David Gates - A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me

He got in the truck, shot the finger at the courthouse and said, “How’s my face?” I turned the mirror toward him. “Fuck,” he said. “Good job.”

“They knew some tricks,” I said. “I felt bad I didn’t get your back.”

“Hey, they had a few years on you. No offense. Tell you the truth, I think I might be getting a little old for this shit. Fuck, man, ten years ago? Five years ago. I owe you money.”

“Forget it. I can probably write off the lawyer as legal fees. Buy us lunch if you want.”

“You mean drinkies too, right? That was a long couple days, man.”

“I guess I wouldn’t say no.”

“ I ought to,” he said.

We drove over to Buster’s, where they’ve got wooden booths and old metal signs on the walls and they keep it dark in the middle of the day and the waitresses will flirt back with you up to a point. We got a young one whose white apron was tight across her breasts and we both ordered Jack on the rocks. Johnny looked at her chest and said, “I want mine double .” She said, “I could’ve guessed.”

“Hey, I might not be that old after all,” he said when she went off to the bar. “We don’t have anything this afternoon, do we?”

“Miller Brook. Jesse and Myron are over there.”

“Well hell then.”

“I’m going to need you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow, man. My favorite day. Thank you, sweetheart.” The waitress set our drinks down. “And how about a couple of menus?”

“No problem,” she said.

“You don’t have to hurry,” he said. “Not that we don’t like your company.”

We raised glasses, and he downed about half of his and said, “Hal-a-fuckin’-looyah.” I guess I downed half of mine too. “So Amber get home okay?” As he said it, he looked up at an old Kelly Tires sign.

“Well,” I said, “she got home.”

“How about Jesse?”

“He probably caught a ride with Myron.”

“See that?” he said. “I fuckin’ love Jesse. Because he knows how to fuckin’ carry himself. I don’t give a shit if he’s black or what he is. Now me, couple of drinks and I’m liable to get right into it with you.”

The waitress put menus in front of us. “Can I tell you about our specials?”

“Sweetheart,” Johnny said, “you make everything special. Why don’t you come sit down with us?”

“You could bring us another round,” I said. On her way to the bar, she whispered something to an older waitress.

“Goddamn right,” Johnny said. “Let’s be assholes. So okay, you took her home and then what? She say anything to you?”

“She was pretty hammered,” I said. “I kind of let it all go in one ear.”

“Shit,” he said. “Yeah, I don’t know, fuck it. Arlene hates my ass anyway.” He downed the rest of his drink. “Hey, she’s got all that bullshit with her boyfriend, plus Billy and dealing with all that, so we’re having some drinks, sitting on the couch—I’m not gonna fuckin’ send her home. She is hot. You know this.”

“So did Arlene find out?”

“I been off the grid for three days, man. They probably had it on the fuckin’ View . That’s what she watches.”

“Amber said she was off somewhere.”

“Well yeah . Else it wouldn’t of fuckin’ happened.”

“So maybe you dodged the bullet.”

He counted on his fingers. “You, me, Amber, the motherfuckers next door—they had to see her car there in the morning. I mean you’re not going to be telling Arlene, right? Because you already fucked me once. I had your back that time.”

“Johnny. Different situation. You moved on the guy.”

“Nah, come on, I’m just fuckin’ with you. Maybe I’m fuckin’ with you.”

The other waitress put our drinks down. “You gentlemen make up your minds?”

“What happened to your friend?” Johnny said.

“She went on break. What can I get you?”

“Cheeseburger well,” I said. “With fries? And a cup of clam chowder.”

“You?” she said to Johnny.

“I am such a fuckin’ fuckup,” Johnny said. “Just one more of these bad boys and bring me the check.”

“I’ll have those right out for you.” She headed for the kitchen.

“Listen,” he said, “they don’t stop you in the middle of the day, right?”

“Probably not if you color between the lines.”

“Fuck, man, and Arlene’s probably home by now. She doesn’t go in till tonight. I’m thinking just get in the car and go . Fuck all these crazy bitches.”

“You’ll get through it,” I said.

“Easy for you, right? I been working for you how long? Well one of these days you ain’t gonna see me.”

—

The house on Miller Brook Road belonged to the Web designer, Steven Holtzman. He took his wife to Aruba for three weeks, didn’t drain his pipes, the power went out, everything froze, then we had a thaw and you can imagine what they came back to. Great old house too. When the insurance adjuster came out with me to look over the damage, he said a good clean fire would’ve been better. We gutted the whole house back in February, right down to the studs, wearing coveralls and masks; we kept heaters going, but they didn’t do much. We filled two dumpsters, the mold-remediation guys came in and did their thing and now the wife wanted everything back just like it was; she still had pictures on the computer. It was going to end up at least a three-hundred-thousand-dollar job. Holtzman was sick about it, and ashamed of himself—it really had been a dumb-ass move—so I had to do some hand-holding. I told him probably July; I knew in order to make that I’d have to hire on extra people. There’s never a shortage of guys out of work; the trick is finding anybody that knows what they’re doing. I had my big three, because Myron had done his cutting over the fall and winter, and I’d be pitching in myself, but we had some smaller jobs coming up, plus the lawns and landscaping right around the corner.

When I got to the site Tuesday morning, Jesse and Myron were already out in the yard sanding the twelve-inch hemlock floorboards we’d managed to dry out, the legs of the sawhorses in the mud and old snow. A pair of Asscrack Harrys were humping sheets of drywall into the front room, where Jesse’d gotten plywood down, and the radio was going. Billy’s old radio, which Amber had passed on to Jesse.

Johnny still hadn’t showed by ten o’clock, so I called his cell and his house, then tried Amber at the office; she hadn’t seen or heard from him. “Anything else shaking?” I said.

“Some guy called about the ad. And somebody else, but they hung up.”

Jesse and I started hanging drywall in the upstairs while Myron stayed with the floorboards. That was a waste of him but I didn’t trust the Asscracks not to leave marks with the sanders; they both looked about sixteen, though the one with the tattoos running up his neck had finished high school. I put him to work stapling rolled insulation between the studs in the dining room and sent the bodybuilder one over to Security Supply in North Adams, where I had an account, to pick up toilets for the half baths, rolls of PEX and a list of other stuff; the toilet in the master bath, with the wooden tank up top, had been ruined too, but that I’d had to special order. This afternoon I’d get him started cleaning up everything we’d taken out and stored in the shed—the claw-foot bathtub, the antique sinks with the brass fixtures, the wood-burning Glenwood kitchen stove that Holtzman’s wife actually cooked on once in a while. She claimed you could taste the difference.

When the noon whistle blew down at the town hall, the guys brought out their lunches—Myron’s wife always packed something hot for him in a zippered bag—and I got in my truck to go by Johnny’s house. It was getting colder and starting to cloud over. His Pathfinder wasn’t there, so I sent him a text —Where U? —then drove to the office and found Amber on the Internet as usual.