The Good Father (16 page)

“Well,” said Ted, “I wouldn’t say Iowa’s the world, but we like it.”

They gave him an old bike that was rusting in the barn. He cleaned it up, bought a new seat and new tires. He would ride it for an hour every morning before work, racing down dirt roads, watching the sun come up. He was getting the lay of the land, figuring out his place. On weekends he would pick a direction and bike all day, riding north until lunchtime, then turning around and heading back. The ten pounds he’d put on in college eating sugary cereals and drinking beer melted off. The muscles of his thighs and calves started pressing against the legs of his jeans. Ten-hour days hauling feed sacks was giving mass and definition to his back and arms.

One night he and the Mexicans went into town for a beer. They drove to Ugly’s Saloon, a bar near the university. One of the Mexicans had landed himself a college girl, Mabel. She was fat with frizzy hair, but she had a nice laugh and Jorge said she gave great head. The four Mexicans and Danny sat in a corner booth. They ogled girls and called them names in Spanish. The Mexicans told Danny that if he was ever in Mexico and he wanted to start a fight with a Mexican he should say
Chinga tu madre
. They told him the best place to hide a knife was in your boot. The fat girl showed up with three friends. One of them looked like Olive Oyl from the old Popeye cartoons. They ordered pitchers of watery beer. Jorge put salsa music on the jukebox. Things started to get
rowdy. Danny ended up sitting next to Olive Oyl. She tried to talk to him, but he couldn’t hear a word she was saying.

He went to play some pool and ended up in a showdown with a blowhard from the outdoor rec program at the state college. The guy was a foot taller than Danny and he kept whacking him with his cue when he turned around. The first time he apologized. The second time he knocked the beer out of Danny’s hand. Seconds later the Mexicans were surrounding the guy. Jorge was up in the blowhard’s face. He called him some of the names they’d taught Danny:
maripso, maricón, mariquita
. The blowhard had friends, flat-top yokels from the rugby team. The blowhard asked Danny if he brought his wetbacks with him to the toilet, too. Danny smiled without humor. His heart was racing in a way he’d never felt before. He saw Jorge reaching down for the knife in his boot. The bouncers were almost there, hulking, farm-raised boys from Swisher and North Liberty, pushing through the late-night crowd.

“
Concha de tu madre
,” Danny said, then hit the blowhard in the throat with the heel of his hand.

Later, after the melee that followed, after the bouncers charged in with their ham-hock fists and zero-tolerance policy, they sat on the curb drinking beer out of brown paper bags. Danny spit blood into the gutter. Jorge clapped him on the back. He was one of them now, an honorary Mexican. Danny told them he was probably the only white boy in America who was climbing
down
the social ladder instead of up it. The Mexicans thought that was hysterical.

That night he called Samantha Houston from a pay phone. She was the girl he’d met in Chicago. Why did he call her, a girl he barely knew? Perhaps the unfamiliarity of his surroundings and the distance from everyone he knew conspired to make Danny feel lonely. Or maybe it was the one-two punch of alcohol and violence making him horny. Whatever the reason, it was after midnight. The Mexicans had taken him to a dive bar out near the interstate where they drank cheap tequila and shouted at the soccer game on television. He stood in the back hall near the bathrooms, one finger jammed in his ear, and yelled into the phone.

“I’m in Iowa,” he said.

“Why are you yelling?”

“If you’d said the word ‘Iowa’ to me six months ago I couldn’t have even found it on a map,” he said.

“Who is this again?” she asked. “It’s Danny. Or as I’m known here,
Cabrón
.”

“You know that means ‘asshole,’ right?”

“Does it? Son of a bitch.” He put a hand on the wall to steady himself.

“Listen,” she said. “I can’t talk right now. My boyfriend just went out for cigarettes.”

“Boyfriend,” he said. She had never mentioned a boyfriend. “I mean we had fun, don’t get me wrong, but you don’t even live here. And my boyfriend’s in law school. A girl needs to think ahead.”

“Absolutely,” he said. “I couldn’t agree more.”

The tequila was making the room spin. He said, “Maybe when I’m in Chicago again I’ll look you up.”

“Do me a favor,” she said. “Don’t.”

