Riders on the Storm (21 page)

When Mary came back inside, she said, “You now have a fan club.”

“I don't want a fan club.”

Kate said, “What's a fan club?”

Nicole said, “That's when people have posters of famous people on their walls and buy their records and stuff.”

Kate said, “Have you made a record, Sam?”

So now I sat at my desk smoking more Luckies than I should have and popping aspirins every hour on the hour. My left arm hurt when I extended it and my right side ribs hurt when I so much as took a deep breath.

Jamie said, “Everybody's talking about you, Sam. I'm really proud.”

“This'll last about two days and then my fifteen minutes'll be up.”

“Look at that stack of phone messages and it's not even ten thirty.”

“I looked at them. And they make me mad.”

“Why would they make you mad?” Today Jamie wore a blue-and-white polkadot dress and a blue barrette that accented the appeal of her fetching Midwestern face and body.

“Because half these people wouldn't ever have returned my calls if last night hadn't happened.”

“They just want to congratulate you.”

“The only ones I'm returning are the ones that might mean a little business for us. I've been thinking of adding a security service for businesses. We don't have a local one. Some of the people who called probably need help that way.”

“Boy, you never mentioned that before.”

“I need to make more money. I …” I hesitated. I wanted to hear myself say it. “I hope I'm getting married.”

She had a great kid-sister grin. “That is so cool. Mary is the best woman you've ever been with.”

“It took me a long time to realize that.”

“I love her girls, too. I see them whenever I take my daughter to things for kids. Kate is hilarious.”

I'd missed one of the phone slips. Now I sat staring at it. “This one I just saw.”

“Whose is it?”

“Senator O'Shay.”

“I didn't like him at all. He made me repeat his name and number three times and then he said, ‘This is urgent government business, young woman.'”

“The hell it is. He heard my name on the radio and now he wants me to travel around with him while he's campaigning.”

“I didn't like him before anyway. It really burns me up that his two sons don't have to serve when he's so big on the war.”

“He's not going to win.”

“You really think so?”

Her phone rang and by the face she made it had to be O'Shay. I shook my head.

“I'm sorry, Senator, he hasn't come in yet.”

She held the receiver out while he ranted. He went through his “official government business” and then he wanted to know where he could find me and then he said, “A secretary in Washington would have done everything she could to find him. She'd have him on the phone by now. But that's a level of competence you're clearly not capable of.”

I grabbed my receiver and said, “Look, you clown. You have no right to talk to her that way and I want you to apologize to her right now.”

“Just who the hell are you to call me a clown?”

“I'm nobody, but I'm calling you a clown anyway.”

“I'll be damned if I apologize to some stupid little—”

“You're going to lose, Senator. Big time. And Jamie and I are going to celebrate your defeat.”

I slammed the phone down.

Jamie gave me a round of applause.

“You defended my honor, Sam. That was very sweet. Thank you.”

“Just call me Sir Galahad.”

“See—you
can't
take a compliment.”

One of our five or six friendly running arguments.

I spent the next thirty-five minutes on the phone. The last call I made was to the hospital psych ward. The extremely friendly nurse I talked to—I'd said my name right at the top and she responded the way most people do to real live heroes—said that she'd talk with Dr. Rattigan about me visiting Will. And that, by the way, Will was now speaking haltingly but rationally and that Dr. Rattigan was very happy about this. She would call me back as soon as she could reach him. I used my best heroic voice to thank her. This hero stuff came in handy.

Karen called just before noon. “I spent an hour with Will this morning. He's almost Will again. I'll let him tell you what happened the other night. He absolutely didn't kill Donovan. He's worried now that he might have given Foster the idea that he was confessing or something. He'll want to talk to you about that.”

“I hope to be up there this afternoon. The nurse I spoke with said she'd check with Rattigan. If Rattigan says no, I'll call Lindsey Shepard.”

After a pause she said, “I'm going to forgive him, Sam. I love him. I'd planned on forgiving him but last night I got bitter all over again. I want to make our marriage work.” And then she started talking about where I'd been last night. And what I'd done. And how she was so proud of me.

The nurse called me twenty minutes later. I was slotted in at four o'clock to see Will.

Greg Egan was waiting for me, his wheelchair pulled up to the table he favored in “Mike's,” a sandwich shop three blocks from my office. Waiting with him was Ted Franks. Their bitter joke was that if they put together the legs Greg had lost in Nam and the right arm Ted had lost there, they'd have a pretty tough guy.

Greg had contacted me about a call he'd gotten from Senator O'Shay. He wanted to know if he should go to the press about it. He'd also talked to Will on the phone this morning. That made two reasons I'd been eager for this lunch.

“Hell,” Ted said, “expose the bastard. You'd be doing all of us a favor.”

Ted had a long, intense face sitting atop a lanky body. These days his empty right sleeve—he always wore long sleeves—was pinned to his shirt. As a Jew he'd always felt like an outsider in Black River Falls, he'd confessed over too many bottles of Bud one night, but oddly enough he felt that his wound had given him the kind of friendship and acceptance he'd never had before.

Mike's was small, the air conditioning kept it at freezer level, and the clamorous crowd loved to shout appreciation to Mike Feldman for the quality of his numerous deli sandwiches. The shouts (and Mike's return shouts) were part of the ritual.

It got a lot worse if a Cubs game was on the radio. Mike Feldman was one of their messianic fans.

