Crows (25 page)

“He's been nice to me,” Robert said.

“And . . . I hear bad things about the No. 1 man.
Bad
things.”

“Joe?”

His father nodded. “His days are numbered,” he predicted with cruel good humor. “You'll be in the driver's seat by the All-­Star break.”

“Joe's a good guy,” Robert said. “He's just a little turned around right now.”

“So
spin
him!” Dave cried sharply, jabbing a finger at his son. “That's how it's done in the world, Rob-­O. If a man is a little turned around, you spin him until he's so dizzy he falls right out of the hunt. That bandoleer he wears! Does he think ­people aren't
cognizant
of that kind of oddball behavior?”

“He's in charge,” Robert said, weary of his father's wind. In all the time he had been in the store no customers had entered, no phones had rung; the world might have come to a halt for his father the day his wife went home.

“I have to proceed on the assumption he will be in charge for the time being,” Robert said.

His father waved a hand and turned his back on his son. “Ah! No killer instinct,” he said.

Robert formed sharp rebuking words but refrained from letting them fly. His father, from the back, looked old and small, with his thin-­skinned pants low on his hips and his shirttail out. With Evelyn gone he looked defenseless.

“Maybe, Dave. I gotta go to work. Sell some balls.”

His father waved a hand without looking at his son, then slipped like a bather through the curtains into the shadowy back room. But he came out again almost immediately, the sound of Robert departing identical to the sound of someone—­wife, customer—­arriving.

R
OBERT, SHORT OF
time, ran through the sunny cold air to the house of his parents. The walk up to the house was clear and so straight through the parallel ranges of snow that it looked carved, shaved and measured with a level.

His mother answered the door holding a book and looking pleased with herself. She gave him a kiss.

“What have you done?” Robert asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I was at the store. Dave is completely lost.”

She had been reading on the couch in a patch of sun and now she resumed her post.

“I was just tired of it,” she declared. “I'm fifty-­five years old and I felt it was time for me to do something else. On my own.”

“But, Dave—­”

She waved a hand. “Nonsense, Dave. He'll survive. He says my not being there is like I died. And there's some truth to that. But this way he's got me to come home to. So it's good practice for him.”

“What do you do all day?”

She stretched, smiling as though the action was faintly sinful. “As little as possible,” she said. “Mostly I read.” She frowned. “Don't look at me like I've let you down. It's an exact replica of the look your father gives me when he leaves for work.” She took a deep breath. “He was starting to bore me, and that
scared
me. I never thought I'd feel that way about him.”

Robert was out of time and told her so.

“Dave brags about you to anyone who will listen,” she revealed, standing. “He goes to his meetings and tells all his friends what a success you are. It enlivens him.”

“Big deal—­assistant manager.”

“To him, it is,” she said. She did the buttons on his coat. Mother and son were nearly the same height. “He's always had me,” she said. “He's never had to be valuable to anyone other than his wife. So for you to become assistant manager of a store you don't own—­that's impressive to him.”

“Do you plan to stay away for good?”

She nodded. “I have retired.”

“What's next for him then? When T-­shirts fold?”

Evelyn shrugged. “He doesn't know it yet, but I'm leaving
that
up to him, too.”

“It will kill him,” Robert said.

“He'll live,” she replied confidently. She had the door open and with a fingertip in the condensation on the storm door window, absently sketched a circle, then divided it like a pie in half, quarters, eighths; by then the heat from her finger made the circle start to run. She kissed her son good-­bye.

A
T
S
PORTS
H
EAVEN, A
package awaited him. Its bulky rectangular shape in the corner of the back room reminded Robert that spring was near, that most of another winter had been put behind.

He said hello to Joe Marsh, who sat in his bandoleer smoking at his desk. “Package for you,” Joe said.

“Yeah,” Robert said. He was tempted to leave the package for later, to open at home. He knew what it was. He knew the month and year in the future when he would finish paying for it. With it, and Duke's new leg, he was heavily committed to installment debt. This frankly amazed him, a man who six months before would not pay to see a movie with the girl he slept with.

