3 A Brewski for the Old Man (8 page)

“Don’t tell anyone,” Lacey said. We were in the truck and I was delivering her to school.

I took my eyes off the rearview. “What exactly aren’t I supposed to tell? Things are piling up and I’m getting confused.”

“About my arms.” She sat hunched up in the corner as far away from me as she could get.

I turned left on Banyan and braked for a jogger darting across in front of me. “Can’t promise that.”

“Just for a little bit?”

“This is too big to hide. You need help.”

“Even if I promise not to do it anymore?”

“Nope. I’m not your guardian, or warden or whatever. I’m not checking you out for fresh cuts, and I can’t make sure you don’t do it again.” “I wouldn’t lie to you.”

“Still nope.” I parked in front of the school. “Have a good day.” Silly words.

She pushed open the door. Reluctant and beaten, she dragged her backpack behind her.

I kept one eye peeled for Ray John and one eye on Lacey to make sure she didn’t bolt. Lacey dragged herself into the building, not acknowledging the other kids, alone in a sea of humanity.

I went to see Rena. The store didn’t open until ten but I knew she’d be there, tidying up, unpacking stock and doing the books.

Rena didn’t look well. Her hair looked faded and dull, her normally impeccable makeup looked smudged over a bruise showing beneath the heavy foundation high on her left cheek. The love of her life seemed to be back to his old tricks.

Rena and I pretended she wasn’t wearing the evidence of his cruelty, pretended life was just as it had been a day ago.

When the small talk ended, her shock began. “Did you know Lacey has been cutting herself?” I asked.

“What?” She backed away from me, her horror real. Denial quickly followed. “You’re crazy.”

“Nope. I’ve seen the scars.”

“Lacey hasn’t any scars.”

“She has, Rena. And she admitted cutting herself, tried to make me promise not to tell you.”

She covered her mouth with her hand, slowly shaking her head in denial before asking, “Why?”

Before I could reply, a fresh resolve gripped her. “She has to come home.”

“What will that solve? She was cutting herself at home.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“But it’s true. We’ve got to get help for her.” Her face pulled into worried lines. “My insurance won’t cover this and I can’t afford it.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll pay for now.” Good going girl, let’s just hope psychiatrists take store coupons. “The most important thing is that we get her some help.” “How could she do this to me?”

So stunning, it took my breath away. Maybe she didn’t mean to be that selfish. Maybe like most of us she was just at the end of her rope and was coping with all she could handle before this.

I wanted to tell her about what Ray John was doing to her child. It was a great big lump in my throat, waiting to vomit out, but I’d promised Lacey, promised that I’d never tell her secret unless she gave me permission. I couldn’t violate that. Well, not yet anyway.

“You try and find her some help and I’ll keep a real close eye on her,” I vowed.

It turned out to be one of many promises I couldn’t keep in my life. But I started out with really good intentions.

Skip Nayato, the bartender already down from Vermont for the season, was working in the stockroom, setting up the bar for the day and ordering new stock. The resort in the North where he worked in the summer had closed after Labor Day and, like lots of people in the service industry, he had made his way south. That’s how it is; lots of maids, gardeners and wait staff work the summers up in New England and Upper New York State and then come to Florida for the winter. It was early in the season to take on wait staff. I really didn’t need any more bodies until November when the first snowbirds would trickle in, but Skip and I had worked together before and I knew he was too good to pass up.

Hurricane Myrna had not only wreaked havoc on the landscape the winter before, it had kept the tourists away. People saw the pictures of the destruction on television and didn’t realize Jacaranda was open for business. Many businesses that survived the hurricane failed in the tourist season that followed, including the place where Skip had worked. I was sure hoping the tourists would forget about hurricanes and come back in droves for the winter to save my ass.

Given the situation with Lacey, I was glad that I’d taken Skip on so early. I asked him to work extra hours and cover for me. Hee Haw, bring on the debt.

I checked the receipts from the night before. Not bad. I was mildly optimistic about my ability to stay afloat, and then I got on the phone and called Cordelia Grant, my friend who was a grief counselor. She’d know what to do for Lacey.

“She needs a child psychiatrist but I have to tell you there is a real shortage of them in this area. It may take months to get an appointment.”

“I don’t know why I say this, but I don’t think she’s got months. Lacey needs help now.”

“Then call the family doctor. He may be able to treat her with antidepressants until she can get real help. You’ll need to talk to him anyway, so that’s a good place to start.”

I called Rena. The phone rang in the store but no one answered.

There was nothing more to be done for Lacey; it was time to look after my own business. At the Stop and Shop, I went inside to pay for the gas. The clerk asked, “Will there be anything else?”