“So this asshole O'Shay calls me and says he'll be giving a speech at the steel plant in Cedar Rapids. He wants to have a vet onstage with him. What he means is he needs a cripple. There're plenty of vets we know who like O'Shay and would be glad to do it for him. But they're not gimps.”

Greg liked that word. The self-contempt seemed to give him pleasure. I'd given him one of my lectures one day but he'd told me to fuck off and I had.

“Think I should call the paper about it? Expose him?”

Ted said, “I think he should, but then I know how Denise feels about it so I should keep my big mouth to myself.”

“Denise is against it?”

“You know her, Sam. She's had kind of a tough time with the way I am.” In war times vets' wives are always portrayed as the relentlessly optimistic vessels of support and good cheer for their husbands. But there are of course wives who have many of the same adjustment problems as their husbands. Denise Egan was one of them.

“I'm with Denise.”

My words surprised him. “Really? I know how much you hate O'Shay. This could really make trouble for him.”

“First of all, Greg, all he did was ask you if you'd appear with him. The thing about ‘gimps,' as you like to call yourself, is in your mind as far as proving anything. He didn't even hint at it. I doubt anybody in the press would even be interested in it. And second of all, think about Denise. Like Ted said, it's easy for us to tell you what to do. And it'd be great if you could do some damage to O'Shay, but it wouldn't be great for Denise. You know how much she hates talking to reporters. Now let's talk about Will. How did he sound when you talked to him?”

“Believe it or not, he sounded like Will. He's a little slower than usual—you know how he likes jokes—but he's definitely Will again.” Then, “But he's a little weird about Karen.” He glanced at Ted as he said this.

Ted said, “We started telling him how lucky he was to have Karen and all he said was that he hoped she'd understand someday. Then he changed the subject right away.”

“It kind of sounded like he'd said good-bye or something,” Ted said.

“Yeah, like he was moving on.”

“Maybe he's not as back together as we think he is. Maybe he was just saying that he hopes that Karen understands all he's put her through. He has to be feeling at least a little guilty about things.”

“That's for sure,” Ted said. “All the shit my wife and kids've had to put up with while I adjusted to not having a right arm.”

“I'm the same with Denise and my kids. I feel guilty for not being able to walk. It's irrational but I can't help it. I see other dads playing ball with their kids—”

He started to choke up but stopped himself.

There was just no doubt about it.

War was fucking wonderful. Just think of all the parades. Just think of all the medals.

Just think of all the O'Shays.

H
E SMILED AS SOON AS HE SAW ME.

He sat in the same chair he'd been in when I visited him before but now he was dressed in the kind of shirt and trousers he'd wear under his white medical jacket at the veterinary clinic. No Sears for him.

The room was filled with late afternoon sunshine and the heavy blue smoke of his cigarettes. “Well, look at you, Sam. If you were just a couple feet taller you'd look like an adult.”

Strained, but better than the eerie state of withdrawal he'd been in since the murder.

I sat on the edge of the bed. “Had lunch with Greg and Ted. Greg said you sounded a whole lot better.”

“Yeah, I do.”

The first minutes of conversation had come easily for him. But now the mouth pinched and the eyes narrowed and he sighed shakily. When he started to speak it was in the slow, precise way that Greg had described.

“I was sitting at home after the ER and I just kept thinking of how much I wanted to be part of the group again. I didn't really get a chance to express myself at the party—at least as I remember it; I was sort of hammered—so I guess I got it in my head that if I could talk to Steve—just the two of us—he'd see why I'd joined that anti-war group. And then I'd tell him that I was dropping it. And then we'd be friends again. Not just Steve but everybody. Buddies. That's all I could think of.

“So I called Cherie's where Steve hangs out a lot to see if he was there. He was, so I drove out there. He didn't want to have anything to do with me so I kept on knocking them down and finally I made it to my car somehow—it was practically parked in the woods—and I passed out. And when I woke up the parking lot was almost empty. I got out to take a leak—I was still pretty drunk—and that was when I saw Donovan on the ground. I was so wobbly I remember almost falling over him. Then somebody hit me from behind across the back of my head and it was maybe half an hour later before I came to.”

“Do you remember calling me from home earlier?”

“Yeah. I was having a really bad panic attack and I didn't know what to do. I thought maybe you could help me. But as soon as I hung up I thought maybe the best thing to do would be to go out to Cherie's and talk to Donovan. What a stupid idea that turned out to be. Man, I remember trying to drive home after I found the body. I was so terrified I couldn't keep the car on the road. I even got so confused at one point I wondered if I really had killed him but couldn't remember. It was like being in the psych hospital again. Days when I couldn't think clearly. I pulled off the road to the place where the police found me. I know Foster still thinks I killed Donovan but I didn't.”

“I know that, Will. And so does Karen.”

His cheeks tinged red suddenly. His eyes closed and he swayed forward, then checked himself. He had to clear his throat to speak. “I'm going to say something you won't want to hear, Sam.”

I waited him out.

“I've given this a lot of thought. I know how much I owe Karen. And I don't have to tell you how much I love our daughter. But the thing is—” He wrung his hands. His gaze fled to the window. “The thing is that I think I've had such a hard time adjusting after coming back home because the marriage isn't right, Sam. And that's not Karen's fault and it's not mine.”

I still said nothing.

A big dopey grin. “There's this young woman I hired, Sam. And she's been with me now for—”

Oh God. At least four married friends of mine had laid The List on me over the years. They wanted my approval, even permission in a strange way. I barely listened to Will's List. I knew it by heart.