T. Parker - Full Measure

At noon he was traveling south on Interstate 15, bound for La Jolla, with Fatta the Lan’ trailered securely behind his truck. He looked back at her in the rearview. The way she bounced along jauntily, as if she were heading out to the water, made him angry at himself. How did he get so fucking dumb? Then he was just sad.

The matching Pangborn boys clambered screaming over the boat while the father, young and potbellied, strolled around her twice, looking for damage. “I can’t go the full eleven. I can only give you five.”

Patrick’s heart fell down and out of him and landed half a mile away in the cold Pacific. “Five thousand dollars? You made me a fair deal at eleven. Now I’m offering the same fair deal back to you.”

“But I can’t take her.”

“Why can’t you take her?”

“It would be against my principles as a man, and my training in finance. I no longer want the boat. But I’ll give you five thousand dollars for it.”

“I need the eleven thousand, right now.”

“I understand that.”

Patrick weighed the satisfaction of kicking Pangborn’s flabby ass against his own responsibility to Iris. At the moment, the ass-kicking was winning out. Pangborn gave him an uneasy look. The boys tried to push each other off the captain’s chair and claim ownership of the wheel. Pangborn snapped at them and they stopped fighting and focused their sullen stares on Patrick. “I expect you to pay what I paid you for the same boat.”

“What lesson are my boys going learn from that?”

“How to do the right thing.”

“They’ll see me as weak.”

“Get back Fatta the Lan’ , Dad!”

“Yeah, Dad... we want our boat!”

Patrick turned his back on the boys and the craft and looked down on the pink mansions and the heaving Pacific. He tried to think of anything but his anger. He thought of Iris far away. He thought of Zane panting in the shade of the Hesco blocks, eagerly awaiting his next patrol. He saw that the La Jolla sky was an unusual gray down low, graduating higher up to storm white. Good distractions all, but he still thought the only answer here was to beat Pangborn senseless.

“I have to be frugal and firm,” said Pangborn. “In the church I’m known for my generosity.”

“I need the money for something very important.”

“I’m sure you do. Okay. Six thousand. Best and final.”

“You’re a hypocrite and a coward, Mr. Pangborn.”

The boys looked at their father. “I’ll go write the check. My bank is down there in town.”

Patrick got back to Iris’s house that afternoon with a new flat screen and DVR and all the right cables; dishes and place settings for ten that looked somewhat like the broken ones; good quality wineglasses, tumblers, and margarita glasses; three crystal vases that, based on the shards Patrick showed to a suspicious clerk, resembled the casualties; two tablecloths not unlike the one drenched by wine and tequila. He had also bought things that were not replacements but he thought Iris might like: a costly hallway runner; a stone vase made in Italy; an electric massage pad with “shiatsu” rollers. Thirty-three hundred and change, gone just like that.

While Salimony and Messina brought the boxes in and started setting up the TV and DVR, Patrick paid the painter half of his twelve hundred dollars up front. Work would start tomorrow. Patrick also paid the glass-and-mirror man two hundred against his estimate of four hundred to replace the mirror glass and repair the frame — work to be completed no later than Thursday. The flooring guy called to say he couldn’t get there today as promised but would be there first thing Tuesday.

Out on Industrial Way he arranged with a furniture maker to repair the oak chair for an estimated two hundred dollars, work guaranteed by Friday. On Main, the art framer said he could build a new frame for the aerial farm photo — two hundred fifty dollars was a cash only price — but the picture itself was beyond his skills to repair. He suggested a printmaker in town who might be able to do something with it.

The printmaker had a gallery that sold original California watercolors and posterlike copies of them. The walls were hung with them and good light streamed through the windows and seemed to project the paintings onto the white walls. Patrick’s eyes wandered to the paintings as the young man examined the farm photo. He told Patrick he could glue the clean cuts from the back but the punctures had destroyed some paper, and this would require small patches and hand-painting. The repaired photograph would still be bent and the reconstruction work would be visible, but he could make a computer-generated giclée that would be nearly perfect. He would personally see to the color corrections. Patrick could have the repaired original and the swanky new copy of it by the end of the workday tomorrow. Patrick gave him one hundred and fifty dollars, half of the job. “Is that one for sale?”

“The horses? That’s Free Spirits by Millard Sheets. Steals your eye, doesn’t it? It’s a lithograph, which makes it affordable and collectible at the same time. Signed and numbered by the artist.”

“How much?”

“It’s eight hundred dollars.” Patrick attempted an unimpressed nod. “We can change the frame if you’d like — there’s no charge for that.”

Patrick walked over for a closer look. There were two horses, one light and one dark, both graceful and spirited. They were running or playing. There was power in them, and a spark of the wild. The animals were engaged with each other and paid not Patrick nor anyone else one bit of attention. They were not meant to be perfectly realistic, which took some getting used to. But the horses said something to him — the dark and the light. He wondered if this was an artist’s trick. They reminded him of some of the other works of art in Iris’s home. But did he truly like the horses or mainly think Iris would like them? Well, mainly he wanted Iris to like them. Was this a bad thing?

“Just back from overseas?”

“Afghanistan.”

“We have a military discount of twenty percent. So it would be six hundred and forty dollars. And I’ll pay your tax.”

“Thank you. I’ll take it.”

“If you don’t like it after a few weeks, bring it back and I’ll refund your money.”

“She’ll like it.”

“A gift?” The young man shook his head and smiled slightly. “She’ll love it.”

It was almost dark by the time Patrick and his two friends got the electronics working, the wall dents patched and the debris taken to the dump. Taibo had set up his table saw and sanders in the garage and some of the newly cut shelves and splines were already stained and drying. Patrick smelled the varnish and thought they just might pull this off.

He marched into Domino’s Pizza just in time for his six o’clock shift. He wolfed a small pizza while attaching the Domino’s light to the top of his truck, then donned the blue, red, and black uniform shirt.

“You look tired,” said Simone. She handed him a large can of iced tea from the cooler. “We have three deliveries ready to go when you are.”

By nine he was back at Iris’s with two large leftover pizzas and twenty-one skinny Monday dollars in tips. Salimony was asleep on the living-room floor, the still-bagged Sunday paper for a pillow. Messina was almost done putting away the new dishes and cookware. Taibo still labored in the garage, the cabinet frame glued, doweled, clamped, and drying. Banda played softly from his boom box.

Patrick was back before sunrise to move furniture out of the way for the flooring specialists. No sooner was this finished then the man called to say he wouldn’t be able to get to Patrick’s floor until mid next week.