Tide King (38 page)

“My stuff.” He grabbed a short Mexican man who was wiping down the table next to his. “Where's my plate, my wallet?”

“I dunno.” The man shrugged. He pointed to the plastic dish bin, which sat on the table. At the top was the plate with the remains of Stanley's sirloin.

“You stole my wallet, you dumb spic.” Stanley grabbed at his t-shirt, but he knew, even being a head taller, that the little wetback could have him on the ground faster than a rodeo cowboy than rope a steer. “Where's your manager?”

“Can I help you, sir?” A woman, a black lady with a cross hanging on her neck larger than the ones displayed outdoors at some churches, appeared. One of her breasts, large and pendulous like a sock filled with change, brushed against his arm as she forced her girth between them.

“He stole my wallet.” Stanley's hand went to his chest, not so much to get away from the oblong breast—he took what he could get—but to scratch at the sudden burning there.

“Ernesto, did you take this man's wallet? Empty your pockets, please.” She peered into the dish bin and began shifting the plates.

“There is man, he leave before I bus table. I thought he eating there. Maybe he took wallet.” Ernesto pulled out the white cotton pockets of his jeans and displayed a marble, and lighter, a coin purse, and a gas station receipt. Not even his own wallet. What kind of man didn't carry a wallet? He stared at them, three-quarters-size Ernesto and the Baptist who needed to pray to God about her droopage, and decided he didn't like the world. Not when some sleezeball stole his wallet and these two were left as his booby prize.

Someone needed to take control of the situation. Stanley moved to the front of the restaurant, scanning the parking lot. It was sparse, the lunch hour long over, too early for dinner. No cars pulled away. He wondered what was on the security cameras. He imagined himself as Colombo, salivated at the sudden promise of importance. Then he remembered his heartburn, that he was old. That he couldn't even be trusted with his own wallet.

“Sir, if you'd like to sit, I can call the police.” The manager touched his arm. “Maybe Ernesto can give them a good description. Maybe there's something on the tapes we can go on.”

“Don't matter. It's gone.” He shrugged her off. The pain moved into his stomach and crept toward his left leg. He wasn't sure what he was saying anymore. “It's all gone.”

He got in the truck, but he couldn't pull away. His chest felt water-logged and he began to sob, his head on the steering wheel. He could never do anything right for Heidi. But the worst part of it was, she had accepted that, and accepted it long ago. The waterworks from his eyes did not dispel the drowning sensation he felt inside his body, so he flung the truck into gear and gunned it home. He'd take an aspirin and lie down for an hour. When he got to school, Heidi would know what to do. She always did.

At home, he limped toward the house, his leg heavy now, and he took the stairs carefully, one at a time, was pleased that he made it. By then, he felt completely underwater. When he closed his eyes, he heard the whooshing of it, like the ocean, and he felt himself sinking deeper and deeper into its tide, sweeping him from shore.

On the porch stood a young man, tall and square, his jaw set like concrete. Stanley couldn't place him, even though the chill of recognition settled in beads on his forehead, the back of his neck. He wore a leather jacket, jeans, strange boots with caulks on them. Probably the young tuff who stole his wallet at the Golden Corral. Stanley figured he'd noted the fat wad of cash in his wallet and probably thought there was more at home. But the tuff had no car. He would have had to have flown to get there before Stanley.

“Who the hell are you?” Stanley puffed out his wheezing, concave chest and strode up the steps.

“Don't you remember me, pole?” The man smiled. “It's me, Calvin Johnson.”

Stanley was old, older than he should have been. His hair was white, parted to the side but long, growing over her ears, and his blue eyes seemed watered down, buried under tissue-paper wrinkles. Johnson felt his heart, slippery, in this throat, as he digested what the years had sanded off, sucked from him. The soft, blond boy with the crinkling blue eyes, the toothy smile, had become a caricature. Stanley lifted an arm, spotted with age, toward him.

“You stole my wallet, you punk.” His grip was firm on Johnson's wrist. “Over at the Golden Corral.”

“Stanley Polensky, it's me, Calvin.” He shook him off and took a step back. “Don't try to intimidate me. Did you ever win any of our wrestling matches during the war?”

