C Box - Below Zero

Stenko writhed in the front seat. She empathized and was an inch away from crying. She could smell his pain. It had a distinct odor as it oozed out through the sweat on his forehead and through his scalp. The poor man.

Stenko dug the gun out from under his seat and handed it to Robert butt-first. Robert didn’t take it. Robert said, “I can’t do that.”

After a moment, the act of holding the gun seemed to exhaust Stenko, and he let it drop to the front seat. Stenko looked away from his son, out the window on the passenger side. “Then take me somewhere and leave me so I can die. I can’t take this pain any longer. It’s hell, son. I’m in hell already.” His voice was pinched, and he hissed his words through clenched teeth. He wasn’t angry. He was hurting.

Robert crossed his arms in front of him and shook his head like a four-year-old who didn’t want to eat, she thought.

Stenko writhed again, twisted himself so he could rest his chin on the top of the front seat and look at her directly. His eyes were rheumy. Thick liquid gathered in the corners of his eyes near his nose. He tried to smile. “I’m so sorry, April, but this may be the end of the road. I feel terrible it turned out this way-I thought I’d have longer. But it is what it is. Don’t worry… I’ll give you enough money to buy a plane ticket as soon as we can get somewhere with an airport. And I’ll give you plenty extra because you’ll need it.”

For a moment, she was excited. This had turned out to be different than she thought it would be in every way. Now he was giving her a way out.

She said, “I’m not sure where I would go.”

He winced, and she couldn’t tell if it was from his stomach or what she said. He closed his eyes and the thick gel in his eyes squeezed out and pooled on the tops of his cheeks like wet glue. “You think about it, April,” he said. “You think about where you would want to go.”

She thought, No one should die like this, as if there were a brood of small fevered animals inside him trying to eat and claw their way out.

Robert missed the exchange. As usual he was deep inside his own head, with his own problems. When he spoke his voice was high. “ You do it,” he said to Stenko. “This isn’t what I do. This is what you do. This is what you’ve done your whole life. I’m along just to keep score and try to help you redeem yourself in the eyes of Mother Earth.”

Stenko didn’t respond. He seemed too spent to argue. Instead he turned around again and slunk down in his seat and talked softly to the windshield. “Do you know how to get to the ranch, Robert? On your own without my help?”

Robert nodded. “I can read a goddamned map.”

Stenko raised one pale hand and wriggled his fingers in the air, a way of saying, I don’t want to battle with you.

“What ranch?” she said.

Robert ignored her as he always did.

Stenko said, “You’ll figure it out, son. Now, when you get there, you need to take that son-of-a-bitch Leo aside and make him give you all the account numbers. You may have to apply pressure because Leo can be real stubborn. There should be twenty-eight million in stocks, bonds, cash, and property. You won’t get access to it all before the feds realize what you’re doing, but if you pick the low-hanging fruit…”

Robert went bug-eyed, shouted: “TWENTY-EIGHT MILLION! Jesus Christ, Dad!”

“Yeah, give or take,” Stenko said, waving Robert away. “Now get that money and use it to pay down my debt. It’s the only way because I’m running out of time. How much did you say was left on my balance sheet?”

Robert was frozen for a moment, frozen by $28 million. His mouth was hanging open.

“Robert?” Stenko prompted.

Robert shook his head and dug for his laptop. Tap-tap-tap. “Twenty-two million to go on your balance,” he said. “So far, you’ve hardly put a dent in it because you really haven’t done so well.”

“I thought you said eighteen,” Stenko wheezed. “I distinctly remember you saying eighteen after Aspen.”

“I did some recalculating,” Robert said, with a speed-glance toward her. It was what he did when he was lying, she thought.

“I bet you did,” Stenko said without malice, “as soon as you heard what I have.”

“Dad! Those Indian casinos use up a ton of energy! The lights, the air-conditioning, all the gambling machines… think about it!”

“Sorry, son,” Stenko said, reaching over and putting his hand on Robert’s shoulder. Robert shoved it away.

“Really,” Stenko said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Old suspicious habits die hard. Do you forgive me?”

After a beat, Robert said, “Mmmmmn.”

“Okay then,” Stenko hissed. “Then go get that money and pay down my debt. Use the rest for your cause. Plant entire rain forests or buy wind farms or whatever the hell it is you do.”

It was quiet. She could see Robert thinking, probably shouting “TWENTY-EIGHT MILLION!” over and over to himself in his head.

An old woman with a headscarf pushed a walker out through the door of Buy-Rite and headed slowly for the Taurus. A white prescription bag was clutched in her hand.

Robert said, “Okay, I’ll go in.”

She watched Robert as he slammed the door shut and strode toward the pharmacy dodging tumbleweeds. He jammed the pistol into the back of his pants and made sure it was hidden by the hem of his jacket. At the door, he paused for a moment to rake his fingers through his hair, throw back his shoulders. Then he went in.

She said to Stenko, “Are you all right?”

He half-turned toward her, his face in profile. “Not really.”

“If you give me some of that money, can I use it for something else?”

“Like what?”

She said, “I’d like to rescue my sister. She’s not really my sister, but she’s all I’ve got. She’s still back in that house in Chicago with all the other kids. Can I use the money to get her out of there? To fly her to me?”

Stenko grimaced a smile. “Sure, April. Do anything you want.”

She sat back, satisfied. For the first time in her life, she had a plan of her own and would soon have the means to carry it out. Thanks to Stenko.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome.”

Then Robert was back, throwing open the door against the wind and heaving himself behind the wheel. He entered talking, “… We need to find another pharmacy. This one’s no good.”

Stenko said, “You didn’t get the morphine?”

“Hell no,” Robert said. “The pharmacist in there is a redneck. I’m sure he has a gun. And he just stared at me all suspicious, as if daring me to try something. He knows, Dad. Somehow he knows… so I beat it out of there. We need to find another place.”

Stenko looked away. Robert turned the key and started the engine. “These little towns give me the creeps anyway. They all just stare at you like you’re from another planet. They’re all inbred or something.”

“I don’t think there’s another pharmacy,” Stenko said in a near-whisper.

“Maybe not in this town,” Robert said. “But there’s bound to be one in a bigger place.”

“It’s after five,” Stenko said.

She said, “Give me the gun.”

AS SHE MADE HER WAY UP the aisle with the hood of her sweatshirt pulled up and the weight of the gun sagging in her front pocket, she gathered items into a shopping basket. Shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste, hair coloring, a new TracFone since the one she had was low on power. She thought about how Stenko had barked a sharp “No!” to her request, but Robert quickly warmed to it, handed over the gun, and said, “Maybe she can finally do something useful.”