Parker Field (22 page)

Just as I answer and determine that Jumpin’ Jimmy Deacon is calling me, I drive into a deep, dark valley, and I lose the reception. I know my life has been changed in wondrous ways by the invention of the cell phone, but sometimes I just want to throw the damn thing out the window.

When I get to the top of the next hill, with a view of what must be the Adirondacks in front of me, I call back.

“Willie,” the voice on the other end says, “Jumpin’ Jimmy’s got some real bad news. Les is gone.”

Chapter Sixteen    

F
RIDAY

L
es took his final turn for the worse about two yesterday afternoon, Peggy told me when I got back last night.

She, Awesome Dude and Jumpin’ Jimmy were there. Les looked over at Peggy and squeezed her hand, and then he squeezed it harder, and then he let go.

This time, the hospital was a little more diligent about keeping an eye on him, or maybe it was just Peggy screaming at the top of her lungs that got help there in a hurry.

There wasn’t much they could do, though. The hemorrhage probably would have taken out someone in much better shape than Les. They did all they could, wheeling him away to work their magic while others herded Peggy, Awesome and Jimmy to the “family room.” A professional trained in delivering bad news came in shortly after three thirty and told them what they already knew.

“I wish I could have seen him one more time,” Peggy said, knowing that the Les she loved for the last twelve years had left several days before they hauled his body away.

“W
E
SHOULDA
got married,” she says. We’re sitting in her living room and, yes, she’s already had something to smoke, and it’s not yet nine o’clock. Wanna make something of it? “He offered to, but I said I hadn’t had very much luck with marriage, and he said whatever suited me, suited him.”

B
Y
THE
time I got in last night, half of Oregon Hill was at Peggy’s house. My mother won’t have to cook for a year, if she can keep all this crap from spoiling. Nobody misses a death pageant up here, even if they haven’t spoken to the deceased in ten years. Even Jerry Cannady, stepping briefly outside his pest persona, went down to KFC and brought a bucket of chicken to add to the redneck bacchanalia. People I hadn’t seen in years were there. Walker Johnson very considerately brought a twelve-pack of Blue Ribbon with him. We toasted Les and I congratulated him on making bail.

“Goat posted it,” he said. “I don’t think he’s too proud of me.”

I told him that kicking the punk’s ass was the honorable thing to do. He seemed pleased.

I sat with Peggy and then, with Cindy’s help, started making all the arrangements nobody ever wants to make. I am thankful that Les didn’t tell us he wanted his body shipped back to Wisconsin or frozen like Ted Williams’s head. As was Les’s custom, he kept it simple, doing what caused those around him the least trouble. He’d made it clear that a cremation was fine with him. Still, there were a thousand things to do, and we couldn’t get Peggy to quit obsessing.

Cindy was already at my mother’s house when I got there.

“Peggy,” she said, putting her arm around her after she’d worried out loud for about the fifteenth time about finding a minister, “go smoke something. We’ve got this covered.”

T
HIS
MORNING
, I have to face the abyss without the nervous energy that kept me going last night.

Now, it’s just sad. I mean, I really am going to miss Les Hacker. I am not used to mourning the people who are really close to me. Sure, I’ve seen three wives come and go, but they’re just not sharing my address. They’re not gone for good, not gone-gone. When I was a kid, I saw father figures decide that they weren’t really ready for commitment, then sat with Peggy when she told me, more than once, that it was just me and her, that we were well rid of the sons of bitches.

None of that prepares me for this. And my duty, as the secondary mourner, is to try to help Peggy get through it.

“What am I going to do?” she says. Her eyes are all puffy and she can’t sit still.

I tell her that she’ll do what she did before Les came along, which starts her crying again. Awesome Dude is shaking his head at me. My interpersonal skills apparently have sunk to subDude level.

I tell her that I will always be here. For better or worse, so does Awesome. But it sucks, without a doubt. Peggy has been as self-sufficient as anyone I’ve ever known. She raised a kid with a suspicious tan here in Alabaster Acres with damn little help from anyone, daring anybody to suggest she wasn’t worthy of their respect.

“Sometimes,” she told me once, after I’d been sent home from school again for fighting, “you’ve got to just keep hitting them until they respect you.”

She carried her own weight and mine, somehow finding the money to send me to college. And then, when love or even endurable male companionship seemed to have grabbed the last train out of town, she met Les Hacker. Les brought a blessing and a curse with him. The blessing was that, for the first time since she was a teenager, she had someone she could lean on, 24-7. The curse? It couldn’t last forever. Peggy let her guard down, let love and trust slip in the back door. Now, with Les gone, it’s like taking a kid from an orphanage, letting her live with a big, happy family for a few years, and then sending her back.

