What You Have Left (19 page)

He's still standing behind the Datsun, trying not to attract attention, when Ted spots him in the side mirror. Immediately the boy lays on the horn. And doesn't let up.
It's so loud you'd think someone was robbing the bank. Across the street, two men boarding a storefront turn to watch as Wylie raps on Ted's window, trying to get him to knock it off. But he doesn't stop until Tracy comes running out of the bank, yelling at Wylie across the roof of the car. “How dare you!”

Wylie steps back, raises both hands like he would in a holdup.
Easy, now.
“For God's sake. Will you just take the papers?”

“I know the law,” she says. “You have to put them in my hand.”

Dodging service is illegal, but Wylie doesn't waste his breath. He makes a dash around the car. Tracy is too quick, though, and it turns into a one-lap footrace that ends with them back on their original sides. As Ted reaches over and unlocks her door, she gives Wylie a little snakebite of a smile and climbs in, disappearing behind the reflection of dark clouds on the windshield.

Tracy is halfway out of the parking space when she hits the brakes so hard the tires chirp. Wylie looks over his shoulder and sees why. A cruiser is coming around the corner of the bank, headed their way. If she really is running off with the boy, her ex may be on to her by now, in which case the police may be looking for her car. The cruiser slows as it passes the Datsun, swerving to avoid its bumper. Wylie thinks he sees the officer checking Tracy's plates, reaching for his radio.

He watches the cruiser park farther down the row. By now Tracy has pulled back into her space. She has both hands on the wheel, eyes straight ahead, and Wylie knows she's thinking this is it—this is where she gets busted. Or where Wylie turns her in. And he
should
turn her in, he's got
every right, but if she would just listen to him for a minute, he'd tell her to relax. The only thing he cares about is delivering the papers. What she does with them is her business.

The cop is a grim fireplug of a man, uniform tight as a sandbag. He looks like a guy with a hurricane on his mind, a guy who, like Wylie, would rather eat nails than get mixed up in a custody fight. When he reaches the Datsun, he gives the three of them a lingering sidelong glance from beneath the brim of his hat and keeps right on walking. He's not looking for Tracy after all. But it's clear he senses something here. A situation.

At the entrance to the bank, he swivels back around and squints, all neck and shoulders. And even though Tracy is the one breaking the law, Wylie can't help feeling like
he's
in trouble—the sight of a cop still does it to him every time. To keep his hands busy, he pretends to search his pockets for a key, even as he realizes this is a ridiculous thing to do, because if he belonged in the car, wouldn't the woman just unlock the door? But by now the officer has lost interest. He turns away, maybe figuring they're just a husband and wife having a spat. He won't get involved unless somebody asks him to.

When the cop is inside, Tracy reaches across the car and rolls down the window. Wylie is relieved for the chance to explain, but Tracy doesn't let him. “Okay, you son of a bitch,” she says, opening her purse and pulling out her wallet. “Is this enough?”

Wylie glances at the money, expecting a ten or a twenty— a bribe he doesn't intend to take—but what he sees is four fifties. More than six times what he'll make for this job. Half a month's rent on an apartment. Enough that he
could
afford to just let her go, tell Hugh she skipped town. But he can't get past the way Tracy is looking at him as she holds out
the money. Not like she wants to spit on him, but like he himself
is
spit. And he wants to wipe that look right off her face, because he's been a good sport up to now, and besides, she doesn't know the first thing about him, the position he's in. If people assume the worst of you, then that's what they should get. Taking her money isn't even enough. As he reaches for the bills, he can feel himself giving in to his meanest instincts. And just like it is with everything else, he can't stop.

“I'm not the one kidnapping my son,” he says, slipping the money into his pocket. “Have you bothered telling him he'll never see his father again?”

Then, for good measure, he reaches across Ted and drops the service package onto Tracy's lap. She's too stunned to stop the papers as they slide to the floor. What Wylie's not expecting is the kid's skinny elbow, the pointy snap of it right in his eye. He sees it coming too late, feels bone on bone like someone has sloshed a bucket of pain in his face.

“Liar!” Ted shouts.

