Tim Green: Exact Revenge

Russo frowned and said he was sorry.

“What if you could do something even worse than that?” Rangle asked, slicking back his thin hair. His eyes glittered. “Would you?”

“What’s worse?”

“What if it was Raymond that had to think about you fucking Lexis?”

Frank’s hand darted across the table, latched on to Rangle’s tie, and yanked him across the table until his face smashed into the cluster of empty glasses. Frank’s thick lips brushed up against Rangle’s forehead.

Overhead, Bryan Adams sang “Cuts Like a Knife.”

“You don’t ever talk about her,” Frank said in a throaty whisper. “Never ever again. Her name doesn’t come out of your filthy mouth or I’ll beat you to a fucking pulp and throw you in jail for assaulting an officer. You got that?”

“Yes,” Rangle said, choking and blinking the fallen hair from his eyes.

Frank let him go and Rangle collapsed back into his seat, tugging at his tie, loosening the collar and sucking in his breath.

“Good,” he said, slicking his hair again and clearing his throat. “I want you angry. I want you sick with fucking hatred. Now, you dumbass, think Raymond, not me. I know a secret, and we have a chance to change everything. All three of us…”

The three of them leaned close and spoke in whispers that no one could hear. Russo’s pink-rimmed eyes shifted around the sidewalk and he gulped his beer. Frank wore a scowl. Rangle’s eyebrows were knit tight, but his teeth shone in a jackal-like smile. It was a simple plan. Quick and easy. Effective.

In less than a minute, the three of them sat back in their chairs and raised their drinks. They brought the rims of the thick pint glasses together with a clink that rang out loud and clear.

I hear that clink. I can smell their smoke. And I see those arrogant smiles every day of my life.

MY DAD’S PLACE was in the opposite direction of mine, half an hour east of Syracuse. The home I had recently bought was half an hour to the west, out in Skaneateles. I don’t like to think of myself as running from my roots as the son of a rock man and a displaced Native American mom. Yeah, I heard my share of red man jokes in school, but I had only two real fistfights in my life.

I prefer to think that I’m in Skaneateles not because it’s the priciest real estate in upstate New York, but because I’m actually closer to nature there. I put out nest boxes for bluebirds, martins, and swallows, and usually fill half of them in a season. Lots of my neighbors are farmers. They let me roam their woods during hunting season, and I can throw a fishing line in the water about a hundred feet from my back door.

From the law office, it was easy for me to hop on the interstate and get out to my dad’s spot of countryside between Fayetteville and Chittenango. I kept the windows down, inhaling the cool smell of cut hay and trees and the soil of farm fields that were buzzing with insects. The letter sat on the passenger seat beside me, jammed into the crack between the seat and the backrest. In my rearview mirror, I could see the oblong orange sun settling into a blanket of glowing clouds. By eight o’clock, the long shadows made the woods surrounding the driveway nearly dark.

My father lived alone in the house where I grew up, a small brown ranch nestled in the woods. I could see its lines, even through the trees. The place once belonged to my grandfather. Like my dad, he operated the small quarry out back his entire life, blasting stone from the backbone of the earth, constantly struggling to survive in a world ruled by international conglomerates.

As I pulled up alongside the house, I heard a blast rebound over the lip of the hill that loomed in the near distance. I shook my head and kept going along the gravel drive, past the house, out of the woods, around the towering escarpment of jagged stone, and up over the hill into the purple shadows of the quarry.

In the headlight beams of a faded old dump truck, my father stood talking with another man. Dust from the explosion swirled in the glow of the light. I pulled right up beside the battered dump truck and hopped out.

“Dad,” I said, raising my voice to account for his loss of hearing. “It’s practically dark out.”

That was as far as my complaint about blasting after dark could go.

“I can see that,” he said. He wore the faded jeans, white T-shirt, and the jean jacket of a teenager, but the skin on his hands as well as his face was craggy and weather-beaten.

I walked up with my back straight and shook his granite hand the way he taught me that real men do. A bat swooped down from the shadows, flitting softly into the beam of light.

“Tried calling you last week,” I said, ducking. “What happened to the phone? They said it was disconnected.”

“Don’t need no damn phone,” my father said.

“Everyone needs a phone, Dad.”

“Money-sucking corporate monkeys.”

“What about business?”

“You do yours, I’ll do mine. A rock man don’t need no phone,” he said. “The trucks keep coming and I keep giving them their stone. Been at it for two weeks without a phone.”

“It’s summertime, Dad,” I said. I doubted he could carry on like this when things got slow.

“You ain’t said hello to Black Turtle.”

I turned and said hello to the ancient Onondaga Native American who had worked on and off for my dad since I was a boy. We shook hands and I was jolted by a clap on the back from my dad. He asked me if I cared for a man’s meal. He and Black Turtle had their sights set on some venison steaks and a game of nickel poker.

“I’m having dinner with Lexis, Dad,” I said. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay and tell you that you’ve got to get a hold of that guy Paul Russo at the bank and get that loan set up. I saw him today. He said you were trading calls.”

“I don’t need a loan.”

“Dad,” I said, “your phone was turned off.”

“I called that asshole anyway, and he never called me back,” he said, as he worked on a quid of tobacco in the side of his cheek.

“Well, he probably couldn’t get through, Dad.”

“If he tried, why didn’t he tell you that?” he said. “I called him for two weeks before that phone got turned off. His secretary always told me he wasn’t in. Bullshit.”

“Well, you’ve got to try again, Dad,” I said, thinking that Russo was a lot more likely to shake a stick now that he knew I was going to be a congressman. “I spoke to him today and he said it’s all set.”

“How about tomorrow night for venison steaks?” my father said, stroking his mustache. “Black Turtle and I can save ’em and go get us a plate of spaghetti and meatballs at Angotti’s.”

His drooping mustache and his blue Buffalo Bills cap were white with dust from blasted rock, making his dark blue eyes seem almost black.

“I’ve got a political thing tomorrow night, Dad,” I said. “A fund-raiser. How about Sunday night?”

“Political shmitical,” he said, taking off his hat and slapping it against his leg before putting it back on.

“They want me to be the next congressman.”

“To Washington?”

“I’ve got to win a special election, but with the Republican endorsement…” I said. Everyone knew that in this district that’s all you needed. “I imagine I could help get you some good road contracts…”

My father put his hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze.

“I know you want to help,” he said, his voice sounding choked. “But I got all the work I need. You just do like I taught you. You don’t take any favors, you don’t owe any…”

I turned to Black Turtle and said, “Don’t you two blast at night anymore, will you?”