“
You were a lucky guy to land such a
princess.”
“
Anyway, I figured it all out by
accident. I was headed to the snack shop for two more beers, but
detoured toward the men’s room. By coincidence, Tommy was walking
down the hall ahead of me and pulled his wallet from a back pocket.
It was one of those set-ups with a chain attached to one corner
that connects to a belt loop.”
“
Biker style,” said Willy. “Wicked
chic.”
“
When he goes for his wallet, I see
a little square packet pop out and land on the carpet. I was real
smooth, scooping it up and slipping it into my pocket without
missing a beat. Then I stood right next to the fucker at the urinal
while we both took a piss. He had a dangling cigarette, acted like
I was invisible. He zips up, hits the handle, and doesn’t even
pretend to wash his hands.”
“
To be fair, you said he was
spraying disinfectant.”
“
Can I finish?”
“
I’m listening,” said
Willy.
“
I had all the answers practically
burning a hole in my pocket. I knew before looking that it was
cocaine he was dealing.”
“
Bingo!” Willy clapped his hands
just as a lightning bolt crashed down and touched the ocean surface
a few hundred yards away. The white flash spread out like a wave in
all directions. “Front page story, right?”
“
I needed proof. I had to get it on
video. I could report what I’d seen, plus I had the little package
of coke, but it wasn’t enough. Without video, it was my word
against his. And what had I really seen? I needed to show money
exchanging hands, then confront one of the buyers away from the
bowling alley where he’d have to take me up on my offer. I’d
promise to keep his name out of the paper in exchange for
everything he knew.”
“
You were a man with a plan,” Willy
said. “Very impressive.”
“
I pictured the story getting picked
up by all the dailies in the state, the Associated Press including
it in its regional and maybe even national feed if any councilmen
had their hands in it. They really get off on that stuff. Local
bowling alley owner’s son is narcotics supplier to downtown
business bigwigs.”
“
How’d your boss feel about your
investigative reporting?”
Dash used his big toe to draw a wavy line in
the black sand. “Not anything like I expected. He threatened to
fire my ass and make certain I never worked at another paper in the
state. The ad revenue from the people I’d be destroying was the
lifeblood of the newspaper. If he found out I so much as took one
more note or asked one more question, my career was
over.”
“
But you couldn’t leave it alone,”
said Willy.
“
I borrowed a video camera from a
friend, cut a hole in an old gym bag for the lens. I asked for lane
eight or nine, the ones with a good view of the front counter, said
they were lucky for me. I set the camera to record while we
bowled.”
“
What made you take Sarah to that
joint in the first place? It had to be pure hell being around some
guy you were pretty sure had hooked up with your girl.”
Dash drew more lines in the sand. “You already
know.”
“
You’re telling the story. I’m just
sitting here listening.”
“
The night we got engaged kept
coming back. I did everything I could to pretend I hadn’t seen what
happened, what she’d done in the truck. But it got into my dreams
and was harder and harder to push out of my head.”
Willy was nodding. “You wanted to hurt him
bad.”
“
I wanted to
kill
him. It’s
why I took Sarah bowling in the first place. I couldn’t hide from
it anymore, so I faced it the only way I knew. The story was dumb
luck. But even after I knew something shady was going down, I
followed him to the bathroom to confront him. I’d started losing it
big time. I was fantasizing non-stop about murdering him, had a
hundred different ways of doing it running through my head.
Dropping the coke saved the fucker’s life. I would have smashed his
head into the tile wall while he was pissing. Grabbed him by the
neck and just kept smashing and smashing.”
“
You had him in a different way. One
that kept you from rotting in prison for the rest of your
life.”
“
I had video of a dozen bedrock
citizens buying drugs from Tommy Chambers.” Dash paused and took a
deep breath of salty ozone. “Or at least appearing to buy little
square packages that may or may not contain drugs. So I kept to my
original plan and picked the guy most likely to roll over on the
rest. He owned a new shoe store, was married and had two young
kids. It was also the one guy I didn’t want to see ruined. I wasn’t
trying to judge people for buying coke. I was caught up in doing a
real story for the first time in my shitty career.”
“
And you wanted to take Tommy
down.”
“
The next best thing to bashing in
his head.”
“
So you took the guy a copy of the
tape?”
Dash nodded. “I walked into his store around
lunch time. His name was Bob, and damn if he didn’t have a smear of
white powder under one nostril while I was trying to explain my
offer. But he was hyper as hell, sniffing and rubbing at his nose,
scared shitless that I was some kind of blackmailer. I tried
calming him down, but he was amped up. ‘I don’t have money,’ he
tells me, and goes on about two mortgages and twenty grand worth of
Buster Browns nobody was buying. So I tell him again what I need,
and something seems to finally click in his head. He bends over the
glass counter, looks down at the knickknacks lined up in the case
as if they have the answer, and starts talking. Tells me everything
I needed to know. Gives me Tommy’s prices, who turned him on to the
operation, and who he suspected was Tommy’s supplier.”
“
Hot damn. Signed, sealed, and
delivered. You were a helluva reporter after all.”
“
Bob went home and hung himself in
the garage,” said Dash. “Did I mention his two little girls? And
would you believe his wife had just found out she was pregnant
again? Not many people have the sort of life insurance that covers
self-inflicted rope wounds.”
Willy reached across and patted Dash’s hand.
“Funny how things work out.”
“
I went ahead and wrote the story,
but didn’t give it to my editor. I sent it right to the wire
service, and reporters from all over the state were on the phone
looking to fill in some blanks or add quotes from me. My boss wrote
a retraction of the story the minute he found out, sent it over the
wires marked urgent, saying a former reporter had fabricated the
entire piece as an act of retribution. He claimed I’d gone crazy,
was trying to pull off some sort of sick stunt that caused an
innocent man’s suicide.”
