Ring Game (7 page)

Crow remembered two other things about that day at the fair. One was that Debrowski’s feet had hurt so bad she’d had to take off her boots and socks and walk barefooted all the way to the car. The other thing was that she had lied about the Crisco.

Crow and his father were still sitting on the front porch. A few minutes earlier, Axel had marched past them carrying the filleted walleyes. He hadn’t said a word. They could hear him banging around in the kitchen, cursing Sam’s meager collection of kitchen utensils.

Sam had finished his cigarette and now had his lower lip packed with Copenhagen. “So this fella Hilton, he as bad news as Ax thinks?”

Crow shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. He used to be into health food and dope, but by the time he met Carmen, he said he was involved with some flaky church. I don’t know if that’s better or worse.”

“Prob’ly both.”

“You think I ought to try to talk to Axel, or just let it slide?”

“Hold that thought, son.” Sam got out of his chair and went into the cabin. Ten seconds later he was back in his chair cracking open a Budweiser. “Ax says we’re eatin’ in a minute.” He poured a few ounces of beer into his mouth, swallowed, belched, leaned over the low railing, and spat tobacco. “I was you, I’d go ahead, try and talk to the son-of-a-bitch. God knows he can’t get any crankier. There’s just one thing I gotta ask you.”

“What’s that?”

“This fellow Hilton, is he the sort likely to hit ol’ Ax over the head and try to steal all his money like Carmen’s last boyfriend?”

Crow thought for a moment. “I don’t think so.”

Sam nodded sharply. “Good. Then you tell him whatever you got to. Only don’t tell him nothing he don’t need to know.”

Axel appeared in the doorway, nearly filling it.

“Let’s eat,” he said.

I don’t remember finding a sailor, however modest, who was not frank to admit that at cribbage he was champion of his ship.

—John Scarne

“
ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?
” Sophie asked.

“Happy about what?”

“The dress, what else?”

Carmen shrugged. “It’s okay.” She bit into her scone. They were sitting at one of the upstairs tables at Café Latté, looking down on Grand Avenue.

“It better be okay.”

Carmen grinned. “Axel’s gonna freak when he sees it.”

“He’s going to freak when he sees the bill, that’s for sure. It’s going to wind up costing nearly five hundred dollars.” Sophie Roman stirred her cappuccino. Carmen was right. Axel
would
freak when he saw the Madonna dress. It certainly was not like any wedding dress Sophie had ever seen before. Not at all like the chaste, God-fearing frock she had expected. But Carmen had loved it. Carmen had gone nuts for it.

Sophie tried to reconstruct the way it had happened: Glinda brought out the dress. Carmen put it on. Sophie said, “No way, young lady. Absolutely not.”

That had been a mistake. The next thing she knew they were shouting at each other, right there in Bridal Shoppe. Then something had happened inside her, like a pipe broke, and all the fight had drained out of her and she’d agreed to buy the dress. It often went like that when she argued with Carmen. Sophie just didn’t have the legs to keep on slugging. Carmen was a young woman; she had the endurance to go all the way. Sophie chose to reserve her energies for more important matters—although she could not at the moment imagine what could be more important than the selection of a wedding dress.

So they’d bought it.

Carmen said, “I can’t believe you let me buy it.”

“What’s done is done,” Sophie said, wondering how the purchase had suddenly become
her
doing. “Now show me what you’ve got from the caterer.”

Carmen pulled a sheaf of paper from her purse and handed it across the table. Sophie propped her reading glasses on her nose, looked at the first page, turned to the last line of the last page, then reviewed the entire four-page document from front to back, her mouth becoming increasingly smaller. She could feel another fight coming on, another fight she knew she’d lose. But she couldn’t stop herself.

“When I married your father we fed seventy-five people for two hundred and sixty-five dollars.”

“What did you serve them? Oatmeal?”

“We had an Italian wedding.” She pronounced it
eye-TALY-un
. “We had lasagna and spumoni and red wine in those basket bottles, and it was very elegant.”

“That was twenty-two years ago,” Carmen argued.

Sophie stabbed her finger at the paper. “What’s this ‘Wild Mushroom Tarts’? What are Wild Mushroom Tarts, and why do they cost a hundred twenty dollars?”

“Hy likes mushrooms, Mom.”

“Well I like Rolls Royces, but that doesn’t mean I have to drive one. I don’t see the meatballs on here. We have to have Swedish meatballs.”