It's all Wylie can do to get his arm out of the car before the window catches his elbow. He staggers away, half of the parking lot going dim and watery as the service package comes flying back at him, a spray of papers in the wind.

The hurricane party is in full swing by the time Wylie reaches Garden City. From the sandy path alongside the pavilion, he can see people out on the pier, hear music echoing across the waves. Farther down the beach, some kids with surfboards are bobbing in the swells as two policemen try to wave them ashore. Through his good eye, Wylie watches the officers advance and retreat with the surf, thinking it's not too late to
turn Tracy in, give them her license plate number, tell them the son of a prominent citizen has been abducted. Why should she get to ride off into the sunset with Ted while he's stuck here with nothing but two hundred bucks and a black eye? To hell with that, Wylie thinks. To hell with sitting here on his hands. Tracy Evans isn't the only one who can do right by her kid. If he skips the party and leaves the return-of-service in Hugh's car, he can be on the road before the hurricane hits. Traffic willing, he'll reach Columbia by nightfall.

On the entrance to the pavilion, there's a hand-lettered sign—
CLOSED FOR HURRICANE
—but the door is unlocked. Inside, Wylie picks his way among dark pool tables and skee ball games. Behind the deserted bar, he wraps a handful of ice in a dishrag he finds draped over the tap. The pay phone is in the corner. Holding the ice pack to his face, he dials Cal's number. Holly answers on the third ring.

“Hampton residence,” she says. “This is Holly.”

Wylie has to pull up a stool, sit down. It's the first time he's heard her voice in more than a year. He used to call once a week. And he's always provided for her—turned everything over to Cal and still sends cash every month. But last year, on the second anniversary of Maddy's death, Cal read him the riot act. “I believe you care about your girl, Wylie,” Cal said. “Problem is, you don't care enough.” After that, when Wylie called, Cal just hung up. Didn't even give him a chance.

Now Holly sounds so grown up, self-assured, the kind of kid who orders for herself in restaurants, who could sell you a whole case of Girl Scout cookies on the morning you look in the mirror and swear off sweets for good.

“Hello?” she says.

The phone is shaking in Wylie's hand. He fumbles with
the ice pack, switches ears. In the background, he hears Cal asking, “Who is it?,” then the muffled sound of the phone changing hands.

“Who's there?” Cal says.

Wylie tries a few lines in his head.
Pack her things, Cal. I'm on my way.
He's had it with Cal acting as if Maddy gazed down from the heavens and told him
he
was in charge. She was as much his wife as she was Cal's daughter.

“I can hear you breathing,” Cal says. “You're not fooling anybody.”

Now it's Holly in the background: “Is it a pervert?”

Wylie closes his eyes, tries not to think about the nonsense Cal must be filling her head with, tries instead to imagine driving up the lane to the farmhouse tomorrow morning, finding Holly there playing fetch with the dog. He has no idea what he'd say.
Hey, honey bun, remember me?

Of course it wouldn't be easy. Of course it would take a while to get reacquainted. And so, even as Cal is hanging up, Wylie is thinking,
Okay, fine,
it'd be better to wait until summer anyway, when school is out. They could take a trip together, maybe spend a week or two on the Outer Banks. They could stop at South of the Border. He'd buy her some sparklers, a sombrero, a bag of boiled peanuts for the ride. By then, at least he'd have an apartment.

Wylie's still holding the phone when the recording comes on, telling him to deposit money if he wants to make a call. He puts the receiver in its cradle. Behind the bar, he leaves a five on the counter and digs a Schlitz from the cooler. He doesn't think about it, except to think that the bottle feels good, the weight of it in his hand, flecks of ice sliding off the label. After he gets the first one down, he polishes off two more as fast as his throat will let him, then pauses to
wring out the rag and add some more ice. Only then, with the empties lined up on the bar, does it start to sink in: ninety-two days down the tubes. All that thirstiness. All that work.

