Tim Green: Exact Revenge

He shrugged at me the way he always had, knowing as well as I did that my words were meant for my father.

“I appreciate it,” I said. “Otherwise, I worry.”

My father held up a small blue blasting cap in the waning light. It was no bigger than a cigarette.

“You wouldn’t think a little thing like this could destroy twenty tons of hard rock,” my father said, “but it does. The well-placed little things are the ones that can move mountains.

“All right, Black Turtle,” he said, gripping my shoulder, then letting go. “We got work to do. Sunday night it is.”

My dad climbed up into the cab of the dump truck. Black Turtle faded into the darkness and fired up the cranky old payloader. The two monster machines rattled off, leaving me in a fresh swirl of dust, the blue-white lights of the Supra, and a low rumble that continued on like thunder.

I got into my car and wound my way through the rocks, past the stone crusher and the sagging office trailer, and back to the main road. My hands turned the wheel without thinking, taking me back to deliver the envelope that sat beside me. In the scheme of everything that was happening in my world of business, love, and politics, it was undoubtedly a very little thing.

THE ORANGE SKY in the west had faded to russet. It was after eight-thirty by the time I got back to the city and the north end of Lodi Street. Pinpoints of light, stars, planets, and airplanes winked overhead as I rolled down the dusty street with my windows open. People in broken porch chairs and others who slouched in rusty cars along the curb craned their necks for a better look at my gleaming car and its sparkling silver rims.

The homes were crammed together and in need of repair. Screens, bent and torn, hung loose from open windows. Roofs sagged. The leprosy of peeling paint and rotted gray wood had stricken every post, step, and shingle. The broken driveways and crumbling sidewalks were peppered with weeds, and the hush of dusk was disrupted by the thumping of boom boxes.

House numbers were a luxury and only a few had them. Celeste Oliver’s place was missing the first two, but I could still see the faded images of where the one and the eight had once been. I pulled up into the driveway behind a red Honda Civic with a crushed rear quarter panel and got out. The envelope was in my hand. In the fading light, I saw the curtain drop and a face disappear.

I climbed the steps and knocked.

The door opened almost immediately and she stood there, pouting. I had to take a breath. She was tall enough so that even in bare feet she was almost eye-level with me. She wore tight stonewashed jeans and an aqua blue halter top that showed off breasts that were neither too big nor too small. Her midriff was honey-colored and molded with curves. Her lipstick was pink. Delicate eyebrows matched her straight blonde hair. Her eyes were powder blue.

“I’m a friend of Roger’s,” I said, when I could speak.

She moved aside and I stepped in. When she turned and walked into the small living room, my eyes followed a perfect bottom. The hammering in my chest and the current running through my center triggered a pang of guilt.

“You can sit down,” she said, plopping down on the couch and picking up a pack of Newports off the glass coffee table. She slipped one into her mouth.

I laid the envelope down on the table in front of her.

“That’s from Roger,” I said, straightening. Unable to sit, but unable to get my feet moving toward the door.

“Did he tell you about me?” she asked, squinting up from the flame of her Bic.

“No.”

“I belonged to Roger,” she said, blowing smoke toward the curtained window. “Not for money. I’m not like that. I dance, but I never fucked a man for money. I loved being with Roger. Do you know he took me inside the White House? I met Reagan.”

I shook my head no.

“And now you’re going to have everything that he had…” she said, looking directly at me with a small smirk. “You’re the one who’ll get to vote on the Star Wars bill this fall. You’ll have the swing vote on the Appropriations Subcommittee on Highways. They want to redo the interstate bridges between here and Canada. Did you know that? The governor will be calling you on that one and you can get him to come do a fund-raiser for you. There’s a real nice bunch around here who’ll pay a thousand a head to have lunch with the governor…

“Anyway, you’ll have me too,” she said, sitting back on the couch and placing her arms along its back with her legs crossed and a little arch in her spine. “If you want that…”

I glanced at the envelope. The feeling in my legs was beginning to return. The smoke from the cigarette helped. I started to back toward the door.

“I kind of have someone,” I said.

“Yeah, that’s standard,” she said. “A wife?”

“Maybe.”

She dashed her cigarette into an ashtray and hopped up off the couch. She came toward me with a bubbling giggle and took hold of my hand, pressing it up against her breast before I could react.

“Yeah, well, this is politics,” she said, her voice dropping into a husky whisper, her fingers tracing up the inside of my thigh. “So she’ll get used to it. They all do…”

I pulled my hand back. Her other hand groped my crotch.

“You’ll need a release,” she said, her pink lips barely moving. “It’s a brutal job. I can keep your mind clear. We all need to clear our minds.”

I knocked her hand away and pushed her harder than I meant to. She tripped and fell to the floor, her head thudding up against the wall.

“I’m sorry,” I said, reaching out to help her up. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Asshole,” she said, swatting at me, then pushing a long strand of the blonde hair from her face.

I turned, yanked open the door, and jumped down off the porch, skipping the steps. I edged past the wreck of a Honda. My suit pants caught and tore on a wild metal shred protruding from the smashed bumper.

As I climbed into my Supra, I looked around. Halfway up the block was an unmarked police car. In the shadows of the front seat, a nickel-size ember-about the size of a cigar-glowed then faded out. That didn’t seem unusual to me. In a neighborhood like this, the police probably knew everybody by their first name.

I never thought much of it back then.

I NEVER HATED MY MOTHER for what she did. Maybe it was because my father refused to blame her. “I knew what your mother needed,” he once said, “and I knew I didn’t have it.”

My mother was a pretty woman who liked to laugh and read books. She was a Mohawk raised on the Onondaga Indian Reservation. That meant that even among the disenfranchised, she was disenfranchised.

As loving as she was to me and to my father, my mother had an insatiable desire for things. I can still remember the one trip we took to Florida over a winter school break. We stayed at a cheap motel across the street from the beach in St. Petersburg. One day, the three of us took a long walk and found ourselves in an exclusive neighborhood on the bay. I can still see the glimmer in my mother’s dark eyes and hear her delicate gasps at the size and intricate architectural detail of the homes. The shiny cars in their driveways. The yachts moored to the docks that jutted out from the swimming pools in their backyards.

When my mother wasn’t reading a book, she was studying magazines like Architectural Digest , Vogue , or Town amp; Country . Every cent my father let her have, she spent on things that were irrelevant to the Native American wife of a quarry man. Irrelevant, but fine. Lalique figurines. A Cartier bracelet. A Chanel evening gown she could never wear.