Knockout (15 page)

B
efore she meets Christian Eccles's mother, she drives her father to have breakfast with Twyla. More than anything her father wants to get his license back. That's the thing he misses the most. He's gone down to the DMV and taken the test three times in the last year, but his hip always gives out on him halfway through the test and he has to quit.

Ingrid Eccles is a small woman, her brown hair pulled up in a misshapen bun. There are lots of doilies in her apartment, lots of pictures of Christian, a good layer of dust covering everything.

The pictures of Christian hang in chronological order on her living room wall, the naked youngster on the shag rug, the boy holding the baseball bat, the teenager with wings of hair feathered over his ears.

Ingrid can't sit still. She makes lemonade, puts out a plate of cookies.

“I can't believe he's gone,” she tells Lisa.

As he ages, the pictures of Christian get fewer and fewer. In the last one, he looks off the rails, his mouth held in a sneer, his eyes watery and distant.

“They were having trouble figuring out his meds,” Ingrid says when she notices Lisa looking at that picture. “At that point he hated any sort of camera being around him. Ever since he was fifteen there were signs. The drugs helped for a while, but then not so much.”

Lisa holds a napkin underneath her cookie. She wants to ask Ingrid if she feels relieved he's gone, but she knows it's a horrible question. She eats her cookie, shakes Ingrid's hand, tells her thank you.

L
ater that week, Lisa is eating dinner with her dad at a seafood place near the wharf, a place with a signed picture of her father in a frame up on the wall. He's dressed up, she's not. They are an odd couple, her in paint-splattered chinos and a raggedy T-shirt, him in a slate-colored suit. The owner keeps coming over to their table, asking if everything is all right for “Mr. Turner.”

“Twyla called me today. She heard they might resurrect my character on
Sunset Beach
,” he tells her. “There's scuttlebutt. That's what she told me. Scuttlebutt. I would have been on a deserted island all
these years. Shipwrecked or some shit. I come back pissed off and out for revenge.”

When they get home, Lisa goes up to bed. Later that night, she gets up and finds her father asleep in front of the TV. His legs are propped up on a chaise lounge. His cannonball video is paused and he's frozen there on the screen. The picture is old and blurry and you can't really tell what is happening, so Lisa grabs the remote from off the coffee table and clicks forward a couple frames. That does it; it moves her father out of the haze. She sets the remote back down on the coffee table and leaves him sitting there, a man held in mid-flight, a man with no pinnacle and no nadir, a man unaware of the ground below.

CHET

M
y older brother Chet died after he got bit by a sick elk. It was a horrible death, lots of moaning and black puke and weeping styes all over his back and chest. Nothing, not any of the doctors at the hospital, not shitloads of morphine or the tenderness of the nursing staff, nothing could ease his pain. Poor Sick Chet. Poor Poor Sick Sick Chetty. That's what we all said.

Chet got bit on our annual hunting trip. The elk that bit him was one I'd shot but hadn't shot well enough. Chet got to it before me and he knelt down in the switch grass to field dress the beast. While he was unsheathing his hunting knife, the elk reared up and chomped down on his thigh, right through his Carhartts. The elk keeled over immediately after that, like that bite was his last wish.

At first, Chet shook off the pain. He gulped blackberry brandy and revenge-stabbed the elk in the face about fifty times—it was only on the drive home that he started to look green. I knew something was wrong with him when my dad asked us if we
wanted to stop at the strip club in Lake City and Chet said he thought it might be best to skip the strippers and head straight home. I knew something was especially fucked when my dad and I dragged Chet inside the strip club anyway and he fainted before he even saw one goddamn tit.

Chet's newlywed wife, Flor, stood vigil by his hospital bed the entire time. Flor was Panamanian and she often wore her hair in pigtails and her dresses were embroidered with tiny flowers on the bodice and sleeves. She'd only been married to Chet for two months, but most nights she slept on a cot next to Chet's wasting body, feeding him popsicle chunks and dabbing his forehead with a damp washcloth as he drifted in and out of consciousness. Unfortunately, one morning she started to puke. It was regular yellow-brownish puke, not blackish puke like Chet's, but I was still worried for her. By then, I'd fallen under the spell of her dark eyes and loved the pragmatic way she stood by Chet's bedside as he fought his way though chill and fever, pain and fear.

“You're not sick,” the doctors explained after they'd examined Flor. “You're pregnant.”

Flor told Chet the news immediately, thinking this bit of wonder might provide him some sort of extra will to survive this horrible elk-biting disease.

“I'm with child,” she explained. “Which is a beautiful thing, right? A baby!”

