Crows (17 page)

“I think you're taking it a little too seriously,” Herm remarked, twirling the lock's dial.

“I did,” Robert said. “That was my problem. That was at the root of my crisis in faith in sportswriting. Fortunately, my paper folded before I was forced to do anything about it.”

“The
Scale
,” Herm said. He dropped the lock, still locked, on the desk.

Robert took a deep, quiet breath to settle himself; his mouth was dry from his speech, which rang in his memory as abrasive, self-­aggrandizing, and a little boring. Herm was, according to Joe Marsh, a man with money to burn and Robert had alienated him on their first meeting.

­“People underestimate the importance of our entertainments,” Herm said. He did not look at Robert, but down at his fingers as they spun the lock on its face knob, reminding Robert of a child tormenting a turtle, setting it a-­spin on its shell.

“If
I
did,” Herm continued, “I'd be in another business. This store, the others I own, nothing more nor less than temples to games.” He snapped his arm up to check his watch. “Mrs. Marsh must've made something extra good,” he said. He put on his coat, then his Russian hat, whose tight weave reminded Robert of packed black worms.

“Joe will be sorry he missed you.”

“No, he won't,” Herm said. “He's a good kid, but we don't see eye-­to-­eye much anymore. He tell you his story?”

“That you gave him a job?”

“I admired his basketball playing. All his life that's all he ever learned to do,” Herm said. “That is the
extent
of his marketable skills. Basketball. And fornication, to hear him crow. So I wanted to repay him for the pleasure he gave me when he played at M.C. I thought I could cut him loose from the dimension basketball had frozen him in. He had a pretty wife, a squawling baby. Where was he going to go? I gave him this job. Now he has grown beyond his devotion to me. He has forgotten his previous straits. Now he resents me because I put him in a field he thinks is beneath him. He forgets,” Herm said, giving the lock a spin. “It's good, in a way, this feeling better than a place. Maybe he'll move on. Once he was just a basketball player. Now he's just a sporting goods store manager. Perhaps in the future he'll be just something else.”

Joe Marsh returned from lunch then, winded from the run through the cold and the fear put in him by the sight of Herm's BMW parked out front before it was expected. He had on a sport coat and a tie, with a silk handkerchief stuffed like a sock in the coat pocket. Robert could see through Joe Marsh's white shirt the black stripes of his ref's shirt.

“Herm!” Joe exclaimed. “You're early. You fooled me.” He shook the owner's hand. He turned a look on Robert, as if to ask if Herm was coming, which was fine, or going, which was not.

“So I see,” Herm said dryly. He removed his Russian hat, a grudging gesture of politeness. With careful fingers he tapped strands of gray hair into order.

“You guys met?” Joe asked, swinging a hand from Robert to Herm.

“Yes.”

“I disappointed him,” Robert revealed. He felt Joe Marsh's anguish and was willing to put himself on the spot to free Joe; he had less to lose, and he sensed also that he had carried Herm into his favor.

“He expected a little more sports gung-­honess,” Robert said, glancing at the owner for corroboration. Herm turned down a corner of his mouth, half an admission.

“Don't disappoint Herm,” Joe Marsh said. “He's done amazing things for me.” His obsequiousness made Robert wince, and was heightened by the remarks Herm Branch had made just before Joe returned. Joe Marsh was throwing flowers down a well, and from the blushing, embarrassed look on his face he seemed to understand his words' futility.

“You have your reports for the first half of December, Joe?” Herm asked.

Joe Marsh made a point of going through his desk, pulling open drawers with the rapid carefulness of a burglar. He said finally, “I'm still getting those together, Herm.”

Herm blinked. He looked at Robert as he said, “Maybe these long lunches are cutting into your work time, Joey.”

“Mrs. Marsh really laid out a spread today,” Joe said, winks all around.

“Regardless,” Herm said with grand imperiousness. “I needed those figures today. Put them in the mail
today.
”

The Russian hat went back on. Joe Marsh picked up the combination lock and held the knob between his thumb and finger. It reminded him somewhat of the hardened nipple of his wife's breast, which he had grasped just that way, barely fifteen minutes before. But the day had gone bad. Herm had been at the store for some length of time and Joe had been out to lunch. No basketball story could save him.

Herm thanked them for their time and shook hands with them both.

“Stay a little longer, Herm. We don't see you that much anymore.”

“Spend more time in the store and you will,” Herm said, and when he stepped out the back door into the cold he had readied the room for the icy blast he let in.

