The Risk Pool (13 page)

Only the Claudes would have thought of the beach in October. After the Mohawk Fair, convention strictly forbade summer amusements until the following Memorial Day, at which time swimming would be permissible, though far too cold to be enjoyed. When we pulled into the state park, the large parking lot was virtually abandoned and the man in the guard shack who was supposed to be collecting the parking fee was sleeping far too blissfully to disturb, at least in the opinion of Claude Sr., who was in rare good spirits. During the summer he would not have dreamed of packing off to the beach, which would have been “littered with Mohawk County.” Even the tattooed men who pressed his concave plastic turtles would be there with their swarming families, perhaps at the very next picnic table, an egalitarian circumstance to be avoided. There would be no such problem today. The long, sloping beach stretched before us, white and empty, not one in fifty picnic tables occupied.

I helped Mrs. Claude carry the bags of food, while Claudes Sr. and Jr. unloaded the trunkful of paraphernalia. Young Claude had a set of large black fins, and a mask and snorkel I knew I wouldn’t get to try even when he was done with them. I wouldn’t ask to, of course. He’d volunteer the refusal, saying, “It’s expensive stuff,” an explanation apparently preferable to more generous alternatives like “The fins wouldn’t fit,” or “Dad would feel responsible if you got hurt.” Claude was
such
a shit.

As soon as we were unloaded, Claude Sr. said that the last one in was a rotten egg and immediately bolted for the water, his flabby middle jiggling. It was the same strategy his son often used to ensure victory against me. Running was the only contest Claude Jr. feared, since his size and weight were no great advantage. He knew that unless he took me by surprise I would beat him. For this reason there was never any “ready-set-go” nonsense. Rather, he’d wait until I was carrying something or heading in the opposite direction. He also liked to determine the finish line, and having crossed its invisible barrier to his own satisfaction, he would stop, catch me as I flew by and after explaining “No, not that tree,
this
one,” he’d raise my hand in the air and proclaim, “The LOOZAH!” It’s difficult to say for certain whether there was any bottom to the abyss of my humility with regard to Claude.

That day I was more than content to watch father and son as they hurtled down the beach toward the water, their pear shapes generating little speed but a terrible momentum. It looked for a second like Claude Jr. might win, but they were running close together, and when the boy came abreast of his father, the older man gave him a big hip that sent him sprawling into the moist sand at the water’s edge, plowing it with his chin, as Claude Sr. parted the water of the green lake, his arms upraised in victory.

Other than just that single defeat, Claude Jr. had a winning day, though beating me at stone skipping, kickball, hamburger eating, and sudden foot races did not engender in him the usual satisfaction. His raw chin was bubbly, and he behaved a little as if he regretted inviting me. After lunch we tossed the football around listlessly in knee-deep brackish water. The only other people on the beach were a group of teens roughly Claude’s age. They were fifty yards or so down the beach, and he eyed them sadly, as if they were much further. I myself wouldn’t have minded strolling down the beach in that direction to have a look at the girls in their bikinis, but Claude said he wasn’t up for it.

“Go on,” Claude Sr. said to his son. “Nedley’s got the right idea, and he possesses a mere fraction of your age and native intelligence.”

Claude Sr. always called me Nedley. I never knew why. He also liked to make comparisons between his son and me. They were supposed to be jokes.

“And quit feeling your chin,” he went on. “It’s just a little scrape.”

I wouldn’t have characterized it as “just” a scrape. Claude had a lot of chin, and all of it was raw and oozing, like a burn.

“Don’t be a baby always,” Claude Sr. concluded.

After a while I became aware of somebody besides us and the teenagers. There was a solitary man at the crest of the hill where the trees had been cleared to form a path to another section of the campsite. The man just stood there, a silhouette, with the sun at his back, watching Claude and me toss the football.

“I’m tired of this,” Claude Jr. said. “Besides, you stink.”

Mrs. Claude was stretched out on the beach towel nearby, her nose, eyes, and forehead beneath a ribbed hand towel. “I don’t think
that’s
a very nice way to address your friend,” she said vaguely.

