Buzz Cut (12 page)

Two people sitting on a broad porch somewhere, wicker furniture. A pretty blond woman, late forties, a boy beside her. Mother's arm over the blond boy's shoulder, hugging him to her. The shot had the graininess of a telephoto lens. A hazy surveillance photo. Thorn was about to set the photograph aside and move on but something in the woman's eyes snagged him.

He drifted across the office, carried the photograph over to the bookshelves. He stood there for a moment studying Sugarman's shelves, ran his eyes back and forth along their length, and there it was. He held the photo out, positioned it next to the snapshot of Sugar's teenage mother.

It was the eyes. The older woman was fleshier, cheekbones softened, hair swept back in a more stylish wave. But the haunted eyes were identical. The woeful shadow, the faraway focus. Thorn moved back to Sugar's desk. Took a couple of deep breaths, trying to absorb this.

He was just easing down into Sugar's chair when the young patrolman appeared, inching forward in a tense squat, steering himself around the edge of the fractured door with his service revolver leading the way. His eyes snapping onto Thorn's.

"You're dead if you twitch," the young cop said. "Keep your fucking hands in view."

Thorn stood up. "Hey, look it's okay, Sergeant."

"Shut up, and keep 'em where I can see them."

"Look, I'm the owner's friend. We do this all the time. Bust into each other's place. Like a joke we play on each other."

"Keep your motherfucking hands up where I can see them."

"It's true. Ask anybody around here. Thorn and Sugarman. We're famous for doing shit like this."

The kid was sweating, inching forward toward Thorn. He could see the enlarged veins in the cop's wrist. Guy fully pumped. When was it that all the cops got younger? Suddenly moved down a generation from Thorn.

"Look, there's no reason to get all . . ."

The kid tightened his stance, aimed down his barrel.

That's when Thorn felt the prickle in his nostrils, a sneeze rising inside him, coming on with such abruptness he didn't have time for a word of warning, just squinched his eyes, shot both hands high, and threw back his head, felt the spasm shake him hard, echo in his ears. Thinking as it happened that this was how it was going to end for him, killed by a chance sneeze. And thinking how that was the way it should be. Same way his life had consistently worked, some stray mote or insect wing floating out of the swirling chaos, microscopic debris sucked into his nostril and bing. Thorn becomes splatter on the wall. No more Thorn. Shot for random sneezing. Thorn's God guided by the same unwavering perversity he'd always used. Sneeze, bang. One long loaded crapshoot from birth to death.

He heard the roar of the gunshot and somewhere nearby a scream. When his eyes cleared. Thorn saw the beautician huddled behind the cop. An aqua-smocked angel. The young patrolman, white and shaky.

Over Thorn's shoulder something toppled to the floor. He swung around and watched a shattered fragment of Sugar's one and only trophy tumble off the shelf beside his desk. The slug had split it in two and gouged a five-inch hole in the concrete block.

"Christ, he's going to be pissed," Thorn said, coming back around. "He averaged 205 that summer. Never bowled better."

The cop holstered his pistol, kept his hand on the butt as though his flesh had melted, bonded forever to that steel.

***

Two hours later Rochelle bailed him out. Breaking and entering, resisting arrest, criminal mischief. Thorn managed only a sketchy explanation. Got carried away, he said. That's all. He waved off her other questions and they drove home in silence, had a quiet lunch. She didn't ask him anymore. Gave him a wide berth as she went outside to work in the yard.

Thorn sat for a while at the round oak table and stared at the curtains billowing with an easterly breeze. He got up, circled the room, touching her things. Cooking utensils, microwave, vases, dried flowers, a photograph of her parents. Her sewing basket, her portable Singer. Her rings and jewelry, her black-faced watch, her wind-up clock, her four different styles of tennis shoes lined up neatly beside the bed.

To quiet the racket in his head, Thorn went to the bedroom closet, got down his fly reels from a high shelf. Took them outside on the sunny porch.

He removed them from their boxes, stacked them on the floor. He went back inside, got his screwdrivers, some cleaning stuff. Back in the sun, he chose the Orvis to disassemble first, laying out the parts beside the railing. Began carefully dusting each of the twenty-eight pieces with a small paintbrush. On a few of the parts he had to use the edge of an oily rag to flake away the salt scum, a few freckles of rust. It'd been a damn long time since he'd had this reel opened, done any kind of upkeep.