Joe Marsh offered a mint from a roll he kept in his bandoleer. Robert accepted the candy; it was pale green with deep red specks imbedded in it. He noticed a half-­eaten link of dried sausage in one of Joe's loops; put there for safekeeping. His father's voice banged in his head and made him embarrassed for Joe Marsh:
cognizant.

“Is that the wet suit?” Joe Marsh asked. The mint had bought him a question or two.

“How'd you know?”

“Saw the credit-­card paper,” he said.

“It will give me a ­couple extra months at each end of the diving season. I got the long-­cuff, three-­finger mitts, ice cap, boots.”

Joe Marsh shrugged. “Snug as a bug. You going to open it?”

“Not here. It'll just get in the way.”

“It's in the way
now
, Bob.” He glanced at Robert. “You ever met Mrs. Marsh?”

“Your wife?”

“Yeah.”

“No,” Robert said. He did not really want to meet her, either. She would stand naked in his imagination.

“She's on her way over,” Joe said. “I'm taking the night off.”

“Any reason?”

He held a ball of crumpled paper in his palm, his wrist cocked as in the days when he was somebody. With a rolling of his shoulders in the chair he mimed an offensive move and launched the paper ball toward a distant wide-­mouthed wastebasket. It went in.

He beamed at Robert. He might have forgotten for a moment where they were; for a moment he was a star again, and Robert a sportswriter whose only responsibility was to spell the names correctly and tell Joe Marsh's story well.

“I've got the blues,” he said, frowning at the last word as if he had just been reminded of the fact. “I'm going to take the wife to a movie in Madison. Maybe dinner. Then—­”

“I know,” Robert interrupted. He did not want the details. Mrs. Marsh might arrive in the small room at any moment to hear her husband's lewd commentary.

Joe Marsh pouted, denied. “Of course, if I leave, Herm will probably show up,” he whined. “I've worked eleven days in a row and no sign of him. He hasn't even called.”

“He probably figures you've got the place under control.”

Joe Marsh's eyes clouded faintly at this thought; to be so trusted, of such intrinsic value. But he knew otherwise and frowned again. He stood and hung the bandoleer on the peg.

“Anyway—­I'm taking the night off.”

“What have you left for me to do?” Robert asked.

Joe Marsh tapped a stack of paper with a red pencil, leaving faint dots. “I left you the ordering here,” he said. “And you'll have to do the books later. We also got a shitload of spring gear in this afternoon. It's in the loading area. Find a place for it and get the kids to stock it for you.” He smiled, spread his hands. “Hey, you're No. 2 here. That means No. 1 can shit on you and call it delegating authority.” His smile cracked unevenly across his face.

Joe Marsh picked up the phone and punched a number. He wadded another ball of paper, holding the phone to his ear with his shoulder. He stood like this for long moments, then hung up.

“She must be on her way,” he said, then shot the paper into the basket. “She almost refused to pick me up. She's got the car, but she wanted
me
to walk over and meet her at the apartment.”

A slender arm passed through the curtains of the back room doorway, a small hand with pink painted nails and a beaten silver spoon ring.

“You here, Joe?” a woman asked in a low voice. She thrust her head in and saw her husband. Robert was behind her, leaning on the desk. She wore her thick brown hair blown into a disciplined cloud of tight curls. She was little, more than foot shorter than her husband, with an appealing weight in the breasts and hips. Her face seemed freshly removed from a bad wind; her skin was very red, with shallow creases and minute pits, as if she had been asleep on a beach. Her eyes were the brown of the very best basketballs. Robert thought he remembered her from the games he had covered years ago; she had sat and rooted Joe Marsh on.

Joe introduced them and she shook his hand. Joe had his coat on and she had her arm through his, already leading him away.

“Ready to go, honey?”

Robert wished Joe Marsh had never said a word about her. Every touch and turn of her frame carried some hidden signal.