“I don’t mind,” I said. If you objected to being told that you
stank, Claude wasn’t the person to chum around with. Besides, I wasn’t paying any attention.

“Who the hell’s that?” Claude said, following my line of vision and apparently a little unnerved by the man’s just standing there.

“My father,” I said, though I don’t remember being certain. With the sun at his back it was impossible to tell.

“Sure,” Claude Jr. said sarcastically.

I happened at that moment to be holding the football, so I gave it a good heave straight out into the lake.

“Now you can go get it,” Claude said.

But I was already headed up the beach in the opposite direction.

“Hey!” Claude said, looking alternately at me and the bobbing football, which had caught the current and was floating down the beach in the direction of the teenagers. “Hey, goddamn it!”

“I don’t think
that’s
such a very nice way to talk,” I heard Mrs. Claude say.

“Hello, Bud,” my father said when I’d made the long trek up the beach. “Who’s your fat friend?”

I told him Claude Schwartz. We stood there looking down the sloping beach at the Claudes and the tiny bobbing football, now a good hundred yards out in the current and still on the move. Big Claude and Little Claude were staring at us openly, while Mrs. Claude peeked from beneath her towel.

“How’d you get hooked up with them?”

That was what he wanted to know after all that time—how I had managed to get hooked up with the Claudes. I shrugged.

“You’re still talkative, I see.”

He was right. I wasn’t much of a conversationalist, especially around him. For a while there I’d gotten to like talking, but only around certain people, like Father Michaels. Since he’d gone, I had pretty much given it up again. Part of the problem, with my father anyway, was that the things he said didn’t exactly lend themselves to response.

“Well?” he said.

A case in point.

“I missed you,” I said. It sort of came out of left field, not at all naturally, but it was the only thing I could think of.

Apparently it was all right with him, because he said, “I missed you, too.” That settled, we just stood there for a while until the Claudes’ football bobbed out of sight around the point.

When I went back down to gather my stuff, Mrs. Claude wanted to know if it really was my father, and I said it was. “You’re sure?” she said, obviously a little apprehensive about letting me go off with him. Why didn’t he come down and introduce himself, or at least let somebody get a look at him? After all, the Claudes were in all probability legally responsible for my safe return to Mohawk. The poor woman looked like she would have liked to consult her husband on these matters, but the other two Claudes had rounded the point in pursuit of the football.

I pulled on my shirt and scuffed into my tennis shoes. “Sorry about the ball,” I said. “It’s just that Claude can be a real turd.”

I half expected her to be angry with me for saying that, but she just looked sad, as if I’d voiced a sentiment she herself had been trying to find the right words to express. “I hope you’ll keep being his friend,” she said when I started back up the beach to where my father waited.

I turned and gave her a smile, surprised to discover that just then I liked her. “Sure,” I said. Why not.

We headed up the dirt road toward the guard shack at the entrance to the park. There were just a few cars parked in the shade along the way and none of them looked like the sort that would belong to my father. I did not mind walking, or even not knowing where we were headed. He seemed content too, not all that interested in catching up on things. I was grateful for that. I don’t know how I would have summarized such a long time. He did want to know if my mother was all right, and when I said I guessed so he didn’t press me.

At the entrance to the park, the attendant was still asleep inside the shack, his chair tilted up against the inner wall, his legs alone protruding out the front door. Spying them, my father put a hand
on my shoulder and motioned for me to be quiet. There was a tiny open window on the side wall of the shack and my father peeked in before unfastening the screen door from its outside hook. The door moaned on its hinges a little, but the sleeper did not stir.

When the screen hit the side of the shack like a pistol shot, the feet resting on the legs of the tilting chair went straight up in the air. Things were still crashing inside the shack when my father disappeared around back. A taut face appeared for just an instant in the tiny window and looked directly at me. Then its owner came out, rubbing the back of his head. He looked pretty mad.

Having circled around the other side, my father came at him from behind. The man must have seen where I was looking, but too late, and he found himself in a double nelson, his arms extended outward and dangling, like a big awkward bird. When he struggled, my father put a knee on his spine and lifted him off the ground. The man gurgled, but could not speak.

