Authors: Mark Wisniewski
And as Tug would tell me weeks later, it was right about then, as this guy was being
crude with me, that Tug, without hearing a word of it, breathed in the Tonawanda’s
smell and, for the first time in my presence, got tearful and hot-faced in a way that
overcame him so quickly and powerfully he completely gave up on understanding himself.
Tug’s fears about the missing forty-gallon drum made sense to him, but what confused
him was that there was this little piece of him that wished his father
would
disappear and never return, and Tug hated how this little piece of himself had been
there for a while now and seemed destined to last forever—and he turned away from
me and everyone present as best he could, glaring at the tear-blurred tree line along
the Tonawanda itself.
But that river’s smell did sort of calm him. It reminded him of moss and turtles.
Then he heard the peaceful sound of hoofs trotting willingly toward him, and he collected
himself and turned to see Equis Mini and me pull up near Tom, Tom’s face sporting
a grin Tug knew well was impossible to read.
“You won,” Tom told me again.
And I asked him, “Did you bet on me?”
“What?” he said.
“You didn’t bet on me, did you, Tom,” I said. My thumbnails dug into the rough side
of the reins, and now here I was, getting all teary eyed, like Tug just had. “You
backed
down
,” I said. “You thought I was too big for the horse.”
“None of us backed down, honey,” Colleen called softly.
“Yes, you did,” I said. “The rookie jock just told me. And he didn’t have reason to
lie.”
“Sure, he did,” Tom said. “He had pride. Pride and losing make any man lie.”
“
You’re
lying,” I said. “You didn’t bet on me, and we all know it.”
“Jan?” Tom said. “That’s no way to talk to me.”
“I want to see the four thousand,” I said.
“My money’s my business,” Tom said, and Tug kept his eyes fixed on Tom’s face right
then and glared at him hard, as if to say to him,
Four thousand?
—because, even for the Corcoran family, four grand was a hefty chunk to bet on a sprint.
Then again, Tug realized when Tom’s eyes skipped from Tug’s to mine to Colleen’s,
their forty-gallon drum was gone.
Tom loved one of us more than he loved the rest, and—if you believed gambling lore—that
person’s days were numbered.
DEESH
“SO YOU DIDN’T LOAD IT?”
I ask Bark.
“Why would I?” he says, and he pulls into traffic, turning up dashboard hip-hop I
right away snap off. He speeds uptown, away from Mississippi unless we’re using the
Tappan Zee Bridge, hangs a right onto 216th, stops across from his favorite bodega.
No freaking way, I think, but he’s already out his door and run off, so here I am,
again double-parked, no flashers on, rush-hour traffic approaching behind, and this
is 216th Street in the Bronx, remember, with dusk already thick—it’s like I’m asking
for trouble. What Bark’s doing right now is buying a six, since, without beer, he
won’t be able to stay cool. He’ll sip as he drives. He’ll sip because winning big
at the track makes him as nervous as he gets when he loses. He’ll sip because he used
to deal weed and smoke the profits—until cops fired eighteen rounds into the only
nonmob
supplier he knew. He’ll sip because he then sold crack until a white dude in a GMC
Yukon with thick-ass bulletproof windows told him to take his business elsewhere.
Mostly, though, he’ll sip because, on top of everything that’s happened today, he
can’t handle the fact that last week, when he and I ran into Madalynn on that sidewalk
in Brooklyn, she didn’t care enough about him to ignore him as seductively as she
ignored me.
JAN
WHEN EQUIS MINI BURST OUT
of the starting gate in that secret sprint, there was no need to whip him or urge
him or jab him with my heels. There was just speed and our breathing and a feeling
of flight, but none of that feeling was because of me or despite me. Instead there
was only this sense of what you might call mutual shimmering, which I’m now quite
sure has everything to do with the fact that there’s an afterlife.
What I’m saying is that, yes, I got teary eyed just after the sprint because of what
that rookie jock had said to me, but there was a lot more to it than that. Mostly
I got that way because, during that sprint’s twenty-one seconds, it hit me that my
father’s departed spirit was somehow inside that little horse; somehow, wherever my
father’s soul had gone after he’d drowned in those sun-bleached weeds, it was now
back on earth with me; somehow he was,
through Equis Mini’s effort to run as fast as a shooting star, trying to say to me:
If you, young lady, truly want to keep on, know I am here, with you.
And this got me all the more emotional right then because, for months before that
sprint—years, really—I’d been trying never to think about my father because of something
that happened when I was a junior in high school. See, I had this friend named Stephanie
Campbell, one of those best friends you get stuck with because you’re a dumbshit in
your teens, and Stephanie invited me for a Saturday night sleepover, and beforehand
her parents spoiled us by making us a steak dinner with champagne and au gratin potatoes
and asparagus—in fact I’ll always remember Mrs. Campbell as the adult who taught me
to eat asparagus spears with my fingers.
