Flyers (9781481414449) (3 page)

Pop had pulled into the driveway just as Mom and a guy who was
supposed
to be his friend were coming off the front steps and heading for the cab that was waiting to take them to the airport. I figure Margaret must have called Pop at his office to tell him what was
happening because it was rare for him to come home midmorning like that. Not only that but he seemed to have arrived ready for business. As easygoing as Pop generally is, he's always had a hop-up-and-down kind of temper when the situation calls for it, and this time he seemed to feel it did. This was understandable since just a few weeks earlier he'd not only gotten this guy off on a felony embezzlement charge but then had offered him an out-of-town place to stay until the publicity died down. When you think about it, the whole deal was pretty raw.

Pop took his time getting out of his car and strolled up to where Mom and the embezzler were coming down the flagstone sidewalk with their suitcases. When he got to them, he took a little more time studying the guy up and down, and then he unloaded a quick right and a quick left into the guy's head. The poor schmo had obviously underestimated Pop, which people who don't know him well enough tend to do, seeing only his modest stature, his gray hair, and his normally sweet disposition, and not knowing it isn't good to get his Irish up. The next thing I knew the schmo was laid out across the front lawn. My mother opened up her compact and took a few seconds to check her makeup one more time, and then said to Pop as if she were asking about the weather, “You don't really think this changes anything, do you?”

“I believe it does!” Pop bellowed, all warmed up now and rocking back on his heels and slurring his words slightly in that way of his which didn't seem to have much to do with whether or not he'd been drinking. “If nothing else, it makes it easier for me to reclaim my shoes!” He then proceeded to pull his Italian cap-toe Oxfords off the make-yourself-at-home and
help-yourself-to-it ingrate, who was still flat on his back and staring up at him glassy-eyed.

“I think that's your suit too, Pop,” I told him, because it did look like one of his and I always hated to see Pop get the short end of things.

“Good eye, Gabriel, my boy!” Pop rasped out enthusiastically. “I think it might be one of mine at that!” He started yanking the suit off the guy right there on the lawn, handing me the jacket and the vest and then shaking the guy out of the pants—all without bothering to undo any buttons or zippers, so the suit suffered some in the transaction.

A few minutes later as we walked into the house together, Pop, holding his Oxfords in one hand and rubbing my head with his other, told me matter-of-factly, “You know, Gabriel, I'm beginning to think that sonavabitch was guilty after all.”

That's the last any of us saw of my mother, or for that matter, the embezzler who got ripped out of the suit, which incidentally, turned out not to be Pop's at all. That was par for the course. Pop always did give me more credit for my abilities than I deserved.

I don't think Pop ever completely got over that day, but it wasn't too long before he'd pulled himself together and things went more or less back to normal. Things took another short turn for the worse a few years later when Margaret died, but Pop managed to pull himself out of that one quicker yet, I think because he realized Margaret's dying had been harder on Ethan and me than our mother's leaving, since Margaret was the one who'd practically raised us.

We never got another full-time housekeeper, but Pop did hire a cook, Jennie, a former student of Bo's mom who came highly recommended by her, and she
prepared our evening meals five days a week, Sunday through Thursday, as well as seeing that we had lunches waiting for us on the days following. Fridays and Saturdays we'd eat out, generally at Willie's, which was pretty much the only good restaurant in town. Jennie's job description had gradually grown over the years to take up what she felt was the slack—things like doing dishes, washing clothes, and watering plants—and at the rate we were going, I figured she'd probably be full-time before too long. So all things considered we made out all right. The only thing was, in the past few weeks I'd seen some disturbing signs that Pop might be drifting off again, and that was why I was making a special effort to keep track of him.

The other guys stayed at our camp and Rosasharn and I set out to find Pop. Even though Jeremy had told me that every time he'd turned around in our driveway, the place looked pretty deserted—no lights on, and no Pop's car—I was still hoping to find him home. But he wasn't there, so we headed for town.

