Carmen told her mom, see? He was not only reliable, he was funny. Lenore said, “How come I keep asking, but you never do my handwriting?” The reason was because Carmen knew her mom’s hand and had not seen anything good to say about it. Her uneven spaces and lack of style values showed indecision plus an inability to think clearly. She couldn’t tell her mom that, because her wide-spaced t stem showed she was easily hurt and would take offense.
Carmen and Wayne were married in Port Huron at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in May 1968. They moved into a two-bedroom ranch in Sterling Heights and Matthew was born the following March.
Within the next few years Carmen had a series of miscarriages due to what the doctor called endometriosis and finally had to have a hysterectomy. She was quiet for months, let her housework slip and watched TV thinking about the two boys and two girls she and Wayne had talked about having. Wayne told her Matthew was a handful and a half, that boy was plenty. Twice during her depression Wayne drove the three of them to Florida to see Carmen’s dad. Maybe getting out helped a little.
But Carmen brought herself back to life. She remembered her book on handwriting analysis saying that if you weren’t happy or lacked confidence in yourself you should examine your handwriting, paying particular attention to the way you wrote the personal pronoun I. As soon as Carmen got into it she said, “Holy shit.” Her handwriting was okay for the most part, but there was more of a backward slant to it now, it was light, weak, and look at the way she was making her I, like a small 2. That became the starting point, changing her capital I to a printed letter with no frills, like an l; that showed insight, an ability to analyze her own feelings. She devised a clear, straight up-and-down script, one that said she lived in the present, was self-reliant, somewhat reserved, a person whose intellect and reasoning power influenced emotions. It seemed so natural to write this way, making that I a bit taller as she practiced, keeping her letters squarely in the center of her Emotional Expression chart, that finally she had the confidence to write in her new script, “What are you moping around for? Get up off your butt and do something.”
Her mom retired from Michigan Bell but couldn’t stay away from the telephone. She’d call Carmen every day to give her recipes Carmen never used, or to talk about the weather in detail, the arrogance of doctors who made her wait knowing she was suffering excruciating back pain, eventually getting around to Wayne. “What time did the man of the house get home last night? If it was before seven you’re lucky, depending how you look at it. If you don’t mind that booze on his breath when he comes in and gives you a kiss then you’re different than I am, I won’t say another word.”
Wayne said, “You’d have to wire her jaw shut.”
He knew Lenore was talkative without ever having seen the way she left her vowels open at the top when she wrote. Her small d and g also.
Wayne would list different reasons why ironworkers stopped off after. It was too goddamn noisy to talk on the job and it sure wasn’t anyplace to get in an argument. Raising iron, it was best to extend a certain amount of courtesy to others and settle any differences you have on the ground. Also, structural work was stressful; you come down off a job you needed to unwind. Like walking a horse after a race.
Yeah, but why couldn’t he unwind at home? Carmen said she’d walk with him. Then sit down and have a beer and he could help Matthew with his homework for a change. Wayne said what was wrong with eating a little later? Carmen said yeah, eight or nine being the fashionable hour to dine in Sterling Heights.
She didn’t pout, whine or nag him. What Carmen did, once Matthew was in junior high, busy with sports after school, she got a job at Warren Truck Assembly on the chassis line. Wayne said if it was what she felt like doing, fine. What he said when she got home later than he did, Wayne in the kitchen frying hamburger for their starving boy, was, “What happened, you have car trouble?”
Carmen said, “I work a whole shift with that air wrench, eight hours bolting on drag links and steering arms in all that noise, I need to unwind after.”
Wayne said, “See? If you feel that way working on the line, imagine coming off a structure after ten hours.”
Carmen said, “I like to be with you.” She did, he was a nice guy and she loved him. What he drank never changed his personality, it made him horny if anything. “Isn’t there something we can do together?”
Wayne said, “Outside of visit your mom and pretend we’re as dumb as she is?”
“I mean some kind of work or business we could both get into,” Carmen said, “and be together more.”
“Wear matching outfits,” Wayne said, “and enter ballroom-dancing contests. Tell me what you want.”
