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Authors: David Daniel

BOOK: Goofy Foot
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In the dark ocean I didn't know which direction was up. Muted sounds came to me, and I kicked myself in their direction.
Michelle was already afloat when I came up ten feet away. The skiff was bottom up but going nose down. The shrilly whining motor chopped the air, burning itself out. I looked around for Rand, but I didn't see him.
The water was rougher than it had looked from the boat. I glanced around again for Rand. He'd bested me last time, nearly drowned me, but I hoped that without the element of surprise working for him, I could hold my own. I needed to give the girl a chance to get to land. I yelled to her to swim hard for shore. To my relief, she started to.
With my fear growing by the moment, I scanned the dark hills of water around me. I did a three-sixty. Rand wasn't there. Had he swum farther out, toward the powerboat? I no longer even heard the other boat. A thought grabbed me with an icy jaw. He'd gone after Michelle. He was a strong, quick swimmer; he could have already reached her. I bobbed on the next rising crest, and this time I saw no one.
I labored in the direction where I'd last seen Michelle, my heart
hammering at my ribs, my head woozy with panic. But soon I could see her: she was alone, moving slowly shoreward.
I didn't waste precious breath trying to call to her. I followed.
After a very long time, I felt my feet touch bottom. Michelle was already wading ashore. There were cops on the beach, and Paula and Ross Jensen, too. Paula ran splashing right into the shallows to Michelle, and then Ross did, too, and the three of them hugged each other in a tight circle. I could hear both women sobbing with relief. I angled away and let them be. I waded ashore farther down and stood by, dripping on the sand, scanning the dark water for whatever might be there. In no time at all I was ringed by cops.
One morning on my way to my office I stopped by the city library and picked up a volume of Matthew Arnold's poems. I found “Dover Beach” easily enough. Ted Rand had known it by heart, all right, but when he'd talked about that dreamworld that lay before him, he hadn't recited the final lines. Arnold wrote that it:
Hath really neither joy, nor love, not light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
I read the poem through a couple times.
“Is this what you do up here all day? No wonder you stay so pale.”
I looked up from the volume. I didn't need to see the dazzle of parrots and tropical flowers on his shirt to recognize the speaker. Red Dog Van Owen stood in the doorway looking weathered and salted and reasonably happy. “I wanted to see if this place really exists,” he said.
“Satisfied?”
“Just as ratty as I'd imagined. I like it.”
I rose to shake his hand, but he grabbed me in a grizzly hug and thudded my back. He smelled of the ocean and cigarettes. I got him seated in the client chair.
“You heard about them finding Ben?”
I had. His body had turned up under the golf course.
“What do you think happened to Rand?” he asked. “Think he got away?”
“I don't know. The water was pretty rough that night. On the other hand, he was a swimmer. Though I have to imagine that if he did get ashore, people are going to find him.”
He nodded. “I visited Iva. She didn't want to see me at first, accused me of wanting to drink her booze, but I told her I wasn't taking any shit. We got to it. I let her know how it was from my angle, said I'd always thought she was a good mom to TJ. She ended up hugging me and crying.”
“She's a tough shell over a tender lady.”
“Yeah. She's not too sorry about Rand. She's been going over to the hospital to visit TJ. She said she'd reach me if there's any change.”
“Is that likely?”
He chewed it a moment. “I guess I still think of him running a football on October afternoons.”
“It's a good thing to remember.”
He went over to the window and peered out onto brick walls and flat rooftops and chimneys. He watched a flock of pigeons wheel past. “How can you live so far from the water?”
“We've got six miles of canals and a big river two hundred yards out that window. You couldn't toss a rock across it on your best day. Supposedly it's got Atlantic salmon in it, and it empties into the ocean a day's walk east of here. That's water enough for me.”
“I guess people can get used to anything.”
“I guess, but there's a difference between choosing and just settling. This is a choice.”
He turned, nodding. “I used to think Standish was, but it got too small … has been for a long time; I just didn't see it. Or maybe
I did and I didn't have the nerve to do anything about it.”
“A hermit crab moves when it's time. Standish seems as good a place as any.”