I figured if I could catch Pop before he left Willie's, I'd have a pretty good shot at getting him home without too much hassle. Ethan and I had had dinner with him there earlier and he'd seemed in halfway decent spirits at the time. When we'd left to head out to our campsite, he'd stayed on to talk to some friends from Saratoga. I hoped they weren't drinkers. Once Pop got started on the wrong foot, he could be a rip.

Rosasharn and I pulled up in front of Willie's a few minutes later. Rosasharn loved Pop and wanted to go in to say hello, which I wouldn't have minded except he was still in his Green Guy costume. I'd grabbed the headpiece off him as we were pulling into town and I caught a glimpse of him under the first streetlight. I
figured his car could attract enough attention on its own. Plus I didn't want to run the risk of having Ray see him looking like that and putting two and two together.

“Thanks, big guy,” I said as I got out. “I'll tell Pop you were asking for him.”

Rosasharn gave me his Curly wave-off and finessed the clutch for his ferocious-sounding second-gear takeoff.

Pop was on his corner stool at the bar when I walked in. He seemed to be in halfway decent shape, although with Pop it was hard to tell anything was wrong until he was pretty much three sheets to the wind. But just finding him still at Willie's where Charlie could look out for him was a good sign. Charlie was the regular bartender at Willie's, and he had a fine line to walk when it came to keeping Pop on the straight and narrow. If he tried to cut Pop off, or even delivered the drinks too slowly, there was the risk Pop would wander off and go someplace else where he'd be unchaperoned and could get into some real trouble. So whenever Pop seemed up for some serious drinking, Charlie did his level best to keep him there until I came for him, while at the same time trying to keep him as sober as possible for as long as possible. Charlie wasn't much in the personality department, but I really appreciated him for doing that.

“How're ya doing, Pop?” I said, coming up behind him.

Pop turned toward me, his face wrinkling into a melancholy smile. “You know who this guy is?” Pop said, squinting at me, but talking to Charlie.

“I've seen him around,” Charlie said, nodding into the big bar mirror at me as he stacked a row of clean glasses.

“Come 'ere and let me have a look at you,” Pop
said, even though I couldn't have gotten much closer without climbing onto his lap. That's the way Pop was. He always had to have a look at me. It didn't matter if I'd only been away from him a few hours, or even a few minutes. He was the same way with Ethan.

“I ask you, Charlie,” Pop said, wrapping his hand around the back of my neck and studying me with a sad and sleepy kind of awe, “what'd I ever do to deserve a kid like this?” He pulled me in even closer.

Charlie gave me a half smile. He knew the routine.

Pop ruffled my hair and continued. “How's a no-account old codger like myself end up with the kind of boys I have? That's what I'd like to know.”

“Somebody made a mistake upstairs,” Charlie said.

“You're darn tootin',” Pop told him. “It was a great and wonnerful mistake of cosmic proportions. A
magnificent
cosmic mistake.”

“Rosasharn says hello, Pop.”

“Rosasharn? He said to say hello, did he?” Pop's wistful smile broke into a wide grin. “Raaahaaa,” he rasped out. “Now there's a man after my own heart. That's another wonnerful thing about you, Gabriel. You've got the very best friends in the whole world. The whole world.”

“You haven't done so bad there yourself, Pop.” It was true. Despite whatever else anybody might say about Pop, you'd be hard pressed to find somebody who didn't like him. Even without all the legal favors he'd done for people over the years, lots of times leaving state senators, and at least one time the Governor of New York himself, waiting while he gave free advice to a neighbor who had a contract problem or a widow
worried about protecting her estate from a gambling son-in-law, the fact remained it was hard to know Pop without liking him.

As always, it took a few minutes to get Pop out the door. Pop's the kind of guy who on the way out of a place has to go and shake everybody's hand and say good-bye and find out how everybody's wife and kids are and send them his best. He'd've made a pretty good politician except that he was so sincere. He genuinely
liked
all those people.