And Stephanie and I ate our steaks and drank that champagne and stayed up till all
hours talking in her room, mostly about the many vacations she and her parents had
taken, and I fell asleep listening to her, then had this dream about riding a train
over the Pacific Ocean. And the train made an unscheduled stop at a station crawling
with vines, and I was about to drink water from a natural spring there when I ran
into my father, who, in the dream, was a thoroughbred
owner
and even more handsome than my mother had always described him, but then I needed
to get back on the train and he said he wanted to stay, so I hugged him harder and
harder—and I woke up hugging Stephanie, who kept trying to shove me off her and shush
me. And she was all flustered because she thought I was trying to hump her; she insisted
I leave and never talk to her again, and then, within days, there came to be all sorts
of rumors about me at school—I was a lesbian, I’d slept with half the girls’ varsity
lacrosse team, I had a large collection of dildos, I rode horses because straddling
them brought me to orgasm, I
regularly went down on the retired hot-walker who’d taught me to ride horses in the
first place, and together this hot-walker and I had manually stimulated a stallion.
If these rumors strike you as outlandish, remember one thing: They
did
all take root in small-town America. And let me say for the record that none of these
rumors were true. Not that I was a virgin, so might I add that there were also numerous
false rumors about what I’d done with a good portion of the male population of Pine
Bluff. I guess you could say I never did fit in there.
But what I want you to know I still haven’t said. Which is that I got so despondent
about the rumors I practically stopped going to school and spent as much time as I
could hanging out with old horses at the retired hot-walker’s trail-riding stable.
And one day the retired hot-walker took a look at me and must have seen despondency
all over my face, because she said, “There’s a woman here needs to see something,
and she ain’t me,” then drove me, in her dented sky blue Subaru, for miles and miles
until, on a two-laner in country that was darned remote even for Arkansas, she stopped.
And out my window was pretty much just a bright white post-and-board fence, and beyond
the fence was land pitched gently upward so you almost couldn’t see, on the horizon
up there, a big old decrepit mansion. And between that mansion and us, near the white
post-and-board, were a couple of silver thoroughbreds—two-year-old colts, it appeared,
since they still had muscle to put on.
And the hot-walker nodded to assure me we were there to watch those colts, so that’s
what I did, already in love with how their coats shone, how they stood beside each
other despite the smooth acres of emerald grass stretching out for them, and then
one nudged the other’s withers in play and headed off, away from the fence, and the
other kicked up turf to follow, and soon they
were side by side in a canter, and then they broke into a gallop, challenging each
other for the pure and unquestioned fun of it, like two kids seeing who’s fastest
on some school’s asphalt track in summertime.
This was joy I was seeing, gloriously contagious joy. Both of my arms had gooseflesh.
And the hot-walker said, “Honey,
that
,
right there, is why your daddy was a champion. The man made every horse he rode want
to run with such joy.” And I nodded, and she went on to say, “Those kids in Pine Bluff
badmouthing you? They only
wish
they could have been born to a daddy like that.”
And from then on, I would want badly to run in a race like I’d just seen: two souls
moving ahead uncommonly fast, conjuring the words
I Am Here, With You
.
DEESH
SO, YEAH, HERE’S BARK LEAVING
the bodega across the street from where I sit in his truck, and I remember one of
those thoughts I was sure Jasir had—
This serious dude is your daddy no doubt
—and
Bark nods at me with a forced smile. And it’s then that I see this cop, a white guy,
maybe half a block east, walking toward me on 216th, Bark now jogging with his eyes
like lasers on mine. And it hits me right then that any decent person can end up being
trapped by friendship, because if you care, you care, and there’s always that question
of how much of your own lot you’ll risk for your friend—versus how much you’ll fend
for yourself.
And here I am again, putting my ass on the line for the sake of friendship with Bark,
because I’m sliding over onto the driver’s seat of his truck, to keep the cop’s attention
off him and his damned concealed gun.
And just as Bark gets in the passenger side, the cop points at me.
As in the cop wants me to stay put.
Take off, I think, though now here comes the cop, hustling ass toward us, all proudly
uniformed and weight trained and clean shaven, motioning for me to roll down the driver’s-side
window.
Just drive, I think.
But I am Bark’s friend.
I roll down the window, all the way, to keep the cop’s focus on me and therefore off
Bark and the gun. Bullshit the guy, I tell myself. Sometimes you’re good at that.
Then the cop draws his gun. It’s all of a sudden as if my insides are up to my throat,
to the point that I can barely say, “Sir, what are you doing?”
“My job,” the cop says. “Hands on the steering wheel, brother.” He waves the gun at
Bark and says, “Hey,
big
guy. Paws on the dash.”
JAN
BEHIND THE WHEEL OF HIS PICKUP,
Tom Corcoran said, “Care to bet with me tomorrow?”—and Tug thought, Here we go, because
Tug was sure Tom had yet again scared up a serious lock, some juiced-up sure thing
supposedly set to get the Corcorans back to even with whoever had absconded with their
drum.
