Authors: Mark Wisniewski
JAN
TUG KNEW WHERE YOU COULD
BUY
a new drum, the lumberyard on an unnamed east-west road just past the second town
north, but it would more than help his cause, he figured, to first off buy a
Form
and visit Bill Treacy’s feed store, to ask where a guy could get a new forty-gallon,
the kind used to burn leaves.
And Jasper’s presence there, on the decrepit wooden chair beside Bill, meant that
Jasper was finally getting out again, holed up as he’d been since Tom’s wake the previous
week, but, still, the only greetings between Jasper and Tug were nods, Bill Treacy
then taking the conversation’s reins to ask Tug how Colleen was managing, whether
my mother and I planned to stay much longer, whether Tug still had aspirations about
law, all of which Tug answered as straightforwardly as he could.
Bill then recommended that same lumberyard north, which
strengthened Tug’s resolve to do what he told his mother he’d do, and Tug pressed
on during the drive north and bought a drum painted the same orange as the first,
not at all rusted but otherwise quite the replica. And with this new drum on the bed,
kept there by a discarded chunk of cinder block, he returned south to make his showing
at the track, which hadn’t yet opened for the day.
But the regulars were there, on the edge of the parking lot near the grandstand, strung
out in a line that stretched to the turnstiles, smoking, clustered in groups of two
and three, all reading
Form
s except The
Form
Monger, who apparently felt no need to hide his bewilderment—or was it respect?—thanks
to Tug’s presence in Tom’s pickup with a new orange drum. In fact, The
Form
Monger stood pathetically for well into a minute, unconscientiously agape, eyes shifting
from the drum to The Nickster and back to the drum, the scarred wrist beneath The
Form
Monger’s phantom hand all the more purple in the late morning sunlight.
And after The
Form
Monger stared like this for so long Tug was sure every chump at the track today would
get the message, he went ahead and waved in their direction, at all of them, he thought.
And The
Form
Monger waved back, then turned to interrupt a conversation between a very young gambler
and The Nickster, and The Nickster looked up and over at Tug, then gave Tug a nod
more resolute than any Tug had hoped for. And Tug felt the sense of worth he’d sometimes
felt months earlier, back when he’d done chores to benefit the horses on his farm.
Then, to make sure The Nickster knew Tug’s days of feeling intimidated were certainly
over, Tug made a show of gathering up something from the pickup’s passenger seat:
the first issue of a
Daily Racing Form
he’d ever purchased for himself.
And to convey even more nonchalance, Tug, on his own accord,
spent a few minutes pretending to read results in that
Form
’s past performances.
And soon there Tug was, actually reading some of those results, probably seeing, in
some racehorse’s officially documented win, an indisputable quality that he, like
Tom—like everyone, really—could never possibly find in love.
DEESH
“WELL?” GERELLI SAYS.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I hadn’t gotten around to it,” I say. “Anyway here’s the question you should be asking
prosecutors: Why would I leave the gun there?”
“With this Gabe Cutler’s body?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t. It was found well upstream from where his body was found. Not to mention,
Mr. Sharp, you’d just used your last bullet on him. There was, of course, another
bullet from that gun in the cop’s head. So as a result, the prosecution is now saying,
you didn’t know what to do after you shot Gabe Cutler point-blank. I mean, the sight
of a third person killed by you is presumably a tad more disturbing when you yourself
are now no longer ably armed.
So you panicked and tossed the gun in the stream, maybe hoping Gabe’s death would
look like a suicide.”
“But it
was
a suicide,” I say.
“Mr. Sharp, I do need the truth. We both do.”
“I’m telling you! Gabe Cutler killed himself. I’ve been telling you this since day
one.”
“Yes, but how do we
know
this?”
“Because he was depressed.”
“Yes, but
how
do
we know
he was depressed?”
“Because everyone is. Because the world is extremely fucked-up.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Gerelli says, and he leans back and tosses up his hands.
And it’s right here that I lose all doubt about whether, if I ever do find myself
on the streets of the Bronx again, I won’t be best buds with Lawrence Gerelli.
JAN
“THEY CAUGHT HIM,”
my mother said.
And she sat down beside me on the cot, the same cot where Tug and I had made love,
and she did her best to ignore the lake as I squeezed one of my knees and said, “Who?”
“The guy who strangled Tom.”