He went back to the bar. The Mexicans were stomping their feet and shouting. On-screen the Mexican team was running around with their arms in the air. Danny sat on a barstool and bummed a cigarette from a cowboy with one eye. He didn’t even smoke.

He nursed his beer and thought about the things he’d learned in the three weeks he’d been here. He could name six brands of harvesting combines. He knew what tillage meant and how to recognize a chisel plow. He knew the difference between a rock picker and a leveler. He could identify a hoof pick by sight and tell you whether you needed that or a hoof knife, depending on the job. If your horse was agitated he could recommend Quietex paste or powder to calm him. They were real-world things, concrete. College was a place of ideas, of ephemera. Here he’d found details he could hold on to. Here the ground rose up to hit your feet when you walked.

Jorge came over and punched him in the shoulder. He had a bruise on his cheek from where one of the rugby players had elbowed him. He told Danny there was a
puticlub
nearby. For twenty-five dollars he could put his
verga
in the
culo
of a woman. Danny told him he only had eighteen dollars left. Jorge shrugged. He and the others stumbled out to the car, laughing, leaving Danny with the bar bill.

Walking home Danny felt the weight of the stars overhead. It seemed as if light was raining down on him. He stumbled along the shoulder of the road, his body rumbling from the speed of passing trucks. He could
hear the cicadas in the roots of his teeth, that relentless exoskeletal scree. A Bubba in a pickup truck threw a beer can at his head. Danny left the road and navigated through the cornfields. The moon was shielded here. He followed its hazy glow through the claustrophobic press of leafy green stalks. By his calculation he had a mile, maybe two to go until he reached the Kirklands’ house.

How much bigger the world felt now than it had just a few weeks ago. Wide open, like he could go anywhere, do anything.

Something hit him in the face. Something big with legs. He brushed it away, cursing, and was hit again in the belly. He spun around, waving his arms. He had always been afraid of bugs. And now they were everywhere, beating against him, getting caught in his clothes, his hair. He opened his mouth to scream and bit down on something crunchy. Panic filled him. He fell to his knees, vomited, then covered his head with his arms. Giant bugs beat against him, creatures of blind aggression the size of his fist. In the darkness he felt like he was being eaten alive, like each part of him that was hit disappeared into the corn. He rolled around like a man on fire, trying to put out flames that didn’t exist. Finally, after what felt like hours, the assault stopped. He lay panting on the ground. Around him cornstalks rustled in the wind. When Danny stood up he was disoriented. He didn’t know where the road was anymore. He brushed at his hair and clothes, trying to remove every last trace of the plum-size grasshoppers that had attacked him. He was dizzy from the tequila. His jaw hurt from where the blowhard had punched him. It was Saturday. The sun would be up in a few hours.

For the first time he could remember he felt truly happy.

He lay down amid the corn and went to sleep.

Carlos Peña lived in a run-down apartment complex just east of Highland Avenue. There was a soiled mattress leaning against a palm tree near the entrance. Across the street, pit bulls barked behind a chain-link fence. Murray parked his rented SUV out front. We were both in suits, and we sat for a moment looking up at the building.

“It’s moments like these,” said Murray, “that separate the something from the something else.”

We climbed the front steps, examined the tenant list.
PEÑA, C
.,
APARTMENT 4F
. Murray rang the bell. We waited. The door buzzed. Murray pushed it open. There was a kidney-shaped swimming pool in the middle of a concrete courtyard. A lawn chair floated in it.

“The thing about Los Angeles,” said Murray, “is that the defining mood is desperation. It’s a feeling that somewhere, someone else is getting the break you deserve.”

I looked up at the windows. The place was laid out like a motel. There were bicycles chained to railings. The elevator was out, so we climbed to the fourth floor. Murray was huffing by the time we reached the top.

“I bill double for exercise,” he said.

We stopped in front of 4F. Murray tried to peer through the window, but the blinds were closed.

He knocked. The door opened immediately, startling us. Carlos Peña peered out, his right hand hidden behind the door. He was a skinny man with a pockmarked face.

“You cops?” he said.

“I’m a lawyer,” said Murray. “He’s a doctor.”

Carlos thought about this. Then he stepped back and let us in.

