Spoonwood (3 page)

I can't help a snicker. “A Frenchman—you always made jokes about Frenchmen.”

“I've been putting my foot in my mouth all my life,” he says. “The taste didn't bother me before, don't bother me now. Long as my driver's license says Howard Elman, I'll know who I am. Let's have dessert.”

“Well I think it's promising,” my mother says.

Birch makes a noise, not a cry, just a yelp, like he wants attention.

“Excuse me, I'm on my way,” I say.

“Where are you going?” my mother asks. Her tone of concern fills me with self-loathing.

“Where does he always go?” my father says.

“Why do you have to talk about me as if I wasn't in the room?” I want to hit him.

“In a manner of speaking you aren't in this room,” he says. “You're already in the
bah.
”

“You're not going to be seeing Tubby again, are you?” my mother asks, voice pained.

“Tubby is with Giselle. He's a lot better since they've been going out,” I say.

“Does it have to be every night—do you have to go out every single night?” my mother says. “And what about him?” she points at Birch.

“Well, what about him?”

“You haven't brought him to a priest to be christened.”

“And I won't. I can't believe what you believe,” I say.

“Oh, Lord, please forgive us,” she says to the Almighty.

I tremble involuntarily.

My mother suddenly softens. “I'm sorry,” she whispers, and her anguish angers me all the more. My father begins to pace, unable at the moment to deal with either son or wife. He makes hurrumph noises.

Suddenly, there's a loud, screeching sound, like a train braking at a crossing where a car is stuck on the tracks, or anyway that's how the sound feels to me.

“He's crying. Look what we've done,” my mother goes to Birch, then stops abruptly.

I back away. “Now what?”

“Pick him up and love him,” my mother repeats yet again. “He needs you.”

I picture myself accidentally breaking his neck. “I don't know how,” I say. “I don't know.” And I storm out before I do something I'll regret.

“What do you mean, do something you'll regret? Think something original for a change,” says the voice inside me.

I drive my pick-up ten miles to North Walpole, where I cross the bridge into Bellows Falls, Vermont. Growing up, my friend Tubby McCracken and I used to call Bellows Falls “Fellows Balls” or “Buffalo Balls.” It's an exhausted railroad town with a perpetually downtrodden economy, but I like it. It has the Miss Bellows Falls Diner, Nick's Restaurant, a Newberry's for cheap shopping, and plenty of free parking. With my beard and long hair, I feel less combatively self-conscious in Bellows Falls than
in Darby or Keene. Tubby and I meet at our usual hang-out, Nick's. Last night Tubby told me he had a “business proposition” to discuss.

On the way in, Rubric Fritz at the bar hollers “Hey Freddie,” and I flash him the peace sign. You know you're on the skids when the barflies recognize you as one of their own.

I know what Tubby wants me to do, and I should be mulling it over, but I can't concentrate on anything for more than a few minutes before useless thoughts fill my head. Just when I think I know who I am and where I'm at and what's going on, I realize I'm looking back at an old me and Now has escaped me again. I'm like an artist trying to paint himself from a mirror image. He dips his brush and strokes the canvas. He looks up at the mirror, and a year has gone by. He paints another slash of color. Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty years pass, and no matter how well he paints he can't capture the image in the mirror because it changes faster than he can work. He has to die in order to sit still, and perhaps then his ghost can paint his unchanging ghostly image, but where was the man?

Tubby, like me, is sturdily built, but not really fat. He has long blond hair that he's very vain about. He got his nickname in junior high school when he divulged his surefire seduction method. He would give girls baths. Until recently I hadn't seen Tubby since he and I were pulling guards on the Keene High School football team. We had little in common except that we were both Darby townies who spoke with stronger upcountry accents than the Keene kids. We were reunited six weeks ago when we bumped into one another at the Miss Bellows Falls Diner, where Giselle is a waitress. All my friends from high school have left the area, or they've married and settled down. Only Tubby is available to pal around with. Tubby occasionally works construction or drives truck, but he's unemployed most of the time; even so, he always has money.