We picked up Pop's car at his office just up Main Street, and I dropped Pop and the car off at the house. I was a few months short of sixteen and couldn't drive legally yet even though I was good with a car. Pop taught both Bo and me to drive on the lane that went around Blood Red Pond back when we had to use pillows to see over the dashboard, and when we got a little bigger he let us practice on our road, which was paved but pretty much off the beaten path. Lately Pop seemed content to have me drive him home whenever I was around—even when he was fit to drive himself. We'd met Chief Finnegan a few times, and though he must have known I didn't have a license, he never stopped us. Pop would give him a big friendly wave and say without any intended irony, “Keep up the good work, Michael,” in that way Pop had of talking to people who couldn't possibly hear him, being on the other side of two sets of windows. I think the Chief was just as happy to see me driving, license or no license, rather than Pop, who after hours could be a little unpredictable. I never took advantage of his indulgence, driving only when I was picking up Pop and never using the car for my own reasons even if it meant walking or hitching.

Pop was fairly done in after a long day and
seemed content enough to be home. As I was heading down the driveway, he remembered something and came running out on the porch fiddling with the latch on his briefcase. He set the briefcase on one of the porch chairs and pulled something out of it. “From the newsroom,” he said, waving it excitedly in the air. “Art just got it in today.” He handed me a new Superman comic for Ethan. “And I didn't forget you, Gabriel.” He handed me a blue-and-white trade paperback called
Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson.
I'd mentioned just the other day that we'd read about the American Transcendentalists in English class and how I'd found the whole thing kind of interesting.

“A client picked that up for me in Glens Falls,” Pop said, his eyes twinkling. “Now you'll both have something to read around your campfire. And watch out for the bears.” For as long as I can remember Pop had joked about bears living in the woods even though no one I knew had ever heard of one being around there. It was just part of our family schtick.

“I don't think any bear in his right mind would try to take on Jeremy and Rosasharn,” I told him.

“Raaahaa!” Pop laughed. “You may be right on that account, Gabriel! Give my best to the boys now, will you?”

“Done, Pop.” I held up the Emerson book. “And thanks.”

“You're most welcome,” Pop said. “Always welcome. Enjoy.” He was still waving when I got to the road.

I woke up
with dew on my head and remembered all of a sudden that I
really
hate to camp. It wasn't just my damp head, or the general feeling of dampness that extended down into my sleeping bag.
Or
the fact that I could almost see my breath.
Or
the rocky ground I could feel bruising my shoulder blades. But put all this together, and then add the fact that we all had real beds waiting for us at home, and temperature-controlled rooms, and bathrooms with hot showers, and you have to wonder what we were all doing sleeping out on the range.

I made a mental note of all this, hoping it might save me from ever waking up in that condition again, and then sat up and looked around. Bo was already meditating, something he'd been doing twice a day every day since he was a little kid. Bo's whole family meditated, even his little sister, who was only nine. She did some kind of a kid's version, where you meditate while you're on the go—brushing your teeth, making your bed, that kind of thing. I remember Bo doing it when we were her age.

I pulled the sleeping bag tighter around my neck and watched him for a minute. He sat there in full lotus, eyes closed and wearing a blank peaceful look. He wasn't completely still like they always show people meditating in movies or on TV. Sometimes his head would roll around in a circle working kinks out of his neck, and sometimes his whole body would start to rock as if he were in a car going over bumps. I'm sure
the entire deal would have looked pretty strange if you hadn't grown up around it, but I had. Besides, when it came to Bo's family, the meditation part of the program was only the beginning if you want to talk about unusual. But we'll get to that later.

Just then Bo started to stretch a little, which usually meant he was about done, and within a few minutes he opened his eyes and got to his feet. He stood there a second looking back through a clearing where you could see the beginning of an orange glow on the eastern horizon. I climbed out of my sleeping bag, wrapped it around my shoulders, and trudged up beside him to watch as the glow expanded.

“Well, guys,” Bo said finally, “is this great or what?”

It wasn't till then that I looked down and saw that Ethan was standing beside me, all wrapped up in his sleeping bag the same way I was.