“Sorry about the mess,” he said, “my girlfriend breaks stuff when we fight.”

The living room was a wreck. There was glass in the carpet. The coffee table was busted. What looked like the handle of a steak knife was sticking out of the sofa.

“Are you really a doctor?” Carlos asked. I nodded. He lifted his shirt.

“I got this rash,” he said.

The skin around his left hip was swollen and red.

“It looks like a rug burn,” I told him.

He thought about this.

“Oh yeah,” he said, remembering. “Never mind.”

He brushed some plates and magazines off the sofa, gestured for us to sit down. The handle of the steak knife was three inches from my left shoulder. If Carlos attacked us I could grab it and stab him in the stomach.

Murray spent a few moments straightening the creases of his slacks.

“My client,” he said, “is Daniel Allen’s father.”

Carlos looked at me.

“Who’s that?”

“He also goes by the name Carter Allen Cash.”

Carlos smiled.

“The guy who shot the senator.”

“Allegedly,” said Murray. “Allegedly shot.”

“We’ve been informed,” I said, “that you were in Royce Hall when the shooting took place.”

Carlos got up suddenly and went into the bedroom. Murray and I looked at each other.

What do we do?
I mouthed.

He shrugged. I reached over and touched the handle of the steak knife. It was sticky. Carlos came out of the bedroom carrying a box. I quickly lowered my hand. He sat on a gutted Barcalounger, holding the box on his lap.

“My brother had a colostomy bag,” he said.

Neither Murray nor I could think of anything to say to that.

“He stepped on a land mine in Fallujah. They were able to save his legs, but his insides were all fucked up.”

He put the box on the table in front of us.

“The doctors told him he might be able to crap normal again. Maybe in time. After a few surgeries. They gave him hope. So then every day he crapped in a bag he was miserable. He spends his time dreaming of the day when he can sit on the toilet like a man. When he can go back to having those miracle shits that make you feel like you just took a cruise. And he has the surgeries, and he has the therapies. And none of it works. It’s two years later and he’s still crapping in a bag. So one day he takes a gun and blows his brains out. My mom came home, found his skull spread all over the living room. We had him cremated, put his ashes in a box.”

He reached out and taps the box he’d brought in.

“And every day I take this box out and look at it,” he said. “And do you know what I think?”

Murray shook his head. I shook mine.

“Acceptance is the key to happiness,” Carlos said. “If those doctors had told my brother he’d be crapping in a bag for the rest of his life, he would have accepted it. He could have found a way to be happy. But instead they gave him hope. They promised him a better life. And so he spent every day hating the life he had.”

He looked at me. His face had the consistency of a pepperoni pizza.

“Do you understand what I’m telling you?” he said.

“No,” I said, though even as he said it the words were resonating in my head.

“You need to surrender yourself to the truth,” he said. “You won’t be happy until you do.”

“And what truth is that?” I said, my voice cracking.

“That your son is lost to you.
That you don’t know him
. That he’s going to spend the rest of his life in prison. Which might not be a long time.”

“Did you wrestle with my son at Royce Hall?” I asked, my voice hard. “Did he take something from you?”

He smiled.

“Wrestle?” he said. “Did I
wrestle
?”

We looked at each other, unblinking. His smile widened, but there was no happiness in it. No life.

“Tell us about these letters you write,” said Murray.

“What letters?” said Carlos, holding my eye.

“To congressmen, senators.”

“I have opinions,” said Carlos. “Thoughts. I express them. It’s not healthy to keep that stuff inside.”

“These thoughts,” said Murray. “They are sometimes of a threatening nature, are they not?”

“What is that?” said Carlos. “
A threatening nature
? What does that mean?”

“Why did you go to Royce Hall?” Murray asked.

Carlos looked at him.

“There’s nothing for you here,” he said.

“We have a photograph that shows you wearing a white button-down shirt,” I said. “You stood less than ten feet from the stage.”

Carlos stood up.

“I showed you the box,” he said. “Next I’m going to show you the gun.”

Murray stood. He gestured to me. I stood up, too. Together we could take him, couldn’t we? Two against one? A Jewish lawyer and a rheumatologist who’d never hit another person in anger.