Gun Lake (8 page)

“No,” he told Mike. “Can’t do that anymore.”

“I gotta tell you—you’ve been the best bartender we’ve had. Those others—sometimes I think a prerequisite for working
booze on a riverboat is you gotta be an alkie. I’ve just—I’ve always told you I’d be in trouble without you.”

“Serving liquor isn’t rocket science,” Paul said.

“Yeah. But you don’t got the baggage all those others have.”

If only you knew
, Paul thought.

“Anything else I can do?”

“If someone comes looking for me, just tell him the truth.”

“What’s that?”

“That I’m no longer here.”

“Where’re you gonna be?”

“Tell them you don’t know.”

Mike let out a nervous laugh. “All right, then.”

They said a quick and unsentimental good-bye, and Paul left the office.

He walked back through the blinking, whirring, clinking room that might as well have been a bonfire for people’s cash. Lay it down and lose it—that was what everyone eventually did on this riverboat casino. They lost it. They would eventually lose everything.

The numbers determine the outcome, and it’s all random luck, and so far I’m on the end of a losing streak
.

Paul looked over at Everly, one of the bartenders he had befriended over the years. He wondered what Everly would do if he went up and asked for a gin and tonic. Everly would be surprised, but he would give him one. People on this ship didn’t judge. They carried enough of their own baggage to be unconcerned with yours.

He walked past this animated life and knew he’d never be back. The riverboat casino had several levels. This was the main floor with the tables for blackjack, roulette, and craps. People made more noise on the craps tables, but usually they made more money with blackjack. Paul had grown used to seeing the revolving dealers, the crowds that changed according to the day and the hour, the people who wanted more booze when they should’ve gone home. He didn’t judge them, either. And he couldn’t refuse them unless they could barely stand.

A pretty blonde cut in front of him holding a beer. She
looked half-drunk. Paul noticed the etched-out half-moons under her dark-brown eyes. She looked at him and laughed.

“Excuse me,” she said.

He nodded and let her join her friends at one of the tables.

Random luck
, Paul thought again. Being at the right place at the right time. Or the wrong time. This young girl might come to a place like this and meet a man she’d spend the next twenty years in love with, or she might meet a man who would ruin her life—all out of random luck. She’d eventually fall out of love, as most women did, and perhaps she’d be strong enough to leave or to tell him the game’s over. For the moment, though, her life was ahead of her. She held the dice in her chubby little hand, bright nails flashing, and might roll any number of combinations. And random luck determined that outcome.

“Please please please,” she was saying. She jumped up and down, shaking the dice in her hands. “Please, God.”

She rolled, waited, then her face crumpled.

Paul shook his head and wondered at the idea of asking God to help with the roll of the dice. He’d given up asking God for anything a long time ago.

Back when he’d tried going to meetings, they never used the word
God
. They always talked about “a higher power.” But it had never made much sense to Paul. God. Higher power. A divine being. Buddha. Whatever it takes to make these people hope for something. Whatever it takes to keep them plunking down their twenties and losing them and blaming God or whoever. God didn’t make them come here, and he didn’t make them lose their money, and he sure didn’t load any dice.

Even now, Paul could tune out the constant noise of voices and slot-machine reels and change hitting the bottoms of metal payout trays. He’d spent almost a decade doing exactly that.

“You working?” a red-haired waitress asked him as she passed. Her name was Nancy.

“Not tonight,” he said.

“Lucky you. I’m bored to tears,” she said. “I’ll see you later.”

He nodded and walked out of this alien, familiar room full of lonely, searching people. He’d learned long ago that most of the
regulars were people with no business on this boat—poor Mexican laborers who had just gotten paid or unemployed blue-collar workers or the kind of awful white trash that tended to be loud and drunk. Perhaps there were classy casinos in Vegas and Atlantic City, where people dressed up, gave big tips, and gambled with money they actually had. But the gamblers here were like that kid in the Willie Wonka story, giving up his last dollar for a chocolate bar in hopes of finding happiness and fame and fortune. But it never came. And as hard as these ignorant people searched, it could never come at a place like this.

