The Risk Pool (23 page)

I freely confess that my fastidiousness about the condiment jars was unwarranted. I was myself a grubby boy who had to be reminded about washing my hands before coming to the table, and it was my father who reminded me. I had been far cleaner when I had lived with my mother and eaten at the long table of the old Monsignor, but since coming to live with my father I had backslid
badly in the area of personal hygiene. Since I ate alone much of the time, or with people it was pretty hard to offend at the Mohawk Grill, I had become a social liability. In our apartment I had indulged many bad habits that my mother would have blanched at. I drank milk from the carton, ate pepperoni in bed and fell asleep sticky. My father never objected to these practices at home, but if he happened to notice anything particularly foul about me in public, he would hold it up to considerable humor and ridicule, blaming my condition on lax maternal training. More than once the clients of the Mohawk Grill were invited to inspect my caked fingernails. And while comparisons to most of Harry’s regulars weren’t necessarily invidious, my father was right. I was frequently revolting.

Which makes my squeamishness about his finger in the olive jar that much more absurd, my father being himself a brutal hand scrubber. He bought coarse, gravelly Lava soap for the apartment and required Eileen to have a bar on hand for him at her house as well, though I don’t believe he advocated it for her personal use. Sometimes, in addition to sandpapering his own knuckles and palms, he’d do mine as well so I’d “know what it felt like to be clean, for once.” By “clean” he apparently meant “raw.” No doubt the Lava got his hands clean, but it made no difference in the appearance of his thumb and forefinger, and try as I might, I couldn’t shake the idea that once his black digit invaded an olive jar, the juices therein were tinged a subtle shade darker.

By the time Eileen began to bring hot food to the table it seemed to me that breakage was inevitable. The jars of pickles and olives were never cleared away, seldom even consolidated sensibly. To the center of the tiny table were added each night, first, a huge bowl of mashed potatoes and an oblong platter of meat, then, at the outer edges of the table a bowl of vegetables and basket of rolls, a dish of fruit or applesauce. By the time Eileen was finished bringing food, it was possible for me to knock something off her end of the table by nudging something at my end by slender centimeters. To make matters worse, we passed things, setting off chain reactions. Lifting the platter of roast pork would upset the bowl of green beans, which someone would try to save, his elbow sending the big bottle of Thousand Island dressing to the floor. In this way, the person who appeared to have made the mess seldom actually
caused
it, but was rather trying to prevent another calamity altogether, the threat of which he
alone perceived. My father and I ate dinner with the Littlers at least once a week, and I can remember no single meal free of casualties, though what got shattered varied from an old, nearly empty bottle of maraschino cherries (what could
it
have been doing there amid the roast pork, mashed potatoes, canned asparagus, and Parker House rolls?) to a valued fancy casserole dish said to have come down to Eileen all the way from the venerable Myrtle Littler herself.

Though I was just a kid, it was obvious to me that our attempts to wedge ourselves into Eileen’s little house were not working and that, to borrow my father’s phrase, some fucking thing had to give, but I was the only one who saw it that way. I remember Eileen as a better than average cook, and I’m confident when I say I was the only one unable to enjoy a single morsel at that table.

So. What follows may have happened that same evening when Drew lifted his cycle out of the snowbank and whistled my father’s broken antenna out into the woods. Or it may have been a month later, with several such meals as the one depicted above intervening. Since neither Drew nor my father ever forgot a single grievance, it probably doesn’t matter. What my father had done and what Drew had done would have been as fresh to them a month later as if it had happened moments before. In any case, the episode begins in my memory with Drew spearing a roast with his mother’s silver serving fork.

God help me, I had to watch him.

I didn’t want to, because that’s what my father was doing. I tried to appear occupied by taking some mashed potatoes, arranging them in one corner of the plate, flattening them out with the back of my fork, depressing a cavity in the center for gravy, then spooning some green beans next to them. All of this to mark time while Drew, who was first, as usual, at the meat platter, built a huge mound, one slice at a time while the rest of us waited for him to finish.

