Just past the gates, a friend picked Patrick up in a beat-to-shit F150 (legend had it Patrick's pickup had been impounded for his drunk driving), and they drove off south out of town. Casino bound? Probably. Off to spend their paychecks on nickel slots and hard drinking. Gene had mentioned Patrick hadn't had a girlfriend in years, which didn't seem likely. Good old boys like Pat Cleary always had someone to manhandle and treat like shit. Gene believed Patrick frequented prostitutes.
As the pickup rumbled past the Vogel family Volvo, Dean got a good look at Patrick's scar, and sucked in a wincing breath, the truth of it hitting him like a cinderblock. The ragged scar tore a line from the corner of his lips and up over his ear. His shaggy brown rat's-nest hair stopped at the pink gash, then resumed below it in a straggly sideburn. He hadn't even tried to hide it, sweeping his hair back under his cap instead of down over the old wound, wearing it like a badge of honor. The lips themselves were downturned on that side, like a man with Bell's palsy. No, Dean decided, this man had no girlfriend. The man might never have had a girlfriend.
Fucking disfigured him, Dean-o. Jesus Christ. I turned the guy into a goddamn circus freak.
Dean bit down on the back of his fist, studying his eyes in the mirror. Regret stared back at him. He hadn't wanted this. He was honestly sorry for what he'd done, he knew that now. But Patrick had been a monster before Dean hit him with the cinderblock. The injury had just made Patrick's face into a mirror, reflecting the ugliness inside and projecting it to the world.
Dean wondered if Sandman walked with crutches now, or a cane. He'd definitely have a limp, maybe for the rest of his life.
At home that night, Dean lay in the dark, picturing Patrick's scars. He imagined the heft and feel of the concrete chunk in his hand as he swung out with it, the crunch of bone, the breaking-glass sound of Patrick's teeth shattering, the shudder up to his elbow and the pain settling there like he'd hit his funny bone. Patrick hadn't shown up to school for the next week, even the next month. For a while, the other kids had given Dean curious, fearful looks, the sort of looks they might have given a tiger in a cage.
And then, sometime during the summer of that same school year, something funny had happened: Dean realized he'd forgotten all about Patrick. Eugene had smiled awkwardly at him in the street, riding by on his BMX. Life had gone on, and the massive part Patrick had played in his earlier life had never been missed. It was, for a time, as if Patrick Cleary had never existed.
Dean had graduated, moved on. He'd gone to school for archeology, and found it incredibly boring, like being a maid for ancient civilizations with all that dusting and Ziplocking. Patrick had stayed in Dark Pines, starting work at the Rockland Mine at 16, doing odd jobs until they'd let him work underground. A fine job for a Dark Pines boy without an education. He drank. He gambled. He whored.
Dean had dropped out of school, never really fitting in. He'd spiraled for a while, directionless, had gotten into drugs and hard liquor, hitting a new bar almost every night. He'd started at the Garland Sugar factory when his student loan had run out, working and maintaining the centrifuges which separated sugar granules from the "mother liquor," a phrase that reminded him of his mom's boxed wine. It had been a decent job with decent pay, and the best part was when he punched out, he no longer had to think about it.
He'd considered going back to school the following semester for psychology (an attempt to follow once again in Uncle Tim's footsteps), but it would have meant taking more high school courses, and the equivalencies were too demanding, especially with the constant boozing, and his weekend regimen of weed, Ecstasy and cocaine. By the time he'd been laid-off during the financial crisis, he'd worked at the sugar plant ten years. His young life had slipped by him, barely remembered through a haze of toxins. He'd had girlfriends, but none steady, no one to write home about. The moment they'd seen what a lost cause he was, they'd all run. No friends he'd have called close. Where did you go when you ran out of options? The Armed Forces seemed the best, and somehow easiest, choice.
That was how Dean Vogel and Patrick Cleary, two very different men—one smart, one thickheaded, one middle-class, the other poor, one with all the opportunities in the world, the other limited by the cards he'd been dealt—had ended up in virtually the same place during the summer of their middle-school reunion.
Dean had taken Patrick's choices away from him. But Patrick had done the same for him, long before Dean returned the favor. They were men haunted by the mistakes of the past. Gingerbread Men. Dean had run all the way across the world; Patrick had run in place. But the past would always catch up with them.
