Smoke (16 page)

“I shouldn't have gone but I couldn't help myself. She was like a bad habit I couldn't lose. More addictive than any guzzle. Anyway, we hit the Chateau LaSalle first and the Sunnyside after that, both places built close to the water—easy for bootleggers crossing the river to unload. We didn't get involved in all that funny business though, just rolled the dice and ate our fill of pickerel and perch and frogs legs, and we drank. There was always a spotter at the roadhouses anyhow, a quick-witted fellow whose job it was to position himself in a window on the top floor and watch out for us.” Doc John feigns smaller, lighter steps, losing years in the telling, almost tiptoeing as if he were a sneak. “So there we were, prowling in the early hours at the most popular gig around—the Edgewater Thomas Inn—owned and run by Bertha Thomas. Bertha was a tough-talking hostess, the kind of woman who was full of personality, as we used to say. Meaning she could stand up to any man and did. She was fond of my girl; they became fast friends.

“The Edgewater had a gingerbread entrance. I remember that. Mahogany-panelled walls. It had a buzzer bar, connected to other taverns with an alarm system that warned of police raids. Upstairs you'd push open a storeroom wall and there we'd be, taking in a razzmatazz jazz band or doing the Charleston, the room cloudy with Omar cigarette smoke and piled high with men in floppy tweed caps. But there was a secret passage running behind the dance hall, and it led to a private meeting room for Bertha and her suppliers. The shelves throughout the place were rigged to roll away, if need be, hiding liquor in the walls or sending it sliding down a chute into a wine cellar. Bertha could replace those shelves with soda faster than you could swallow what was left in your mouth. Lots of things—and people—went undercover at the Edgewater.”

“Did you kiss her?”

“Bertha? No.”

“Your girl I mean.”

“You sure are single-minded.” The doctor chuckles, clears his throat. “She wasn't made for the life and wanted out, see. Said so. And as we stood in some back room under the cool blue lights I started imagining that we could make a go of it somewhere else, together. ‘You want to come away with me?' I asked her. ‘Would you leave if I arrange it?' She grabbed my hand and pinned me to her. ‘What I want is to try something different tonight.' The bulb was on the blink so only the flicker of her eyes reached me. We stood like that, face to face for a long while, her body pressing up flat to mine so that I couldn't hardly tell us apart. I knew what she wanted but something dangerous curdled up inside me like bad milk so I shoved her harder than I meant to.”

“You hit a woman!”

“I didn't hit her. I said I shoved her … away from me.… She teetered back against the wall. I ran over to help her up of course.”

“Course. Did she slap you? Threaten to call for her father?”

“It wasn't like that. It was … different.
I
was different then.”

“How so?”

“You know how you were before the fire?”

“Normal.”

The doctor shakes his head. “Ugly word. Let's say regular. Commonplace. You were Buster but not the same fellow as now, right? Now you're … you're …”

“A suspect.”

Doc John swats the boy. “An exception. And I was an exception too. I was … not exactly the proper fellow you see standing here before you today. I guess you could say I was a lost soul. But my girl was used to living in the shadows and finding the very heart of a person there. And, she was all for breaking rules. She would've liked you just fine.” The doctor holds one gloved hand out before him as though he can feel now what he felt long ago. “I offered her my hand and she took it and on her way to her feet she said, ‘Not what you expected huh?' No words scratched out because it was true—I hadn't expected her to be so bold. I liked her plenty but us being who we were then, I never would've made a move like that. What if I'd misread her interest? What if someone saw?” He drops his hand to his side. “Nothing's ever what we expect it to be, son—it bears remembering time to time. Nothing ever is.” He turns to face the boy. “After that I didn't resist any more; she smoothed out the skirt of her dress, slipped her hand around the back of my neck and planted one on me.”

“I knew it! I knew you kissed her. Did Axler spot you there?”