A six pack of Coors landed on the counter beside my hand. “And a brewski for the old man,” a baritone voice said behind me.

I turned around to face my father, Tully Jenkins.

“And a brewski for the old man,” I told the clerk.

“How you doin’, Sherri?”

“Not bad.”

My cautious reply didn’t change his grin. “You?” I asked just to be polite.

He gave me a ragged charming smile, “What can I say? I’m old, ugly and mean, but still able to get out of bed come morning.”

He looked better than his assessment. Tully has every bad habit a man can have, some of which he’s taken to an art form, but he’s been strangely unaffected by them. When I looked at him for signs of change there were very few. He’d looked much the same throughout my whole life, a few more wrinkles from the sun and the cigarette that always hung from the corner of his mouth, but that’s about all. Sometimes I felt that one day I’d pass him in aging and while I grew old, he’d do a Dorian Gray and stand still. Only now was grey beginning to show in his dark hair.

Still dressed head to toe in denim and still wearing a black straw cowboy hat pushed back on his head, he was still handsome. No denying it. A parade of women had been taken in by his chiseled features and laughing black eyes. He’d never worried much about those women wising up and moving on, knowing there was another one in the next bar, truck stop or marina. Ruth Ann was the only one he couldn’t seem to get over. In the past he’d gone to great lengths to get her back, even stopped drinking and catting around for a while. Then he’d get back to his old ways and Ruth Ann would throw him out again. Very entertaining, although ultimately tiring, but even that seemed to have died down.

He had turned sixty the summer before but was still all bone and sinew. His dark skin stayed the same color no matter what the time of year, but then he was outside all year round, seldom making any concession to the weather except to pull on a jean jacket if the temperature dipped below fifty. He was as dark and mean as the feral pigs he loved to hunt illegally in the scrub brush out around the state park east of Sarasota. Every Thanksgiving and again in March he’d have a pork barbecue. The pigs went on a spit over a hardwood fire early in the morning and cooked all day. People started dropping in around three, the women bringing potato salads and desserts, the men carrying twelve packs of beer and some lawn chairs. They’d sit themselves down and drink and laugh and make a little music while they watched the spit turn. When Tully decided the pigs were done, two men would lift the spit onto a scrubbed picnic table and they’d begin carving them up. Served on a fresh bun with some brown mustard, it’s as sweet and tender a meal as you’ll ever get.

I gave Tully a thin cautious smile and said, “That’s good, glad to hear you’re doing fine.” I turned back to the clerk, holding out my hand for the change and grabbing my bottle of water, anxious to get away from Tully. I shoved the change in the pocket of my jeans as Tully reached out and picked up the beer.

“Well, see ya,” I said and walked.

Tully beat me to the door. “Sherri, how’s ’bout we get a little bite?”

I looked at him, trying to guess what he wanted, to judge if he was about to tell me some real bad news or if it was just a friendly offer. Yeah, right — as if. I knew it wasn’t going to be the last option. I could only hope for a moderately bad crisis, if such a thing existed.

“Okay,” I agreed cautiously, looking for the open pit about to swallow me.

“I’ll drive.” He pointed to the edge of the lot. “Park Jimmy’s truck over there.”

“It’s my truck,” I snapped. It had been Jimmy’s until he died but it was mine now. Silly, but Clay always called it Jimmy’s truck, making a big deal of it and always wanting me to get something different. Another little sliver of annoyance in our splintery lives together, and I’d grown stubborn about getting rid of it, not that I had any deep attachment to it and certainly not to Jimmy, like Marley keeps insisting. I just don’t like being told what to do. Giving in just isn’t my style. Tully raised an eyebrow and said, “Fine, your truck.”

I parked the truck and walked over to where he stood waiting for me, watching to make sure I really was coming and wasn’t going to slip away at the last second — such a close and trusting family.

Tully also drove a pickup but it wasn’t a pretty little red one like Jimmy’s. Tully’s was held together by rust and dirt. The back bumper was wired to the body to keep it off the pavement and there was a big dent in the tailgate.

The back of the truck was full of diving gear. People or jobs — sticking to things was not a talent Tully ever had. Only the Gulf of Mexico held his imagination and his faithfulness. A Peter Pan sort of person, the old coot still followed his holy grail, his dream of finding buried treasure. When he wasn’t driving long-haul trucks or working shrimpers he was out diving to wrecks off the west coast of Florida, searching the aquamarine waters for Spanish bullion or Confederate ships that had sunk while loaded with money to buy arms in Europe. He had a hundred stories to justify his hope, plausible and exciting. I’d believed them all when he’d first told them to me, his eyes shining and his voice full of conviction.