But he reaches for another anyway, twists off the cap and sends it sailing like a Frisbee over the pool tables. He's not going to beat himself up for
this.
You take a few steps forward, you take a step back. So it goes. The important thing is where you end up. And right now, this is what he needs, whether it takes four beers or forty—a break, a world made smeary enough that he doesn't have to think about tomorrow. Plus, the tremor in his hands is gone. He's steady as a gambler. He puts the rag back where he found it and walks through the bait shop, feels the wind fighting the door as he shoulders his way out onto the pier. Farther down, people are gathered near a grill, the smoke peeling off low and fast. A man with a handlebar mustache is basting shrimp, and Wylie recognizes him as the manager of the pavilion, a guy Hugh once introduced him to, the useful kind of friend Hugh makes when he sits long enough on a bar stool.

At six-foot-seven, Hugh is easy to spot—only today, instead of seersucker and bow tie, he's in swim trunks and flip-flops, showing off a farmer's tan that would keep most men in a shirt. When he sees Wylie coming down the pier, he breaks into a lopsided grin and wades through the crowd, waving a lobster arm above his fish-white belly.

“Damn, Wylie,” he says. “You beat up somebody's fist with your face?” He gooses Wylie in the ribs—the same knucklehead greeting Wylie got back in June when they ran into each other at the courthouse, right after he'd finished meeting with his probation officer. Even though they hadn't seen each other since college, Hugh didn't hesitate. “Come
work for me,” he'd said. “Easy money. Tide you over until you find something that suits.”

It isn't until Hugh clinks his bottle against Wylie's that he realizes something isn't right. His gaze travels from Wylie's black eye to the bottle in Wylie's hand, then back again, as if he's connecting the dots in a puzzle. “You get beat up
and
fall off the wagon?”

Wylie's in no mood. His hands may be steady, but his eye feels like it's big as a golf ball. He pulls the return-of-service from his pocket. “That's it. I'm done.”

“Done?” Hugh says. “Now wait a skinny minute—” but one look at Wylie and he takes the sheet of paper, folds it into his waistband with a sympathetic nod. “She give you trouble?”

“No more than usual.” Wylie hadn't bothered picking up the rest of the papers in the parking lot. Now he doesn't bother telling Hugh that Tracy has taken Ted. He's the lawyer, let him figure it out.

“Listen,” Hugh says. “Forget about it. I got some girls I want you to meet, couple of foxes.”

“Not today.”

“Come on, Sport Model. It's a party.”

Wylie swallows what's left in his bottle, rifles a nearby cooler, and comes up empty. “No more beer?”

“There's more down yonder,” Hugh says, but he's already talking to Wylie's back. “Catch me before you leave. I've got your check in the car.”

“Keep it.”

Near the end of the pier, a group of people are shouting and leaning over the rail. At first Wylie thinks someone has fallen
in. Then, as he gets closer, he sees a rope ladder, a stringy young guy in cutoffs climbing up from the water. It takes him a moment to understand that the kid has been down there getting battered by the waves, a kind of daredevil game—like riding a mechanical bull, minus the off-switch. When the kid hauls himself back up onto the pier, dripping and sucking wind, the crowd gives him a round of applause.

“Man oh man,” somebody says. “You look like a cat in a car wash, Roy.”

Still gasping for air, Roy rakes his wet hair off his face and tells the guy to kiss his ass.

“Pick a spot,” his friend says. “You're
all
ass.”

And everybody is laughing until Roy reaches for a towel and they see the long red scrapes down his side where he's been pitched against the piling. Roy's friend lets out a low whistle, says they better call it a day before somebody gets killed, but Roy is already lighting up a smoke, insisting on another volunteer. Step right up, he's hollering. Who's got what it takes?

It's a carnival barker's call, the kind of taunt Wylie might hear next summer if he were to find himself at Family Kingdom with Holly, strolling past the ring toss or the shooting gallery, and he pictures himself aiming at ducks like any good father would do for his girl, like he'll ever get that chance. Roy is still running his mouth as Wylie balls up his shirt and kicks off his loafers. By the time he's on the ladder, they've formed a circle at the rail. The laughter has died down again. Maybe it's the black eye.

“I'd take off that watch if I was you,” Roy says. “And make sure you loop your arms through the rungs.”

Down below, a medium-sized wave slaps the bottom of the ladder. Wylie starts to lower himself, pauses after a few
rungs, and surveys the distant beach. Deserted. Even the surfers have called it a day. Just a long row of stilted houses that might not be around tomorrow.