He picked up the shot glasses and held one out for me. We had toasted my mother once a month for the last eleven months. “She’s gone Virgil, but she’s not forgotten. Not for a minute. I love her and I always will. But I’m done toasting the past. So here’s to you and me, Son, and whatever waits down the line.” My father drained his shot glass and set it down hard on the bar then walked away, leaving me sitting there alone, staring at myself in the mirror.
I suppose my father grieves his loss in ways I do not yet and hope never to understand. But I also grieve in my own way and not a day will pass that when I think of my mother I do not also think of her father, my grandpa. He died long ago, and when he passed, to say that things were never quite the same with our family would be a gross misrepresentation of our ancestral history. He was quite simply the center of our universe and we circled happily around him like planets around the sun, as if when immersed in his shining love there was nothing ever to fear, no darkness that could not be illuminated and laid bare for what it really was.
I have a picture of my grandfather that sits on the mantle of my fireplace at home. In it, he is sitting in his finished basement, facing the camera, his arms stretched just so while speaking with someone out of frame of the photograph. His back faces the descending stairway that was lined with light colored natural pine panels, and hung at eye level on the walls in a diagonal fashion are pictures of his grandchildren and a few other people I do not recognize. But one picture in particular hanging on the wall behind him always gets my attention. It is a picture of my father as a young man, perhaps taken even before he and my mother were married. It is black and white, and I think it is the most handsome picture of my father I have ever seen. There is a look of quiet confidence on his face and the way it hangs just over my grandfather’s shoulder in the photo tells me the love he showered on me was not exclusive. If you were a part of his life, you were a part of his love.
But when he died and we were forced to carry on without him, without his guiding influence in our lives, things slowly began to change. We began to drift apart, our exaggerated steps taking us further away from each other instead of closer together. Earlier when I spoke of the influence he had in our lives I used the analogy of the sun and the planets, and after he died if felt as if we no longer had his gravitational force around us to hold us together. Everyday we were together I remember a sense of anticipation and wonderment at what lay ahead, but after his death those hopeful days began to diminish as if our world had stopped turning and we were now stuck on the edge of an eternal night, locked in a phased elliptical orbit on the dark side of a place I thought I might never escape.
Eventually I learned a lesson from what happened to our family after my grandfather died, a lesson that clearly my father had learned along the way as well. I would honor his life and the lessons he tried to teach me by living my life to the fullest, the way he did.
Bottom line, if my father wanted to date another woman, who was I to judge?
A few minutes later I got up and put my rum behind the bar, and moved down next to Carol. We watched each other in the mirror for a few seconds, and then I turned on my stool so I could face her and said, “I’m Mason’s son, Virgil. Everyone calls me Jonesy. You must be Carol.” I smiled when I said it though I really didn’t intend to.
As the night went on I worked the bar with my dad but neither one of us had much to say to the other about a shared loss we continue to grieve in very different ways, which is, as I suspect, the way it should be. We had a decent crowd, and our band brought the house down with their original and covered Reggae. With two hours to go until closing my father took off his apron and walked over to where I stood and ruffled the hair on top of my head like I was still a little boy. “See you tomorrow, Son.”
I watched him and Carol as they walked out the door, then took my shot glass of Rum from the drip tray where I had left it earlier in the evening, held it up for a second and then drank it down. “See you tomorrow, Dad.”
Delroy walked over and put his arm around my shoulder and said, “Your father…he loves you, no?” He patted me twice on the chest then went back to work, singing along with the band, his voice carrying across the bar. A few minutes later he looked over at me and smiled, still singing, and just for a moment I could have sworn I was looking at my grandfather.
Half an hour later Miles, Donatti, and Rosencrantz came in and took a table in the back. I drew two pitchers of Red Stripe, placed them on a tray with four frosted mugs and joined them at the table.
“Alright,” I said. What have we got so far? Ron?”
“Well,” Ron said as he took a long pull of beer, then let a small belch escape his mouth, “to put it as professionally as possible, we ain’t got dick.”
We all sat with that for a moment. “He’s right,” Donatti said. “We got nothing on the canvass from this morning out at Dugan’s. The houses are all too isolated, and well, hell, Jonesy, you know that crowd. They’re good people and all, but when you’ve got that kind of jack, unless you’re at one of those fancy social functions, everyone keeps to themselves. And besides, it was just early enough that most of the husbands were gone, the wives weren’t up and the help hadn’t arrived. All in all, I’d say that whoever did this had it pretty well planned out.”
“What about the print off of the shell casing?”
“Blank. Who ever it was, they’ve never been printed.”
“So,” Miles said. “I stand by my original statement. We ain’t got shit.”
“You said ‘dick’ the first time,” Rosencrantz said.
Miles looked out over the top of his glasses. “I’m pretty sure I said ‘shit.’
“No, no,” Donatti said. “He’s right, you said ‘dick.’ I heard it.”
“Yep,” Rosie said. “I think you’ve got dick on the brain. Is there something you’d like to talk about?” He wiggled his eyebrows at Miles.
Put four cops around a pitcher of beer, I thought, and this is what you get. “Maybe we could stick to what’s important here?” I said. “Rosie, do you have anything at all?”
“Yeah, your sign’s wrong. The food’s good. And the beer is ice cold too.”
“Tell me again why I hired you.”
“My superior investigative skills.”
I stood from the table. “Work it out, guys. We need leads and I want a plan of action by tomorrow morning. The Governor and the press are going to be breathing down our necks, so let’s show ‘em something.”
As I walked away I heard Rosie tell Miles again that he was positive he’d said ‘dick.’
Twenty minutes later I was ready to pack it in for the night. I told Delroy I hoped to see him tomorrow, but I couldn’t be sure.
‘Dat alright, mon. Every ting come in its own time, no?”
“I guess so, yeah.”
“Your father, he worries about you.”
“Is that right?”
“Yeah, mon. Of course dat’s right. He wants you here, run the bar wid ‘im. Safer for you here, you know what I mean?”
“He’s never said anything like that to me, Delroy.”
Delroy laughed. “Yeah mon, you two a couple of talkers, you are.”
“I don’t get it,” I said.
“Hey, what do I know? Probably not my bidness anyway, mon.” He nodded over my shoulder toward the front entrance of the bar. “Dat probably not my bidness either, but here come your woman.”
I turned and looked around just as Sandy slid onto a stool next to me. She wore a loose blue halter dress that hung almost to the middle of her thighs and a pair of platform sandals.
“Delroy,” Sandy said, her hand over her heart, “that voice of yours melts me every time I hear it.” Then to me: “Buy a girl a drink?”