“If Herm
does
show up, tell him about the eleven straight days I worked,” Joe said. “Don't sweat all the other stuff. Do what you can.”

Robert nodded. Mrs. Marsh was already out of sight. Then Joe Marsh was gone.

Robert chewed another mint from Joe's bandoleer. He stood trying to decide where to begin work. Mrs. Marsh had had on red stockings, red shoes, and a fur-­collared coat. He saw her clearly standing to cheer Joe Marsh as he lifted free of the defending knot of players to nail the ball home. He saw her hands come together and go away in applause, saw her tight curls shiver. She gasped as the ref rushed in, his whistle shrieking, to call a foul. She took the grip strengthener from her purse and she returned it to the shelf, and when her offer of a bribe was refused and she was free again, she pivoted with the deftness of her husband and walked away.

H
ERM
B
RANCH DID
come to the store that night, and Robert almost laughed at Joe Marsh's prescience; he had a feel for the approaching end of his job.

There was no warning at all over the PA, Herm just appeared in the back room where Robert worked on the ordering.

“Hey, Mr. Sports Scribe,” Herm said jovially, looking around. He held his Russian hat.

“Hello, Herm.”

“The store's a mess,” he complained without rancor. “In one aisle I found two cigarette butts and a gum wrapper, just your generic litter.
One
aisle, this was.”

“We've been busy,” Robert said. “Makes it hard to spring someone loose in the middle of the day to sweep.”

Herm Branch listened carefully to this, one eye shut, one eye doubting.

“You have to
make
time, Robert. ­People are just looking for a reason not to buy something. Dirty floors and dirty walls are the perfect excuse. When were those walls washed last? I recall them being a lighter blue.”

“I'd have to check,” Robert said.

“So check. Better yet, get the walls washed.” He leaned and studied Joe Marsh's hanging bandoleer. His nose twitched once with disgust, as though something in one of the bullet loops had gone bad.

“You say you've been busy? Where are the numbers?”

“You'd have to talk to Joe.”

“I'd like to. Where is he?”

“Night off. He
said
you'd visit on the night he was off. He wanted me to be sure and tell you he's worked the last eleven days straight.”

“OK. You told me,” Herm said. “You've been busy, you
say.
But your numbers don't reflect that. You're way behind my other stores.”

“Look at the markets,” Robert said. “Milwaukee, Madison. Mozart? We can't compete with towns like that.”

“Bull. You're the only game in town.”

“Mozart's been frozen solid since Halloween. We just need a warm breeze and ­people will start thinking sports. We've had a lot of ­people in here just sniffing around. Like they can smell summer somewhere up ahead. You'll get your numbers.”

“Hell, it's nine above today,” Herm said. “How warm does it have to get?”

Robert laughed at this; and though Herm did not join him he ceased his brusque interrogation.

“You like being in charge?” he asked.

“I'm not.”

“You're here and Joe's not. Every time I come in, Joe's gone and you're working. You're doing the ordering. You've got some answers for me. From Joe I get sulking and tales of yesteryear. Your numbers aren't bad, but they're stale. This store has
never
clicked like it should. That lake is a gold mine.”

“You ever thought of selling boats?” Robert asked.

“It's an idea. I'm always wary of competing with the marinas, guys with the space to devote to it. But it's an idea, and that's what I don't get from Joe. I don't get ideas, I don't get enthusiasm, I don't get a hard day's work, I don't get a serious demeanor.” He slapped the bandoleer so hard it spun off its peg and rolled like a hoop across the floor. Mints spewed like dropped coins and cigarettes cracked, leaving trails of tobacco. Herm hung the bandoleer back up. From his coat pocket he took a flattened cigarette butt and compared it with one of Joe's cigarettes.

“Same brand. I picked this up off the store's floor.”

“Circumstantial, Herm.”

The owner bit his lip. “Why do you look out for the guy?”

“I like him. I feel a little sorry for him. He's been good to me.”

“He's been good to you because he's finally found someone he can count on to do
his
work for him.”