My father rotated him so that the man’s right hip was toward me. “Take his gun and shoot him,” my father said.

“It’s not l-l-loaded,” the man squeaked.

“Well,
that’s
good,” said my father, releasing his victim. “I’d hate to think anybody’d give live ammunition to a blockhead like you.”

“God d-d-damn you, Sammy,” the man said. “You’re gonna go too f-f-fucking far some day.” He shook my father’s hand reluctantly.

“I wish you’d watch your l-l-language around my son,” my father said.

“Screw you,” the man said, fingering the back of his head. “Is it bleeding?”

My father examined the man’s head. “Not bad,” he said.

“I oughta let you have one,” the man said. It didn’t sound like much of a threat.

“Nah,” my father said. “I’m just trying to keep you sharp, Tree. What if there was a real evildoer around here?”

The man called Tree went over and examined the screen door, which angled crazily now on its bent hinges. “You’re about as close to an evildoer as we get around here. By the w-way, somebody said you w-w-weren’t around, if anybody was to ask.”

“That’s all straightened out,” my father said, glancing at me. “Just a couple of fellows I met out in Nevada.”

“Too bad they didn’t work on your kneecaps. What’s the kid’s name?”

My father told him.

Tree looked me over and shook his head. “Never adm-m-mit he’s your old man,” he advised, “and m-maybe you got a chance.”

“You hurt my f-f-fucking back, Sammy,” he added.

My father told him to come with us. There was a little, dusty-looking tavern called The Lookout just outside the park entrance. There were a couple cars out front. One was a cream-colored Mercury convertible that looked like somebody had ridden hard, though there weren’t any bullet holes that I could see. “We’ll get Alice to rub your back,” my father said.

“I’m w-working,” Tree said, nodding first at the shack, then at his uniform, as if these constituted proof. “Besides. Alice and I aren’t getting along.”

“Since when?”

“Since lately.” He stared down the dirt road at The Lookout with a mixture of longing and fear.

“Suit yourself, Tree.”

“I c-c-could drink a beer,” the man admitted, then considered everything for about two seconds. “Let me lock up, at least.”

Inside the guard shack, he took some money out of a shoe box and put the thick wheel of red tickets in a drawer and locked it. Then he locked the inside door and did the best he could with the screen, throwing my father another malicious glance. “Park closes day after tomorrow anyways,” he said. “W-w-wouldn’t be much point in canning me, I guess.”

He counted the money as we walked, then put a rubber band around it. “Took in f-f-fourteen dollars,” he said. “They gotta pay me twenty.”

“That’s about right,” my father said. “Mayor of Mohawk works things the same way.”

Tree shrugged. “July, we do two, three hundred a day. More on weekends.”

“What’ll happen to that big roll of tickets when the park closes tomorrow?”

“Disappear, p-p-probably.”

My father nodded. “You’re all right, Tree.”

The Lookout was dark and cool inside. When the screen door clapped shut behind us, I couldn’t make out anything but the flickering lights above the shuffleboard machine and the scripted fluorescent beer signs. Tree and my father went straight for the long bar at the other end of the room. They either knew where it was or were used to night soundings. They took stools at the
opposite end of the bar from The Lookout’s two other patrons. I figured my father had forgotten me completely until he checked the stool next to his and I wasn’t there.

“Well?” he said when I finally arrived. I climbed onto the vacant stool at the end of the bar, pleased that for once I seemed to understand the significance of his favorite question.

A huge woman seated behind the bar was talking to the other customers. You couldn’t exactly see the stool she was sitting on, but there had to be one. All along the bar were lighted candles in red goblets that reminded me of the stained glass in Our Lady of Sorrows, and my father used one to rap on the bar. The huge woman was already looking at us and shaking her head.

“You got a little exercise, you wouldn’t be so fat,” my father observed good-naturedly.

“Or I could have more customers like you, in which case I could just sit still and starve,” the woman said, making no move to get up. “What’s this? Your first visit in three years?”

“It wasn’t me that told you to put this place way the hell and gone out in the woods.”