J
OE
M
ARSH SHED
his coat and tie and white shirt. He draped his bandoleer across his chest. He had hung it out of sight of Herm in his locker. He lit a cigarette.

Robert had returned to the shoes. For the first time since coming to SportsHeaven he was uncomfortable in Joe's presence. He felt poisoned by additional information he had not sought. The power Joe had to set him adrift back outside the store hung like a stone in the air between them.

“What did you talk about?” Joe Marsh finally asked, his voice shrunken and hard with distrust.

“Sports, mostly. Checkers. Sportswriting. The fallacy of giving a hundred and ten percent.”

“Why didn't you call me?” Joe asked with a whine. “Jesus!”

“He was only here a half hour,” Robert said. “I couldn't get away to call you. It's not your fault he was early.”

“Shit, you'll have your own store in a ­couple months.”

“No. I don't think he liked me.”

“You don't know that. He's cagey. He used to idolize me but now I think it's slipping the other way.”

“He said you're doing a good job,” Robert said, he didn't know why.

“Yeah?” Joe Marsh perked up. He inflated his chest against the bandoleer until the dried leather squeaked. “If you
had
called, I don't know if Mrs. Marsh would've let me go, anyway.”

And with a wink he returned to work.

 

E
THEL HAD NEWS:
her friend Stephen would be spending Christmas at Ben's house.

“He lives alone on the other side of the lake,” she said. They were as always in the kitchen; outside it was colder from day to day as winter deepened, found its rhythm, and they drank hot tea and hot chocolate and wore sweaters and wrapped themselves in blankets. “He spent last Christmas with his daughter in Pennsylvania. This year he is spending Christmas with us.”

“Why doesn't he go back to his daughter?” Buzzard asked.

“He was invited here,” she said evenly.

“She didn't
want
him back,” Buzz cried. “He bored his own daughter to death. Now we're going to be stuck with him.”

“You may spend the holidays in your room if you wish, Buzzard.”

“Will he be here first thing in the morning?” Olive asked innocently.

“I told him to get here as early as he wished.”

“I thought he might just spend the night,” Olive said.

“We don't want to have to wait to open our presents,” Duke said.

“It might do you good,” Ethel replied. “All of you need to develop some restraint. You only think about yourselves.”

Robert drank cocoa and kept silent. He had earlier promised Buzz and Duke he would take them ice fishing, and now he hoped they had forgotten, that their early enthusiasm had been blunted by the cold. Olive kept a small thermometer on her desk and that morning it had been 50˚ in her bedroom, –12˚ just outside her window. For long minutes after Ethel shouted up that breakfast was ready Robert would not let Olive get out of bed. He held her against him, and though she protested and laughed and kicked to get free he would not release her. Getting out of bed would crack the fragile pod of warmth they shared. When he finally turned her loose and she kicked away the blankets he nearly screamed.

Robert had worked until noon on Christmas Eve. The season for which he had been hired was at an end. The store was closed Christmas, and Joe Marsh had not told him to come in on the twenty-­sixth.

But when he punched out, the
chunk!
of the time clock seemed to be a signal, for Joe appeared at Robert's side at once. He was draped in his bandoleer; he had put a sprig of holly in one bullet loop.

“Merry Christmas,” he said to Robert.

“Merry Christmas.” Since Herm's visit the feeling between Robert and Joe Marsh had changed. Joe no longer took extended lunch hours, only “quickies,” as he told Robert. Herm's visit had made them competitors in an odd way that Robert had no use for.

“What do you have planned?” Robert asked.

“I haven't bought a tree yet,” Joe said. “Buy a tree, trim it, bounce the kid on my knee, roll around with the Mrs.”

Robert smiled. He never knew what to say to these remarks.

“What about you?”

“Visit my folks. The kids want me to take them ice fishing.”

Joe Marsh told Robert he had just what they would need. He went deep into the store and returned with a long red tool that reminded Robert of a posthole digger.

“This is an ice auger,” Joe Marsh said. “The lake ice is a foot thick. This will bore right through it. You got a shelter? A stove?”

“We have the shelter, I know. A stove, I don't know,” Robert said. “It's their project.”

“It's cold out there.”

“Thanks,” Robert said. He leaned against the auger, the shined point pressing into the floor tile. “What's the story with me now?” he asked politely.

“What do you mean?”

“Every kid I've talked to has a long face because the season's over and they've been let go,” Robert said. “Do I still have a job?”

