The Art of Disposal (8 page)

I asked about Ricky's leg.

“Getting shot is the least of Ricky's problems,” Dan said.

I asked him what he meant. Dan the Man rolled his fingers across the steering wheel, looked over at me, and in the soft light I could tell there was something he didn't want to talk about. I didn't press. You can't convince Dan the Man to tell you anything. He either does or he doesn't.

“You know Jim Steeves?” he finally said.

You couldn't so much as turn on a television without seeing a Red-White-and-Blue Jim Steeves for Congress commercial. He was running against Roslyn Wyer, the Democrat with short hair and thick glasses. I hated both of them. Jim Steeves looks just the way you'd imagine. Thick brown hair and a Superman jaw-line.

“Ricky's been hanging around his daughter,” Dan the Man said.

“So what,” I said.

“Steeves don't like it.”

“So he tells him to knock it off.”

“Eddie's in a real jam now because of it.”

“How so?”

“Frank Conese is pumping money into the campaign. Birds of a feather.”

We rode for a minute in silence. Dan the Man coughed, a real wet jag, and then he spoke with a voice that sounded like it had been run through an old stone mill.

“Eddie's weighing his options.”

That was all he said. That was all I needed to hear.

Christmas Eve, 1975. I was six months old, spending the holiday at a drug dealer's house out on state route 52. My Mom had a nose and arms that worked overtime. Her dealer was a loser named Rhett DeFoe: a guy who'd spent more time in the clink than out on the street. He'd just been paroled, and was living back at home with his elderly father. I guess it's hard to see that your own kid is rotten.

My own Dad was spending the holiday at his home away from home, The Hitchin' Post Bar and Grill, where he was well-known for falling off of stools and passing out in the vestibule. Everyone knew that Rhett DeFoe was giving my Mom a little something extra when she stopped by for the stuff. Some of the gossip ran that Rhett was my real Dad, and it's entirely possible.

So my old man was pickled at the Post, and my Mom was scoring nose-candy from her not-so-secret convict lover (you'll never see an episode of
Leave It To Beaver
with that storyline). Rhett's seventy-three year old father was napping in his recliner, listening to Bing Crosby's
I Wish You A Merry Christmas
album, when the guys in black leather coats knocked on the front door.

I've heard so many versions. Just like a ghost story, the wildness of the detail depends entirely on the imagination of the teller. Here's what's certain: Rhett had shorted them some of the money, and it wasn't the first time. See, the criminal world works a whole lot like the regular world. Honor, integrity, follow-through—these things matter. Of course I never knew Rhett, but I've met plenty of other guys stamped from the same mold. They cheat and lie, and they'd rat you out for a hundred dollar bill.

They plugged the elderly father first. Then they walked far to the back of the house and into the bedroom, where, according to some versions of the story, my mother was on her knees and Rhett was standing in front of her. They blew a few holes into Rhett and ended his earthly fun. Then the boys had a little holiday party with my Mom before ending her illustrious career as a wife and mother. I was on a blanket on the bed the whole time, crying and doing the things you'd expect a baby to do with a whole lot of racket going on.

Then they did a burn job, gasoline, like me and Dan the Man did to the West Virginia Boys. Lucky for me, one of those thugs had a soft spot. He wrapped me up in the blanket and carried me outside, far away from the house, and laid me down under a pine tree. If it weren't for him, I'd've burned to death before I ever got a chance to grow up and die the right way.

Before they struck the match, one of the gang ran an extension cord from an outside socket, plugged in the turntable, and set it out in the snow. He dropped the needle and forced Bing Crosby to croon into the vacuum of the wooded night.

Then came the firefighters, aiming hoses as flames licked the sky. The house burned. One of the firemen, a guy named Noah Lynch, thought he heard a baby crying. The other guys said it was just the wind; the squeal and hiss of water meeting its foe. But Noah left his post and wandered out and into the darkness, where he found me wrapped up and dying in the cold. I wonder if the Star of Bethlehem was shining that night.

About a month after the incident, my old man stumbled home from The Hitchin' Post, swallowed a dozen Libriums, and went off to the land of eternal sleep. I guess things are easier over there.

