The Man Who Cancelled Himself (54 page)

“I know that, Merilee. Just one of those phases a guy goes through. Shouldn’t last for more than another decade.”

“Is this you being new-fatherish?”

“This is me being I-don’t-knowish.”

Tracy watched me intently from the bed. I watched her back.

Merilee watched us watching each other. “I wish you two would make up your minds about one another.”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean you keep measuring each other like potential enemies.”

“We’re just getting ready for when she’s a teenager.”

Merilee hesitated, biting her lower lip. “Know what I keep thinking you ought to do, darling?”

“Oh, God, Merilee. You’re not going to send me off in search of my smile, are you?”

“Hoagy, you never had a smile.”

“Did so. It so happens I was a buoyant, fun-loving child.”

Lulu started coughing. It’s what she does instead of laughing.

Merilee’s eyes were on the windows. “I keep thinking … What I mean is, if only you’d sit down with your father and—”

“I don’t want to talk about him, Merilee,” I said gruffly. “You know I don’t want to talk about him.”

“I know, I know,” she conceded, coloring. “It’s just that your mother and I were—”

“My mother and you were what?” I snapped.

“Don’t yell at me!”

I stood and went over to the windows, gazing out at the cove. A hawk was circling over the marsh, slowly, in search of breakfast. “Merilee, I don’t know what it is.”

“Then maybe Thor can help you find out. He’s always had some mysterious power over you, God knows why. And God knows why I’m agreeing to this. The two of you will probably end up facedown together in a brothel somewhere in Mexicali.” She sighed grandly, tragically. “All right, they may stay—for your sake. And because I care about Ruth. Although if she ever finds out I’m harboring those two moral fugitives—”

“Let’s try not to judge them, okay?”

“I’m trying,” she insisted. “I’m just not having much success.”

“Neither am I.” I took her gloved hand, getting lost in her green eyes. “That’s a rather agreeable mouth you have on, Miss Nash.”

“Why, thank you, sir.”

“Any reason I shouldn’t kiss it?”

“None that I can think of.”

So I did. She kissed me back, gently. And then not so gently. I reached inside her nightshirt for whatever I might find in there.

“Careful,” she whispered. “They’re sensitive.”

“Nice and warm, too.” I know I was certainly overheating. It had been quite a while since we’d been joined together in atomic passion. Longer than I cared to admit. “I could get back in there with you, you know.”

Her eyes widened in mock horror. “Merciful heavens, Hoagy. Tracy could be permanently scarred.”

“Or permanently impressed.”

“I should have had her when I was twenty-two,” she said ruefully. She said this a lot. Practically every day. “I would have had energy for the both of you then. I just don’t now.” She tugged primly at her nightshirt, buttoning it. “And I certainly don’t feel sexy. More like some form of large, slow farm animal.”

“You don’t look like one, Merilee.”

Her eyes softened. “Really?”

“Really,” I said, reaching for her.

Only now we could hear Dwayne’s truck turning in at the foot of the drive, stereo thumping, engine rack-racketing—the kid had little or nothing in the way of a muffler. He pulled up outside the carriage barn in a splattering of gravel and hopped out. I heard voices. Thor was up. The two of them were getting acquainted.

Merilee pushed me away, reluctantly but firmly. “I’ll be down to say hello as soon as I do my post-natal exercises.”

“I can suggest some terribly interesting new exercises.”

“Those, mister, are very old ones. Now off with you. Go on. Scoot.”

It was my turn to sigh grandly and tragically. I climbed to my feet and started for the door.

“The thing of it is,” she pointed out, “I wasn’t ready to be a mother when I was that age. I wasn’t a grown-up, not like I am …” She stopped short, her brow creasing with concern. “Are you all right, darling? You look terribly pale all of a sudden.”

“I’m fine. Still can’t get used to the idea that I’m living with a grown-up, that’s all.”

“Hoagy?”

“Yes, Merilee?”

“Hello.”

“Hello, yourself.”

Dwayne was busy showing Thor the sill work he was doing. Thor was busy making all sorts of enthusiastic noises. The man always did have a gift for drawing people out. Making them see themselves and their work, whatever it was, as something to be proud of.