“I don’t know, but it isn’t doing laundry and dusting and making pies. I don’t even know how to make pies.”
“I noticed that.”
“And I don’t care to learn, either.”
“You’re sorry now you didn’t become a computer programmer.”
“That must be it,” Carmen said. “I love machines that talk back to you, cars that tell you the door isn’t closed or you don’t have your seat belt on.”
“You want to be independent. Like me.”
Carmen said, “You guys are individualists all doing the same thing. Remember hippies? You’re like hippies only you work.” Wayne had to think about that one. She said, “I could stay at Warren Truck and work on the line. I think I can do anything I put my mind to. I could even go to apprentice school and become an ironworker.” She said, “You have women now—how does that sound to you?” knowing it would embarrass him, just the idea of it.
“We have one woman journeyman, I mean journey-person, and a half dozen apprentices out of twenty-two hundred in the local.” He told her you had to be a certain type to be an ironworker, man or woman. “You’re too sweet and nice and . . . girlish.”
She said, “Thanks a lot.”
They moved into the farmhouse and it kept her busy, Carmen doing more of the fixing up than Wayne, who was handier with a thirty-five-pound impact wrench than a hammer and saw. He borrowed a tractor with a brush-hog twice a year to keep the field cut and have a clear view of the tree line. Carmen, thinking of moneymaking ideas, got him to clean out the chickenhouse, believing someday it could be made into a bed-and-breakfast place; cater to duck hunters and boaters who came up from Detroit and got too smashed to drive home. Wayne said, “We’ll call it the Chickenshit Inn. I never seen so much chickenshit in my life as out there.” Carmen planted a vegetable garden in the backyard. Every spring Wayne put in a row of corn out by the woods and let the deer help themselves to it in August.
It wasn’t until Matthew left for the navy in January, their fifth year in the farmhouse, that Carmen took the real estate course at Macomb County Community College and went to work for Nelson Davies Realty. Wayne said if it made her happy, fine. She sold her first house in April. Wayne took her to Henry’s for dinner and listened to her tell how she’d closed the deal, Carmen glowing, excited, telling him what a wonderful feeling it was, like being your own boss. By June Carmen was offering the idea that real estate was the kind of thing they could maybe even do together, work as a team; it’d be fun. Wayne said he could see himself going back to school, Jesus. By August Carmen had him looking into the future, playing with the idea of eventually starting their own company. Wayne said, paperwork being so much fun. Now it was October and Carmen had Wayne at least agreeing to talk to Nelson Davies, a man who’d made millions in the business and wasn’t much older than Wayne. Wayne said he could hardly wait.
Carmen got home first and parked in the garage. A few minutes later, in the kitchen putting groceries away, she looked outside and saw Wayne’s pickup in the drive. It was half past six, getting dark. Wayne had been coming home earlier since Matthew left. Carmen went out to the porch. She was wearing her “closing suit,” a tailored navy; it was lightweight and she folded her arms against the evening chill in the air. Wayne was lifting fat paper sacks from the picku
p bed, bringing four of them over to the porch steps.
“Sweet Feed,” Wayne said, looking up at Carmen on the porch. “It’s corn and oats, but that’s what they call it.”
“I thought you meant me.”
“You’re tastier’n corn and oats. How’d it go?”
“I closed on a three-bedroom in Wildwood.”
“That’s the way.”
Wayne was wearing his IRONWORKERS BUILD AMERICA jacket. Carmen watched him turn to the truck, lift out a twenty-five-pound block of salt and place it on the grass next to the gravel drive. As Wayne straightened he said, “I saw Walter out on the road. He showed me whitetail tracks going all the way across his seeding to the state land.”
Walter, their neighbor, grew sod for suburban lawns. Carmen would think it was a strange way to make a living, watching grass grow.
Wayne came over to the steps with two more bags of Sweet Feed. “They love this stuff.”
“They think what a nice guy you are,” Carmen said. “Then you shoot them.”
