The boy was silent.
“Dr. Cash tells me you joined the exercise group this week. He says you’re hanging right in there. I can’t… can’t tell you how happy that makes me.”
The boy turned and smiled, almost imperceptibly, and turned back toward the window.
“Looks like you’re putting on some weight. That starchy hospital food, I suppose. Good thing you’re taking up that exercise thing.”
The boy was silent.
“It’ll be getting warm soon. Maybe we could get out and play some tennis together. Dr. Cash says there’re some courts near here, and we could use one, if you like, when it warms up.”
And it went on like that, for fifteen minutes, Tree struggling painfully to maintain the one-sided, small-talk conversation, while his son sat staring, reacting occasionally, usually with that small smile, but nothing more.
“Well,” Tree said, finally, with reluctance, in relief, “gotta go now. See you next Monday. I… I love you, son.”
The boy turned and nodded and turned away. Roger waved to us in the hall as we left. He was on his way back to Frank Jr.’s side.
I didn’t ask Tree anything till we were out of there, iron doors shut behind us, in the cool outer corridor of the hospital.
“He never says anything?” I asked. “He just sits there and looks out the window and smiles now and then?”
Tree’s eyes were glazed. “You don’t know how much those smiles mean to me. It’s taken him four months to get that far.”
Half an hour later, in a bar in downtown Iowa City, Tree told me the story.
23
The only time business is slow in a college-town bar like the Airliner is when it’s closed, but this was mid-afternoon and a quieter time than most, so it didn’t make a bad place to talk. We bought drinks at the bar, a double Scotch straight up for Tree and a Coke on ice for me, and carried them to a booth at the rear.
Tree had a lot of lines in his face, which gave him a rough-hewn, Marlboro man quality capable of luring at least an occasional younger woman for a bounce on his water bed. At the moment, however, in the shadowy, flickering reflection of the candle in glass that lit the booth, those lines seemed simply a sign of age.
And his sigh said he felt even older than he looked.
“I didn’t raise him,” he said. “His mother did. I met her in Reno, in ’56 or 7. I was drifting back and forth between Vegas and Reno, working for casinos sometimes, sometimes for myself. I already knew what I wanted… my own place, why settle for less? I ran some joints for the DiPreta boys, in Des Moines, after the war. Learned everything there is about managing a club, any kind of a club. But there was no place to climb, there were enough DiPreta brothers to fill all the top slots in the Des Moines action, so I left. I liked to gamble and I was good at it. I started hitting poker games in little towns and big ones and everything between. Ended up on the Reno and Vegas circuit, of course. She was a cocktail waitress at Harold’s. Nineteen and already divorced once, but no kids. I was dealing blackjack. Knocked her up, married her. I don’t know why, except I always had it in the back of my head to have a kid, and she was a looker and I thought I loved her, the cunt. She had blond hair everywhere and tits that wouldn’t stop and I’d fuck her today if I could and hate her while I was doing it.”
He stopped for a moment, embarrassed. Scratched his head. Dandruff seemed his only grooming problem. He looked down at his drink. Drank it, got up and got another and drank half of that before going on.
“You know the first couple years weren’t so bad. She loved Frank Jr. She was a good mother, no shit. And she was good to me. That was while I was out hustling my ass, making my goddamn fortune. Maybe that’s why she put up such a good front, those first couple years. She must’ve known I had it in me to make it, and figured to stick with me till I did. We weren’t married three years before I had my place on the river, across from Burlington, and it made money from day one, right away they were calling it Little Las Vegas, that little town we took over. I owned my own place and a piece of everybody else’s on the street. The only help I had was the DiPretas. My old bosses backed me, at the start, but they stayed out of my way. You want another drink?”
“No.”
He did.
This was hard for him and the lubrication was a must. Still, he seemed to feel the need to tell me all this, and not just because someone wanted him dead and to stop it I needed background. That was part of it, but important too was his need to tell somebody, to purge himself of memories too personal to tell anyone except a stranger.
He came back with a third double, drank it, and went on.
“She waited,” he said, “waited till things were going real good for me, and then she filed the papers. She socked me for a ton of alimony, let me tell you, and child support, only that I didn’t mind so much, the bitch. She took my kid and drained the fuck out of me, and my opinion of marriage ever since went down a little, you know? Never again. Anyway, she raised the kid, or her sister did. She was screwing a lot of guys, never did get married again, but then that’d stop the money, right? I’ll never figure out why she was such a good mother at first and then just turned the kid over to that senile sister of hers. The only thing I can say for the twat is she let me see the kid, couple of weeks in the summer, Christmas, some other holiday, usually. I’d take him camping, ball game, things like that. I was a good father to him, good as I could be, considering what little chance I got. And he looked up to me. He really did. That made me feel good, and I’m not ashamed to say it. Another drink?”
“Not me,” I said. “You have to drive back, remember.”
“One more won’t hurt.”
Well, if it did, he sure didn’t seem to feel it. He showed it only in the increased speed and ease of his speech, which wasn’t slurred in the least.
“She turned into a sort of a lush, after a while,” he said, his own glass empty now. “You get soft living on somebody else’s money all the time, never working a day, you know? She never worked a day. Last fucking job she ever had was when she was a cocktail waitress at Harold’s, in Reno, which is where I met her, the whore. That’s what she turned into, only she gave it away. With all the money of mine she had, you’d think she’d at least go around fucking the country club set or something, but no. Lowlifes. That’s what she was and who she liked to be around. Just pick up some goddamn factory worker in a bar and ball him and blow him and Jesus. Anyway, she got hit by a car about five, six, years ago. Drunk. And Frank Jr. came to live with me. He was torn, though, I think, you know? That sister-in-law of mine was the closest thing to a mother Frank ever had, and how can you blame him for feeling something for the old douche bag? Listen, I got to have a beer chaser, that’s all there is to it. You?”
“Okay. Make it a gimlet, though.”
He did, and he sipped some beer before starting up again.
“He was a quiet kid, Frank Jr. He wasn’t too active, not in sports or any of those high school things. I think I maybe disappointed him, a little, because I was more strict than he thought I’d be. I wanted to know where he was going, what time he’d be in, things like that. I wanted to know what crowd he was running with, would check out the kids, their parents. He had some friends I didn’t much approve of, but I finally gave up on that. He was his mother’s son, after all, what’re you gonna do? The biggest blow-up we ever had was over money. I didn’t give him much. Hell, I didn’t give him any. I put a roof over his head, food on his fucking table, and it was a goddamn good roof and the food wasn’t leftovers by a long shot. I had a sixty-thousand-dollar home, there in Burlington, maid who cooked, kid had it easy. Too easy to suit me. I wanted him to work. He needed to know about that, that things don’t come easy in this life. I didn’t want him to be a lousy whore like his mother, if you know what I mean. You got to learn to earn your money, or at least fucking win it, you know what I mean? I tried to teach him that, and I think he came to learn it and maybe even respect me for it. He worked at a gas station and before you know it he had his own car and he dressed good and I was proud of the kid, really was. The only thing was I should’ve watched him closer. I just couldn’t keep him from that crowd he ran with, and about two years ago it all kind of came to a head.”