Chet was in a coma by then. He hadn't spoken in a week, but after Flor told him about the baby we heard him mumble, okay, okay, okay. We milled around his bed for a while after that, excited, hoping for more, hoping for a small signal he was still fighting. Unfortunately, those were the last words Chet ever spoke. A few minutes later his body seized up, every muscle in his arms and legs tightening and braiding, his torso bucking up and
down on his bed. The doctors rushed in with a crash cart, but it was useless. Flor buried her head in my shoulder and sobbed.

“It was like he was waiting to hear about the baby before he said good-bye,” I told her.

II

F
ive years might be a long time for some people to grieve, but it isn't for me. I still tear up every time I think of Chet. It's just how I'm wired. I end up thinking about Chet a lot because I can see his gravestone from the cafeteria of the power plant where I work. Sometimes I'll be eating a grilled cheese sandwich and I'll accidentally glance down at the graveyard and think about how Chet liked grilled cheese sandwiches and my eyes flood with tears. I can't help it.

A bunch of my other relatives are buried in that cemetery too. It's about two hundred yards from the power plant, overlooking the river. It's extra ominous because steam from the turbines billows over it and because there are always craggy old fishermen on the shore below, casting their lines into the murky bilge. It's great fishing if you like bottom feeders—suckers, carp, the occasional gooch that's taken a wrong turn from the gulf—all of them love the soupy water, all of them love being nearly boiled alive.

Today at lunch, I eat a chicken salad sandwich Flor has packed for me. My Uncle Jimmy, who also happens to be my boss, is staring out at the river with his binoculars. Jimmy is my mom's brother. Truth be told, this is kind of a family-run power plant. My Aunt Joan works in human resources, my dad was the plant maintenance coordinator until he retired last year. After Chet died, we got Flor a job in the childcare center, where she works with Uncle Jimmy's twin daughters, Elaine and Erica. Some people might call
this nepotism, but we call it taking care of our own. And that's what we do, even when our own are total dumbasses like Allen, my first cousin, who works in the turbine control room and who, about two to three times per year, knocks out the entire power grid east of the Mississippi.

“Uh-oh,” Uncle Jimmy says, passing me the binoculars.

I look down at the cemetery to see what he's uh-oh-ing. The old priest from town, Father Hollenbeck, is down there trying to dig up Chet's grave again.

“You've got to be fucking kidding me,” I say.

It's the middle of August, 102 degrees. I was hoping to stay inside the air conditioning today. I was planning to take a restorative nap after playing some computer solitaire, but instead I holster my taser and tromp past the cooling towers and then over the catwalk that runs the length of the outtakes. I pass by Vince, Uncle Tommy's bastard son, in the guard shack.

“Didn't I tell you to radio me if Hollenbeck showed up again?” I ask.

“He said he was gonna put a hex on me,” Vince says. “He held up his cross and muttered a bunch of Latin shit. I'd much rather just have you pissed at me than him.”

When I get down to the cemetery, Hollenbeck's wiping his brow off on his vestments. The man's nearly eighty years old, but he's digging like he's twenty. He's already reached the top of Chet's casket. I see the gouges on the lid from the last time he did this.

“Sure is hot out, huh, padre?” I say.

Father Hollenbeck turns toward me, the sweat rolling down his forehead and catching in the folds of his face. He's getting worse. Last week, he walked into the produce aisle of the grocery store, pulled out his dick, and rubbed it all over the Bibb lettuce. I heard the church was moving him into assisted living,
a place with large orderlies and locked doors, but he's obviously not there yet.

“Do I know you?” he asks.

“Bryce Jordahl,” I say. “I was an altar boy a few years back?”

Father Hollenbeck pulls a flask from a secret pocket inside his cassock and takes a nip. He's forgotten to put in his dentures today and his lips look like they're being sucked into his mouth.

“I'd remember that,” he says, “but I don't. Which means you've probably been sent here by the devil to confound me.”

Hollenbeck clears away more dirt from around the coffin. His breath is gamey, full of scotch and garlic. I look at Chet's gravestone. It's not in the best of shape. There's bird shit streaked on it and someone keeps bringing flowers out here but never taking them away. There's a bale of decaying roses next to Chet's grave, curled together, smelling like sweet piss.

“Bryce?” I say, pointing to the name on the stone, “Chet's brother?”

“Whose brother?” Hollenbeck asks.

I notice a bunch of my relatives standing in front of the big windows of the cafeteria, my aunts and uncles, a handful of my cousins, all of them looking down at me. It is way too hot to pussyfoot around, so I grab Hollenbeck's shovel. Unfortunately, he sidesteps me before I can get a good grip on it and he swings the shovelhead and nails me in the shin. I fall onto the ground and writhe.

