A Far Gone Night (18 page)

“You exaggerate. I only do this every eighteen months or so. Before last year, I hadn’t done anything like that for over twenty years.
Truly.”

“Thomas, you shot and killed two men in your house.
You wounded another. You put those two thugs from Dubuque in the hospital. You tore up a couple of rednecks out at
Shlop’s
Roadhouse. And now, look at you! You’re messed up again from another incident. On a freaking
Indian
reservation! In another freaking
state
! What’s wrong with
you!
”

It was a fair question, and I thought about it. But then I realized she probably couldn’t handle the truth about me and violence, so I just smiled my winning smile and said, “I think it’s dietary.
Vegetable overexposure.”

She didn’t get it.

“Thomas, you aren’t always funny. You sit there making wisecracks and I’m here across from you and my life’s a freaking
typo
, Thomas, and I can’t delete it and I can’t use white out to make it better. My husband left me for a man, then I fall for you and you lie to me and get me shot, and now Harmon’s dumped me for a bimbo from Dubuque half his age. I am not having fun, and there you are, shooting people and getting in fights over and over, fighting off Suzanne and Penny, and you’re just cruising along having a fine old time. We’ve had this conversation before.”

“Liv, I don’t think you want to compare your downers with mine,” I said, my voice low.

She looked as if I had just pushed her, hard, in the chest. Her shoulders sagged,
then
she took my Three Philosophers and drank the rest of it. At least I’d had a taste. Then she looked at me, and there was some of that fire in her eyes I had seen before, and I knew she was going to speak with fervor.

“You know something,
Thomas,
you can always pull out your dead family and trump everyone else’s troubles. You can. What happened to you is the worst that can happen to a person. I am sorry it happened. Everyone in this town is sorry. People in
other states
are sorry. But that doesn’t mean other people can’t hurt, too. When I just now told you my life was a typo, you immediately shot me down with your trump card. Well done. You win. You always win, so good for you. Just continue being what you are, whatever this is besides ‘all about you.’ Have a good time with it. Me? I’m tired of it all. You just wear me out. I’m just not strong enough to deal with you. Sorry.”

Moon showed up with another Three Philosophers, noted Liv’s facial expression and stiffened body language. He set the ale down in front of me, took the empty glass, and departed with some degree of
Ojibwian
haste.

Liv had gone quiet, dropping her eyes. She picked up her wine glass and finished the few swallows left. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I shouldn’t have said that. Your family is off limits. I’m sorry, Thomas.”

“No,
I’m
sorry. I should have listened. Please talk to me.”

“The moment has fled.” She started to slide out of the booth.

“May I call you? May I ask you out to dinner when I call you?” I asked, relying on what had worked once before.

She offered a small, sad smile, said, “I don’t think so,” and left.

I was encouraged. She did not give a definite “No” to my offer. I turned to my brat and ale, mildly comforted by the reliability of good food and drink, something positive about our “I’m sorry” fusillade.

A
fter listening to
Jurgen
Clontz’s
assessment of the adversary, and knowing that Moon was badly banged up, and there were lots of folks working for Ted
Hornung
up in
Chalaka
, and even more muscle behind them, it seemed prudent to attend to the strengthening of my hand. The fact that I’m getting older never once figured in to my calculations. No way. Or the fact that I took some pretty good shots I might have evaded in earlier times during my pre-Karen years.

So Monday morning Gotcha and I drove to Iowa City and were lucky to find a vacant parking place within two blocks of the University of Iowa Student Union Building down by the Iowa River. I went around and opened the passenger door, Gotcha hopped down from the cab, and we set off. It was the first day of classes after their Thanksgiving break, and students were drifting here and there, every last one of them using a cell phone as they strolled in the achingly cold, sunlit morning.
A few who looked where they were going saw us walking along toward the SUB.
One was a pretty girl.

“What a beautiful dog!” she exclaimed, walking right up to us. We stopped. Gotcha was not on a leash because I had taught her to be obedient and to follow voice commands.

“Sit,” I said. Gotcha sat. I stood next to her.

The girl had smart gray eyes and was wearing a nice, full-length lavender cloth coat, a white scarf around her neck, and a lavender knit cap on her head that matched her coat. She asked, “May I pet your dog? What’s his name?”

“Her name is Gotcha, and yes, you may pet her. She likes people, unless they are bad,” I said. “If you’re a bad person, she’ll bite, so take your chances.”