“Life goes on. They're looking for a new police chief.” He raised his eyebrows.
“I don't look good in a blue baseball cap. A fedora's more my style.”
“Yeah. I saw Mitzi Dineen running around like crazy doing her thing. And the high school looks like it'll have a decent football team for the first time in years.”
“How's Fran Albright doing?”
“Fran's good. She sold that white elephant. Somebody wanted the land. They'll knock the buildings down. She's going to open a little coffee nook in town.”
“As long as she charges the cops, she should do okay.”
We went on for a few minutes, but he was growing restless, with Atlantic Casualty right behind. He picked up one of my cards and put it in his pocket. “Take a bunch,” I said, “hand them out to everyone you see.”
I walked him downstairs. We stood in the shadows of buildings, amid the scurry of passersby and the noise and fumes of traffic, and he looked around, checking out my city.
“And what about Standish's fabled surfer dude?” I asked. “Notice I saved him for last?”
“I'll be heading west in a few days. California, for a start. I'm looking for something different.
“A beach without footprints? You'll find it.”
He lifted his head in a silent laugh. He didn't look so certain, but he seemed adjusted to trying. We shook hands. “If I do,” he said, “I'll let you know; you can come visit. I'll teach you how to hang ten.”
I couldn't cap it and didn't try. The image of that was too ludicrous to imagine.
 
 
August sunshine fell through the canopy of a clear afternoon sky, painting all the old buildings on Market Street in dusty hues. I stood
outside the Ale House, waiting, when I saw a deep red Porsche Boxter pull up in front. Paula Jensen got out of the passenger side, and the car rumbled off. She was wearing a flower-print summer dress that showed her suntanned shoulders, and she moved with that coltish grace I'd seen the first time I'd met her. Spotting me, she smiled, and I reached to shake her hand, which she ignored and gave me a warm hug and a kiss. I think I glowed.
“Was that Ross?” I asked.
“He's going to find a parking spot. He'll join us.”
“New car?”
“A gift to himself. His firm won that case.” It had been in the papers, along with all the news about how Michelle Nickerson had been found safe, apparently sheltered against her will by a deluded man who'd believed her to be in danger. Part of his delusion, it was suggested, may have grown out of his loss of his own daughter in a drowning accident years ago and a misplaced desire to protect the young: “Holden Caulfield syndrome” a psychologist was quoted as saying. “Unfortunately, we can't stay long,” Paula said. “Ross is meeting a client at the Red Sox game tonight, and I've got to get back for the kids.”
“How are they?”
“They're just great.” She smiled and met my eyes with clear sincerity. We went inside and caught up quickly.
“Ross's big case is over, thank God. I'm hoping we can do some family things. I'm sure once he relaxes …” But she wasn't sure; I heard it in her voice now, as I had when she'd phoned to say let's all get together for an afternoon bite.
I told the hostess our party was almost complete, and she seated us in a booth by the window overlooking the narrow cobblestoned street beyond a window box full of flowers.
“And how are you, Alex?” Paula asked.
“Curbside seats when I request them. Geraniums. I'm a king in my realm.”
“Is that all I'm going to get out of you?”
Her gaze was steady, inquiring. It was customary, in my experience, for people to forget your name when you'd finished a job
for them. They came to you in a time of turmoil, when they were at their weakest, and afterward they wanted only to forget. I respected that Paula had called and insisted that we all get together, but now I almost wished she hadn't. Or that I had begged off. “I'm okay,” I said. “Busy, too.”
She watched me, her blue eyes asparkle, examining me as if looking for something she'd misplaced or lost. Abruptly, she glanced outside, and I realized she was looking to see if her husband was coming. He was walking up the block, neat in a tan summer-weight sport coat and dark slacks. Paula reached and took my hand and gripped it. “I know I don't need to tell you again,” she said, “but I'm so grateful for what you did. What I do want to say, or try to is that … in ways you may not know, you saved my life.”