At the time I thought he must be oblivious to us, or at least to my father, who was watching him with an air of quiet homicidal menace, but I’ve since changed my mind. The opposite hypothesis makes far more sense—that Drew Littler was perfectly aware of my father and of himself. With such a large fork, he could easily have removed half the meat from the platter with one forceful thrust. Instead, he made a point of his hoggishness, taking each slice singly so there could be no mistaking his intent, by arranging
each slice artfully, by not surrendering the silver fork until he was good and ready. When he finally did surrender it, he turned his attention to the gravy boat, which he emptied over the mound of gray beef.

“Mind your own business,” Eileen said to my father, who looked ready to spontaneously combust. “There’s plenty more.”

She pushed back her chair and took the empty gravy boat with her. I could tell that she too was miffed with her son’s behavior, but she never publicly took my father’s side in matters of conflict.

My father helped Eileen to some of what little remained of the roast, then me, then himself, leaving one thin slice in the center of the big platter. For a vigorous man, my father hadn’t a large appetite, and the portion he took for himself was comically small, a pointed contrast to Drew’s heaped plate.

Eileen returned with the gravy boat and we ate. My stomach had shrunk to pellet size and I’d have given a lot to be able to return to the platter some of the roast my father had given me, because I could see where we were headed with that one remaining slice of beef. Each mouthful was a struggle.

Drew had no such difficulty. With his steak knife he sliced through several layers of meat at a time and raised them, dripping gravy, to his mouth. He never changed hands with his fork or set his knife down. He seemed almost not to chew. His Adam’s apple bobbed once and the food was gone. We all watched, my father openly, Eileen and I surreptitiously, engaging each other in small talk, trying in vain to draw my father into it, to disturb his focus, but all the while adopting that focus ourselves. There was no point in trying to draw Drew into any conversation while there was food around, and in the end the talk died.

Drew ate.

In steady, workmanlike fashion he devoured what was before him without looking up from his plate, exhibiting the same concentration he used under the weighted bar in the garage. My father ate much more slowly and I knew why. It was a matter of timing. He did not want to be finished before the boy. He was working it so the two of them would swallow that last bite of roast at exactly the same time, with just the one remaining slice of meat between them in the center of the table. I doubt Eileen saw the strategy of it or she’d have either taken the slice of meat herself or gone to carve more, but I’m quite sure Drew knew where they
were headed, knew it without having to look up, just as he knew my father was trying to shame him.

He must have understood all this, because Drew Littler couldn’t have
wanted
that last slice of beef. He just had to have it. I was sure of that as I watched the blue vein in his forehead work over that last mouthful of food. And when he reached, I saw that my father was holding his own fork like an ice-pick, tines down. At first, I thought he intended to stab the back of the boy’s hand. Instead the fork pierced the meat, pinning it to the platter so that Drew’s came away clean. Then, suddenly, it was on my father’s plate.

I thought for a second I would wet my pants.

“There,” Eileen said. “Are you happy now, you two children?”

My father kneed me under the table. “You gonna let her call you names?”

“Sure,” I said.

“That’s where you’re smart, unlike some people,” my father said.

“Some people are smarter than you think,” Drew said.

“I doubt it,” my father said. He relit a cigarette he’d extinguished at the start of the meal. Then, after a thoughtful drag, he put it out again in the center of the still untouched slice of beef.

“You think it’s smart to waste good food,” Eileen said, getting up to clear away the dishes. “That’s your idea of smart?”

My father ignored her. “You enjoy your dinner?” he asked me.

I said I did.

“How about you?” he asked Drew.

“It was all right,” the boy said.

“Just all right.”

“The potatoes were lumpy,” he said.

“Just all right,” my father repeated. “I thought it was a very good dinner, myself. Of course, that’s just me. But it was the best meal I’ve had in a long time. Maybe if you had to work for a meal, you’d appreciate it more.”

“Potatoes either got lumps or they don’t.”

“Stop it, the two of you,” Eileen warned, and she looked to me like she meant business.

“I tell you what,” my father said. “Just to be nice to your mother and show a little appreciation, you and I will do the dishes. Your mother can go in and watch TV. Relax.”

“Get
him
to help,” Drew said, indicating me.

“He can help too.”

“I’ll help,” I agreed. I would have stood up and started right in if I could.

“I got someplace to go,” Drew said.

“I tell you what. Go later,” my father said. “People won’t mind if you’re late. Trust me.”