“You aren't Calvin Johnson.” Stanley moved closer and frisked him. “If you've got a gun, boy, I suggest you drop it. I'm retired Army—I'll break you in half.”

“Stanley, I was state wrestling champion of Ohio once—you know that.” Calvin pulled out a pack of Lucky Strikes. “Why don't you invite me inside? I got some business with you. About the herb.”

“How'd you know about that?” Stanley peered at him. “You one of Heidi's friends?”

“Heidi?”

“My daughter. Look, you got your money. As you can see from the house, we ain't got nothing else. Now get the hell out of here before I put a beat down on you that'll make you cry for your momma.”

“Stanley, look at me.” Johnson grabbed his arms. “Do I look familiar to you at all?”

Stanley squinted, so close to Johnson's face, he could lick him.

“Shit, if you don't look a little like him.” Stanley softened. “Christ. Are you a ghost or something? Come back to haunt me for what I done?”

“What did you do to me, Stanley?” Johnson's stomach filled with butterflies. “I need to know.”

But Stanley was already opening the door. “I need a drink. Every time I try and stop, I start seeing shit.”

Johnson followed Stanley into the house uninvited. Stanley moved heavily through the living room, occasionally massaging his chest. He seemed unaware he'd just talked to Johnson a few moments before, or perhaps he had convinced himself that Johnson was some alcohol-induced hallucination and decided not to acknowledge it. He fumbled in the kitchen cabinets for a bottle of aspirin and a drinking glass that he filled half with Wild Turkey, half with water.

“Are you all right, Stanley?” Johnson sat across from him at the kitchen table.

“I knew it would come to this,” Stanley said, bringing the aspirin to his mouth with shaking fingers. “They all visit before you die. Is my mother coming next?”

“I'm not a ghost, you asshole.” Johnson grabbed the bottle of Wild Turkey and took a swig. “Now listen, you stuffed that god-damn herb in my mouth back in the Hürtgen Forest and I lived. Look at me—you need to undo this.”

“Undo what?” Stanley held the glass to his lips and stared at him. “Are you telling me I can't get into heaven?”

“Look, you're not going to die. At least, I don't think so. But that's the point. Whatever you did to me, I can't die. I've been looking for you for years—you need to give me the antidote.”

“Antidote?” Stanley finished his whiskey and began to pour another.

“Is there another herb that undoes the effects of the one you gave me?”

“I don't know, boy.” Stanley lit a cigarette. “I tried to burn that herb, you know. It wouldn't even burn. I gave it to my daughter. I don't want nothing to do with it.”

“Where is it?” Johnson stood up.

“Why?”

“Because I think you should eat it, too, so we'll be even.” He began to rummage through the kitchen drawers, pushing aside utensils, matchbooks, losing lottery tickets, lint.

“You're not real.” Stanley set his glass down. “I'm going to lie down and take a nap, and when I wake up, you'll be gone, okay?”

“Stanley, why did you save me?” Johnson turned from the cupboards. “Why didn't you just save yourself?”

“Because you were my friend.” Stanley shrugged. He fell against the doorway of the kitchen, and Johnson cupped him under his armpits, helping him to stand straight. “I never had one of those before. Haven't had one since.”

“Where is the herb, Stanley?” Johnson helped him to the couch. “I'll find it, you'll take it, and we'll both have friends for life. What do you say?”

“I'm taking a nap.” Stanley closed his eyes. Within minutes, he snored, a wet, sonic clatter that Johnson could hear from any location in the house. He wondered how Stanley's daughter slept. He looked at the framed school picture on top of the television. She was an unusual bird, feral and dark with her honey hair feathered back the way he'd seen some of the young girls, the Charlie girls on television or whoever they were, style it. He went upstairs and started in her bedroom, going through drawers of what he thought were rather immodest undergarments for a teenager, gaudy blouses and slacks. With the exception of Kate, beautiful Kate, he wondered whether women even wore dresses anymore. The women he'd watched on the television at the hotel in New York were angry at men or they were overly painted, sparkly silver and blue eye shadow that made them look like space aliens. And the men weren't much better—long sideburns and strange fabric one-piece suits that zipped. But he was in a better position to roll with the changes, to absorb them in his eternal chameleon skin, than Stanley, who did not have to advertise to the world that he was hopelessly out of touch.