Giselle is twenty-two, with pistonlike legs, a big wide perpetual smile, and freckles, a female Alfred E. Newman. (Actually, practically everybody I know resembles Alfred E. Newman.) She has two kids and a husband, current whereabouts unknown. She
and Tubby plan to marry as soon as the ink is dry on the divorce papers.

Tubby is buying the rounds. He has a wad of bills in his money clip half an inch thick. I feel strange, the emotion gone out of me, outside of myself. I see an ugly young bearded man in the mirror staring into the void; I want to punch him in the face. I'm grateful for my rage; it masks my confusion.

Tubby is in no rush to get to his point. He's waiting to feel the booze before speaking, I know, because I myself am waiting. We down a couple shots of Canadian Club and two tall beers and hardly say a word to one another before Giselle ignites a conversation.

“How's the kid?” she asks.

“I can't bring myself to pick him up,” I say. “He scares me in a weird kind of way. It's like he knows me all too well.”

“Babies got wisdom, no doubt about that,” Giselle says. “They lose it as soon as they begin to talk. Then they get like everybody else, and you can't handle them—they call it the terrible twos, but it's really . . . what was that long word you came up with the other night?”

“Existential angst—I didn't make it up. It was something I got out of my reading in college. You mean he'll get worse?” Something in my voice must be pitiable because Giselle bursts out laughing.

“What's so funny?” Tubby asks.

“Him”—she points at me—“Freddie is such a riot.”

“Frederick—call me Frederick,” I snap at her.

“Watch the way you talk to my woman, boy,” Tubby says.

I ignore Tubby's superior tone for now. “Listen, Giselle, I admire you,” I say. “You have kids, a job that must tire you out, but you never complain. You seem downright serene.”

“You do what you have to do,” Giselle says. “You just go day by day.” She repeats the words, half in song. “Day by day, I go day by day.”

“That's what I'm doing now,” I say. “I want something else out of my life, but I don't know what it is. Tubby, what do you want out of life?”

“I want another beer.”

“No, seriously.”

“Seriously? Me and Giselle and her kids, and the kid we're going to have . . .”

“Really?” I look at Giselle.

“Really.” She pats her tummy.

“We're going to Arizona and start a new life,” Tubby says.

“You have to have money for that,” I say.

“I got money.”

A few minutes later Giselle's friend Joyce drops by the table. She's thirty, been around, lots of make-up, short skirt. Her buck teeth make me think of my mother. Suddenly, I'm full of rage at the people who raised my mother and never fixed her crooked teeth. I'm angry with my father for not insisting she get braces, angry with her for her self-sacrificing personality.

Giselle introduces me to Joyce, who holds out her hand. I refuse to take it and I avoid eye contact. I can't bear to look at a woman on the make. A minute later Joyce leaves and Giselle follows her.

Tubby laughs.

“Was that your idea?” I say.

“No way. I know better. You keep avoiding women and people are going to start thinking you're queer.”

“If it'll keep them away from me, that's fine.”

Giselle returns to the table alone.

“Freddie—Frederick, you can't carry a torch for a dead girl,” Giselle says.

“It's like she sucked him dry, and he's got nothing left,” Tubby says.

With Tubby's words my rage builds inside, but I hide it with a bashful smile.

“You can be so crude.” Giselle's laugh says she likes Tubby crude. “Frederick, what do you want out of life?”

“I don't know. I got this idea that if I could get away for a year maybe, drive across the country, learn about the country, just myself, I could, like, you know.”

“Pardon me, but it sounds pretty vague,” Giselle says.

“I'll tell you what you need to straighten out your sex life and get your confidence back.” Tubby reaches into his wallet, pulls out a hundred dollar bill, and slaps it down.

“Money is the root of all evil,” Giselle says.

“Call me the Devil,” says Tubby. He nudges the bill toward the beer glass with the tip of his index finger.

I'm thinking about the money. Money is freedom. Money is escape. I order another round of drinks. Tubby pays. I slurp half the shot, and almost immediately slurp the other half.