“
Boy, oh boy.” Willy squeezed Dash’s
hand, held it. “What a story that made, huh? Husband and loving
father driven to suicide by crazed journalist. Talk about front
page news.”
“
I made the front page, for
sure.”
“
I really like that Snoopy,” Willy
said, pointing to the figure on Dash’s lap. “I like things you can
touch and not worry about killing.”
Dash handed him the toy.
“
Thanks.” Willy propped Snoopy back
in his belly button. “You have some time before the big weenie
roast. Seems like a waste, grinding on things you can’t fix. Try
spending your time with something productive, maybe work on your
stone skipping.”
Dash watched the storm as it was pushed farther
to the south. The village fishermen were headed home through the
heavy surf, making the last turn at the southern tip of the reef.
One waved to Dash, who lifted his hand from habit. Maybe becoming a
human sacrifice was exactly what he deserved.
D
ash skipped stones across
the rolling wave tops. The wind had died down when the thunderheads
disappeared, the sea as calm as it ever got south of the reef. Foam
spilled over the rocks, gulls squawking and battling for air space.
They chased the flat stones, were frustrated when the tempting
objects dug in and sank out of sight. Tiki laughed, gathered more
for him to throw.
“
Come, I wanna teach you.” He held a
stone with his curled index finger and thumb.
“
Did you have happy times with
her?”
“
Who do you mean?”
“
You and Sarah.”
He backed away from the meager surf, stone
still in his right hand. He sat next to Tiki as she stacked her
collection into a pyramid.
“
Was she a good cook? Did she make
you clothes?”
He would never admit the only successful aspect
of their relationship to a ten-year-old girl. He had, come to think
of it, once blurted out to Sarah that she was like a pro when it
came to certain endeavors. She bopped him in the head for that one.
They were in bed, still panting, when the words slipped out. She
stormed from the sweaty covers into the bathroom, locking the door.
He knew she’d sit on the toilet for an hour, reading magazines and
smoking from a stale pack of Marlboros she kept stashed in the
medicine cabinet. He’d been forced to pee in the kitchen
sink.
“
She seemed to really like my mom,”
he finally said. “And my mom sure loved her. She thought Sarah was
the best thing in the world for me. My mom was a sucker for a good
love story, maybe because hers had turned out so sad.”
“
Did your mama tell Sarah
stories?”
“
Is that what loving mothers do?” he
asked, knowing the answer. “I guess she would have if they’d spent
more time together. My mom wanted a grandchild almost too
much.”
He’d worried about his mother, how she’d grown
increasingly distant from friends, doing things that crossed the
line into full-fledged eccentricity. The store had looked less and
less like an antique shop, and more like a stage set for a large,
Victorian-era family. One with eight babies roughly the same
age.
While her home was cluttered with trash bags
spilling from the kitchen out onto the front porch, the shop was
immaculate in the years following her husband’s death. White
candles burned in each window. A fresh wreath hung on the front
door year-round. The enormous dining room table had been cleared of
inexpensive bric-a-brac, replaced with a fourteen-person China set,
gold-plated silverware, hundred-year-old serving plates, and
elegant stemware. Eight chairs held hand-crafted booster seats and
porcelain baby dolls with fine linen bibs.
The dolls were her babies, and she showed them
off to her friends when they came to the shop for tea. The women
had smiled when his mother brought out an album, photos of the same
babies in the same chairs. He’d been lugging boxes past the
heartbreaking scene, wanted to interrupt his mother, make some
excuse for her. But he allowed it to continue, letting her dote
over the dolls while serving cookies and finger sandwiches to her
uncomfortable lady friends who would soon stop their visits.
Reputations slid fast in a small town, and he heard snippets
regarding the poor widow who’d been getting loonier and loonier
since the nasty business with her husband.
“
Sarah said she wanted to get to
know my mom. We were invited to dinner at the shop right after we
were engaged.” Dash recalled the snowy roads on the way out to the
store, how the town plow driver had seriously slacked off. “Every
window was lit by a dancing flame, and even the old gas lamp at the
end of the walkway burned. There was an antique sled with a green
silk ribbon propped by the door. Mom had decorated the Christmas
tree, hung evergreen wreathes across the doorways and mantle. It
was beautiful.”
“
It sounds like magic.”
“
It was magic,” he said.
“
A Christmas tree is the same as our
Yule tree, but yours is named after Baby Jesus. I know that from
the burned books.”
“
That’s right. It’s the most
important holiday in our culture, or at least used to be. It was
once all about religion, but now it’s mostly about buying
gifts.”
“
Can kittens be gifts?”
“
I’m sure lots of kids want a kitten
for Christmas.”
“
Did your mother give Sarah a
kitten?”
“
No, we were only there for dinner,
the three of us and Mom’s eight baby dolls.”
“
Baby dolls can eat?”
“
You can pretend to feed them. Dolls
are toys for little girls to practice being mothers.”
“
I want a baby doll and a
kitten.”
“
My mom gave us an envelope.” Dash
closed his eyes and saw the red paper with a card tucked inside.
“It contained plane tickets, which were to be a wedding gift.
Tickets for the airplane that brought me here.”
“
She didn’t know the Volcano was
going to make it crash,” Tiki said, reaching to touch his
hand.
“
My mom was wearing white makeup all
over her face.” He remembered now what he’d dismissed at the time,
mostly because Sarah had seemed to find it all so charming and
normal, “and a hat with a stuffed parrot on top.”
“
A stuffed parrot? You mean it was
dead?” She looked back over her shoulder to where the small green
birds darted among tree tops.