Noah Lynch and his wife Miriam took me in. When I had questions, they gave answers. Not that they could've ever brushed it aside. In a quaint Indiana town, people don't just know your dirty laundry: they know which corner you throw it in.

Mr. Lynch described that eerie night—how his firetruck pulled in and Bing Crosby was singing, unaware that a house was burning down right behind him.

“I am a poor boy too, pah-rum pum pum, pum,” he said. “The Little Drummer Boy. I'll never forget that song.”

He'd call me Bing sometimes, when he was proud of me, and it made me feel good, like I was living up to something, even though I didn't know what exactly it was. If I was working on a school paper, and I wrote a particularly good passage, he'd wrap his arm around my neck and say, “that's it, Bing. You're doing fine.”

But those were the good times, early on.

In the sixth grade I punched Darryl Oliver (for calling me “Murder-House”), and when he was down on the ground, I kicked him in the head so hard that he went deaf in the left ear. I got suspended, but the bullies backed off. People will treat you however you let them.

That summer, Miriam drove me into Pennsylvania and dropped me off at her sister's farmhouse. She kissed my forehead, and that was that.

I hated my Aunt Stella and Uncle Carl. He was a country dolt, and she was a witch—right down to her missing teeth and devilish cackle. Uncle Carl looked like a grasshopper, spitting out black juice from the plug of tobacco in his lower lip. When I was done with my chores, off I would run to the pond near the tattered white barn. That was my secret world, and in there among the tall reeds, with my hands in the mud, I was at home with the snakes and frogs and turtles; quiet creatures who don't know a thing about gossip.

The neighbor's boy came over once to play, and he took the bullfrog tadpoles we'd caught, large and plump, the color of olive oil, and he raised his baseball bat and said that we would play a game. He tossed a tadpole high in the air, swung the bat as it fell, and the poor thing came undone.

I pushed him down and grabbed the bat, and when I was just about to give it to him like he gave it to the tadpole, my Uncle Carl showed up and plucked the bat from my hands, and cursed and yelled like he was exorcizing a demon.

Then, around my fifteenth year, Aunt Stella walked in on me while I was lying on the floor, pumping up and down like there was a lady underneath of me.

“I knew it, I knew it!” she hollered, looking more like a witch than ever before. She slapped me so hard across the face that I could taste the sweet sting of blood in my mouth. She tore my room apart, and when she found the Club International magazines that Sam Forsythe had given to me, she ripped them to shreds and said we'd have to pray all night if there was to be any hope for my eternal soul.

We sat at the kitchen table, the only sound the nightbirds cooing in the dark, and every so often Uncle Carl would stand up and go pour himself some more coffee from the tarnished metal pot. We all held hands and Stella led us in prayer, and by midnight she said that my soul had been redeemed of its wickedness, and wasn't I thankful for it?

Uncle Carl died my senior year of high school, and with him gone it was easy for me to go away too. Aunt Stella couldn't stop me. I was finally bigger than she was. Miriam called me up, and I'll never forget what she said.

“What are your plans? Heading off to school somewhere?”

What a hoot. Like I had the grades or the dough to go to college. I told her as much.

“We love you, Bing. Just remember that. We know you're gonna do great things.”

I could feel myself starting to cry. They had never visited me. Not once.

“Can you put Dad on the line?” I said, forcing the tears out of my voice.

“He's out in the garage,” Miriam said.

“Do you think that… that, maybe… that I could come back home. Just for a while?”

“Your father doesn't think that's a good idea,” she said. It struck me as funny right then how they were still saying Mother and Mom, and Father and Dad, even though they'd washed their hands of that whole dreaded experiment long ago.

I left the farmhouse the following day, hitched a ride into town and bought a bus ticket for San Diego. I only stayed there for a year and a half. The people are terrible, and the weather really gets to you. Sometimes you need a rainy day.

Miriam and Noah sent me a check for five hundred dollars when I wrote them with my new address. They do care. They love me. It's just not like it is in the movies—but is it ever?

I send my foster parents a Christmas card, every year. I used to send one to Aunt Stella, too, before she died from a stroke, because I hated to think of her walking that long driveway back and forth to the mailbox, hoping for something besides the electric bill.