“Hy’s a vegetarian, Mom. He wants the reception to be meat-free.”

“What about Axel? If you want him to pay for this, you’d better have Swedish meatballs. He loves those things. Besides, they’re cheap.”

“Maybe we should go Mexican,” Carmen said, putting a sneer in her voice. “Have Axel cater the damn thing himself. Feed everybody Super Tacos and Bueno Burritos. We could set up a taco stand in the reception hall.”

Sophie actually seemed to be considering the suggestion. Carmen quickly said, “I’m just kidding.”

“It
would
save a lot of money,” Sophie said.

“Look, I don’t want you and Axel rolling burritos when you should be in the wedding party. I want this to be nice. It’s my
wedding
.”

Sophie bit down on her wooden coffee stirrer. “Maybe we could invite fewer people,” she suggested.

“We already cut it down to one hundred and sixty. Hy wants a big wedding.”

“Speaking of the wedding, have you found a church yet?”

“Not exactly. But we’ve got a preacher.”

“A preacher? What kind of preacher are we talking about?”

“I don’t know. Does it matter?”

“Well, we
are
Catholic.”

“Yeah, right.”

Sophie blinked. She parted her lips to speak, then gave her head a quick back-and-forth jerk, as if trying to flick a bead of sweat from the tip of her nose. “Well, anyway, you want to make sure it’s a nice church. Big enough to hold everybody.”

“Uh-huh. I’m sure it’ll be fine, Mom.”

Sophie looked back down at the caterer’s estimate, frowning. “I still don’t see why we can’t have meatballs. Hyatt doesn’t have to eat any if he doesn’t want to.”

Carmen tasted her coffee, added two more pouches of sugar. She agreed with Sophie about the meatballs. She liked Swedish meatballs, too. But Hy wanted a vegetarian spread, and that was that. She had to keep it together here. Sophie would bitch right up until the
I dos
, and then some. But it really wasn’t up to her—Axel would be paying the bills. Still, she had to start with Sophie if she was to get the wedding she and Hy wanted. She hadn’t broken it to Sophie yet, but Hy didn’t want to get married in a church. He said he’d had enough of churches. He wanted to do the deed at the reception hall, wherever that turned out to be. Some place nice. It had to be big. They were going to have a big wedding with lots of people. Hy said a lot of celebrities would be there, like the guy on that TV show. What was his name? Hy had a list of people he wanted to invite. Hy said the more people they invited, the more
perfect
it would be.

Axel placed the last piece of walleye in his mouth and chewed slowly, fixing his green eyes on Joe Crow. He said, “So what you’re saying is, he’s not a friend of yours.”

“That’s right,” said Crow. He watched the way Axel’s chewing made his jaw muscles pulse up his temples, all the way to the top of his bald crown. The old man had a big head, which suited the rest of his body. He must’ve been a monster when he was younger, Crow thought. He still looked like he could eat nails.

Axel put down his fork. “But you don’t much like him.”

“I wouldn’t want to go fishing with him. But if he was in the boat, I wouldn’t jump out.”

“Then how come you introduced him to Carmen? You know how impressionable she is.”

Sam pulled off his baseball cap and whacked Axel across the shoulder with it. “Dammit, Ax, he’s been tryin’ to tell you he didn’t do nothing.”

Axel looked at his shoulder, then back at Crow.

“But she’d never had met him if it wasn’t for you.”

“That’s right,” Crow admitted. “He followed me and Debrowski over to your taco stand, and then he introduced himself. I think he was trying to convert her.”

“Convert her to what?”

“He was involved in some sort of church.”

“He doesn’t strike me as the church-going type.”

“I don’t think it was the church-going type of church. Anyway, Debrowski and I took off. We were trying to get rid of him, actually.”

“You left him with Carmen.”

Crow sighed. “I didn’t know he was going to want to marry her. Besides, what was I supposed to do?”

Axel set his jaw, leaned forward, then rose up to his full height of six feet four inches, his bad knee popping. He said, “I always liked you, Joe. You’re a straight shooter.” He walked to the door and looked out through the screen toward the sunset. “Unlike my future son-in-law, who I wouldn’t trust to piss out the right hole.” Axel opened the door and stepped out onto the porch.

Crow turned to Sam and said in a low voice, “Carmen isn’t his
daughter
, is she?”

Sam shook his head. “Ax is kinda funny on that point. See, him and Sophie, they’re shackin’ up. So in his head, it’s like her kid is his kid.”