“I’ll tell
you
what,” the boy said. Then he cleared a place in the center of the dinette large enough to plant his big elbow. “Loser washes.”

“Enough,” Eileen said. “In a minute everything’s going to be broken, and guess who’ll get to clean up the mess.”

My father put his elbow next to Drew’s, but they didn’t lock hands immediately. “You better move those bottles,” my father said. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Where I was sitting, I figured to get the worst of it. Drew had an arm like a leg, and when he slammed my father’s into the table, I’d get the gravy boat and the dregs of the green beans for sure. It took me a split second to prepare for this and even less for my father to slam the back of Drew Littler’s hand onto his mother’s plate, flipping it into the air like a Tiddly-Wink. The boy let out a sharp howl as the chair went out from under him and he disappeared onto his back beneath the table. He never hit the floor though, because my father never let go of his hand, which stayed pinned right where it had been slammed. Drew looked to me liked he’d have given a good deal to just fall, but he couldn’t. Like a big, excited bug, he tried desperately to right himself. His feet had become entangled in the capsized chair and his free hand frantically climbed the smooth wall in search of something to grab on to. With all that weight on his pinned forearm, it was a miracle it didn’t snap, especially the way the boy continued to thrash, kicking the fallen chair violently, but ineffectually, since with every blow it rebounded off the wall and back on top of his feet to be kicked again.

“You let go, Sammy, you fucker!” Drew bellowed, the blue vein in his forehead wriggling frantically. “So help me, I’ll break it!”

It took me a moment to realize the unusual nature of this threat—that it was his own arm he was threatening to break. And while its obvious sincerity scared the hell out of me, its comic aspect did not escape my father, who looked willing to risk it. I think it was the knowledge that if the arm broke he’d eaten his
last dinner at Eileen’s that finally caused him to let her son drop. And from the frozen expression on her face, I’d have sworn his decision came too late.

Drew no sooner hit the floor than he was back on his feet again, and I thought there would be blood now for sure, but here again I was mistaken. Drew looked like he was going to attack, but my father did not get to his feet, and something about the way he just sat there so calmly prevented the boy, and when he saw my father lean back against the wall it was suddenly all over. He grabbed the arm my father had pinned to the table top and sank to his knees. “I wasn’t ready, Sammy, you cheating son of a bitch, you cocksucker,” he wailed.

“No,” my father admitted, “and twenty years from now you still won’t be. That’s your problem.”

Drew was sobbing now, but his fury had leaked away almost instantly. “I’m getting stronger every day, Sammy. I am. Every day. My day’s coming, Sammy, you shithead.”

My father snorted at the idea, but the boy neither heard, nor reacted. I could tell from the lack of focus in his eyes that he was talking inwardly, trying to pump himself up again, not allowing himself to hit bottom, like a boxer talking rematch before his handlers could even stop the bleeding.

“Be
my
day then. My day,” he said. “All you sons of bitches.
My
day.”

He was on his knees now, rocking, his wounded arm tucked in to his middle, rocking there in the middle of the broken glass and pickle juice.

“Good,” my father said, winking at me, his unwilling accomplice. “We’ll call it Dummy Day. We’ll crown you king, Zero.”

At his worst, no human being is attractive, and that day we’d all seen Drew at his worst, raging out of control, bent on destruction, even self-destruction. But most times he was not a bad sort, and he wasn’t nearly as dumb as my father and his teachers down through the years had concluded.

He had, in fact, something rather like a personal philosophy of life, and unless I am mistaken, I am the only person he ever discussed it with, including his mother. In fact, he recruited me, along with another dubious fellow named Willie Heinz, to become members of an organization to implement his philosophy, an organization whose membership never did exceed three, though we had great hopes of expanding into a worldwide network. The only goal of our organization was to abuse rich people, all of whom Drew Littler hated with a white-hot passion. The “Money People” he called them, the people who thought they were too good, who considered themselves above the rest. According to Drew, who explained all this one afternoon as I spotted for him in the garage, it was the fault of the people who had money that those who hadn’t any lived difficult lives, a notion he considered original to himself. Though five years older than I, Drew was only two grades ahead of me just then, having been held back, once due to a prolonged childhood illness, the other two times as the result of academic failure. When he turned eighteen that May, he intended to drop out and go to work in a garage that serviced motorcycles.