It is not enough to suggest that my mother should be happy for the good times they had. That pearl of wisdom can wait for a time when common sense starts edging grief out the door.

Andi’s here, too. She’s been a rock for her grandmother the last two weeks. I ask her how she’s able to get so much time off. She says there are a million restaurant jobs out there, and anyone who thinks she ought to put work before family can kiss her butt.

I tell my daughter that I don’t know how she could have turned out so well, considering who her father is. She tells me to shut up.

In the early afternoon, I step outside on the porch to have a smoke.

My old buds are here. Abe’s gotten off early from his custodial duties, and we’re joined by R. P. McGonnigal and Andy Peroni. Andy, ever mindful of the solemnity of the occasion, asks me if I’m screwing his sister. I tell him to go inside and ask her himself.

“I can’t believe you still smoke that shit,” R. P. says. Hell, we all smoked when we were kids. It was the manly thing to do. Like underage drinking and getting arrested, it was part of the Hill rites of passage.

I tell him that I’m only doing it to keep my weight down.

“You oughta try it,” I tell him, knowing that Richard Petty McGonnigal is as vain as a cheerleader about his appearance.

We tell the stories we always tell. Some of them never even happened, or at least not the way we remember them now. I know that Andy Peroni never pissed in the baptismal fount at the Baptist church just before a few sinners were saved one Sunday morning, but he always meant to, and that’s practically the same thing. Our stories, like our waistlines, have evolved.

“Les was a prince,” R. P. says, and we all nod.

“He’s the only one Peggy never kicked to the curb,” Custalow says. We agree that this is high praise indeed.

I’ve smoked my second Camel and am about to go back inside when Abe pulls me to the only corner of the porch that isn’t awash with mourners.

“Rand was asking about you today,” he says. “He said to tell you that he’s gotten another call. Whoever’s calling him seems to think that somehow Rand can get that guy out of jail by not pressing charges.”

By this time, I’m about ready to let the world do what it will with Raymond Gatewood. I don’t like the son of a bitch. But the evidence seems to be undeniable to just about anyone except our fine police chief that Gatewood isn’t Les’s shooter. Or, if he is, it’s a hell of a coincidence, because somebody’s been picking off the ’64 Vees for about twenty-seven years. I’m pretty sure Raymond Gatewood wasn’t killing people before he was toilet-trained.

“He says he’s afraid to go outside.”

“Well, Gatewood hasn’t talked to anybody except me and his lawyers, unless he’s got somebody in the lockup who’s trying to do him a favor. And I tend to believe him when he says he doesn’t have any friends. He’s worked pretty hard at that.”

I start to go inside again. The funeral’s going to be on Monday, and I’m starting to feel like Peggy. We’ve got a hundred things to do. There are still cousins in Wisconsin who haven’t been notified, although if they were close, I suppose one or more of them might have hauled their asses down here before Les died. I know Peggy got the word to what family Les had left up there.

“Wait,” Custalow says, putting his hand on my arm. “There’s something else.”

Abe doesn’t usually talk for the sake of talking. If he has “something else,” it’s probably worth my time to discover what it is.

“I found something,” he says, “but I want to show it to you. It might be nothing, but you need to see it.”

I promise Abe Custalow that, as soon as I can spare a few minutes from dealing with my mother’s (and my) grief, he can show me what he’s talking about.

Abe has to get back to the Prestwould. I hesitate for a moment, then pull out another Camel. I’m not quite ready to go back in there yet.

Chapter Seventeen    

S
ATURDAY

A
be Custalow has, as has often been the case in our fucked-up, intertwined lives, shown me the light.

The first time I saw him, I think Abe was whipping some boy’s butt for calling him a bad name reflecting on his Native American heritage. Abe did that pretty regularly for a while, until kids got tired of getting their asses handed to them. We became friends, probably because neither of us was a full-fledged, card-carrying member of the All-White Club. My African-American heritage was and is barely visible to the naked, unbigoted eye, but kids overhear their parents and some kids, in case you’ve forgotten, can be cruel as a hanging judge.

The all-white guys who later gravitated to us are still, along with Abe, my best friends. The ones who are left, R. P., Andy and Goat Johnson, are quite simply there for me. And nobody’s been more “there” than Abe.