The air outside smelled like the river. Paul leaned on the boat’s railing, lit up a cigarette, and did some more of what he had been doing the last few days. Looking around. Surveying his surroundings. Trying to see if anybody was watching him.

Working at the casino, Paul had gotten used to odd hours. Often he would get home at five in the morning, at an hour when newspapers were being tossed into driveways and coffee was being brewed in kitchens and normal working people were waking up and getting ready for their days. He would think about the outside world and how apart he felt from it. Sleeping throughout the day, staying up through the night.

But it wasn’t just the schedule. He’d spent his whole life outside of that world, the world of normal people, a world where the luck of the dice could pay off in triplicate. Where one lucky spin, one big draw, one gigantic turn could set you up for a good life. A real life, as opposed to the one that had settled into his wrinkles and thick brow and the sunspots that splotched his hands.

He rubbed his close-cropped gray beard, an old habit when he was lost in thoughts and nervous about something. And Paul had always been nervous about something or the other. High-strung, his mother had called it. Years ago, when the anxiety threatened to consume him, he’d tried to drown it in an ocean of liquor. He had managed to stay afloat and even climb out on shore. He wasn’t even sure how that had happened. He knew it wasn’t a matter of trusting in a higher power. Maybe it was just stubbornness. Or a little more random luck.

He snorted a short laugh. Some luck. You could manage to
stay dry all these years and make a life, such as it was. And then one little thing could send the whole thing tumbling down.

One thing he knew for sure. He was one card away from a bad deal.

His only hope, the one last hope that had haunted him the last week, was a change of scenery. Not a change of life—he knew that was impossible—but a change of scenery. And that, in the long run, might just help prolong the pathetic draw of cards that had been dealt to him many years ago. A hand that contained no aces and one, only one, wild card.

A wild card he didn’t know what to do with.

JARED COULD BARELY STAND as Michelle helped him take off his shirt. His eyes couldn’t stay open, and he rocked unsteadily on his legs. She left on his jeans, figuring it would be too difficult to get them off without the risk of him collapsing and hitting his head on the edge of the bed or the dresser. She led him to the unmade bed and gently guided him onto the mattress, where he lay lifeless.

A lamp on the dresser lit up the bedroom. For a moment, Michelle looked around the strange, foreign world.

Posters covered almost every inch of wall they could. Most of them were of the bands Jared constantly listened to: Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Staind, Nine Inch Nails, Linkin Park. It used to be that she would come into his room and find his trophies and awards front and center—all those little statues and ribbons from playing soccer and track. Now they were stuck in a closet, still unpacked from the last move.

Is this our punishment for moving?
she asked God silently.
Is this all because we should have stayed in Missouri? Did we make some big mistake?

Her husband wasn’t the type to second-guess decisions. The economy was tight. Jobs were scarce. The move to Naperville and the Chicagoland area was necessary. But should they have prayed about it more? Should they have waited for a more obvious sign from God?

Will you let me know, Lord?

Then she sighed, wondering if she even expected God to answer anymore.

She studied her son’s sleeping body, his profile against his pillow, the peace he seemed to be drifting in. How could someone who spent so much of the day locked up in angst and unspoken depression look so content while sleeping?

What can I do to get him back?

So much potential. She couldn’t get away from that word. The wasted potential tore at her heart. He’d be with them for the summer, then leave for Dover Academy in upstate New York. Maybe that would change him. Or maybe not. Maybe it would make him worse.

What do you want me to do? Nothing I’m doing’s working out. I have to do something
.

But again, God remained silent. Was he holding a grudge because he knew she was ticked off at him? She knew she had no right to be angry at her heavenly Father, but she was. This was her son she was making herself sick over. Her eldest son. Didn’t that mean anything? Didn’t her prayers, their prayers, count for anything?

