.

  “He was going to turn me in,” Skarda said. “He was watching the place hoping I’d show up so he could turn me in.”

  “Yeah, I gathered that. I don’t know why, though.”

  “For the reward.”

  “There is no reward, Dave. The Minnesota Department of Corrections has over two hundred and seventy fugitives in the wind, and they haven’t offered a reward for any of them. The only people who offer rewards are bail bondsmen looking to protect their investment. Have you posted bond?”

  “I never got the chance.”

  “So there is no reward.”

  I tossed the lighter in the bartender’s lap so he’d know what a putz he’d been.
/>   “Oh no,” he said.

  “Turning on your own people for money—tsk, tsk, tsk. What would Josie say?”

  “I was hoping she’d never know it was me.”

  I checked the SIG. It was loaded, all right. I parked in the chair next to the bartender. He looked at me, the gun, then back at me again.

  “What are we going to do with him?” Skarda asked.

  “Shoot him and bury his body in the woods behind your house,” I said.

  “No.” Skarda and the bartender spoke the word in unison.

  “Are you sure, Dave? I know why this guy doesn’t like the idea…”

  “No,” Skarda repeated.

  I turned to the bartender. “Listen—what’s your name, anyway?”

  “Scott,” the bartender said.

  “Listen, Scott—how much money do you need?”

  “Only five thousand dollars…”

  “Only five thousand dollars,” Skarda repeated.

  “It’s the tourist season, and I always do well. I just need some money to tide me over, to pay my suppliers. I’m COD with some of ’em. Five thousand and I’ll be good.”

  “All right. I’ll pay you the money, but you’re going to earn it.”

  Scott gazed into Skarda’s eyes for a few beats. They both seemed confused.

  “What do I need to do?” the bartender asked.

  “Whatever I tell you, when I tell you. You can start by getting some Summit Ale in that dive you own. I’ll be in later tonight.”

  “When—when will I get the money?”

  “When the job is over.”

  “What job?”

  “The other thing you can do is keep your ears open. I want to know the gossip. I want to know what people are talking about, especially Brian Fenelon and what’s-her-name, Claire de Lune.”

  “You’re not going to tell me what the job is?”

  “I could, Scott, but then I really would have to kill you.”

  From his expression, he didn’t like that idea at all. He kept looking at Skarda as if he expected Dave to help him. As usual, Skarda just looked confused.

  I stood and offered the bartender my hand. He took it and I helped him up. “See you later,” I said.