“God's will is God's will,” Hollenbeck tells me.

While I rub my leg, Hollenbeck walks over to the casket. He sticks the shovel under the lid, rocks it back and forth, trying to pry it open. Before he does, I lurch to my feet. I unholster my taser and blast his ass, because priest or no priest, this mofo deserves to be tased. Hollenbeck yelps and his jaw clenches and his eyes bug out of his head and he tips to the ground. He's still
breathing and everything, but he's just way less interested in digging up my dead brother now.

“Leave my family the hell alone,” I whisper in Hollenbeck's ear as I slap the handcuffs on.

I stuff Hollenbeck into the cab of my truck. My relatives are all looking at me from the cafeteria window. Most of them think I've got anger management issues. Most of them think that just because I tased Allen after he stole my burrito from the employee fridge I'm a loose cannon. Most of them think I should've been suspended by Jimmy for much longer than a week for blasting my own cousin over something as insignificant as a burrito. I look up at all of them looking down at me with the judgey hazel-colored eyes that dominate my family tree, and I flip all of them off because guess what, fuck what the fuck they think.

H
ollenbeck's still out of it when I pull up in front of the rectory. His eyes are open, but he hasn't said a word. I give his cheek a little slap but that doesn't help. His housekeeper, Ethel, comes out from the house and we carry him to bed. Once he's safely under the covers, he closes his eyes and starts to snore.

“He used to be such a peaceful man,” Ethel tells me, “but he's the exact opposite now. He can't find any relief.”

When I get home, Flor is in the backyard weeding around the tomato plants and I walk over and give her a kiss. Today's our first wedding anniversary. My dad is coming over in a few hours to babysit Antonio and the two of us are going to dinner to celebrate.

“The birds are back,” she says.

Even though I call Antonio my stepson, since he's Chet's kid, he's my nephew too. For his birthday last year one of the presents I gave him said “Uncle Bryce” and the other one read “Dad.” I look at him sitting in the shade of the big oak tree in our
backyard. There are six crows sitting about ten feet away from him, their feathers pressed tightly against their bodies, their eyes unblinking, watching Antonio play with his Matchbox cars like he's giving them some sort of lecture.

“Did you stop shooing them away?” I ask Flor. “Didn't we decide we needed to keep doing that?”

For some reason Antonio attracts birds. It's one of the many weird things about the kid. Whenever he goes outside, the crows swoop down from their perches and park themselves a few feet from where he's playing. Antonio will hardly say a word to me, but often interacts with the crows, caws at them, whispers things to them under his breath. Flor hopes it's a phase, but this isn't any phase.

“Did we decide to start shooing again?” Flor asks. “I thought we were just letting them be.”

I don't have the energy to shoo the crows away from Antonio so I just let them be. I just want to have fun tonight. Flor and I had to bargain with my father for the babysitting help. Even though Antonio's his only grandchild, the last time he babysat, Antonio told him he was going to die soon, that he was going to have a heart attack. Normally my dad would've just laughed a comment like that off, but at the grocery store a few weeks earlier Antonio told August Johnson he was going to drown. August tousled Antonio's hair and told Antonio that he sure had an active imagination, ha, ha, ha. The next night, on the way home from his dart league, August drove his truck off the Lester River Bridge and his truck sank and his lungs filled up with water.

“Hollenbeck came back again today,” I tell Flor. “He almost got the casket open this time.”

I skip the part about tasing Hollenbeck because after I tased Allen over that burrito, after he spent that day in that medically
induced coma, after his life was sort of touch and go there for a few hours, me tasing anyone is a sensitive subject with Flor.

“That poor man,” she says. “I wish there was some way to help him.”

My father arrives and gives Antonio a halfhearted hug. My dad used to always bring along a little gift whenever he came to visit, a wood car or a Lego set, but tonight he comes over empty-handed. He sits across the room from Antonio.

“Be nice to Grandpa,” Flor tells Antonio as we head out the door.

A
t dinner, I order steak and fries and Flor gets the pasta special. We quickly finish off a bottle of wine. It's so great to be out of the house on a date. It's been a while.

“I can't believe it's already been a year,” I say, toasting Flor.

I'm trying to keep things upbeat, but truth be told the last year has been difficult. A few months ago I came home early from work and found Flor in our bed rubbing an eight-by-ten picture of Chet against the crotch of her jeans. I hadn't thought about it much before, but it really made me start to wonder—was she happier with Chet than she was with me? Was Chet a better husband? A better lover? It's hard to compete with a dead man because all of the jackass things he did that have been washed away by time and all the jackass things I do keep on happening every day.