“I don't want my shot, just the beer. You want mine?” Tubby slides it over.

I knock it down and drink half my beer in one swallow.

“All those rumors about you are true, Tubby, is that right?” I say.

“If they are it would account for the money, wouldn't it?” Tubby grins.

“Excuse me, I really must powder my nose,” Giselle says, in fake Upper Darby diction.

Tubby watches her walk away. Giselle has a very nice tush.

“She meant powder up her nose,” Tubby says.

“What?” I say.

“Why do you think she's so confident? You know where I'm headed.”

“I don't have any experience in that line of business,” I say. “I'm not even a regular user.”

“Last thing I want is a user. You have something else that's perfect for what we have in mind.”

“We?”

“Nobody does anything alone, Frederick. You got to realize that. Listen, I'm just a small part of a very big operation.”

“Who's in charge?”

“If I knew I wouldn't tell you. Nobody knows, but right here in southwestern New Hampshire is a Mister Big. That's all I know. What you have that we like is your truck, the camper body. You could go to a campground and nobody would suspect.” Tubby breaks out a map of New Hampshire and puts his finger on some blue.

“It's Great Bay,” I say.

“Right. Looks like a big lake, but really it's part of the Atlantic. Lobster boat goes out into the open ocean to do some business, lobster boat comes back in with its valuable cargo and docks right here.” He points at the map. “Guy with a camper pick-up truck drives to the dock at a certain time and says howdy, I'm here for the lobsters. You and this other guy load the lobsters in the back of your pick-up. You call a number and you say I have the lobster order. You get directions, you drive there, you drop the lobsters. It's as simple as that.”

“Except my cargo is not lobsters.”

“It's lobsters, okay?”

“I have to think about this, Tubby.”

“Of course you do. This is not a business to be taken lightly. I'll tell you this, Frederick: what you're doing is totally safe. I'm starting you with the easy stuff. The fact is—I mean, I love Giselle—but except for you I don't have any male friends.”

“Me neither.”

“This is a business where you can't trust nobody. It gets lonely. You and I have known each other a long time. You're not going to betray me.” Tubby pauses for effect, then adds, “You're too stupid.” Tubby laughs loud and sips his beer. “Seriously, Frederick, I know you. You never betrayed anybody in your life.”

I'm thinking about Lilith now, how I had gotten angry with her, suspicious, and walked out on her when she needed me most.

“I'm at a time in my life where I need to get away,” I say.

“Listen, Frederick, I know you're sick of Darby and your folks and your kid. Think about this. You can work the lobster trade all over the country. You make a call at every port. Everybody likes lobster, am I right or what?”

I pretend to think for a long moment, a long good moment actually. The moment I've been seeking all day. My mind goes blank. I'm past the buzz; the booze has negated my thinking apparatus. Which is what makes the moment good. I can pretend to relate to people more or less, function more or less, but I can't reason or scheme or create. The blankness is good. There's no
pain in blankness. I wish I could crawl into the kernel of this moment and stop time.

“I'm not the right guy for this, Tubby. I'm too unstable right now.” With the sound of my own voice, the good moment passes. Nothing good can happen for the remainder of this evening.

“Unstable—everybody I know is unstable. You think Giselle is squared away? Ask how much Kleenex she goes through in a month. Don't you want any of this?” He waves the hundred dollar bill under my nose.

“Tubby, I don't know where I'm going with my life, but it's not going to be on a track to run drugs.”

“You are demeaning my livelihood.” For the first time in the evening Tubby's words and the expression on his face match. I am suddenly sobering off, readying myself for an emergency. It's a good feeling, specific and uncomplicated.

“Fuck your livelihood,” I say.

“Who do you think you are?” He tosses the hundred dollar bill in my face. I watch the bill fall on the table, slip off the side onto the floor. I turn my head toward the bar in full knowledge that Tubby will be insulted, and I wave at Rubric Fritz.

Rubric Fritz waves back.

“Look at me when I'm talking to you.” Tubby slams the beer mug down on the table and beer jumps into my face. I grin at him.