“You don’t want to eat live venison,” Wayne said. “They’re hard to hold, and it’s not good for your digestion.” He stepped over to the truck, reached into the cab window and came out with paper sacks he handed up to Carmen. “This goes in the house.” She could tell from the weight what was inside. Boxes of 12-gauge hollow-point slugs.
“I don’t see how you can shoot them.”
“I can’t, less I get within fifty yards. Not with a slug barrel.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I don’t see them as little Walt Disney creatures,” Wayne said, rolling up the cab window. “That’s the difference. You shoot some in the fall or they starve in the winter. Look at it that way.”
This was an annual exchange, Carmen giving her view without making a moral issue of it; Wayne seeing deer as meat, now and then citing a fact of ecology. Carmen raised her face as he came up on the porch. They kissed on the mouth, taking their time, and let their eyes hold a moment or so after. Twenty years and it was still good. She asked him how his job was going.
“I’m finished at Standard Federal. They want to put me on the detail gang, plumbing up, I said no way, I’m a connector, I’m not doing any tit work.”
“You didn’t.”
“I told ’em that—I want to take a few days off.”
“Good.”
“I’m gonna look at another job next week.” He told her there was a new basketball arena going up in Auburn Hills, fairly close by, except it was all precast, so he’d most likely go to work on the One-Fifty Jefferson project in Detroit, he believed was to be a hotel, thirty-two levels. He said he’d rather drive all the way downtown to a story job than work precast across the street. He said, “Lionel’s coming by tomorrow, we’re gonna look for antler scrapings.”
Carmen said, “Wayne?”
He moved past her and was holding the door open. “Let’s have a cold one. What do you say?”
“You promised you’d see Nelson tomorrow.”
“I did?”
“Come on, now don’t pull that.”
“I forgot, that’s all. What time?”
“Two o’clock.”
“That’s fine, Lionel’s not coming till four. He’s gonna take a look, see if there’s any white oak out there. I read that deer eat white-oak acorns like potato chips. They can’t stop eating them. I know there’s plenty of red oak.”
Carmen placed the sack of shells on the kitchen counter. Wayne got two cans of beer from the refrigerator, popped them open and handed her one. “You look nice. I’d buy a house off you even if I already had one.”
Carmen said, “You’re really going to talk to Nelson?”
“I can’t wait. You know how I love working for assholes.”
“Wayne, try. Okay?”
“You’re gonna be there, aren’t you?”
“I’ll be in the office. What’re you going to wear?”
“I don’t know—I have to get dressed up?”
“I think you should wear a suit.”
Wayne stepped to the counter, put his beer down and opened the sack. “I could. Or my sport coat.”
“And a tie?”
Wayne said, “I’ll wear a tie if you want,” taking the boxes of shotgun slugs from the sack. “I’m trying three-inch magnums this year. Lionel says they’ll ‘bull the brush,’ nothing like it out to fifty yards. Hit a buck you hear it slap home.”
Carmen said, “Wayne?”
“What?”
“How you look is important. The impression you make.”
He paused. She could see his mind still out in the woods for a moment. He took a sip of beer, the can almost hidden in his big hand, his wedding band, a speck of gold, catching light from the window. She would see him in the bathroom shaving, a pair of skimpy briefs low on his hard body and would think, My God, he’s mine. She wished she could take back what she’d said. He didn’t have to try to impress anybody.
“Wear what you want,” Carmen said, “be comfortable.”
“I wear my blue suit,” Wayne said, “and you wear yours, will that impress him?”
“Forget I said that, okay?”
Wayne sipped his beer, staring at her. He seemed to grin. “I like that short skirt on you. I bet Nelson does too.”
“If he does,” Carmen said, “it’s because when hemlines go up, so does the stock market. Nobody knows why. Then interest rates go down and we sell more homes.”
“Like the moon and the tides,” Wayne said, “is that it? Or the seasons of the year. Did you know hunting season comes when the does are in heat?” He reached into the sack again and took out a small plastic bottle fixed to a display card. “The bucks know it. They’re ready, so you use some of this. Foggy Mountain ‘Hot’ Doe Buck Lure.” He held it for Carmen to see, then read from the card. “ ‘A secret blend with pure urine collected from live doe deer during the hottest hours of the estrus cycle.’ “
“You’re kidding,” Carmen said. “You put that on you?”
