“It’s not fair,” he muttered. “Just ain’t fair.”
“What is fair?” Gerry picked up the cards, shuffled, dealt them out again. “Society? Society is like this card game here, cousin.
We got dealt our hand before we were even born, and as we grow we have to play as best as we can.
We picked our cards up.
“Well this really ain’t fair,” said King. “This is ridiculous.” His neck was swelling up slightly, showing big veins. “By God,” he said, “this ain’t no way to treat an American vet! I never dodged it like you.” He nearly spat in vexation. But Gerry’s teeth just showed, crooked and gleaming white.
“Glad I didn’t have to go,” he said. “They couldn’t pay me enough to commit their murders.”
He sighed and raked the cards back into his palms.
“If it helps,” he said to King, “don’t think of it as losing a car but as saving your own snatching neck. ” King went all rigid. Gerry was already serving two consecutive life sentences. He’d have to die and be resurrected twice before he’d quit the joint.
“Deal and call,” King said in a choked voice. “Deal five and show.”
Gerry shoved the deck across the table to me and nodded that it was my deal. His face was cool and serene, like the pictures of those Chinese gods. So I shuffled carefully. I saw the patterns of it happen in my mind. I dealt the patterns out with perfect ease, keeping strict to Lulu’s form.
I dealt a pair to King.
Gerry got a straight.
And myselP I dealt myself a perfect family. A royal flush.
We turned our hands over, showing them, and then there was a long strained pause.
“I’ll take the keys,” I said.
Gerry was rubbing his chin, a silent study.
King took a long time working the keys off the ring. As he did so I took a deep breath and glanced up at my father.
“I’ll drive,” I said, “wherever you want to go.”
King threw the keys down, but I never heard them hit the table. I never heard them because between the throwing and the landing there was a thud on the door.
“Open up! Police!”
Now It was me paralyzed. The room went whirling. Awful fear of being trapped squeezed my middle. It was even worse than I ever imagined. I heard them tramping in the entryway and their voices echoing in the air shaft. I heard their booming voices, gravel clicking in their holsters, the champing at the door of the steel harnesses at their belts, and in my mind I saw their raw red hands forming in fists.
For what seemed the longest time, we sat there stiff as bricks.
Then someone moved. It was Howard. He came running from the next room on his toothpick legs.
“Hold on! I’m coming,” he yelled. “He’s here!”
The boy ran to the door, fumbled with the catch that was placed too high for him, screaming all the time,
“He’s here!
He’s here!”
And how the boy had changed-gone from being a playground of flickering shadows to old age. He was suddenly a tiny, lined, gray grownup who threw himself in concentration up to the latch, screaming the name of his father.
And you know, that was what scared me most. Him screaming his own dad’s name.
“King’s here! King’s here!”
I sat there like a lump on a log. This was it, I thought, this was the wages of everything we done. This was the wages of the father meeting up with the son and the ghost of a woman caught in the dark space between them. This was the wages. This was the sad fact.
I couldn’t linger too long on sad facts though, for Howard finally got them in. He stood there wheezing and crying and pointing at King.
I thought the police would leap across the table and collar Gerry, then tie me up, and I had just mustered up the courage to get arrested with a decent struggle when I noticed that the state police were still standing in the door. It hadn’t taken more than a quick look-see through that apartment for them to ascertain that Gerry wasn’t there.
I whirled around.
He was gone. Vanished. He’d been hoisted from his chair into thin space. There was nothing but air where my dad had been.
My lips formed his name, but I never said it aloud. To this day I think he laid a finger beside his nose and went flying up the air shaft.
That’s the only thing possible.
The police were mumbling. King was answering.
“Sorry for bothering you, sir,” they said. “Have a good evening.
And then they shut the door and we were left there. It all happened so fast we felt stunned flat. I didn’t even have time for relief that they never asked about me. Howard was laying on the floor, stretched out, still as death. I knew he was playing dead. I would have in his shoes.
I picked him up and I put him under the coat on the couch. It was a woman’s coat, an old plaid thing with one sleeve ripped loose and the lining split. It still held a sweet, fresh whiff of perfume. I smelled the woman’s comfort as I tucked the collar up around his neck.
“It’s okay,” I said. “You lost your head a minute. Go on and cry.”
But there was no tears. He lay there stiff and watchful, ready for the hurt. The sense in his black eyes already had retreated to an unknown depth.
“The registration,” I said to King. “The fucking registration.”
Lynette lurched to the bread box; her teeth were chattering.
She messed around among some crumpled papers and dried bread heels, and finally came up with the form. She put it on the table and made him sign it. I grabbed the keys. I folded the paper, put it in my pocket, and then I quit them without a word.
The car was stove-in on the right bumper so that one headlight flared off to the side. I had seen there was nicks and dents in the beautiful finished skin. I ran my hand up the racy invert line of the hood as I drove the tangled highways in a general homeward direction. I had the windows open, needing good fresh air. I was free as a bird, as the blue wings burning on the hood. Night was gentle and flowing swiftly to either side. The buzzing yellow arc lamps of the city were soon left behind, and the air began turning bold and sweet with the smells of melting earth. I thought I’d drive straight through the night, cleaving the soft wet silence with my peacefulness. I thought I would never quit driving, it felt so good. I had a full tank and I was buzzed up with Lynette’s coffee and the power of events. I knew my dad would get away.
He could fly. He could strip and flee and change into shapes of swift release. Owls and bees, two-toned Ramblers, buzzards, cottontails, and motes of dust. These forms was interchangeable with his. He was the clouds scudding over the moon, the wings of ducks banging in the slough, he was … I was waxing eloquent in my mind when all of a sudden the back end started knocking. I slowed down and it got louder, so I speeded up again and it got quiet. I thought it must be the jack not properly secured in the trunk. What else would I think? I started waxing off again. But then the knocking would start up, so I’d have to bear down and speed. It finally got me to the point where it was disrupting my concentration to make a sense of things. I didn’t want to stop, but I thought I’d have to just pull over and tie the jack in tight. So I stopped, and soon as I did I knew there was something strange going on, because the knocking started up fast and furious.
I jumped out, not knowing what on earth to think. I thought there was some animal trapped inside there. I wouldn’t put it past King to throw a dog or something in his back trunk. The night was so dark. I didn’t know that it might not spring for my throat, so I held the key out very ginger when I put it in the trunk latch. I turned the key and jumped back. The hood sprang up.
I couldn’t tell what was in there, but it was sure big, and loud-gulping, sighing, half gagging. I finally figured out that it was human, and rushed to drag the body out. As soon as he could speak, of course, I knew it was by a miracle none other than Gerry Nanapush. He was curled up tight as a baby in its mother’s stomach, wedged so thoroughly inside it took a struggle to get him loose.