“Well, good,” I said—I actually said that.
“Thirty-seven years old. Unemployed and, bless his heart, about as black as you are
white. Named Douglas Sharp or some such.”
“Rest in peace, Douglas Sharp.”
“You’re saying you prefer him dead?”
I shook my head no. “Just that now that they caught him, he’s as good as it.”
She studied a sunlit oak and it struck me that there were too many men to think about.
My father and Tug’s, Tug himself, and
now whoever it was that had killed Tom—men were always running roughshod over the
brighter future I’d long ago hoped for.
My mother leaned a little toward me—or maybe I had toward her.
“If I were you,” she said, “I’d tell Tug to forgive him.”
“Of course you would,” I said. “It’s just that there’s one not-so-small problem with
that.”
“Huh.”
“You will never be me.”
And here my mother was, definitely leaning in, pressed against me so intently it was
clear she wanted to keep touching me. “I’m aware of that, Janny,” she said. “All I’m
saying is that here I am, feeling sour because y
ou’re
feeling sour because Tug’s off every day watching horses run. So it seems to me that—maybe?—if
he’d forgive this Douglas Sharp . . .”
“Maybe what.”
“Maybe some of that sourness would leave us all.”
“Yeah, well, Tug Corcoran isn’t just watching those horses. He’s betting on them.
And if you ask me, that’s
your basic problem here.”
“That he’ll turn out just like Tom? All in love with betting and in debt up to his
eyeballs and gone for good from his fine-looking woman?”
I felt a smile threaten then, and I thought: If only men loved as easily as mamas
could. “Something like that,” I said.
“Then all the more reason to forgive Douglas Sharp. Not that this should be repeated,
Jan? But Colleen and I have been talking, and if you ask her, neither she nor Tom
were all that prone to forgiving—or apologizing, or accepting apologies, or making
good out of bad—or anything along those lines. It was all stone-cold
business around here, and now she believes it stayed like that because she and Tom
never forgave.”
“And you didn’t prompt her, even the tiniest bit, to adopt that belief?”
“Maybe a little. But if so, barely. Anyway forgiveness is only a matter of saying
three words. I mean, from Tug’s point of view, there’d be very little to lose.”
“I kind of doubt just saying
I forgive you
is all it takes,” I said, and right then, out a window to the south of us, a healthy-looking
leaf fell straight from an oak. It appeared to be a big, fine leaf that was still
shiny and dark green, but it fell.
“And how would you know,” my mother said.
“You’re right, Mama. I wouldn’t. Just making my best guess, really.”
“Jan, no one’s asking anyone to join some church or tithe instead of gamble. I’m just
saying come out with those three words. I mean let’s be serious, girl—how could that
hurt?”
And of course I’ll never like when anyone tries to force beliefs on me. But then again,
it really did feel like Tug was starting to get stuck on gambling.
If nothing else, he kissed differently now, all eager to pull away.
DEESH
“SO LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT,
Mr. Sharp,” Gerelli says. “You actually want me to argue . . .
now
. . . after this damning discovery of Tom Corcoran’s murdered body . . . that you
killed neither Tom Corcoran nor the cop in the Bronx.
And
that what happened in those woods in Pennsylvania was that a despondent, underemployed,
aging white male willingly navigated you
away from his house and well into the woods, then peaceably came into the possession
of the same gun used to kill the cop in the Bronx, then freely decided, with you sitting
in his boat and looking on, to end his own life.”
“Well, I wasn’t looking on, but—”
“What were you doing, Mr. Sharp?”
“Looking overboard.”
“At what?”
“The water.”
“Because it was so freaking beautiful?”
“Because I was fishing. And deciding I would come back here to talk to my kid.”
Gerelli rolls his eyes, then closes them and covers his face with his hands.
And I let this silence play itself out, my hope right now being that maybe he’s prepping
me for how it’ll feel to be cross-examined.
Then he says, “Well, we can argue that, Mr. Sharp. But before we decide what to argue,
I need to know every single one of the facts. Because we just can’t walk into another
surprise.”
I nod, dumbstruck all over again about how it didn’t matter who pulled the trigger
in Gabe’s boat, since I should have known better than to put down the gun around Gabe
in the first place. Then it occurs to me that, in fact, I am guilty of kidnapping
Gabe, and that Gerelli and I have yet to discuss this.
