Ed Gorman - Short Stories, Volume 1

Parnell got out of there.

They went ten long blocks before Parnell said, “You didn’t do it, did you?”

Richard got hysterical. “You sonofabitch! You sonofabitch!”

Parnell had to pull the car over to the curb. He hit Richard once, a fast clean right hand, not enough to make him unconscious but enough to calm him down.

“You didn’t do it, did you?”

“He’s my father, Parnell. I don’t know what to do. I love him so much I don’t want to see him suffer. But I love him so much I don’t want to see him die, either.”

Parnell let the kid sob. He thought of his old friend Bud Garrett and what a good goddamn fun buddy he’d been and then he started crying, too.

When Parnell came down Richard was behind the steering wheel.

Parnell got in the car and looked around the empty parking lot and said, “Drive.”

“Any place especially?”

“Out along the East River road. Your old man and I used to fish off that little bridge there.”

Richard drove them. From inside his sportcoat Parnell took the pint of Jim Beam.

When they got to the bridge Parnell said, “Give me five minutes alone and then you can come over, OK?”

Richard was starting to sob again.

Parnell got out of the car and went over to the bridge. In the hot night you could hear the hydroelectric dam half a mile downstream and smell the fish and feel the mosquitoes feasting their way through the evening.

He thought of what Bud Garrett had said, “Put it in some whiskey for me, will you?”

So Parnell had obliged.

He stood now on the bridge looking up at the yellow circle of moon thinking about dead people, his wife and many of his WWII friends, the rookie cop who’d died of a sudden tumor, his wife with her rosary-wrapped hands. Hell, there was probably even a chance that nurse from Enid, Oklahoma, was dead.

“What do you think’s on the other side?” Bud Garrett had asked just half an hour ago. He’d almost sounded excited. As if he were a farm kid about to ship out with the Merchant Marines.

“I don’t know,” Parnell had said.

“It scare you, Parnell?”

“Yeah,” Parnell had said. “Yeah it does.”

Then Bud Garrett had laughed. “Don’t tell the kid that. I always told him that nothin’ scared you.”

Richard came up the bridge after a time. At first he stood maybe a hundred feet away from Parnell. He leaned his elbows on the concrete and looked out at the water and the moon. Parnell watched him, knowing it was all Richard, or anybody, could do.

Look out at the water and the moon and think about dead people and how you yourself would soon enough be dead.

Richard turned to Parnell then and said, his tears gone completely now, sounding for the first time like Parnell’s sort of man, “You know, Parnell, my father was right. You’re a brave sonofabitch. You really are.”

Parnell knew it was important for Richard to believe that — that there were actually people in the world who didn’t fear things the way most people did — so Parnell didn’t answer him at all.

He just took his pint out and had himself a swig and looked some more at the moon and the water.

I am in my sister’s small room with its posters of Madonna and Tiffany. Sis is fourteen. Already tall, already pretty. Dressed in jeans and a blue T-shirt. Boys call and come over constantly. She wants nothing to do with boys.

Her back is to me. She will not turn around. I sit on the edge of her bed, touching my hand to her shoulder. She smells warm, of sleep. I say, “Sis listen to me.”

She says nothing. She almost always says nothing.

“He wants to see you Sis.”

Nothing.

“When he called last weekend — you were all he talked about. He even started crying when you wouldn’t come to the phone Sis. He really did.”

Nothing.

“Please, Sis. Please put on some good clothes and get ready ‘cause we’ve got to leave in ten minutes. We’ve got to get there on time and you know it.” I lean over so I can see her face.

She tucks her face into her pillow.

She doesn’t want me to see that she is crying.

“Now you go and get ready Sis. You go and get ready, all right?”

“I don’t know who she thinks she is,” Ma says when I go downstairs. “Too good to go and see her own father.”

As she talks Ma is packing a big brown grocery sack. Into it go a cornucopia of goodies — three cartons of Lucky Strike filters, three packages of Hershey bars, two bottles of Ban roll-on deodorant, three Louis L’Amour paperbacks as well as all the stuff that’s there already.

Ma looks up at me. I’ve seen pictures of her when she was a young woman. She was a beauty. But that was before she started putting on weight and her hair started thinning and she stopped caring about how she dressed and all. “She going to go with us?”

“She says not.”

“Just who does she think she is?”

“Calm down Ma. If she doesn’t want to go, we’ll just go ahead without her.”

“What do we tell your dad?”

“Tell him she’s got the flu?”

“The way she had the flu the last six times?”

“She’s gone a few times.”

“Yeah twice out of the whole year he’s been there.”

“Well.”

“How do you think he feels? He gets all excited thinking he’s going to see her and then she doesn’t show up. How do you think he feels? She’s his own flesh and blood.”

I sigh. Ma’s none too healthy and getting worked up this way doesn’t do her any good. “I better go and call Riley.”

“That’s it. Go call Riley. Leave me here alone to worry about what we’re going to tell your dad.”

“You know how Riley is. He appreciates a call.”

“You don’t care about me no more than your selfish sister does.”

I go out to the living room where the phone sits on the end table I picked up at Goodwill last Christmastime. A lot of people don’t like to shop at Goodwill, embarrassed about going in there and all. The only thing I don’t like is the smell. All those old clothes hanging. Sometimes I wonder if you opened up a grave if it wouldn’t smell like Goodwill.

I call Kmart, which is where I work as a manager trainee while I’m finishing off my retail degree at the junior college. My girlfriend Karen works at Kmart too. “Riley?”

“Hey, Tom.”

“How’re things going in my department?” A couple months ago, Riley, who is the assistant manager over the whole store, put me in charge of the automotive department.

“Good great.”

“Good. I was worried.” Karen always says she’s proud ‘cause I worry so much about my job. Karen says it proves I’m responsible. Karen says one of the reasons she loves me so much is ‘cause I’m responsible. I guess I’d rather have her love me for my blue eyes or something but of course I don’t say anything because Karen can get crabby about strange things sometimes.

“You go and see your old man today, huh?” Riley says.

“Yeah.”

“Hell of a way to spend your day off.”

“It’s not so bad. You get used to it.”

“Any word on when he gets out?”

“Be a year or so yet. Being his second time in and all.”

“You’re a hell of a kid Tom, I ever tell you that before?”

“Yeah you did Riley and I appreciate it.” Riley is a year older than me but sometimes he likes to pretend he’s my uncle or something. But he means well and, like I told him, I appreciate it. Like when Dad’s name was in the paper for the burglary and everything. The people at Kmart all saw it and started treating me funny. But not Riley. He’d walk up and down the aisles with me and even put his arm on my shoulder like we were the best buddies in the whole world or something. In the coffee room this fat woman made a crack about it and Riley got mad and said, “Why don’t you shut your fucking mouth, Shirley?” Nobody said anything more about my dad after that. Of course poor Sis had it a lot worse than me at Catholic school. She had it real bad. Some of those kids really got vicious. A lot of nights I’d lay awake thinking of all the things I wanted to do to those kids. I’d do it with my hands, too, wouldn’t even use weapons.