“Axel and Sophie are living together?”

“Pretty much.”

Crow smiled. “They must be driving each other nuts.”

Sam lit a cigarette, tipped his chair back, propped his feet on the table next to his plate. “Sometimes I think they already done it, son. She’s what they call a
fate accomplished
.”

Later that night, Axel and Crow sat down to a game of cribbage, a dime a point. Sam had made the cribbage board from the valve cover off an old Ford 289-cubic-inch V-8. The pegs were fashioned from cotter pins. Axel was up five bucks, which was fine with Crow. He’d be better off losing, considering Axel’s touchiness. Sam watched for a while, drank a few more beers, made some unwelcomed suggestions, then tottered off to bed.

“He likes his juice,” Axel said.

Crow nodded in agreement. He had mixed feelings about Sam’s drinking. Sometimes he thought that his father would be better off if he gave it up. Other times, he couldn’t imagine it. Maybe an alcohol-free Sam wouldn’t be Sam anymore. He might become somebody else. As for himself, Crow suspected that he’d been a more interesting person when he’d been using. Funnier and more relaxed. According to the CA and AA people, such thinking was both fallacious and counterproductive. Nevertheless, Crow still had those thoughts, though they didn’t come as often these days. Crow now thought of Sam as the family drinker. As long as Sam drank, Crow didn’t have to. If Sam clambered aboard the water wagon, Crow might have to jump off to make room.

“Never could understand it.” Axel had been nursing the same Budweiser since dinner. “I drank that much beer I’d be pissing all night long.”

“This didn’t used to be an island, you know.”

Axel picked up his newly dealt hand, frowned at his cards. “You ought to be more respectful. He is your old man.”

“Yeah, maybe. He’s old, anyway.”

“All the more reason to be respectful.”

“He ever tell you how he came to buy this place?”

“He said you and him came into some money.”

“Yeah. I was going to buy a cabin up here. Next thing I know, Sam goes and buys one.”

“And you’re complaining ’cause he stole your idea? Seems to me it’s a good deal for you, kid. You hang out for free and when he dies you get your cabin after all.”

“I suppose. But sometimes I wish I had something of my own right now. You know. You’ve got your business at the fair, and Sam’s got his place in St. Paul. Me, I’m living in a rented duplex and playing cards for a living.”

Axel sorted through his cards. “You keep dealing your opponents shitty cards like these, kid, you’ll do fine.”

“The point is, I wish I had my own island or something.” Crow felt awkward now, with Sam gone. He wasn’t sure why he was saying this to Axel.

Axel selected two cards from his hand and threw them into the crib. “Of course, I don’t need good cards to whip your rookie ass. Back in the merchant marine I was cribbage champ three years running.”

Crow added his two cards to the crib. Axel cut the deck and Crow rolled the starter card. A jack. “Two for his heels,” Crow said, moving a cotter pin forward two holes. He hadn’t played cribbage in years, but its strange rules and customs and language had quickly come back to him.

Axel grunted, squinting at the jack with his straight eye. The other eye stayed on Crow, who could not imagine how a guy could make sense of the world with eyes pointing two different directions. Axel emitted another grunt, then laid down a card, calling it out. “Four. Sam and me, back in our heyday we used to make our living playing cards. Best times I ever had.”

“It must’ve got old or you’d still be doing it. Ten.”

“I was the one got old. Fifteen two and a run of three.” Axel pegged five points. “Why don’t you buy yourself a little business? Get yourself a stand out at the fair?”

Crow laughed.

Axel gave him a sharp look. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” said Crow.

Axel stared at him, his eyes catching light from the flyspecked lamp hanging over the table. “Don’t talk out the side of your mouth to me,” he said, his voice sharp.

Crow sat back, startled.

Axel said, “Don’t give me this crap about you want your own island then laugh at my piece of dirt.”

“Sorry!”

Axel was shaking his head. “Jesus Christ, Joe. First you fix up my little girl with that son-of-a-bitch Hilton, then you laugh at what I do.”

Crow laid down a three. “Eighteen and a run of four. And I told you, I didn’t ‘fix them up.’”

Axel frowned as Crow pegged four. “Whatever. Look, I believe you when you say you didn’t do it on purpose. Everybody makes mistakes. When I was your age I did some pretty dumb-ass things myself. Just don’t treat me like I’m an old cocker doesn’t know what’s what. I don’t need you walking on my eggs.”