Stuart Kaminsky - Bright Futures

“Carrots are bullshit,” said the old man who climbed up on the stool next to me.

I knew him. He was a regular. His name was Tim-Tim from Steubenville. Tim said he was sixty, but he was closer to eighty and looked it. He lived in an assisted living home a short walk away at the end of Brother Geenen Way. He spent as much time as he could at Gwen’s, reading the newspaper, shaking his head, and trying to lure people into conversations about eliminating the income tax. Almost everything he said about income tax, abolishing drug laws, and eliminating gun laws ended with the punctuation, “damn government.”

He always had a newspaper and commented on stories ranging from war and devastation around the world to cats and dogs waiting, hoping to be adopted before they had to be urged to pass away, making room for others to wait their turn.

“Do animals have souls?” Tim asked, the blue veins undulating over his thin bones.

“I don’t know.”

“What about carrots?”

“Carrots don’t have souls,” I said.

“What’s the matter with your Cubs?” Tim asked in one of his familiar dancing changes of subject.

“They’re cursed,” I said as he was served his coffee and a slice of pineapple upside down cake.

“I’ll drink to that,” he said, lifting his coffee mug and bringing it to his lips.

“No,” I said.

“I won’t drink to that?”

“No,” I said. “Animals don’t have souls.”

The coffee was hot. I could see the steam rising, feel the heat with my fingers through the porcelain mug. I hadn’t drunk any yet, even after adding milk from the miniature aluminum pitcher. My grizzled counter partner took no such precautions. He sipped, made an “uhh” sound to indicate he had made a mistake, and put the coffee down.

“You do that all the time,” I said.

“I do what?”

“Add the milk and then remember that you don’t like it with milk.”

“My problem,” he said. “Just like Jesse always said when she was living-that I don’t learn from my mistakes. I’m just doomed to keep repeating them. What about people? They have souls?”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Cubs, here’s to you.”

He raised his mug and drank more cautiously this time after having cooled down his coffee with the milk I had passed to him. He called me “Cubs” because of the Chicago Cubs cap I wore. I wore the cap for several reasons. First, it was a memento of my affection for the Cubs. Catherine had bought it at Wrigley Field one afternoon when she and I had taken the day off to catch a game with the Pirates. The Cubs had won 4–1. Catherine had bought it for me. I had put it on her head. She looked cute in it. It made her smile. Now she was dead and I wore the cap. Second, it covered my increasing baldness. It was not a receding hairline. It was a steady retreat. Vanity? Maybe. I didn’t take time to analyze it. Old bald men look younger in hats. They don’t necessarily look better. Men my age who wear baseball caps either look tough or would like to be thought of as athletic.

Greg Legerman showed up. He was alone. I couldn’t tell if he was any more nervous than he always was, but he was sufficiently nervous to make the patrons uncomfortable. He wore jeans and a short-sleeved buttoned shirt with a collar. The shirt was green with yellow lines. He sat on the open stool to my right.

The old man leaned forward to get a better look at Greg and said, “Young man, you think people have souls?”

“Good question,” said Greg, avoiding my eyes.

I thought serving this permanently wired kid coffee would not improve the coming conversation, but I was too late. Gwen’s daughter, the one with two kids, including a teenage boy who sometimes worked in the shop after school, put a mug of hot liquid in front of Greg and said, “Decaf. Breakfast?”

“Waffles,” Greg said.

She nodded and moved off. You ordered waffles here. You got waffles, butter, maple syrup. You didn’t get built-in blueberries or bananas or bacon bits. You didn’t get wheat or bran waffles. You got the old-fashioned kind. Just the way Elvis had eaten them half a century ago.

“I can explain,” Greg said.

“I’m sure you can,” I said.

“I was just joking,” he said. “I do things like that for no reason. I get excited…”

“Carrots are bullshit and so are you,” I said. “How did you know someone had shot at me?”

“Everybody knew,” he said.

“Everybody? The King of Jordan knew? Brad Pitt knew?”

“Oh come on,” he said. “I mean…”

“First you hire me to help Ronnie Gerall. Then you call me to warn me off. You think he did it.”

“No, it’s just that I… it’s too dangerous.”

“For who?”

“I gave you five hundred dollars to find the real killer. I’ll give you five hundred dollars to stop looking.”

He reached into his pocket and came up with a roll of bills wrapped in a thick rubber band, which he placed in front of me. I pushed it back and added to it the money he had given me the day before.

“My teeth need fixing,” the old man said. “If neither one of you want that money…”

Greg Legerman and I ignored him and looked at the money.

“Leave it there,” said Gwen’s daughter as she placed the plate of waffles in front of Greg, “and it’ll be the biggest tip anyone ever left here.”

“What about Elvis?” I asked.

“His tip is legendary,” she said moving on.

“Someone shot at me in a car and probably blinded the man with me,” I said. “Then someone shot a pellet into the back of a fourteen-year-old I’m responsible for. He could have died if he tumbled down my steps. It seems pretty likely that someone was trying to shoot me. I’m getting interested in finding out who killed Philip Horvecki.”

“Why’d they shoot at you?” asked the old man.

“To scare me off.”

“Please stop,” Greg said. “You could get killed.”

“My therapist says I’m suicidal, only I’d never kill myself. I wouldn’t, however, object to someone else doing it for me.”

“Why are you suicidal?” asked the old man with interest.

“Because my wife was murdered and the killer was never arrested.”

“Then go look for him, Cubs,” said Tim.

“I know where he is.”

“Where?”

“Sleeping on the floor of the place I’m living in.”

“You are a strange duck, Cubs. Kid, you think people have souls?” he asked again.

This ignited Greg. “No definitive evidence,” he said. “Though research at universities in France, Germany, England, and the United States, including Princeton, is inconclusive, there seems to be evidence that electrical impulses…”

“Greg,” I interrupted.

“He’s just getting started,” said the old man.

“I know. Who are you trying to protect?”

Greg shook his head no.

“Winn doesn’t know what you did, does he?”

Greg shook his head again.

“No. You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

“You don’t even like Ronnie,” he said. “No one does.”

“He hasn’t been arrested because people don’t like him. He has been arrested for killing Philip Horvecki.”

“Lots of people wanted to kill Horvecki,” Greg said, looking at his waffle.

“Put the butter and syrup on ’em kid,” said the old man, “and whale away while they’re still hot.”

There was an early morning breakfast hubbub in the Waffle Shop. All the stools and all the tables were full. Men in suits laughed at each other’s jokes. Men in work clothes talked softly and tended to concentrate on eating. The smell of waffles wafted, and Gwen’s daughters bustled. I put enough on the counter to cover my coffee and a tip and said, “I have work to do.”