“So what the fuck do you want me to tell you?” I ask. “A list of every wrong thing
I’ve ever done?”
“That probably wouldn’t hurt, Mr. Sharp. I realize you have no priors, but there are
also certain exigencies a public defender like me and a client like you need to address.
Such as how much fucking time do you actually expect me to dole out to you when I
have other clients—who are far more upfront and grateful—waiting encouragingly for
me?”
“What are you saying? You want me to pay you something after all?”
And it’s here that he just stares across the table at me, lips pursed.
“That,”
he finally says, “was really not the kind of question you should feel the need to
ask me.”
And now’s when I realize that if he isn’t suggesting that I arrange for him to receive
some kind of payola, he’s just playing judge and punishing me by messing with my head.
JAN
EVERY GRANDSTANDER TUG HAD KNOWN
had harbored a tragic tale that explained why he, that poor, poor grandstander, wagered
on horses every day, as well as a story about the
giant
trifecta he
almost
bet on, as well as a nonstop stream of anecdotes about his
unbelievably
persistent losing streak.
And whether Tug had wanted to hear about gambling or not, every grandstander had blabbed
on about some horse race wherein the long shot he’d bet was numerous lengths ahead
of the pack down the homestretch; about how, when this long shot was mere feet from
the finish line, another horse came
flying
from out of nowhere to win by a nostril; about how, had this nostril not been flared,
this particular grandstander’s life would be far easier than it now seemed cursed
to be.
So Tug didn’t bother me with all the facts about his wins and
losses during the twelve days he spent at the track after he showed up there with
the Corcorans’ second orange forty-gallon drum.
Other than to suggest, by way of his various moods when he’d come home every night,
that he, too, had welled with the joy of winning.
And that he, too, had experienced how victory can urge a wounded soul to want to win
more.
And that he now no longer questioned his father’s belief that if a man with a modicum
of intelligence hunkers down alone and handicaps obsessively, he
can
know who will win.
And who
will
win—as Tug had long known—is the track.
And when a guy is down to his last six dollars, and then four, and then two, and he
bets those quivering two on an even-money favorite to show, and it lopes along ahead
by eight only to pull up lame and finish last, that guy can face the horror of his
father’s death all over again—with his own eyes dulled and his lips joined as if one
and his heart certainly overworked.
And if it’s not until minutes
after
this guy’s last possible bet that he realizes he’s just lost the cash he’d once promised
himself he’d use to buy a gift for the woman he loves, his heart feels pretty much
gone.
And when he therefore flips down his
Form
to announce to everyone in the grandstand that he, too, is a profound loser, and
the bare legs of this same woman appear as she takes the seat directly to his right,
wearing shorts and a sweatshirt and a frown across her face, this guy will indeed
struggle, like the true bastard he now feels he is, regarding what, precisely, he
might say.
And what Tug said, after such a struggle, was nothing. Instead he just faced me directly,
tried and failed to make eye contact with me.
But then, in consolation, he had these thoughts to think:
You no longer owe him that fifty.
You gambled it—and more—
for
him.
You are done.
And then I tried to make eye contact with him, and when I finally succeeded, I pointed
at the disheveled
Form
at our feet and said, “I take it this means you lost.”
“Yes, it does,” Tug said.
“A lot?”
“A good amount.”
“Good as in harmless? Or good as in large?”
You understand now, Tug might have thought then. You understand how your father felt.
And he said, “I don’t know how to answer that, Jan.”
“Then why don’t you just show me your wallet?”
“What?”
“If you’re such the Mister Money Bags that you’re able to sit here betting every day,
let’s see your fucking thick supply of cash.”
This is how your mother felt, Tug probably thought then. This is why she and he argued.
And I slumped back in my seat, but still I was glaring, though now my eyes were aimed
at the concrete aisle just beyond the
Form
, as if I were having this lovers’ spat with the charts rather than with Tug.
Then, finally, I asked a question I’d wanted to ask for a while. I asked, “Ever think
you’ll have kids, Tug?”
And he, too, glared at the aisle.
And I could almost hear him thinking:
Okay. This is it. Don’t waste any more of her time.
And, to me then, he simply said, “Nope.”
“Good,” I said.
He shrugged again, this time making a big show of it, then slumped back, barely behind
the line of fire of my eyes.