But Tug shook his head no. Then he went all tongue-tied, like his mother sometimes
would after a horse they’d piled on lost. And then there Tug was, promising himself
he’d never bet a cent for the rest of his life, not even on a raffle ticket for the
worthiest cause—since it was finally clear to him that the best thing gambling could
do was distract a guy from what a guy wanted but couldn’t have.
But then there was Tom, glancing back and forth, between the moonlit road and Tug.
“Why not,” Tom asked.
Tug shrugged. You don’t dislike
the guy, he thought. You just hate being scared.
Their pickup’s engine purred, and Tom leaned back. “Something wrong?”
“Not at all.”
“It’s about Jan, right?”
“Yeah, what happened last night anyway?” Tug said. “
Did
you cancel a bet because you thought she looked too heavy for the horse?”
In the blue glow of his dashboard, Tom went as still as a gut-hooked muskie floating
dead in morning sunshine.
“You did, didn’t you,” Tug said. “You canceled your bet on her.”
Tom sighed. “Tug, I didn’t cancel a damned thing.”
“Wait. No.
Dad.
Don’t tell me. You actually bet
against
her?”
“Don’t want to discuss it, son.”
“You did! You bet against
her!”
Tom kept shaking his head no.
Tug shook his, too, all but breathless. “And you
lost
!”
“That’s enough out of you,” Tom said. “That’s enough.”
And it was those last two words of Tom’s that assured Tug that his father had lost
far into the thousands. Plus he was
betting against people he was supposed to care for. And it had been months, Tug realized,
since Tom had mentioned their progress in saving for Tug’s college tuition.
Milkweeds zipped past. Tug swallowed something like carsickness: disdain. Despite
it, he eased his eyes toward his father, who handled a curve with the confidence of
a man who’d never lost a cent, but then Tom’s gaze at the road lost spirit, as it
would after his quietest arguments with Tug’s mother after a luckless day at the
track. Tom was, as everyone needed to admit, an outsider, a guesser, a wonderer—in
his own words, a goddamned grandstander.
So as a kind of compromise Tug said, “I guess you were just trying to help her.”
Tom nodded, then drove on.
And Tug thought: Remember, you’re this man’s
son
.
And what’s important is you’re both still here.
And now they were picking up speed.
“I was sure she would lose,” Tom said. “And I thought the experience of riding Equis
Mini would be the best way to let her down easily.”
Which was the most direct way Tom could muster, Tug figured, of admitting that, yes,
Tom
had
bet against me when I’d won on Equis Mini.
Which assured Tug that, yes, Tom had also vandalized Tug’s horse farm’s fence and
walked off with Silent Sky.
Tom
had sold Silent Sky to a rendering plant for gambling cash.
And that was that.
And now here Tug was, grabbing the dash because Tom was hitting the brakes.
“What,” Tug said.
“Someone,” Tom said. They stopped completely and Tom clicked on the brights. “Someone’s
up there.”
“Where.”
“I think that’s her. Off to the side. God, Tug, that is
her. What in hell is she doing?”
And, see, I’d only been doing what Tom had more or less advised me to do, running
in the dark. And when I’d do this and any headlights behind me brightened, I’d always
veer onto the gravel shoulder and turn to see who it was, and this time the glare
from the brights had me unsure, but their steadiness on me had me feeling, with butterflies
pretty much gone crazy in my stomach, that I was facing the Corcorans’ pickup, which
might have meant Tug was there.
Then I heard Tom’s voice call, “What’re you doing?”
“Running,” I shouted.
“From what.”
“Just, you know, trying to get in shape.”
“Want a lift back?”
“Got a ways to go but thanks,” I said, and it was only then that I noticed someone
else had gotten out, too, Tug, I sensed given the silhouette’s angular torso, and
I couldn’t make out his eyes or face but saw him headed my way, and Tom got back in
the pickup, then held on to his door.
“Son?” he called.
“I think I’ll stay,” Tug called, maybe a little peeved, maybe a little nervous, and
I wondered what was on his mind while neither he nor I nor Tom spoke, and then I felt
a finger touch the side of my neck, on that ticklish spot where your jawline begins,
and a jolt shot through me. This jolt was like the electric feeling I’d had on Equis
Mini but far shorter and much stronger, and it teased me with promise about kissing
later in secret and making love, and I didn’t know what got me more, the charge it
put in me or how Tug had made sure it hadn’t overpowered me. And then he, Tug, very
quietly said, “You had a bug there,” and if this was a lie, I didn’t care: I just
wanted another jolt.
And Tom, from beyond the glare from his brights, called, “Suit yourself,” and then
came the slam from his yanking closed the door Tug had left open.
And then the truck itself rolled toward us but went right on
past. It stopped and made a U-turn, then passed us again, gone now except for the
sound of its shifting gears, and I pretended to listen to that sound fade, to let
Tug know I, too, cared about family, but also to offer that same place on my neck.
Because my loudest thought then was
Kiss me there.