Johnson sat on Heidi's bed, ran his hand over the plain green bedspread. There weren't many feminine appointments to the décor: a poster of a black music singer, a rainbow. A bookshelf made of cinder blocks and cut plywood held titles by the Brönte sisters but also Norman Mailer. He stood and pulled up the mattress then looked under the bed. In the drawer of the nightstand, he found the datebook filled with Stanley's wavering, blocky text. He put it into his back pocket and finished searching Heidi's room. Then, he moved onto Stanley's.

He was saddened by the bareness of their personal spaces. In Palmer's brownstone, achievement was framed, importance shown through meticulously dusted furniture, the number and symmetry of objects. Stanley had a bed and a pile of clothes on the floor where he must have pretended there was a hamper. He walked over to Stanley's closet, noted the revolver on the top shelf, his musette bag hanging on a peg. He unhooked it and touched the canvas to his face, smelled the fabric. He wondered whether his own still rested at the bottom of a mountain in Montana, whether his things had been recovered, himself reported dead again.

But it was home, this creaking box of boards. At least they had that much, each other. He went back downstairs and sat on the rocking chair, smoking cigarettes while Stanley slept, reading the datebook. He fingered the picture of them taken on the warship, a few days before they were dumped on the shores of Omaha Beach and their lives changed forever. That day, while it rained monsoons, the gray sky and gray sea undulating, crashing into the horizon line, he and Stanley built houses made of matchsticks as the boat rocked like a carnival ride. They had been through battles, through Troina in Italy, in Algeria. They had no thoughts about their survival. One got up and hoped to go to sleep that night, or a few nights from then. Enough days and nights strewn together, like enough matchsticks, were all one could think about. And somehow, forty years had passed, and here they were.

“Shit, you're still here?” Stanley eased himself up to a sitting position. “Why are you haunting me like this, Johnson? Dreams weren't enough for you? You want my mind now, too?”

“I want the herb.” Johnson put the datebook on the coffee table. “Seems like you've been doing a lot of thinking about it. And me.”

“I don't have it.”

“Then we'll wait for your daughter, then.” Johnson leaned back in the rocker. “So you and ‘Lil Cindy, huh? I can't tell you how many songs I heard of hers on the radio and never once thought of you.”

“I wish I could say the same about myself. Cindy's the only woman I ever loved, besides my mother. The only woman I ever hated, too.”

“You had a child together?”

“She ain't my child.” Stanley shook his head, swinging his feet to the floor. “Can't you tell? She's Cindy's, but she's not mine. Not that I don't love Heidi. Smart as a whip—at least she does the Polensky name proud.”

“Well, they say family isn't always blood,” Johnson answered. “Tell me what you've been doing since Hürtgen, Stanley. You get all the way through, or did you get wounded?”

“I made it through.” Stanley rubbed his forehead in his hands. “I always thought that was going to be you. You were braver than the rest of us, that's for sure.”

“I was scared shitless. I acted like a big-shot asshole, but I was a little liver belly.”

“And you would have lived, too, if I hadn't voted to go back. I never forgave myself.”

“I did live, Stanley. You saved my life with the herb.”

Stanley could still move. Like a cat, he leapt at Johnson, knocking him and the rocking chair over backwards. He felt the splinters of wood dig into his back as Stanley grabbed at his face, pulling on his lips and cheeks.

“You're a real person, but who the hell are you?” Stanley leaned back on his knees, his face a tomato, panting. He turned halfway and took the datebook from the coffee table. “Where'd you get this? You been reading this and pretending to be Calvin Johnson, haven't you?”

“I wish I had something to show you, a picture, my old dog tags.” Johnson pushed himself from the floor. “There was a fire, back in ‘47. I haven't had much since. Oh, wait—
the metalanthium lamp
! The rays of immortality.”

“That's not in here,” Stanley said, looking up from his datebook diary. “So how…”

He stood up, dropping the book on the floor. He took a step backward toward the stairs. Johnson wondered if he thought of the revolver in his closet.