“Because as much as you’d suck as a husband,” I said, “you’d suck even more as a father.”
Give her that, he probably thought. And let her enjoy having it.
Then he must have felt he owed me an explanation, because he said, “So now you know
why.”
“Why what?”
“I grew up wanting a horse farm.”
“Actually, Mr. Tug? I have no idea why being a jerk means a guy would want a horse
farm.”
And there, right then in that grandstand, Tug might have finally understood why his
parents’ arguments had never ended. The gambler sees more of the picture than his
lover does, and the gambler knows that what he sees spans plenty of time—more time
than his lover is considering—and the gambler sees that, for all this time, he has
never stopped wanting the best for her.
He
sees
this.
And it’s not so much that she lacks confidence in him.
It’s that she refuses to see.
And no one can make anyone, especially a woman who’s strong enough to love a gambler
in the first place, do a single thing, Tug probably thought right then.
Because he said to me, “The upshot, Ms. Price, is that I’m good with horses.”
And I took a deep breath, then held it.
Finally I said, “Uh-huh.”
“As opposed to people,” he said.
“Okeydokey.”
“And I feel comfortable with horses as opposed to people.”
“Gotchya.”
“So why wouldn’t I just take care of horses—instead of fathering some actual human
being who I’d definitely raise to be a completely fucked-up member of society?”
Now I was shaking my head no, looking at every grandstander there except Tug. But
as I did this, I asked, “Why would you fuck anyone up?”
And Tug’s answer was “Why wouldn’t I?”
“You’re saying you’re fucked-up because you were raised by your father?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I nodded once, quickly. I said, “I’d go along with that.”
“And my mom,” he said, and he shrugged again, a shrug he might have thought I didn’t
notice, but now I seemed destined to notice things like that, and I felt smaller as
I folded my arms.
I said, “Well, that’s just sad, Mr. Tug.”
“Not if I end up with a horse farm.”
And for quite a while there, we sat like that, side by side as if stuck in those old
grandstand seats with each other, watching a green sunlit tractor comb the homestretch
dirt free of hoof marks.
“Or so I used to think,” Tug said.
And then—maybe—he noticed that I was holding my head slightly off center, as I had
when we’d first met.
I said, “For what it’s worth, my mother thinks you should forgive Douglas Sharp.”
“Who’s Douglas Sharp?”
“Guy who killed your father.”
“They caught him?”
I nodded.
“He confessed?”
“No. I mean, I don’t think so.”
“Jan, I’m no expert like your mom,” he said. “But I think the forgiving’s supposed
to happen after
the guy fesses up and says he’s sorry.”
I sat up straighter. I ran both hands over my clipped-back hair.
I was as calm as ever as I said, “So you’re saying you’re not ready.”
“For what?”
“Lots of things.”
“I’m telling you, Jan. I’ll forgive the man as soon as he confesses.”
“And what if he never does,
Tug?”
“Then I’ll do it when he’s convicted. I mean, if you still want me to then. But I
really don’t get how this whole forgiveness thing’s supposed to work. I mean, let’s
just say I visit this Douglas Sharp and forgive him
.
How does doing that make my average day better?”
I shrugged and said, “Hell if I know.”
And here, dammit, I had Tug smiling so hard I was sure I had him hooked.
And I said, “My mother would probably say that, somehow, good would eventually come
from it. Like somehow you and this Douglas Sharp might, you know, think about each
other more or whatever, and as a result one of your problems gets solved.”
“My problem or his?” he asked.
“Whoever’s,” I said. “I have no
idea, Tug. But if you plan to ignore the guy anyway . . .”
“All I said,” Tug told me then, “was I’d wait till we know for sure that he did something
wrong. I mean, let’s just say he turns out
to be innocent. Forgiveness from me would be kind of rude, right? I mean, think about
it, Jan. If this Douglas Sharp is innocent, we both probably owe him an apology.”
“For letting him sit there?”
Tug nodded.
And I said, “I still say having more forgiveness than you need isn’t the worst thing
in the world. Because, damn, Tug, people screw up.”
And here was where my voice had gotten shaky, when Tug was probably sure I would cry,
but I didn’t. I hadn’t cried at his father’s wake or funeral or burial or at any time
since, and I hadn’t cried all summer, not that he’d seen, not with tears falling,
and it struck me then that maybe he thought I was one of those people who cry only
when they’re happy, and he sat looking at the odds board, apparently ticked off at
himself and maybe the world because he, Tug Corcoran, had followed his father’s footsteps
and as a result gambled away cash he could have used to buy me a gift.
