Bryan Gruley: Starvation lake

“What about Saturday nights, Mother? The job?”

“He just wanted some extra money. We were starting to save for your college. And there was that Cadillac he had to have. It wasn’t a big deal.”

“You didn’t mind him working at a titty bar?”

“Watch your mouth,” she said. I glanced at Darlene standing outside the cell and she looked away. “I didn’t know that, at least not right away. He was in his funny period after Cousin Eddie died. Anyway, the money was very good. And he didn’t work there long.”

“Long enough to get mixed up with the wrong people?”

She ignored me and unfolded the piece of paper. “Your father wanted that Cadillac. After the doctors told him about his illness, I wanted him to have it. But he insisted on buying that other car and putting a thousand dollars into this business opportunity. I tried to talk him out of it, but you know your father.”

“What opportunity?”

“You’re not going to like this, son.”

“What?”

“Rudy never told me. He never told me anything about our money. That’s the way things were then. He just said it would pay off. He wouldn’t do anything that would harm anyone. Your father was a good man.”

“You said he didn’t give it to Blackburn, though.”

“No. He gave it to Francis.”

I felt suddenly dumb. “Francis? Dufresne? What’s he got to do with Blackburn?”

“Didn’t they work on a lot of real-estate things?”

“Yeah, years after Dad died. Was Dad investing in real estate?”

“I told you I don’t know. All I know is, after your father died, when I was having trouble making tax payments on the house, Francis came to the rescue.” She handed me the paper. “This is from last year.”

“You never said anything about problems paying taxes.”

“You weren’t around, Gus. You were in Detroit.”

The paper was a photocopy of a receipt from the Pine County Treasurer’s Office and a canceled check drawn on First Detroit Bank. The receipt confirmed a payment of $542.61 in taxes on property owned by Beatrice Carpenter on December 5, 1997. The check in the same amount was signed by Francis J. Dufresne. So my father had given Francis that thousand dollars for who knows what, and years later, Francis returned the favor by helping my mother with her taxes? Was that how the investment paid off?

“By the way,” Joanie said. “I was trying to tell you something when we got cut off the other day. I noticed something in my Bigfoot notes I missed before. Dufresne chaired some little state committee that gave Perlmutter a bunch of the money he used for his Sasquatch stuff.”

I was staring at Dufresne’s signature. There was something strangely familiar about it. I grabbed the envelope off the sink and looked again at Francis’s handwritten note.

“Joanie,” I said. “Did you write that bank story?”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Mom said.

“Why?” Joanie said.

“Did you?”

“Yeah. Six inches.”

“Which bank bought which?”

“Why?”

“Which, please?”

“Chill out. City-something from New York bought First Detroit. So what?”

“And First Detroit owned what or used to own what? Didn’t Kerasopoulos have a buddy who’s a big shot at one of the banks that got bought?”

“Yeah. It’s just called First Detroit now, but it used to be called-”

“First Fisherman’s Bank of Charlevoix.”

“Yeah. So?”

I had to clutch at the slab to keep from doubling over. The paper fluttered to the floor. “Gus,” Mom said. “You’re pale.”

The cell door creaked open. “Time’s up,” Darlene said.

My mother swung around. “Darlene Bontrager,” she said, using her maiden name.

“Two minutes,” Darlene said.

Mom got up and sat down next to me and put an arm around me.

“Gussy,” she said. “What is it?”

“Why didn’t you tell me these things? I asked you about Leo. Why didn’t you tell me about Dad and his job and his movie projector and his investment?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Yes. I do.”

“All right.” She gave me a look I hadn’t seen since the day she told me Dad was gone. “It’s simple, actually. You really didn’t need to know, but even if you did-even when you were asking me-you weren’t ready to know. You were too young.”

“Too young at thirty-four?”

“Thirty-four, twenty-five, fourteen. What difference does it make? You boys, you and Soupy and the all the rest, you got out of high school and you had your chance to grow up but you chose to stay boys forever, playing your little games as if they really matter.”

I fixed my eyes on the floor. “I know they don’t matter, Mother.”

“No, you don’t. You’re still acting like a boy. Running here and there instead of settling down and facing the facts of your life. You left this place, a place you loved, because of a stupid little mistake you made in a stupid little game. Instead of the people you loved”-she didn’t have to look back at Darlene-“you put your trust in silly prizes and sillier superstitions, in, in, I’m sorry, whatever that foolish glove is you wear, as if those things could somehow make you more than what you are.” She put the tissues back in her pocket. “I love you, son. But I was afraid that telling you what I knew would only drive you farther away. You were already far enough away for me.”

I let her words sit there for a minute.

“Thanks a lot,” I said.

“I’m sorry.”

“Why did you come here?”

“I came here for you.”

“Give me a fucking break.”

“Gus,” Joanie said.

“It was my fault that you kept secrets? Bullshit. I’ll bet you still know more than Joanie’s been able to wheedle out of you. And you’ve known it for years and years but old Spardell told you not to talk so you didn’t talk, not even to your own son. Was that the right thing to do? Just keep your mouth shut and keep cashing the checks? Why don’t you go see Francis? He paid your damn taxes.”

Joanie stood and reached for my mother. “That’s enough,” she said.

My nerves felt as if they might poke through my skin. What could I tell them that would make them all happy? What did I really know that they didn’t know already? Nothing had changed since Dingus marched me into that cell. Except, perhaps, this thing about Dufresne. I couldn’t get that signature-Francis J. Dufresne-out of my mind.

“You’re wasting your time,” I said. “Sorry.”

“Stop being sorry,” Mom said. “Everyone is sick of it.”

Darlene held the door for Mom. Joanie stayed.

“Remember that priest at my high school?” she said.

“What priest? What about him?”

“Here.” She pulled a piece of paper from her jacket pocket and set it on her chair. “Not that any of this matters anymore,” she said.

“What the hell are you talking about?” I said, but Darlene took Joanie by the sleeve and ushered her and Mom away.

I lay back on the slab and closed my eyes, but I couldn’t sleep. Soon Joanie and Tawny Jane would be opening those FedEx deliveries. I wondered if Tawny Jane would come to the jail looking to interview me. Maybe I’d be gone to Detroit by then.

I sat up and grabbed the paper Joanie had left. It was a photocopy of a story that had run in the Daily Press of Escanaba, Michigan, three months earlier:

“No way,” I said.

“What?” Darlene said. She was still standing outside.

“Nothing.”

I understood that the suspect was the very same Jeff Champagne who had played for the River Rats. I did not want to believe that the cop was Billy Hooper. There had to be a lot of William Hoopers in Michigan.