And someday it would eat them whole.
ON SUNDAY, DEAN was jogging along Quarry Road toward Dark Pines Estates on the outskirts of town, close to the river lock. The estates, in this case, were mobile homes. He jogged rather than drove because he wanted to meet Patrick with a clear head, and jogging put him in a Zen state. Also, Dean had found bumping up the adrenaline before a conflict helped keep the mind and body sharp when that conflict arose.
Just outside of town, an orange sign declared: DANGER COUGAR IN AREA.
Here be dragons, Dean thought. Beware of dog. Caution: Patrick Cleary sighted. Do not feed the fuckin' animal.
He chuckled.
A honk startled him. He threw a look over his shoulder, still jogging on the soft gravel shoulder of the road, and recognized the approaching hatchback as the same car from Catherine's driveway. The sun reflecting off its windshield, he couldn't see inside at the driver. Probably the man he'd met the other week, Catherine Priest's husband—though, most likely, her name was no longer Priest.
The passenger window zipped down as the car crept alongside him. He slowed enough to peer inside.
Catherine sat hunched over the drive shaft, looking up at him, just as perfect as ever. "Dean Vogel," she said with a grin. She looked out at the empty road, the miles and miles of pine stands and farmland ahead of them. "What are you doing out here?"
For a moment, Dean couldn't speak. He caught his breath, swallowed. "J-jogging," he said finally.
"I can see that. Jogging where? The lock? There's nothing out here but cows and trees."
"I like the view," he managed, between breaths. "It's peaceful. What are—" Another swallow. "What are you doing out here?"
"Grandmother's house I go," Catherine said with a somewhat desolate grin.
Dean peered into the back seat. "I don't see a picnic basket," he said.
"What?"
"Never mind."
"Actually, I'm on my way to visit her in the hospital. Alzheimer's, Parkinson's: you name it, she's got it. I'm supposed to see her today, but I've got some errands to run in the city first." She scrutinized him. "You know, there is something between here and the city, but it's not much to look at." She left a pregnant pause, long enough for Dean to realize what she meant. "Dark Pines Estates?" she said. "The trailer park?"
"Never heard of it."
Her face lighted with an awed smile. "You're going to see him, aren't you?"
"I don't... I don't know who you're—"
"Oh, come on, Dean. You know you could never lie to me." An eyebrow rose. "You sure could run, but you never could lie."
Dean relented, nodding.
"You know he wants to kill you, don't you? You're not—? Dean, you're not going to hurt him again, are you?"
"For your information, Catherine, I'm going there to apologize."
She laughed and shook her head. "You must have a death wish." She opened the passenger door. "Well, come on. Get in."
"I thought you were visiting Grandma."
"If you're going to let Patrick Cleary bash your head in, you'll probably want a witness."
Dean laughed. "Real nice." He looked up ahead. Trailer Park Road wasn't even in sight yet, let alone the estates themselves. "All right," he said, and slipped in beside her.
"YOU KNOW I thought that was you at the store, two or three weeks back," she said as she drove. Her eyes n
ever left the road, hands never roaming from ten and two. She wore a buttoned-up white blouse and a black skirt, flesh-toned pantyhose and flat black shoes, and still draped herself in the same perfume, a flowery, orange scent that filled the car yet wasn't at all overpowering. "Then my cousin mentioned a strange man at the door. Described you to a tee."
"Your cousin?"
"You met him. In his robe and those silly little fuzzy slippers of his?"
Dean clued in. "Oh! Your cousin!" Suddenly self-conscious, he dialed down his enthusiasm. "Seems like a nice guy."
Finally, she favored him with a glance. The scrunchie was in—red today. The gray in her hair was more prominent in the sun, as were the fine lines around her lips and eyes. Dean thought they made her somehow prettier than she'd been. She didn't try to erase them, hiding herself with makeup and hair dye, presenting herself as a woman who had lived—maybe not an easy life, or a particularly exciting one, but a life. Catherine had the look of someone who knew her best days were ahead; looking at her made Dean feel the same. "You thought he was my boyfriend," she said, before returning her gaze to the windshield.
"Husband, actually," he said.