Why had his family bet? I wondered silently then. Why had each Corcoran continued
when everything felt jinxed? There’d been very little good in all that time they’d
spent in the grandstand, and now, as always, there was even less time, good time and
bad time both. There was never, ever good in not being able to buy something small
and nice for a lover you actually loved. Today offered every grandstander there a
gloriously clear sky and newly blooming flowers on the infield, but now that Tug had
lost, what good was all of that doing us?
Then, to our right, we heard, “Do you need this?”
And there, weak chinned and crouched on the concrete stairs and pointing at one of
the strewn
Form
sections at our feet, was The
Form
Monger.
“No, pal,” Tug said. “It’s all yours.”
And The
Form
Monger didn’t thank Tug or me, just reached for the section closest to his grimy
self, unmarked past performances worth pennies at most since the eighth race was just
now leaving the gate. Using both his purple stump and his good arm, he struggled somewhat,
and I, no doubt red-faced, maybe from fading anger with Tug or new embarrassment over
how close the purple stump was to touching my legs, bent to help The
Form
Monger, and he thanked me, once as one potentially kind human being to another, a
second time, it seemed, as a man enamored of me if not of gambling only.
Then he and I had roughly all of it gathered, various sections now secured between
his torso and the stump, his hand taking the last of it from me when I said, “Wait.”
And I was reading a past performance while his hand pulled at it.
“You can’t have this,” I told him.
“But Tug said I could,” he said.
“But I need it,” I said.
“But—”
“Sir, this
Form
is ours and I need this particular section,” I said. “Take the rest of it if you
want, but please just go away.”
“But you have the ninth race,” he said. “What I have is worthless.”
“I know, sir,” I said. “And we thank you for recycling it. Seriously, mister, I need
to study this race.”
And he walked off without even a glance in our direction, no doubt pissed at me for
my lack of respect and at Tug for being a cocky liberal who took pride in respecting
women to the point of embarrassing every old-school grandstander present, and then
I pointed at the newsprint and asked Tug, “Did you—did you
see
this?”
“See what,” Tug said.
“Equis Mini. He’s running in the next race.”
“Here?”
I nodded. And I will always, always have to admit that, right then, I was excited.
“Today?”
Tug asked.
“With morning line odds of fifty to one,” I said.
“Don’t play with me, Jan.”
“I’m not. Look.”
And I held that
Form
section closer to his face, so he could see that there, beside the numeral nine,
were the words
EQUIS MINI
.
And Tug no doubt again felt stupid for having blown all his cash.
Though of course there was also the thought any gambler could think: Nothing’s for
sure anyway.
And Tug said, “He’ll probably get his ass kicked.”
“I kind of doubt that,” I said.
So Tug then went ahead and did it despite his better judgment, skimmed over Equis
Mini’s past performances.
“Look at the results of his last real race,” he told me. “He got killed. Twenty-plus
lengths behind the pack the whole way.”
“That was a year ago,” I said.
“Which means today he’s rusty.”
“You just saw him fly in that secret sprint, Tug. Which is not listed here as a workout.
Which means it’s still more or less secret. Which means his odds will probably stay
high.”
“You think so, huh,” he said.
And I hunched myself up to pull cash from a back pocket, a
wad rolled tightly and secured by one of those black elastic bands he’d seen me use
when I washed my face.
“Where’d you get all that,” he said.
“Fishin’.”
“I thought that muskie money went to your mom.”
“It did. She gave it to me when your dad went AWOL. She was scared she’d disappear,
too.”
I pulled off the hair band, uncoiled the bills, the top one a ratty hundred.
“Why would
she
have disappeared?” Tug asked.
I held the cash against my chest. “Why does anyone?”
And I knew this could be taken as referring to my possibly moving back to Arkansas,
though I still suspected Tug figured I’d left Pine Bluff because of all the rumors
there about me. Then I realized Tug might have taken it as referring instead to his
father’s death, which obviously needed to take precedence over anything else, and
for a while right then, both Tug and I just sat. If we could just keep being this
honest with each other, I thought during this silence, we could probably make this
work.