“No, not there.” Doc John adjusts his hat. “It was more than an hour later when we made our way downstairs. The Edgewater was rowdy as ever with customers still turning up. I paid Bertha and we said our goodbyes. Outside the air was thick with factory pollution. The river winked at us like it had black diamonds for eyes. We walked towards it down the alley, holding hands.
That's
when. Axler and a couple of goons were on their way inside.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Right. Axler's face was solid marble, lost all its expression, and his eyes turned to slits of dirty ice. ‘What the hell are you doing here!' he shouted at my girl. ‘You look like a tramp. And who's this …?' He looked me up and down, thought there was something familiar but couldn't place it. I let go of her hand then. ‘My friend,' she stammered, as if she could introduce me like that and everything would be all right. Axler laughed. Laughed like he'd never heard anything so ridiculous. His little girl, out with the likes of me.”

“But you're a swell guy.”

“Hmm. Axler didn't exactly see it that way.”

“If she liked you—”

“She did. And like I said, I was fond of her too.”

“Then why not stick up for yourself?”

Doc John grips his cane more tightly, feels how unyielding the wood is. “Sometimes you fight and other times you give people what they expect. I've always known which is which.”

“He must've clobbered you? He must have let you have it.” “Wanted to, oh I could mark it in his eyes. You know how it was with those Purples. But nobody acted before getting the signal from a Bernstein and none of them were there, so Axler raved on. ‘Think you can run around putting your dirty paws all over my daughter, do you?' He stepped so close that I could smell the stink of bourbon twist up between us like a mad dog. ‘She don't know what she wants unless I tell her. Got that?' Then he turned and grabbed her by one arm, slapped her hard across the face. His ring split her lip. ‘You want to act like a whore?' he shouted in her face. ‘Let's see what you're worth!' He ripped the front of her dress, exposing her undergarments. I thought he was going to kill her.”

“What did you do?”

“Almost swallowed my tongue. I was in a cold sweat but Axler's men were watching me. I emptied my pockets and started to scribble a promissory note in the amount of my entire bank account. ‘Here,' I said. ‘This is all I've got and it's yours, every penny. Just let her go.' Axler grabbed the paper and stuffed it in his pocket. ‘She's not going anywhere.”

“Did you at least kiss her goodbye?”

“Kiss her again. Are you even listening?” Doc John gives a silent, wheezy laugh, like a car turning over. “Heck I didn't get close enough to touch her. Axler spat in my face and dragged her away, kicking and screaming. Last I saw she was down the alley being shoved, head first, into the passenger side of her father's sedan.”

“You're making this up. The real Mo Axler would've shot you on the spot.”

Doc John's eyes gaze into the distance blank and horrified, at something only he can see. “The next thing I knew the two Purple Gang strongmen turned on me. One thug reached into the trunk of his car and I heard a loud
crack!
The splintering sound of wood smashing pavement. I spun around, dropped my keys. Reached down to pick them up. Before there was time to think both men came at me with baseball bats, their faces friendly—their voices spitting mean. One restrained me while the other slammed my ribs. ‘I know what you need,' he said. ‘Let me have a go.' Their laughter and jeering cut the air like a buzz saw.” Doc John shakes his head as if to fling off the memory. “Bertha must've heard the commotion because she flicked the tavern porch lights on and off, and both goons let go and turned to see who was watching. That's when I bolted. I ran as if hell had caught fire in my pants.”

“What about the girl?”

“I don't know.” Doc John straightens his glasses. He notices his young friend watching him, wet lips parted in anticipation. He wants to know more, the whole story, and for the first time in years Doc John wants to share it. He aches to share it before it's too late. Before he's gone and the past is gone with him. “There's something I haven't told—” Buster's eyes are curious. Too curious. Possibly the eyes of a squealer.

“Uh-huh?”

That gang was amoral, the doctor thinks. They were deviant. They were also proof of another way to live—a tainted, off-colour menace that was recognized. Michigan and those early years represent a time in his life he's tried to forget and can't, because you can't live long enough to forget when you were first introduced to yourself. But that's a story he must hold on to until the very end.

“It's nothing,” he says.

“C'mon. What've you got to hide, Doc?”

“Sometimes I glimpse her, that's all. When I close my eyes.”

“You do?”