Proud made for a nice break in the day for Dwayne Gobble. He was a tall, grungy beanpole of a kid with veiny red hands and a scraggly goatee and dirty blond hair he wore in that style favored by heavy metal musicians and minor league hockey players—short on top, long and stringy in back. A strikingly ugly purple scar slanted across his forehead and halfway down his nose—this from when he’d gone headfirst through his windshield a while back. They hadn’t done a very good job of sewing him back together. One eyebrow was higher than the other, one eye slightly atilt. It was as if two different people’s faces had been stitched together. Dwayne had worn the same flannel shirt and torn jeans every day since he started working for us, his jeans stained and filthy and so loose they practically fell from his bony hips. He favored tattoos. Had any number of them on his arms. None said loser. He didn’t need that one. Already had it written all over him. Chiefly it was his eyes, which never looked directly at you. Down at your feet or over your shoulder or up in the air—anywhere but at you. Dwayne was a troubled kid. The village outcast, actually. But nice enough, once you got to know him. And it really wasn’t his fault no one in town besides us would hire him.

Thor knelt in the damp earth beside the twin hydraulic jacks that presently held up that corner of the barn, scrutinizing one of the pressure-treated two-by-fours Dwayne had sistered in. “Lay a transit on her, boy?”

“You bet I did, sir.” Dwayne shook a Camel out of the crumpled pack in his shirt and lit it, using his calloused palm as an ashtray. “She’s dead nuts, all right.”

“Good work, boy. You’re a born craftsman. And, believe me, there’s no more valuable a man on God’s green earth.”

Dwayne pawed at the ground with his unlaced work boot, more than a little flattered by Thor’s approval. “This is just a real honor, Mr. Gibbs,” he said shyly. “Meeting you, I mean. I’ve read all your books backwards and forwards. Especially
Dickless Decade.
”

This didn’t completely surprise me. Young Dwayne was making a serious effort to improve his mind. One day on his lunch break I’d found him with his nose buried in
On the Road.
When I offered to loan him one of my own novels he allowed as how that would be righteous. I could tell when he’d started reading it—a look that approached awe crossed his lopsided face. Either it was awe or the hot sausage and peppers hero he brought for his lunch that day.

But it was nothing like the look he had on his face now, meeting Thor Gibbs. This bordered on the religious. It was positively Jordanesque. “Man, I just never imagined I’d actually be standing here talking to you.”

Thor waved him off modestly. “You give me way too much credit, boy. All I do is connect words. Bunch of bullshit. Not like this …” He gazed admiringly at the post-and-beam structure overhead. “This is real art.”

“No way, man,” Dwayne disagreed heatedly. “All that stuff you said about how a man shouldn’t accept being unhappy, how it’s in his nature to go after what he wants … It wasn’t until I read that that I even dared to think such stuff. I mean, everyone’s always told me what I
can’t
have,
can’t
be …”

“Man is an animal of strength and force and purpose,” Thor intoned, stroking his beard. “You have the power, Dwayne. It’s in
here.
” Thor thumped his chest. “And in
here.
” He gripped his balls. His own, not Dwayne’s. Dwayne hanging on the man’s every word. “Believe in yourself, boy. Be a man, damn it! And be proud.” Thor brushed off his knees, smiling at the kid warmly. He loved nothing better than a new disciple. Hadn’t had many lately. “How do you and your father get along?”

Dwayne looked down at the ground uncomfortably. “We don’t,” he replied, stubbing out his cigarette in his palm and pocketing it. “He’s away.”

Away in Carl Robinson State Prison, to be precise. For burning down the first selectman’s house in a small dispute over a borrowed Weed Whacker. Dwayne and his mom lived in a shack out by Rogers Lake. She was a schoolteacher, or had been. Got herself fired from the local elementary school for tying an unruly eight-year-old to a chair. These days the two of them lived on whatever Dwayne was able to earn, which wasn’t much—the child she’d tied to the chair happened to be the son of the biggest building contractor in the area.

Thor shook his huge, gleaming head at him, his electric-blue eyes moistening. “And so you’re growing up with no male adult figure who you respect. You and a million other boys out there. In tribal times, you’d have been taken off in the woods for an initiation ceremony. A respected elder would let you in on what it means to be a man. Now, you sit and watch your football on TV, bombarded by beer commercials on the one hand and feminista bullshit on the other. It’s killing mankind. Killing us, I tell you.” He ran a hand over his weather-beaten face, disgusted, then heaved his chest and went strutting back out into the sunshine, where it was warmer.