“You can, or sprinkle it around your blind. The buck smells it, he goes, ‘Man, I’m gonna get laid,’ and comes tearing through the woods. . . . I was thinking,” Wayne said, “if we could invent something like this for the real estate business . . . You know what I mean? Something you sprinkle on a house and all these buyers come running? What do you think?”
“I think you’re right,” Carmen said. “Wear the blue suit.”
“And my hard hat? It’s blue, it’d match nice.”
“Yeah, put it on backwards,” Carmen said.
“Just be myself, huh?”
“You can do whatever you want,” Carmen said, turning to look out the window at Wayne’s pickup and dead vines in the vegetable garden and the chickenhouse that would be a chickenhouse till it rotted and fell apart.
“What’re you mad at?”
“I’m not mad.”
“What are you, then?”
“I don’t know,” Carmen said. “If I find out I’ll tell you.”
4
* * *
IT WAS AFTER THEY CAME to Donna’s house in Marine City, Armand invited to spend the night, Richie started calling him the Bird. First, introducing him to this woman Donna as Mr. Blackbird, then right away saying, “Yeah, I ran into the Bird at Henry’s.” And a couple of minutes later, “Get me and the Bird a drink, will you?” Making it sound like they were old buddies and he’d always called him by that name. The funny thing was, Armand didn’t mind it.
The Bird. New name for the beginning of a new time in his life. Different, not so Indian-sounding as he played with it in his mind. Who are you? I’m the Bird. Not a blackbird or a seagull, but his own special kind. He liked the way Richie Nix said it, the guy sounding proud to know him, wanting to show him off. Donna came in from the kitchen with a dark drink in each hand. Richie said, “The Bird’s from Toronto,” and Donna said, “Oh? I was there one time, it’s real nice.”
Armand the Bird took a sip of
the drink and wanted to spit it out. Jesus Christ, it was the worst thing he ever tasted. Richie said, “What’s wrong, Bird?”
The Bird becoming just Bird now.
“What is it?”
“That’s a Southern and Seven,” Donna said. “It’s our favorite.”
Armand, or whoever he was this moment, went out to the car, where he had four quarts of Canadian Club in the trunk, for the stay at his grandmother’s, and brought one of them inside. He said to Donna, “I don’t drink that. I only drink real whiskey.”
Once he made this known, Donna stuck close to Richie and didn’t say much, peering out through her big shiny glasses like some kind of bird herself, pointy face and a nest of red-gold curls sitting on her head. Hair fixed and face painted like she was going to the ball—except for her tennis shoes and the lint and hair all over her black sweater. Coming here after they’d stopped for drinks and had a talk, Richie Nix had said, “Wait till you meet Donna. She was a hack in the joint where I met her and got fired for fucking inmates, man, if you can believe it.”
The Bird didn’t care for what he saw of Donna, a woman who had to get it off convicts, or this dump she lived in, a little frame house he could tell in the dark coming here needed to be painted and was overgrown with bushes. He couldn’t see how two bedrooms would fit in here and how Richie Nix could sleep with that woman, if he did.
He didn’t care too much for Richie either, except the guy had nerve. With a gun against his head saying, “You’re just the guy I’m looking for.” To pull that off, get the Bird to believe it, took something that couldn’t be faked. Telling him, “No shit, I mean it. I’m glad this happened.” Telling him, “Man, you have to be somebody, drive a car like this, a piece under the seat.” Respect in his tone of voice. Then telling in detail about the deal he had going. The Bird listened and came to realize this punk actually had something, wasn’t making it up. It could even work. The Bird had seen enough variations of it in Toronto, all kinds of shakedowns and protection deals; he knew how to convince a slow pay to come up with what was owed. This one was different, a one-shot deal, but based on the same idea: scare the guy enough and he’ll pay every time.