She raised her left hand off the wheel a moment. No ring—why hadn't he noticed when he'd seen her at the grocery store? She threw him another glance, a smile in the eyes but not on the lips.
"You really don't have to come with me," he said.
"It's no trouble. Besides, someone needs to protect you. Unless you're hoping to find a cinderblock on Patrick's lawn."
The joke caught him off guard. He didn't know how to react.
"I'm sorry," she said. "That wasn't funny, was it?"
"No, it... Yeah, it wasn't funny. But it's okay."
"And I guess we really don't have time to fill each other in on our lives. There's Trailer Park Road."
"You know I always found that weird. The road's called 'Trailer Park' but the trailer park's called 'Estates.'"
"Probably couldn't get the city to change it."
"Yeah." Silence. "Can I turn on the radio?"
"Nervous?"
"About Patrick?" He shook his head too eagerly. "No. I've been practicing. I've played out every scenario a dozen times."
Her nostrils flared. "But you are nervous."
He nodded. "You make me nervous."
She laughed. "Oh god, Dean! Still?"
"Always," he said. He remembered the invitation he'd gotten in the mail, wondered if she would go to the reunion. "Hey, you're not—"
Catherine glanced at him, curious. "What?"
"Nothing. Never mind."
She shook her head and flicked the turn signal. Tick-tock-tick-tock. They turned onto Trailer Park Road.
"Well. This is it," she said forebodingly.
"This is it," he agreed. His right hand gripped the storage compartment in the door as they approached the attendant station. Catherine zipped down her window. A plump woman in her 50s sat behind the glass, wearing a sweater with I (HEART) MY GRANDKIDS printed on it, and regarded them with a smile from under her bucket hat. "Welcome to Dark Pines Estates, how can I help you?"
"We're looking for the Cleary Estate," Catherine said.
Dean snorted laughter. The woman eyed him with scorn before consulting her book. "Number 37. Go two blocks up, and take a left. Mr. Cleary's house is at the end."
"Thank you very much, ma'am," Catherine said, and drove ahead. The lady looked after them, then busied herself with something at the desk. It looked to Dean like she'd picked up the phone. Maybe someone had called in, but maybe—
You're being paranoid, Dean-o.
—she was calling out.
"Last house on the left," Catherine said. "How apropos."
"I don't know what that means."
She snickered.
And there it was: the epitome of bottom-rung. The other homes were pleasant little single- and double-wides, most of them, anyhow, with flower pots and shrubbery and barbeques and neat little rectangles of lawn. Some were flecking paint, but many were vibrantly colored. As far as mobile homes went, they really were estates.
Patrick's, on the other hand, was a caravan resting on cinderblocks. Every bit of metal exposed to the elements was rusty, the license plate rendered unreadable, and nearly all of the paint had flaked off the sides. Four ruts lay in front of the door where his truck had once been parked. The motorcycle hidden under a tarp hadn't been moved in a long while; dirt and pine needles were crusted into the treads. Crushed beer cans lay just about everywhere, cigarette butts everywhere else. A tree stump chopped off and skinned at a height of three or four feet had a length of frayed yellow rope tied around it. A kettle BBQ, the kind that eats charcoal in its orange Pac-Man mouth, stood at the foot of the steps. The place smelled like burnt meat, lighter fluid and urine.
"Wow," Catherine said. "This is end of the road, all right."
"Yeah," Dean said. He wasn't surprised. The Cleary family hadn't had much to begin with; it wasn't as though Patrick had started from the top, and Dean had taken the rest away with an almost casual swipe of a concrete block. He wasn't pleased with what he'd done. He felt no sense of Schadenfreude.
She unbuckled her seatbelt. "Well? You sure you still want to do this?"
Dean stared at the blinds in the darkened windows, some slats broken, others bent, a few missing entirely. In one window, likely the bedroom, Patrick had draped an AC/DC Highway to Hell flag sideways. "I have to," he said, and opened the door. It took him another moment to muster the courage to haul himself out. Catherine got out on her side first, and he followed.
A dog barked inside. A single finger lifted the blinds with an audible scrape against the window pane. Only darkness lay beyond.