“Hey, of course,” Joe Marsh said. “I thought that was understood.” He took a yellow envelope from his pocket. “Herm's a good boss. But he's tight with his money, so this is doubly impressive, that he thought enough of your work to give you this.” He handed the envelope to Robert. “Don't open it here. Don't tell me how much it is. Just enjoy it. I'll see you the day after tomorrow. Merry Christmas.”

Robert walked home with the ice auger over his shoulder. Everything was gray with cold; the greenness that was ordinarily the heart of the place wore a gray overcoat of cold and ice. The red auger gleamed in this like a beam of warm light frozen solid and made transportable. The wind hit him like a wall; at times he thought he would have to bore through the frozen air, a pipe to slide home through.

He leaned the auger against the outside of the house. Everyone was in the kitchen. On the table were three looped fishing lines, clear and strong; blue hooks; an array of lugs; a half-­dozen bobbers, half the sphere red, half white; and a plastic container of bait.

Duke and Buzz stood when Robert came in, but he waved them to be patient and poured himself cocoa. The walk home had frozen him and turned the whiskers around his mouth white, as though they alone had seen a ghost. He ran upstairs and took clothes from his closet, then carried them down to change in Olive's room, where the temperature was 59˚. The temperature on the fourth floor was in the high thirties, he was certain. He dressed in long underwear, trousers, sweat pants, T-­shirt, flannel shirt, hooded sweater, three pairs of socks, insulated rubber boots.

Dressed, he had more cocoa in the kitchen, and Ethel now had almost freed him from the responsibility to go out in the cold with her news about their Christmas guest. Robert kept silent. Ethel was on a course whose ultimate destination he could not guess; he knew she wanted no comments from him. He felt safer at work. The edge of the family life he had walked for so long felt wider now that he had a job. Only occasionally did it trouble him that this Stephen might now be walking the same edge with him, thus halving the space.

Robert tore open the envelope Joe Marsh had passed along to him from Herm. Surprisingly, no check or cash fell out, but rather a folded photocopy of a newspaper clipping. Robert instantly recognized the faintly blurred type that characterized the
Daily Scale.
It was a copy of a story Robert had written some years before, coverage of an M.C. basketball game. His by-­line at the top looked out of place.
BY BOB CIGAR.
Scale Sportswriter.
The type was wrapped around a fuzzed picture of Joe Marsh in flight, his mouth open as if in public ecstasy, his thin, pale arm stretched to deliver the ball to the basket, which had been cropped from the picture but for the merest curve of rim and half loop of hanging net. Joe Marsh's name was prominent throughout. He had scored forty-­one points and M.C. had beaten Ripon, 84–78.

But Herm Branch's purpose in sending the article to Robert was to critique the writing. With a pen whose ink was as black as his wormy hat, Herm had circled at least two dozen phrases, clauses, punctuation marks, entire paragraphs. He appended to these ink balloons remarks such as “cliché,” “forced metaphor,” “awkward,” “needs a semicolon,” “poor usage,” “Huh?” “Better word,” “What does this mean?” and “sophomoric.”

Robert read the story four times and on the fourth reading was able to get through it without paying attention to the marks. He stood by the solidity of the story; he had spelled the names correctly, gotten the score in the lead, captured some of the cadence of the game, quoted both coaches accurately. Taking into account the boredom he experienced covering games by that point in his career and the time pressures of deadline, he thought the story was decent.

Herm had added a note at the end.

“Perhaps,” he wrote, “you remember incorrectly your talents as a sports scribe. A career in retail sports equipment sales may be just right for you. Merry Christmas, Herm Branch.”

“What's that?” Ethel asked.

“My Christmas bonus,” Robert said.

T
HE ICE SHELTER,
packed in Ethel's car with the portable stove and the ice auger, was still painted copper from Duke's Halloween guise as a refrigerator. Buzz did all the packing while Robert stood at the kitchen window, and finally there was nothing to do but just go. Robert had a moment's hope that the car wouldn't start, but it was in the garage and turned over nicely.

The lines and hooks and other equipment were stored in an old tackle box whose locks, hinges, and interior compartments were coated with a viscous, oily fur of age and disuse. Some trays in the box held lures the length of hot dogs, with evil three-­pronged hooks that made Robert shiver, the idea of them ripping into him as he dove for Ben.

“For muskellunge,” Buzzard said, holding up one such lure.

“Do we need a record player?” Robert asked. “With a record of two fish fighting?”

“Fun-­
ny,
” Buzz said.

