“I think you’re overreacting,” Meredith says.
“You would,” I tell her, and I feel like a child bringing up something that happened a long time ago and doesn’t matter anymore.
“It was just a part of his test,” she says.
I expect Joey to say something like “You’re not my father,” or “I don’t have to listen to your shit.” But instead he says, “Only the strong will survive, Ronald.”
It’s something his father used to say at pep rallies before big games or after he’d knock the books out of my hands in the hallway. The thought occurs to me that without ever really knowing his father, the odds are that Joey Jr. will turn out to be exactly like him.
“Has it ever occurred to you that you’re a complete asshole?” I ask him.
“Ronald,” Meredith says, shocked.
“Better than being a complete pussy,” Joey says.
“Get in the car right this minute,” Meredith tells him. She knows this was bound to happen. He and I have come to words before. Our mutual dislike can only simmer for so long.
Joey Jr. gives me one more menacing glance and then climbs into the back of their minivan, sliding the door shut behind him. Meredith is giving me a disapproving stare.
“What?”
“You would think that with you being the closest thing he has to a father figure, you’d be a little more patient with him.”
“He’s a carbon copy of his father and he’ll probably turn out to be just as big a dickhead.” After it’s out, I realize that at a crucial juncture in the conversation this was probably the wrong thing to say. Meredith shakes her head, gets in the minivan and drives off. That night she doesn’t call to say good night like she usually does and I eat dinner alone in silence.
The next day at Custom Critters, I’m talking to an older man who is interested in buying one of my deer heads, when Meredith storms in. She’s distraught. Out of breath. Hair in her eyes. And by the look on her face she wants to talk. Now. I turn to look at the man.
“I’m very sorry, but would you mind coming back in a little while? This should only take a moment.”
The man, completely bald with ears too large for his head, nods politely and gives me a wrinkled smile as though he understands. But when he leaves, I see him walk toward the parking lot instead of turning left toward the rest of the plaza, and I know he won’t return.
“Joey Jr. got suspended from school today,” Meredith blurts out as soon as the glass door shuts. She’s wearing a red pleather raincoat over her green nurse’s uniform. Outside there isn’t a cloud in the sky. Meredith, I have learned over the course of our relationship, is always prepared for the worst.
“Shouldn’t you be at work?” I ask her.
“He’s been suspended for two weeks.”
I look at her blankly. Her arms are crossed under her breasts, her face pulled tight. “Don’t you even want to know?” she asks. She begins to cry. I put my arms around her, keep them around her when she pushes at me with her elbows, whisper to her that it’s alright. It breaks me to see her like this, but I’m also reminded that she’s not all barbed wire and brick walls. That sometimes things get to her and it’s me that she comes to, that she needs. But I don’t ask about Joey. I don’t want to. I don’t want to hear that he bound some other freshman in duct tape and left him underneath the bleachers, or that he held down a frail, studious kid while a group of jocks doused him in urine. What Meredith doesn’t understand is that I won’t sympathize with Joey. I’ll champion the case of whoever it is he’s wronged because I still remember what it was like trying to hold back tears in front of a locker room full of boys.
I rub Meredith’s back. She continues to cry, and finally, I give in.
“What did he do?” I ask. “I mean, what happened?”
“He roundhouse-kicked another boy in the cafeteria. A senior.”
I almost slip and call him a prick, but I catch myself. Meredith is upset and I don’t feel like talking anyways.
When Meredith calms down, we walk next door to Tom’s Diner and order pecan pie and coffee.
“What are you going to do with him?” I ask. The skin around her eyes is puffy and pink. She stares down at her coffee while she stirs it.
“I don’t know. I can’t just allow him to sit at home and watch television for two weeks.”
“What about work?” I ask. “Isn’t there some place for him at the hospital?”
Meredith shakes her head.
“Well you should make him work. Work is exactly what that boy needs.”
When I say this, Meredith looks up, and I understand immediately what she wants.
“No.” I answer the question before it’s asked.
“But, Ron,” she is already saying, “he could help you in the back and do some cleaning in the showroom. And you wouldn’t have to pay him. He could work for free. As punishment.”
“Punishment for who?” I ask. But I know that arguing is pointless. Like volunteering at the dojo, Meredith is already lifting my arm for me.
“I’ll drop him off tomorrow at seven,” she says, “on my way to work.” She leans across the lime-colored tabletop and kisses me.
“I have to get back to the hospital,” she says. “Denise is covering my shift.”
For the first two days, Joey and I don’t speak more than two words at a time to each other. “Don’t touch.” “I won’t.” “Lunch time.” “Not hungry.” “Go home.” “I wish.”
We’re the opposing parties of an unsuccessful duel, forced to serve our sentences together. Joey sits behind the counter in the showroom, and I spend as much time in my workshop as I can: cleaning, organizing my chemicals, doing every task, even the most simple and mundane ones, over and over. Only when a customer walks in do I venture out, unwillingly forcing the two of us to share a room. I want Joey out of my store and back in school so badly I consider calling his principal.
On the third day, I’m in the backroom re-rechecking the inventory of my bird skin degreaser when I hear the tinny ring of the reindeer collar attached to the front door. I walk into the showroom and am greeted by the old man from the other day. He’s dressed in orange hunting camo, and he’s cradling a stained burlap sack like it contains a fragile gift. He acknowledges Joey with a gray-toothed smile.
“Got something for you here,” the man says proudly, hoisting the bag.
I apologize to him for the interruption the other day.
“Not a problem,” he says, clearly more interested in showing me the contents of the bag. Behind the counter, Joey is pretending to read a book, but he steals a curious glance at the swollen bag.
“Follow me,” I tell the man, leading him into my workshop.
In back, the man sets the bag on the table and pulls it open.
“Gobbler,” he says. From the bag’s damp interior he carefully lifts out a large turkey. “Finest I’ve ever seen,” he says. And indeed it is a beautiful creature. A full-grown tom that weighs in at thirty pounds when I place it on the scale. The bird’s chest is wide and full, the wattle stretching along its throat like a scarlet ribbon. A bristly beard, at least a half a foot long, hangs from its upper chest, and the bird’s feathers are a burnished gold.
“Got him out by Walnut Creek,” the man says. “I’d been waiting in my blind all morning without seeing a thing when he came strutting by.” His face is wrinkled with excitement. “I want to have him mounted for my son. He’s coming in from Cincinnati in a few weeks.” He nods toward the front of the store. “That your boy out there?”
I look at the man’s tan wrinkled face, and think about what Meredith said. Closest thing to a father figure he has. The man is waiting for me to answer.