As they reached the steps, the screen door swung out violently and banged against the wall. The man stood in the doorway in graying long johns and dirty socks, no shirt. His ribs were visible, the belly distended by beer, giving him the impression of life-threatening malnutrition, but men like him were built to last. A few tattoos adorned the pale skin above his farmer's tan: an anchor on his right upper arm, blue and mostly faded, a blood-red heart with some word in a scroll—MOM?—on the left, the phrase BAD 2 THE BONE in black calligraphic letters etched over his left nipple, and THOROGOOD over the right.
The door swung back. He caught it without taking his eyes from his visitors.
"Ohh, well well well," Patrick Cleary said with caustic good cheer. "Looky looky looky, the gang's all here, huh?" The scar was even worse up close. It hadn't split cleanly, as Dean had thought when he was a kid. The wound was jagged, carved upward in a rugged grimace, giving the left side of his face a vaguely amphibious look, crocodilian. Where the scar met his lips, a bubbly white crust had formed. Fresh spittle pooled there, and he sucked it away as his gaze shifted between Catherine and Dean: a man following a tennis match. "Guess you couldn't wait for the reunion? Had to drive all the way out to Dark Pines Shit-states in your prissy little hatchback and see me post-fuckin'-haste, that right?"
Catherine had stopped a few feet behind Dean. She came to his side now.
"You bring the cooze for backup?" Patrick wondered with an amused little grin. He twiddled his fingers at Catherine. "Hi, cooze. Been a long time."
"Fuck you, Patty."
"Heh, yeah. Fuck me. She got some mouth on her. I bet you like that, huh, Pean?" His eyes remained on Catherine, twinkling with mischief. "That pretty, smart little mouth."
"Leave her alone," Dean said.
Patrick's eyes returned to his quarry. "It speaks," he said. "I was pretty sure for a while there you only barked. Woof-woof, Peaner. Woof fuckin'—" He seemed to remember something, and peered back inside the house. "Where is that shithead fuckin' dog, anyways?" He called out: "You best not be on my bed, Dean! I will whup your sorry ass, you mangy mutt!"
Catherine grasped Dean's arm. He turned to look at her, saw her teeth clenched, the jaw squared, her lips curled in a snarl.
Patrick turned back to them. "
That's right, I called the fuckin' dog Dean. How ya like that, shithead?"
"That's pretty funny, Patrick," Dean admitted.
"It is, ain't it? You know what I like most about having a dog?" His eyes twinkled. "I come home after a long, shitty day at the pits, and he wags his tail, lookin' up at me with those dopey bloodhound eyes, and I don't pet him—no sir. You wanna know what I do?"
"I don't think so."
Patrick ignored him. "I give him a swift kick in his sorry ass, that's what. And he'll whimper and scurry off to the bedroom, and when I come to bed, he licks my fuckin' hand. Because that's what a good dog does." He beamed a smile at them, proud of his viciousness. "It takes its lickin', and begs for more."
The two men studied each other, gunslingers at high noon, though it was only just past nine, and neither man was armed. At least, Dean hoped Patrick wasn't carrying.
"I came to apologize," Dean said, "but I see now that was a mistake. You never changed—no, that's not right. You got worse. You're a sadistic, violent piece of shit, and I'm glad for what I did to you."
"Bad to the motherfuckin' bone," Patrick conceded, dragging the back of a thumb along his scar. "I ain't changin' for nobody."
"Let's go," Dean said, holding out a hand to Catherine. She gave him a surprised look, then took it. They turned back to the car.
"Uh-uh, oh hell no," Patrick said from behind them. "You don't turn your back on me, you little fuck."
Dean looked back in time to see Patrick jerk a revolver out from the back of his long underwear as he took to the steps. His sock feet squelched in a mud puddle at the foot of the stairs. The Smith & Wesson Model 19, the short-barreled version of Dirty Harry's .357 Magnum, jet-black instead of chrome, and riddled with scuff-marks. He aimed it somewhere between Dean and Catherine; the ambiguity of his aim made it all the more lethal. He could just as easily shoot Catherine as his intended victim. Or both of them.
"Get the fuck in the house," Patrick said.
"He's not gonna shoot us," Catherine said, urging Dean along by his hand. "There's people everywhere."
Gristle & Bone Page 15