Our fleet was parked out there, safely out of harm’s way. Not that we doubted Dwayne or his hydraulic jacks. It was he who’d insisted we clear out the barn. Said it would be stupid not to. There was the ’62 Land Rover, which was battered and bruised and either tan or olive drab, depending on the light and how clean it was. Lulu’s favorite. There was the Jag, the sinewy red ’58 XK 150 drophead, every inch of it original, right down to the sixty-spoke wire wheels. My favorite. And there was our latest addition, which we’d bought for carting Tracy around: a powder-blue 1950 Ford Woody wagon that had belonged to our dear, departed neighbor, Margaret, an aviatrix who’d been a test pilot during World War I. Solid as a tank, heavy and quiet. And the Woody wasn’t bad either. Had 42,000 miles on it, no rust, its original wood and five brand-new wide whites. The clock even worked.

Lulu was curled up next to it, eyeballing the barn warily. She won’t go in there if she can avoid it. It has bats and, from time to time, raccoons. Sadie was stretched out next to her in the sun chewing on a foot. She likes the barn just fine. But she likes being warm even more.

The chapel door opened and young Clethra came padding out, her eyes puffy and her hair uncombed. She was barefoot, and wasn’t wearing any pants. Just a T-shirt and her black leather jacket, which just did cover her butt. Her legs were somewhat chubby, and blotchy from the cold. She painted her toenails black.

“Clethra, dear child!” Thor called out to her. “Come over here and say hello to my friend, Dwayne Gobble.”

She came scuffling over, most grudgingly. Until she realized Dwayne was her own age. Then her manner changed completely. We’re talking major thaw. “Whassup, cuz?” she asked him, all friendly and interested. Smiling even. All of a sudden, I felt very old. “You, like, work here?”

“Sometimes,” he replied, gawking at her dumbly. Poor guy was utterly entranced. If this had been a cartoon he would have been hearing tweety birds. “For a while, anyway.”

“Dwayne’s an artisan,” Thor informed her. “He works where he wants, when he wants. A man with his gifts is always a free man.”

“Cool,” exclaimed Clethra, tossing her wild mane of black hair at him, her dark eyes flashing and playful. “Hey, can I bum one of those?”

He was fumbling for another Camel. “Uh, sure. You bet.” He shook another one out of the pack and lit it for her. “I like your ring,” he said, meaning the one in her nose.

“Check, I got this new one last week …” She pulled up her T-shirt so he could see it. It was in her belly button. “Jamaican dude in the East Village did it for me.”

“Cool!” exclaimed Dwayne, very impressed. “Did it hurt?”

“Duh, yeah,” she said most casually, dragging on her cigarette. “Like, I mean, if you want total excellence you have to do the time, know what I’m saying?”

“You got that right,” agreed Dwayne, slipping her five and getting five back.

Thor stood there beaming at the two of them like a proud parent. Me, I was starting to feel like David Niven in
Prudence and the Pill.

“Whoa, your truck is a piss,” she observed, scuffling over to it.

Dwayne drove a jacked-up Dodge Power Ram, gunmetal gray, and bedecked with the usual he-guy bells and whistles—the mondo Trail Buster tires, the roll bar, the fog lamps. As well as some individual flourishes of his own. Homemade front and rear bumpers of pressure-treated lumber. And a rear window plastered with clever bumper stickers like “Red, Hot and Rolling” and “Lick My Meat” and “Perot for President.”

“Awesome stereo,” she raved, getting up on her tippy toes so she could see in the window.

“She’s got eight-inch woofers,” he informed her, his eyes firmly fastened on her own eight-inch woofers. “You into death metal?”

“I used to be into Metallica, but then they got so commercial, y’know?”

He nodded vigorously. “They’re totally bogus. I’m into Deicide now. They’re the truth, man.”

Dwayne had played me a sample one day when we were working on the barn. To me, the truth sounded like a garbage disposal eating up a live rodent, and I told him so. He thought maybe it was a generational thing. I preferred to think of it as a taste thing.

Dwayne tugged nervously at his goatee. “I’ll … uh … play ’em for you sometime. If you’re gonna be around, I mean.”

“Cool!”

Dwayne grabbed his tools from the back of the truck and headed into the barn, work to do.

“Yo, is there like a shower, homes?” Clethra asked me, reverting instantly to her brattier self.

“I suppose we can arrange something,” I said stiffly. I didn’t mean to be inhospitable. I would have been plenty warm if she’d at least said good morning.