“Sure. It's like that with some folks; they never fully leave you. But I wouldn't want to meet up with her again. Going backwards can feel worse than moving on and seeing that girl again face to face would surely be the death of me.”

“You never saw her again?”

“That's right. You never know when the last time you'll see someone will be. We come into the world a howl but we often depart as seamless as vapour. So I ran, and I kept right on running until she was a distant smudge in my mind's eye. You don't approve by the way you're looking at me, I can tell. But survival's a racket, same as any other, and running got me here didn't it?
Here
. Nothing to be ashamed of in that.”

Buster nods, tries his best to accept the prospect of his own surrender and his failure to run away. When he speaks again he can barely push the words out.

“I still dream about my accident.”

“That right?” The doctor is surprised. He'd thought that by now it would have played over and over in the boy's mind and lost its potency.

“Yeah, only sometimes I get out safe. When I wake I'm myself again, without the scars. Then I remember what really happened.”

“There's no mercy in a memory is there?”

“Hmmm.”

“I know. By the time I stopped at my Model T that night, scrambled with the keys and jumped inside, I'd emptied my bladder and it was running down my legs, soaking the seat.”

“Did you know the thugs?”

“Course I did. I dug a bullet out of the one fellow's chest not long before, as a matter of fact. Saved his ungrateful life.”

“So who was it, Ruthless Eddie? Another lackey?”

Doc John raises a gloved finger to his lips, pinches his fingers and turns them as if locking his mouth and throwing away the key.

“Ah ah ah, never tell, son. The man who leaks no secret—”

“Is a man of honour. I know. You've told me a million times. But are you
sure
you're not making this one up?”

“What do you think? Exceptions are dangerous.”

“I guess. But I still don't follow. It makes no sense. If the girl liked you, I mean? Was she like her dad said, a renter, is that it? A Bedroom Betty?”

“No, no. She was a lady of the first order.”

“Like Mrs. Gray.”

Doc John peers over his shoulder. “Yes, like Mrs. Gray.” He adjusts his coat. “Here's my point: forget about the rumours. Forget thinking your problem is other people. Problems like yours and mine are best solved here.” He thumps his chest over top of his heart with one gloved hand. “And here.” Now he taps on his temples with one finger.

“Easy for you to say,” Buster scoffs. “It all worked out for you.”

“Are you kidding? I've never been able to show my face again.”

“Really? You've
never
gone back?”

“It was a long time ago.”

Buster thinks about all of this, about how everything can change in a split second, about how it's the things we don't plan that lead us farther away from our old lives than we ever thought possible. He tugs on the old man's sleeve.

“Tell me the truth, Doc. Will I ever be normal again?”

“The truth?” The doctor faces him. “Truth is merely wounded fact, son. Wounded fact.”

H
AZEL JOHNSON WAVES FRANTICALLY
from inside the hardware store and Doc John and Buster step onto the porch. The bell over the door chimes and the radio is playing a tidal wave of a Latin riff when the doctor enters. “Is there a problem?”

Hazel is now behind the counter waving a letter in the air. A scrapbook is open and she's ready to place the letter next to a newspaper clipping. “You won't believe it.” She is unable to contain herself. “Walter! Judy. This'll be the best parade ever. Just wait until I tell Alice. Oh, I almost forgot in all the excitement.”

“What's going on?” Buster pretends to do a drum roll on his thighs. Hazel doesn't meet his eyes. His face reminds her of those dried apple dolls she makes to sell at church bazaars. “This letter right here is from none other than our own Barbara Ann Scott.”

“The skater?”

“One and only. I wrote her months ago. Judy, you remember?” Jelly Bean sits on a stool at the end of the counter doodling on a pad of paper, imagining angels without wings and outlining the store window she will paint later on. She notices Buster and swings one leg over the other. “Uh-huh.”

“Well, who would have thought that a famous star like Barbara Ann would take the time to respond to fan letters but here you have it.” Hazel thrusts the letter up before Doc John's face. “Isn't her penmanship simply exquisite? Mine wasn't any letter, you know? I wrote specifically to invite her to our sesquicentennial.”