“Stay warm,” was Ethel's benediction. “Come home before it gets dark.”

It took only minutes to drive to the lake. Duke and Buzz wore blue ski masks, the eye, nose, and mouth holes rimmed in crimson.

Robert could walk to the Cow and the Calf if he wished. This amazed him, as it had amazed him every winter since Ben vanished. Duke, his eyes swinging uneasily out across the flat ice, might have been having similar thoughts. Only Buzz seemed in a hurry to get out there.

“Last chance to go home and hang out in the kitchen,” Robert said.

“Come
on,
” Buzzard whined. “No guts, no glory.” The words struck Robert as being pulled directly off a T-­shirt.

“No sense, no feeling,” he replied.

Out in the open again, the cold was worse than he remembered. It filled his mouth, his ears, the pockets of air in his clothes. His eyes watered and froze.

They shuffled seventy yards out onto Oblong Lake, to a place Robert remembered the water's being about fifty feet deep. He had dived there, a careful covering of the area beneath him, a picking through rocks as though through a selection of bad alternatives.

The first trip out they took the shelter and stove, and Robert helped Duke with his crutches skittering on the ice. While Buzz erected the shelter, Robert went back for the tackle box and ice auger. When he returned, the shelter was up and the stove lit. Buzz, sitting on one of the benches that folded out from the shelter walls, wore a smile of absolute smugness and pride.

“Very nice job, Buzzer,” Robert said. Already the shelter felt warmer than his fourth-­floor room.

They selected a point in the center of the ice surrounded by the shelter to drill the hole. Robert did this while the boys readied hooks and lines. The auger as he turned it produced fine white ribbons of ground ice; there was a high shriek, almost of tearing metal. Robert leaned into the auger, tentatively at first. He could not put his faith in the strength of the ice. Any moment it would fall open under him and into the dark cold water he would go. But the auger went deeper and the ice held like marble. In minutes he broke through. Lake water bubbled out.

The shelter had the dimensions of a small outhouse or a large refrigerator. The three of them and the stove made a tight fit around the hole they had opened. But in out of the wind, the stove roaring out heat, Robert began to feel better.

“Now,” Buzz said. “Dad told me about ice fishing. He said to use small amounts of bait because the fish aren't very hungry. They've slowed their systems down for the winter and don't eat much.”

“Think of it,” Duke said. “You're half asleep, just dozing in the cold, and you take a bite of passing food and have a hook ripped through the roof of your mouth. What a rude awakening! What a jolt to a fish brain.”

“Long lines are called for,” Buzz went on. “All the fish are asleep at the bottom.”

Duke opened the bait container. Inside were small portions of raw ground beef wrapped in strips of American cheese.

“Christ,” Buzzard said. “What
is
this?”

Duke looked over at him; he had been contemplating the hole in the ice. He said, “It's bait.”

“Cheese balls? Fish are going to eat cheese balls?”

“Dad told me about it.”

Buzz shifted in his parka. “OK,” he said.

“I think we should use three lines of differing lengths,” Robert suggested. “Then if one of us is having a lot of success, the other two can set their lines for that depth.”

“No way,” Buzz said. “Every man for himself. You fish with your secrets. I'm not giving away any more tips.”

“I shared my bait,” Duke said.

“But it's my stove,” Buzzard said. “I think we're all even.” He stuck an orange pill of cheese and meat on his hook and dropped his line through the hole.

They fished for three-­quarters of an hour and caught nothing. The sun behind the gray ice sky moved and diminished. The cold deepened. A number of times they had to break the ice that tried to reclaim the bored hole. The hooks came up from the water empty at times, at other times still carrying their bright orange cargoes of spurned bait.

Robert stayed close to the stove. He charted the onrushing darkness. He looped the line over the top rim of his glove. He had brought the hook up once and his bait had been gone and he had not bothered to rebait it.

He spent most of his time thinking about the dives he had made and those he would make when winter was over. Through everything that went on from day to day, Ben remained at the back, waiting to be found.

Buzz got a bite then. The line went taut but the fish did not run. Too tired, or too large, it seemed content to let its submerged weight fight against Buzz's efforts to bring it to the surface.

“It's a monster,” Buzz announced. He tore off his ski mask. His face was red and sweating like a man hard at work in a summer field.

“I'll bet it's a muskie,” he said, retrieving line hand over hand. “A hundred pounds, minimum.”

Robert and Duke watched the hole in the ice and waited for the fish to break.