I squawked the door of the truck open. The ripped upholstery, spewing stuffing, was covered with the rubbish; empty food containers, beer cans, tools and papers. He used his fore-arm to sweep it all to the floor. “Get in,” he ordered, dropping the beer on top of the mess on the floor.

I set my bag on the seat and looked for a safe place to put my feet. Sticking out of the chaos under the Coors was one of those pamphlets you see in doctor’s offices. This one was on angina. That’s serious stuff, right? I looked at Tully. Was this what I was about to hear?

Ruth Ann had moved up to Carolina to be with my two half-sisters and their children. Tully was the only relative I had left. Suddenly I didn’t want to be left alone. Even this old fart, who I avoided like a communicable disease, was better than nothing.

He had the truck started, coughing and shaking, and was fiddling with the radio. “Get in,” he repeated.

I got in.

Tully drove east, past Tamiami Trail, past the I-75, towards farm country where palms and manicured lawns gave way to slash pines and palmettos. “You didn’t tell me I’d need to pack a lunch just to get to the food.”

He stayed silent, didn’t seem in the mood to fight, which took away a lot of the fun of being with him. Fighting was generally what passed for quality time between Tully and me. He drove with the window rolled down and a hand resting out on the side mirror, heading towards where the sun rose, while the Dixie Chicks kept us company. A mile past Hobo Joe’s Fireworks I was about to protest about the odyssey when he pulled in to the shell parking lot of an old roadhouse called The Dog Trot, or rather, The Dog rot. The
T
was long gone and
rot
better described what was happening to the place. Long and low, with a door in the middle and three narrow windows on either side filled with neon beer signs, decay was eating the ramshackle structure from the ground up. It was visibly gnawing away at the bottom of the grungy, grey-board siding to reveal black tarpaper beneath.

“They should change the name,” I said staring out the window at the ruin of a building. “No way would the humane society let a dog in there.”

“We just came to eat, not to do a house beautiful tour.” His door screeched open so I made mine make that nice sound as well.

Inside things did not get better. The smell — stale beer, sweat and last week’s fries — suited a room so dark you couldn’t move from the door until your eyes adjusted to the gloom. It was silent, except for the scrape of a barstool on a plywood floor, as if the place were taking our measure, waiting to see if we might be dangerous.

The return of vision didn’t change my first impression. Across from the door, a narrow bar ran most of the length of the back wall. Along the wall where we stood was a line of small scarred tables.

Business seemed slow. The only customer was a man at the bar studying the bottom of his beer glass. He didn’t look up.

“Hi, Tully,” the bartender called out. A big man, he leaned on the bar with both tattooed arms, looking like he was hoping someone would come along and try to give him lip. I couldn’t imagine anyone crazy enough, or drunk enough, to do it, but the big guy would sure enjoy it if they did.

Dad grunted in reply and turned right, going to the last table and sat with his back to the end wall. I followed his lead and pulled out the chair against the side wall. With our backs protected from whatever might come, I was still regretting leaving my Beretta in the glove compartment. It seemed likely I’d have a use for it in a place like this.

“I’m not the delicate sort, really,” I informed Tully, “but my stomach is saying don’t even think of eating here.”

“Hasn’t killed me, has it?”

I kept any further opinions to myself and picked up the greasy card with the menu printed on it. “Going on the theory that it’s always good to order something hot enough to kill germs and too hot to be touched by human hands, I’ll have a grilled cheese.”

“You’ll be missing some of the best pulled pork you ever tasted.”

“Sad, but then life is full of tough choices.” He grinned at me. I don’t know why but he suddenly looked as delighted as I’d ever seen him. Maybe he knew something evil about the cheese in the place. He got up and went to the bar, putting in our orders and returning with two long necks.

Our past history was a battle zone of broken promises, wrecked intentions and shattered dreams, so we concentrated on our beers, trying to find conversation that was safe and not leading to war. I worked on the label while I tried to put words together. Finally I asked outright. “So, how sick are you?”

“What?”

“There was a pamphlet in the truck on angina.”

“Naw, just indigestion.”

“Don’t shit a shitter, Daddy.”

“I’m telling you it was nothing. Have to stop eating raw onions and chili, that’s all.” He winked at me and said, “It’ll still take three good men to lick me.”

I nodded. “Yeah, but it won’t take ’em long.” A strip of label came off in one satisfying full width.

I looked up at Tully. “I have to tell you something.” He had the bottle halfway to his mouth and he paused there, waiting. Just like me, Daddy could hear bad news coming miles away.