One night a few years back, around Christmas time at the Hotsy Totsy, Dan the Man and Al Da Paolo were playing a game of Crazy Eights, just to pass the time. Eddie was sitting next to them, wrapping up a cardboard jewelry box with metallic blue paper. He was wearing that self-pleased crooked grin, and his tongue was poking out on one side of his mouth as he creased and folded the ends of the paper to make it nice for taping.

“Irene?” Al said.

“The ruby earrings she's been eyeing,” Eddie said.

“She'll forget all about 'em in a few weeks,” Al said as he threw down a card. “Christmas. Bah Humbug.”

“Not Irene,” Eddie said with pride. “She'll cherish 'em. And the look on her face when she opens the box? That's worth the price of admission right there.”

“I swear you've gone soft since I went away,” Al Da Paolo said. “Or maybe you was always soft, and prison just made me hard.”

“I bet prison made you hard,” Dan the Man said. The whole gang busted up at that one.

“You're a pessimist,” Eddie said to Al. “A bummer.”

“You know what a pessimist is?” Al said, pushing the wide accordion of his cards into a single pile and setting them on the table. “A pessimist is a guy who knows the facts.”

There was a long pause. Al finished the last gulps of his third or fourth drink. But I noticed that he kept a sharp eye on Eddie, even through the glass warp of the tumbler.

“A guy who hates Christmas is a guy who's got nothing left,” Eddie said.

That's one of those scenes I replay in my mind a lot, that night at the Totsy when my hands weren't yet wet with the blood of Crazy Al, when I was just a guy who washed dishes and ran numbers, and who, if he was really lucky, might make an extra two hundred bucks driving a brown bag from point A to point B.

Every year on Christmas Eve, when the world is dark and cold, I put Bing Crosby on my LP player, lower the needle, close my eyes, and remember the good times. Our parents and guardians can't be Ward and June Cleaver. They don't have professional writers feeding them perfect lines. The lighting is dingy and yellow, and there aren't any make-up artists or stand-ins for all of the trying times. We have to be grateful they even gave the whole thing a shot, knowing it would never turn out like it does on television.

Eddie was right about Christmas, about that feeling you get when you give something nice to someone you love. That's why I send off my holiday cards. When I sign my card for Miriam and Noah, I always sign it “Bing.”

About two weeks after the West Virginia Boys went up in smoke, Eddie called me up at four-thirty in the morning and told me to beat-feet it over to the office.

“Right now?” I said, rubbing my eyes and yawning.

“And swing by the Koffee Kart,” Eddie said.

“Americano?”

“Double-shot,” Eddie said.

I drove all the way to the Koffee Kart and didn't realize I was still in my pajamas until I was sitting there at the pick-up window. We're lucky to have that little drive-thru coffee cart. It's an old air-stream trailer at the side of the road. It opens before the crack of dawn, to serve all the clock-punchers who drive to work when it's still dark out. I love the place, but I hate the “K's” for “C's.” It's like when they call a daycare “Kiddie Kollege.”

The young girl said “cute pajamas” and handed me the drinks. That's when I looked at my legs and saw the hot pepper PJ's that Marcia got me for my birthday. I gave the girl a five dollar tip. More than the coffees cost. It was too late for me to turn around and drive back home.

“Thanks for dressing up,” Eddie said when I walked into the office. “Didn't your old lady tell you to put on some pants?”

“She's at home. With her husband.”

He paused. “Married women are bad news, Champ.”

I plopped down in a chair and rolled my eyes when Eddie's back was turned. I was beat, and I was in no mood for Eddie's advice on love and happiness. He dug around in his desk drawer and pulled out a short cigar, pushed it out of its cellophane, ran it under his nose with the gray hairs peeking out of the nostrils, clipped the cap of the cigar, tapped it on the desk a few times and placed it in his mouth. Then he drew cold air through it.

“Good coffee,” he said, after he took a sip. I waited for him to light the cigar, but he never did. Whenever Eddie is stressed he just uses the stogie as a prop. He likes to taste it, pull some air through it, tap it on the desk, draw it under his nose. But he never lights it until his mind is at ease.

“Not that I don't like getting up at the crack of dawn,” I said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Eddie said, cutting me off before I got even more sarcastic. “Here it is. You know Jim Steeves?”