She thought of their attempts to get Jared involved at church. Jared claimed the whole youth group consisted of “nerds” and “stuck-up kids.” And Michelle had to admit he didn’t really fit in with the kids at church. So many of them seemed smug, self-assured, like they knew the answers. And Jared—Jared was a walking question mark. Questioning where God was if he existed, why high school was so awful, what had forced him to move in the middle of his junior-high years, who had designated the cliques at school. When cornered, he was adept at protecting himself with questions.

But not recently. That was what worried Michelle most. Jared
used to argue and yell and scream at her, at Ted, at the other kids. But not anymore. Now he simply shrugged. And disappeared.

God help me
.

Those big-name speakers and authors made it sound so easy. The guys on the radio who talked about the right way to bring up your children, the correct way to love and discipline. She had to wonder if those “experts” had ever really had to deal with someone like Jared. She suspected they did, and they just didn’t talk about it. Sometimes, regardless of every bit of wisdom you managed to convey, your kids simply wanted to do their own stupid things.

Jared snorted, stirred in his sleep, flopped a long arm off the bed. Michelle started to put it back, then decided there was no point. She just watched him, feeling closer to him at that moment than she had in months. He was so beautiful, slim like her, that golden flawless skin he’d inherited from his father. But she could look at him and still see the baby she had carried for nine months and taken twenty-four hours to push out into the world. The tiny but feisty infant who had cried with strangled, unlearned vocal cords and waved his little fists in the air. The energetic little boy whose smiles and hugs had given her back her faith.

She had to laugh at the irony of that. But it was true. Back when Evan died, at a time when she had almost stopped believing God could be good, Jared had kept her going. He had reminded her that God is good and life is a precious gift.

Maybe that’s why, of all her three children, he had always been her favorite. She wouldn’t admit that to anyone else, but it was true. Maybe that was part of the problem. Maybe she was being punished for having a favorite. Mothers weren’t supposed to do that.

Is that why he’s being taken away from me? Father, you’ve got to help me here. I’m really stuck
.

Michelle sat in his room looking around, thinking, praying. And then she saw the photo. It was tacked onto the corkboard on the wall, a board full of photos of old friends and distant memories, along with other miscellaneous postcards and stubs and quotes.

The photo had been taken two summers ago, the first summer after they had moved to Illinois. It had been their first family vacation in years, back to a vacation spot Ted remembered from being a child in Michigan.

Michelle remembered smiling while Ted snapped the picture. It was of Jared and Michelle, sitting by the lake’s edge, smiling after a day spent fishing and riding on the boat.

An idea came to her as she looked down at the Jared of two years ago. He was a different boy back then. How different, she didn’t know. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. But maybe there was some of that boy left inside of him.

The idea was a good one. And it might just work.

She turned off the light and thanked God that tonight, at least, she knew where Jared was sleeping.

SEAN HUMMED A SONG in his head and heard the rumble of the SUV’s engine as he turned the key. He drove up to the Steer-house entrance to pick up Wes. They were going to make it out okay with enough cash to last them for several weeks and nobody hurt. This wasn’t a repeat of the Louisiana mess. Perhaps it was good that the other three weren’t there.

Except now Sean had to try and find the idiots.

The passenger door opened, and an out-of-breath Wes climbed into the vehicle. He kept the door open for a minute and just sat there, cursing over and over. Sean was thinking that for a big, dumb guy, Wes sure had a big vocabulary.

Then Sean noticed his pants.

“What is that?” he asked.

“What?”

“That. Right there. You just eat a hot dog or something? Spill a little ketchup?”

“Uh … no.”

This time it was Sean who ripped a curse in the Dodge. “Then what is it?”

“Well, I had a little problem.”

“A little problem? Who?”

“The bartender.”

“What’d you do?”

Wes shook his head, looked down, now just repeating the same curse word over.

“Wes, come on.” Sean shook his head. “How bad?”

“Couldn’t really get no worse, I guess.”

Sean again let out a curse, then laughed. “You are such a complete dimwit. You know that?”