His wooden house, his several reels, his skiff and ancient cabin cruiser all needed constant tending. Thorn had surrounded himself with high-maintenance possessions. The absolute worst thing you could do for stuff like that, reels, boat motors, or wooden houses, was let them sit. But that's just what he'd done lately while he and Rochelle explored the dark side of the moon.

On the north perimeter of his property, she was kneeling in the fishtail ferns, weeding. First time, as far as Thorn knew, anyone had ever pulled a weed on his five acres. He wasn't sure how she knew which ones were weeds, but she was working hard. Sweating profusely, on her knees, snipping with hand shears, tugging up vines, uprooting crabgrass, making huge piles. She'd already finished the south side, working with furious concentration.

Everybody irritated today. Everybody teetering. Like some frightful phase of the moon.

Thorn dusted off the drag assembly, the knob spring, the drag click ball, the knob retainer. When he had them as clean and shiny as he could get them, he started on the spool cover. Focused, working that shiver out of his hands.

Finally Thorn began to reassemble the reel. He set the click pawl spring against the spindle. Slid on the O ring assembly, tightened the retaining screw, pressed the spool drive plate to the compression spring. Done it a few hundred times, could manage in the dark if necessary.

Not seeing it until now, that of all his reels, he'd chosen this one first. Staring down at his hands, at this Orvis, which was a present from Sugar on Thorn's thirtieth birthday. Given to him during a raucous party that commenced at sunrise and didn't end till two days later. The house swarming with people. Thorn and Sugarman and dozens of their closest. Kids and dogs. Somebody even brought a butchered pig, laid a spit and roasted it.

Thorn had never owned a reel so fine. It must've set Sugar back a month's salary. But here it was, over a dozen years later, and that reel still sang as sweetly as it had on its first afternoon. And while it had broken the spirit of countless heavyweight fish, it had never once seized up.

Holding the reel in his right hand, Thorn's eyes drifted up and he looked out at Rochelle, then out at the bay again. He felt a nettling sting behind his eyes. As he raised his hand to rub them clear, the reel slipped from his grip and broke open against the rough boards of the porch, its clockwork spilling through the gaps in the planks, all those tiny disks and springs and nuts falling in a bright rain down into the dust below.

Thunder shook the Winnebago, and the dream she was having abruptly vanished. Something about eyes, lots and lots of eyes floating in a gray mist. She pushed herself up on her elbows, blinked away that haze. The light inside the van was tinted purple. A thunderstorm rolling over, its gusts rocking the big van.

"Good morning, sleepyhead." Butler smiled at her, then swiveled back to his work.

He was stationed at a workbench across from the bunks. Wearing a pair of gray jeans and a white tennis shirt. A blue bandanna clenched his hair into a ponytail.

He was hunched forward over the long desk, some kind of high-tech soldering gun in his right hand. She craned forward to see, and it looked like he was melting dots of silver onto a circuit board. As he worked he peered through a jeweler's magnifier on a band around his head. Taking one look through the lens then glancing up at what appeared to be a blueprint tacked on the wall before him.

Scattered around the walls above his workbench were dozens of black-and-white photographs. She swept her eyes around the compartment and saw more photos on the walls, on cabinet doors, on the door of the small fridge, the shelves. Rows and rows of children. Several hundred of them. All those eyes, dark, empty. Asian boys, Hispanic girls, European, African. Some naked, some in loincloths. Bellies swollen, flies walking on their eyes. All staring into the camera lens with matching expressions as though they'd been posed by the same manipulative photographer. Come on, kid, gimme that sorrowful, hopeful, hungry look.

Outside there was a white flash then the immediate cannon blast of thunder as if the lightning spike had struck one of the tall pines a dozen feet away.

She climbed down from the bunk, came over to him. He was bent over, touching another careful dot of silver to the circuit board. She glanced around the room, scanning the faces in those photographs. Feeling a cold tingle move up her neck.