The girl looked at me with an impish smile, assessing my words,
then
she laughed. “I’m not worried,” she said, and came to a full squat in front of Gotcha. The girl held out her hand in a fist, palm down, for Gotcha to sniff. Gotcha sniffed.

And then Gotcha started wiggling her little root of a warped tail, came to her feet, and bumped into the girl, licking her face, and putting her on her backside. The girl laughed loudly and Gotcha pounced, slurping the helpless girl’s face.

“Gotcha, no!”
I said, and she desisted. I told her to sit again and she did, all the while eyeing the student and hoping for another opportunity to slurp her face. The girl got up, laughing.

“What a fabulous dog,” she said. “That’s the hardest I’ve laughed in some time. I guess there’s nothing too bad that can happen when there’s such a fine creature on the planet. That was terrific therapy.”

“I’m glad. My name is Thomas,” I said.

“Of course you are,” she replied, and I noticed for the first time a faint English accent. “And I am Chelsea. Pleased to meet you.
This is wonderful, and thank
you so much for allowing this encounter, but I must be off. Thank you so much! Bye-bye, Gotcha, you wonderful girl,” she said, patting my dog’s big shoulders and head. Gotcha remained sitting and looking very proud of herself.

The girl, a marvelous and astute young woman, briskly marched away, humming something, heading in the direction of the English-Philosophy Building. Made my day, and that’s for sure. Good therapy for me, too, to have such a wonderful encounter in the midst of everything else going on in my life—murder, kidnappings, Liv Olson mad at me.

We proceeded on, Gotcha and me, entering into the SUB by the front doors, noticing as we sauntered along that male students tended to look askance at Gotcha while female students, generally speaking, smiled at her.

Inside, we meandered about until we found a bank of pay phones. Gotcha and I approached, and I made a call to a number that would lead to another number and so on, most messages untraceable, many by word of mouth in dank habitats of dangerous people on maybe more than one continent. Almost certainly more than one
continent,
and eventually reaching the ears of Clancy Dominguez.

I finished my brief call and stood and, just as I turned around, a young man in a shirt, tie, and blazer with the University of Iowa seal emblazoned over the left breast came up to me and said, “You can’t have a dog in here unless it’s a guide dog, sir.”

“Sure I can. I just did.”

“But you can’t. You need to leave,” he insisted, looking a little nervous when I stood close to him, seeming to lose his resolve. “It’s against the rules,” he added.

“We were just leaving, Spoilsport.” I brushed by him, saying, “Gotcha, come.”
Which she did.

Once outside, another fine thing happened regarding Gotcha. Three girls walking together stopped and asked the same questions Chelsea had, and got the same answers. And then they swarmed over Gotcha, petting her and rubbing her ears and massaging her shoulders. A look of bliss came over the Bulldog’s face, and I had to smile.

“We all have dogs at home, and we miss them,” one of the girls said, smiling up at me.

“I understand,” I said.

For a full five minutes Gotcha received the love of three girls, evoking jealousy from me, and then they were on their way. Gotcha looked up at me and actually grinned, a horrid yet beautiful sight, and we set off again, charged up by one of the best parts of people—that they love dogs, too. At the same time, I couldn’t help but think that the girls were about the age Annie would have been.

Back in the truck, we drove around town for a while as I reminisced about places where Karen and I had lived. Gotcha slept. Down to the 900 block of Iowa Avenue, over to
Hotz
Avenue (between Parsons and Clapp—a story right there) and out to Emerald Avenue by
Finkbine
Golf Course, I allowed myself the luxury of living for a while in fine and pleasant memories of when Karen and I were in town and bursting with dreams and plans and love.

But then my stomach growled, waking up Gotcha, so I found a drive-through Burger King near I-80 and ordered two Whoppers and fries for me, a cheeseburger for Gotcha, which she ingested with the sound of a sump pump starting up, devouring the sandwich in less than ten seconds. Then she belched and flopped down on the shotgun seat and fell asleep again, her thick tongue hanging out to afford better breathing.

We took our time driving home, avoiding the interstates and sticking to back roads, just enjoying the morning and the small towns as we motored through Mount Vernon,
Prairieburg
, and Greeley. The humble beauty of the small towns, small farms, and rolling hills gave me a kind of pleasure that’s hard to explain other than to say I felt at home, even though I am all alone and stripped of my family I would have gladly died to protect.

Life doesn’t knock us
down,
it holds us up with one hand and slaps us back and forth with the other.

As we approached rural
Rockbluff
, I thought about what might come from my phone call earlier in the day.

