Dennis Lehane - The Given Day

The bartender, a wide man with a thick mustache curled up so violently at the edges you could hang hats on it, came walking down the bar. “What can I get you?”

Still feeling a glow of kinship with the workingman, Ruth ordered two beers and a shot, make it a double, and the bartender placed the drafts before him and then poured a healthy glass of whiskey.

Ruth drank some beer. “I’m looking for a man named Dominick.”

“That’d be me, sir.”

Ruth said, “I understand you own a strong truck, do some hauling.”

“That I do.”

Down the other end, one of the men rapped the edge of a coin off the bar top.

“Just a second,” the bartender said. “Them’s some thirsty gents, sir.”

He walked back down the bar and listened to the two men for a moment, nodding his large head, and then he went to the taps and after that to the bottles, and Ruth felt the two men watching him, so he watched them back.

The one on the left was strapping tall, dark-haired and dark-eyed, and so glamorous (it was the first word that popped into Babe’s head) that Babe wondered if he’d seen him in the flickers or in the pages of the papers devoted to returning war heroes. Even from down the other end of a long bar, his simplest gestures — raising a glass to his lips, tapping an unlit cigarette on the wood — achieved a grace that Ruth associated with men of epic deeds.

The man beside him was much smaller and less distinct. He was milky and dour and the bangs of his mousy brown hair kept falling over his forehead; he brushed them back with an impatience Ruth judged feminine. He had small eyes and small hands and an air of perpetual grievance.

The glamorous one raised his glass. “A great fan of your athleticism, Mr. Ruth.”

Ruth raised his glass and nodded his thanks. The mousy one didn’t join in.

The strapping man clapped his friend on the back and said, “Drink up, Gene, drink up,” and his voice was the baritone of a great stage actor hitting the back row.

Dominick placed fresh drinks in front of them and they returned to their conversation, and Dominick came back to Ruth and topped off his whiskey, then leaned back against the cash register. “So you need something hauled, do you, sir?”

Babe sipped his whiskey. “I do.”

“And what would that be, Mr. Ruth?”

Babe took another sip. “A piano.”

Dominick crossed his arms. “A piano. Well, that’s not too—”

“From the bottom of a lake.”

Dominick didn’t say anything for a minute. He pursed his lips. He stared past Ruth and seemed to listen for the echo of an unfamiliar sound.

“You’ve got a piano in a lake,” he said.

Ruth nodded. “Actually it’s more like a pond.”

“A pond.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, which is it, Mr. Ruth?”

“It’s a pond,” Babe said eventually.

Dominick nodded in a way that suggested past experience with such a problem and Babe felt a thump of hope in his chest. “How does a piano manage to get itself submerged in a pond?”

Ruth fingered his whiskey. “You see, there was this party. For kids. Orphans. My wife and I held it last winter. You see, we were having work done on our house, so we’d rented a cottage on a lake not too far away.”

“On a pond you mean, sir.”

“On a pond, yeah.”

Dominick poured himself a small drink and threw it back.

“So, anyway,” Babe said, “everyone was having a fine old time, and we’d bought all the little tykes skates and they were stumbling around the pond — it was frozen.”

“I gathered, sir, yes.”

“And um, I, well, I sure do like playing that piano. And Helen sure does as well.”

“Helen’s your wife, sir?”

“She is.”

“Noted,” Dominick said. “Proceed, sir.”

“So myself and some of the fellows decided to take the piano from the front room and push it down the slope onto the ice.”

“A fine idea at the time, I’m sure, sir.”

“And that’s what we did.”

Babe leaned back in his chair and relit his cigar. He puffed until he got it going and took a sip of his whiskey. Dominick placed another beer in front of him and Babe nodded his thanks. Neither of them said anything for a minute and they could hear the two men at the other end talking about alienated labor and capitalist oligarchies and it could have been in Egyptian for all that Babe understood it.

“Now here’s the part I don’t understand,” Dominick said.

Babe resisted the urge to cringe on his barstool. “Go ahead.”

“You’ve got it out on the ice. And does it crack through the ice, taking all those tads on skates with it?”

“No.”

“No,” Dominick said softly. “I believe I would have read about that. So, my question then, sir — How did it manage to go through the ice?”

“The ice melted,” Ruth said quickly.

“When?”

Babe took a breath. “It was March, I believe.”

“But the party …?”

“Was in January.”

“So the piano sat on the ice for two months before it sank.”

“I kept meaning to get to it,” Babe said.

“I’m sure you did, sir.” Dominick smoothed his mustache. “The owner—”

“Oh, he was mad,” the Babe said. “Hopping. I paid for it, though.”

Dominick drummed his thick fingers on the bar. “So if it’s paid for, sir …”

Babe wanted to bolt the bar. This was the part he hadn’t quite worked out in his head yet. He’d installed a new piano in both the rental cottage and the restored house on Dutton Road, but every time Helen looked at that new piano she’d look at Ruth in a way that made him feel as attractive as a hog in its own filth. Since that new piano had taken residence in the house, neither of them had played it once.

“I thought,” Ruth said, “if I could pull that piano from the lake, I—”

“The pond, sir.”

“The pond. If I could pull that piano back up and, you know, restore it, it would make a swell anniversary gift for my wife.”

Dominick nodded. “And what anniversary would that be?”

“Our fifth.”

“Isn’t wood usually the appropriate gift?”

Babe said nothing for a moment, thinking that one through.

“Well, it’s made of wood.”

“Point taken, sir.”

Babe said, “And we’ve got some time. It’s not for six months, my anniversary.”

Dominick poured them each another drink and raised his in toast. “To your unbridled optimism, Mr. Ruth. It’s what makes this country all that it is today.”

They drank.

“Have you ever seen what water does to wood? To ivory keys and wire and all those little delicate parts in a piano?”

Babe nodded. “I know it won’t be easy.”

“Easy, sir? I’m not sure it’ll be possible.” He leaned into the bar. “I have a cousin. He does some dredging. He’s worked the seas most of his life. What if we were to at least establish the location of the piano, how deep it actually is in the lake?”

“The pond.”

“The pond, sir. If we knew that, well, then we’d be somewhere, Mr. Ruth.”

Ruth thought about it and nodded. “How much will this cost me?”

“Couldn’t say without talking to my cousin, but it could be a bit more than a new piano. Could be less.” He shrugged and showed Ruth his palms. “Although, I make no guarantees as to the final fee.”

“Of course.”

Dominick took a piece of paper and wrote down a telephone number and handed it to Ruth. “That’s the number of the bar. I work seven days from noon to ten. Call me Thursday, sir, and I’ll have some details for you.”

“Thanks.” Ruth pocketed the number as Dominick went back down the bar.

He drank some more and smoked his cigar as a few more men came in and joined the two down at the other end of the bar and more rounds were purchased and toasts given to the tall, glamorous one, who was apparently giving some kind of speech soon at the Tremont Temple Baptist Church. Seemed like the tall man was big noise of a sort but Ruth still couldn’t place him. Didn’t matter — he felt warm here, cocooned. He loved a bar when the lights were dim and the wood was dark and the seats were covered in soft leather. The kids from this morning receded until they felt several weeks in his past, and if it was cold outside, you could only imagine it because you sure couldn’t feel it.