"I was an only child, just like you," Butler said, continuing with his work. "My mother and I, alone together. I never met my father. Don't have any idea about him. But it didn't matter. It was just me and Lola."

"Look . . ." she said.

"No, let me finish. You need to know about me. What you're getting into."

She heard the eighteen-wheelers sizzling past on the wet highway fifty, sixty yards away. The never-ending flow of goods to Key West, Saturday traffic pouring down from Miami. She took a seat on the edge of the bottom bunk.

"There I was, her only son. But I couldn't do anything right for Lola. She wanted baby Jesus as a son. Albert Einstein wouldn't have been smart enough for her. Nothing I did made her happy. She'd stick a book in front of my nose, no matter what it was, I'd read it, drink it down and it would stay in my head. Every word. But was that good enough for Lola? No, sir.

"I'd quote the book back to her, give it to her word for word, but she'd just shake her head, unhappy, like I didn't understand. I'd fallen short again. Nothing was ever right for Lola Jack. Fall down on the playground, get a little tear in my brand-new pants, Lola wouldn't hit me. She wouldn't get out a strap or anything like that. She'd squint at me like I was the devil and I'd just farted poison gas. Just stand there and scrutinize me and not say a word. And I remember how at times like those the lights seemed to get dim, how I'd begin to whimper and grovel and she'd just stand there and look. Never hit me.

"Though I wish she had. I wish she'd beat the ever-loving shit out of me. So I'd know where I stood. But she didn't. Lola was too good for that. She was white and pure and Christian. Sang in the Presbyterian choir. A soloist. Wonderful voice. White dresses, white hats, white gloves. Going to church every chance she had. Good Lola. Bad Butler."

He kept his head down. One part of his brain glancing up at his blueprint and then adding another silver dot, the other part talking. Talking.

"We were poor. Always struggling. Barely enough money for food, clothes, rent. Lived in a terrible neighborhood, murders out in the street. It took her twenty years, but Lola finally worked her magic on your father. Got him to notice her, promote her. Got him to marry her.

"And that was what she wanted all along. Her plan. A big tall rich man. Somebody to swoop her up and take her off to the penthouse for bottles of champagne and caviar and scintillating talk with his pals. She used to tell me how she was selling herself short all those years. She deserved better. But then she found a buyer worth her stock. That's Lola. Now that's who she is, my mother. Living at the top of the pyramid, eating baked Alaska and escargot while the world starves.

"But, you know, Monica. I'm not angry. I'm actually grateful to her. Grateful she pushed me away, taught me self-reliance. Because what I found out was, a person doesn't need his mother's love. A person like that can accomplish a great deal if they stay focused. If they use every second to advance their cause. If they have a list and follow it, an outline. If they know where they're going, why they're going there, what it's all for. And that's been me. I've had my list, my commandments, I've followed it, and I'm here now because of it.

"Some people might call me compulsive. Overcompensating for a joyless childhood. I have no friends. I don't have hobbies. I don't go to the movies, I don't listen to music. I don't play sports or any of that. I don't go to restaurants, I don t travel except for work. I don't stand around and gawk at sunsets or stare at the stars. But I don't feel deprived. Not a bit.

"You look around at the great men, men of major accomplishment. You look at them and you tell me how much stargazing they did. How much music they listened to. No. The great ones had a mission and they carried it out. They stacked up the hours of work one after another, stacked them up higher and higher until they'd built something that changed for all time how the world works. Changed the goddamn gravitational field of the earth. They didn't handicap themselves playing by the pathetic rules they found around them. They invented new rules. There are men who altered forever the way human life proceeds. Their names are written in granite outside important buildings.

"Those men didn't whine and groan and worry about whether their pretty mother loved them or not. They set themselves an impossible goal and they accomplished it. And that's exactly what I'm doing, Monica. That's who I am. That's who you're with. That's who you were talking to out there on your front porch, your swing. That's who you were writing to, those love letters long ago. Pledging your undying love."

She glanced around at the dark paneling, the cheap red curtains, the linoleum. Rain pelted the roof, fat subtropical raindrops. The air inside the van was thick with the vanilla scent of rain. "Who are these kids, Butler? What's going on here?"