I had not seen Clancy for over twenty years. He had disappeared into Costa Rica eleven years ago and was living off the grid, surrounded by beautiful, brown-skinned women no doubt, and living the good life. However, I suspect that his skills had not eroded very much. He was not one to take it easy, develop hobbies, play golf every day, or retire.
Too much energy and too much joy in high-risk situations for him to settle down for very long.
To Clancy Dominguez, adrenalin junkies were just half a step above assistant librarians in life’s excitement hierarchy.

Clancy had been in my SEAL Training Class, my first one, and became a legend, setting records in virtually every physical challenge presented. Further, he emerged as a unique combination of lunatic and leader, always willing to do extra at every juncture of training. He would be laughing and shouting as we jumped out of helicopters at midnight into the Pacific Ocean with a five-mile swim, with gear, to the island where our assignment waited. Everyone else was silent, meditating, praying, concentrating on the exercise, and Clancy would be chanting, “Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s get rolling!” He went on after I broke my leg, finished first in his class, and shipped out. We kept in loose contact even after I broke my other leg and received a medical discharge from the Navy.

We had become buddies in training, friendly competitors to see who would finish first in our class, in a dead heat when my wimp leg broke. It was one of those, “If you ever need a little help with something…” relationships. When the government contacted me to do some contract black ops for them (apparently I had done something in training to get their attention), I jumped at the chance to pick up considerable income and stay sharp doing my best to screw up the lives and organizations of people who hated the United States. I was good at it, and when Clancy was honorably discharged from the Navy with a chest-full of ribbons and a reputation out of a Quentin Tarantino movie, I hired him and we collaborated on several lucrative missions. Oh, and Clancy Dominguez is the best I have ever seen with a knife, and even better with explosives.

Clancy is a person who would not rate a second look if you saw him on the street. He is five-ten or so, maybe 170 pounds, lean and loose-limbed. His face is unremarkable unless you look into his eyes and notice that one is pale blue and the other is dark brown, and they are intelligent and intense. But he usually wears sunglasses, so you wouldn’t notice. He is not built like a bodybuilder, but he is strong, possesses excellent coordination, and 20/10 vision; that is, he sees at 20 feet what most of us can see at 10 feet. And he can hear a cat walking on moss two blocks
away,
his auditory gifts are so extraordinary.

I stopped by the house, let Gotcha out to do her duties, and then we both went inside where she sought out her favorite recliner, jumped up, pushed it open, and stretched out. I changed into my workout gear, black
Umbro
bottoms, black cross-training shoes, a gray t-shirt with NAVY in block letters, and a blue sweatshirt. Then I got back in the truck and drove into town.

I arrived at
Mulehoff’s
Earthen Vessel Barbell Club around 4:30, a little later than I prefer, knowing that there would be a good number of people there, something I try to avoid by usually hitting the weights around 1:30, between the lunch crowd and the after-work gang. But it was the best I could do right then, so I stretched and got into my upper body routine, starting with incline dumbbell bench presses, blocking out the dozen other members moving around, chatting, lifting.

After a warm-up set with a pair of 60s, I pyramided to a set of six reps with 100-pounders.
Dumbell
flyes
followed with 80s, and then I went to work on my back, doing machine pull-downs with 180, a few dumbbell rows with a 100-pounder, seated behind the neck presses with 200, and so on, sweating like hell and loving it all. Then I hopped onto the elliptical trainer and began that smoothing out part of my workout, and came face to face with Suzanne
Highsmith
.

“
Hiya
, big boy,” she said, fluttering her eyelashes and wiggling the fingers of her right hand as a greeting. She was wearing black short-shorts that could have been a second skin, and a purple tank top, under which I could discern a sports bra working overtime to fulfill its calling.

“Hello, Suzanne.”

“You and Moon should have invited me along on your little trip Friday. I knew something was up when his car wasn’t at The Grain o’ Truth, and you weren’t home. I should have figured out you’d head for the
Chalaka
Reservation. Dumb me. By the time I figured it out, it was too late to go looking for you guys.”

She looked closely at my face.
“So Moon wasn’t the only one who got bumped around.”

“Are you in here to work out? Did you join the Earthen Vessel?” I asked, continuing to work on the elliptical.

“Yes. You remember what I said about the body going south. I’m trying to slow that down a little, plus I just had my chance to see how strong you are.
Really.
Pretty impressive
poundages
, Thomas.
No wonder you’re the toughest man in northeast Iowa.”