A hundred lines rose in my mind, where I left them. I gave her hand a squeeze and then let go. In a minute Ross appeared, loping over like a big grinning schoolboy. I shook his hand, and we did the man car-talk thing for a moment. He said they could only stay for a drink because …
“I explained,” Paula said, and we all laughed, and the talk slipped back to the level where everyone operated most of the time. When our drinks arrived, Paula excused herself to go to the ladies' room. I stood, and seeing me do it, Ross shuffled to his feet, too. When she'd gone, Ross reached into his coat pocket and took out an envelope and handed it to me. For a moment, I thought it might be Red Sox tickets, but I saw several crisp new bills with 100s on the corners. I put the envelope down.
“You guys paid me already.”
“Take it.” He pushed it toward me. “From me.”
“No, I can't. You've already been generous.”
“You got answers. Call it a bonus. I got a little windfall myself.”
I smiled; I liked an understatement, too. “Thank you, Ross, but it's not necessary.”
“Give it to a charity, then.” His tone was insistent. When I didn't take it, his eyes narrowed. “What's your problem?”
I tried to lighten it with a little laugh. “Maybe we should be drinking Fog Cutters. Paula sent me a check. It cleared. It's in my bank account already. I'm satisfied.”
“Are you?”
“I don't follow you,” I said.
“I doubt she really knows what you accomplished. I have a better appreciation of these things.”
“Because you're a man? And she's only a woman?”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“No, what did you mean? What's going on?”
Stow it, Rasmussen, I told myself, or you're going to regret it. Be graceful, take the money; pay off your old parking tickets with it. But I didn't listen. I reached into my inside jacket pocket and took out the photograph, the one that Grady Stinson had given me, and handed it over. Ross looked at it a moment, and I had the thought that I'd been wrong, that he would ask me who the woman was and where I got the photo. But then I saw him redden slightly. He ripped it in half and then again and put the pieces into his pocket. “That's over,” he said. “It has been for a while. It was a mistake.”
He puffed a breath and sat back, his gaze drifting away to something only he saw. I glanced outside. The Porsche was parked a little way down, in a no-standing zone, as bright as a fire truck, not a cop in sight. Neither of us spoke for a sluggish moment. Then he asked, “Did Paula give you that?”
“No. As far as I know she never saw it.” He went on staring at me. I said, “What's the point?”
“What?”
“The object, the goal—the raison d'être?”
“You mind telling me what the hell you're talking about?”
“Is it to become a partner in the firm? Blankety Blank and Jensen.”
“You think that's small change?”
“No, but in the end, what've you got? A win-loss record? A tally of how much money you've made for your clients, for the firm? What's the net? How much you jack up the other guy?”
His hand clenched. “You put a sock in it right now, pal! Or I will!”
I was holding my beer glass way too tight. “I'm saying that when they log your name in the book of hours, the only testament you,
or anyone, has got is the pride and the passion in what you've left behind. Doesn't matter if it's the azaleas, or wooden decoys you carved, or the afghan you knitted. It can be a book of poems, or your own good name. But it can't be just about money, or sitting in the best seats.” He'd started to draw away; I actually reached and clasped his coat sleeve. “You won't
miss
anything. I sat at Fenway that October night in '75—along with the two million other folks who swear they were there—when Carlton Fisk danced his clout fair in the twelfth, and the miracle kids took Cincinnati to game seven.”
He pulled his arm free. His face looked as hot as his new car. “Your alleged point being?”
“If I'd never seen another game, I wouldn't have missed a thing. The Sox will take you close but will always trounce your heart, because they know your love's unconditional. But who cares? Good arms give out, toys break. The river flows, as a philosopher bartender I know might say. Your girls won't be eight and sixteen forever.”
Jensen's lean jaw locked. His hand on the table was a fist. If he was going to hit me, this was the moment. I waited. He didn't swing. “What the hell do you know about it?” he hissed. “Have you got children? Huh? You don't even have a wife anymore, do you.”
I glanced outside and felt the last of my anger cooking away, and realized that the one I was angry at most was me. I lifted my glass and took a drink and set the glass down carefully in the wet ring it had made on the plank table. “You're right,” I said. “Forget it.”

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