“And get his phone and his keys,” Dave says.
Chet holds out his hand. I hand over my phone and keys. I think of turning on the recorder on my watch, but don’t want him to see. Chet follows me through the kitchen and down the stairs. The basement is warm, overhead light on. The air hockey table has been moved aside and the paneling removed. The corridor to Weedland is open. I can see down the short, narrow dirt-floor hallway, and the three lines of bright lights that glow beneath the grow rooms. Monte must’ve left it open. I sit on the hard carpet next to the pellet stove, lean against the wall.
Chet points a thick index finger down at me, in warning, I guess, and then tromps back upstairs. And for the next few minutes I hear footfalls and low voices, a steady hum, Chet’s voice occasionally rising above the rest—“What the fuck does that do for us?” and “Why do I have to do it?” More footfalls. Doors open and close.
God, it’s warm down here. I look around. There’s nothing on the paneled walls, not even a beer poster. If I had bought this place…Jesus, what am I thinking? Across the room, that dark hallway leads to short beams of light beneath the closed and locked doors.
There’s more talking from upstairs, the low voices, more doors open and close, and finally…footsteps on the stairs. I look up and see business loafers. Eddie. Dave.
He takes the last of the steps, turns and walks slowly toward me without meeting my eyes. He stands above me, staring darkly down. I look for the trace of a handgun in his wool coat and pressed slacks, but I don’t see one. He looks like a lawyer after hours, like an extremely angry lawyer.
I sit up a little. My neck and side are killing me. “Look, Dave. I don’t blame you for—”
He holds up a hand to interrupt me: “Are you wearing a wire now?”
I ease the watch off my wrist. Hold it out. “It’s not a wire. It only records. They don’t monitor it. It isn’t even on unless the backlight is lit.”
Dave reaches down, takes the watch and turns it over in his hand. I glance past him, to the stairs, wondering…if I made a run for it…is Chet waiting for me up there?
Dave looks confused as he turns the watch over in his hand.
I take this opportunity to rise off the wall, so we’re both standing. I’m so sore. “They wanted me to pretend to buy this place,” I say. I glance past him, to the stairs again. God, I want to be up there. Down here, it’s just Dave and me—and suddenly the low ceiling and the dark hallway on the other side of the room make me think of a grave.
Dave is staring at my feet again. “Did you tape our conversations?”
“No…I just got the watch today….”
“Tell me exactly what you told them.”
“I didn’t tell them anything. They knew it all. They’re the ones who told me about you.”
“What did they say?” Dave’s voice is barely a whisper. He still won’t look me in the eye. I’m not an expert in these situations, but this fact doesn’t seem to be in my favor.
“Well. They said your name was actually Eddie…that Dave is an alias…” No reaction. “And they showed me your record…you know…which was…well…I mean, we all make mistakes, right?”
He is shaking with anger. He says something so low I can’t make it out.
“What?”
“Bea said…” He looks up. “They told you I killed someone…”
“Yeah,” I say. “That was a little alarming.”
Then a deep, guttural noise comes from Dave’s chest and he starts to move on me and I put my fists up…and in that moment I think of the boys and of Lisa—and I understand something about myself, that to see them again I will scratch and kick and bite, I will kill this son-of-a-bitch with my bare hands if I have to, and anyone up those stairs who gets in my way, too and the adrenaline courses and I tense for what comes next—almost eager for it. But Dave simply shoves me against the wall, spins away, staggers and walks toward the dark hallway, enters it, throws his face and arms against a wall and begins wailing.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Dave yells. “I can’t believe this!”
I look from Dave to the stairs—freedom—and then back at Dave, who is pressed face-first against the wall in the narrow corridor leading to the grow rooms, a drying plant hanging near his head. Dave cries, blubbers, moans through his nose…not crying like Franklin when he doesn’t want to go to bed, but wailing like Teddy the time he rode his bike into a parked car, broke his wrist, split his head open and saw his own blood for the first time.
And I find myself at the door to the grow rooms, the staircase just to my right—
“It’s so unfair!” Dave sobs over his shoulder. “That they’d tell you I killed someone! It was a fuckin’ car accident!” Dave wipes at his eyes, tries to get control of himself. “These guys, Slippers! They’ll do anything…they’re fucking ruthless!”
Dave moans again, and spins away, so that his back is against the wall of the dark hallway. He tilts his head back, as if trying to keep the tears in his eyes.
“I don’t suppose they told you that it was the other driver’s fault? Or that he turned in front of me? That the girl was in his car?”
“No,” I admit. “None of that.”
“I’d had a few glasses of wine, blew a point-oh-one—and if there are two drunk drivers in a fatal accident, they charge both with vehicular homicide. The prosecutor was supposed to plead it down to a DUI…but I’ll bet it was your fucking drug task force friends who convinced him to withdraw the deal.” Dave moans, shakes his head. “I knew. I knew it—”
“Dave, I didn’t—”
“And Dave is my middle name!” he yells, and bursts into tears again. “It’s not an alias! It’s my middle fucking name! That’s not the same as an alias! I haven’t gone by Eddie since I was thirteen!” He wipes at his eyes. “People used to call me Special Eddie. How would you like that?” He looks around himself. “I should’ve let Monte board this place up, but Jamie comes up with the idea of selling this place and I just thought…yeah, if I could make a little money before I got disbarred…I could go back to school.” He sighs. “I was gonna be a counselor.”
Then he shakes his head. “A federal fucking task force? Do you know what that means?”
“No,” I say. Honestly…I don’t know what anything means.
“It means federal prison. Means they can hide us in some hole in Nebraska for fifteen years. Confiscate everything we own.” He points at me. “I knew they were sniffing around, too. I could just tell. People said I was paranoid, but I knew. That’s why I got that shit-bucket Nissan. I gave my mom the Benz just in case, ’cause I didn’t want those fuckers taking my good car.”
He’s right. The Maxima is a shit-bucket car. I wonder if they confiscate mine, if I’ll still be responsible for the payments.
“What else did they say?”
“Dave, I don’t—”
He wipes his nose on his sleeve. “Come on, Slippers, just tell me.”
“They said you committed an assault and…uh…intimidation?”
He nods, ashamed. “That was a long time ago. I had some anger stuff then. My ex-girlfriend…this older guy she was seeing.” Dave wipes his pocked cheeks again. And a little snot bubble forms, just like Franklin gets. “The funny thing is…I felt like I had my shit together…you know, before the accident? You make one mistake and then—” He shakes his head. “Did they tell you I gave her CPR after the accident? The girl?”
“No.”
“No,” he says, “of course not,” and he sighs. He stares down the hallway again. Shrugs. “Jesus, Slippers. How does everything get so fucked up?” And it’s all too much for him again. Dave’s head falls into his hands and he shudders with sobs. And I find myself stepping into the dark hallway, my feet crunching on the dirt floor, my hand rubbing his twitching shoulder.
“It’s okay,” I whisper. “It’s okay, Dave.”
Then Edmund AKA Dave Waller, manslaughtering, weeping drug dealer, turns back to me, his cheeks glistening, and
says, through snot and tears, “Shit, Slippers. I’m never gonna practice law again, am I?”
CHAPTER 29
Lincoln Log Dreams
I HAD A ROUND TIN of those little toy logs when I was a kid. All you could really build was cabins; still…I loved them, the feel, the smell, the way they fit together. In my dream, they’re just as small as I remember them being, but there are tens of thousands of tiny logs, and the cabin I build is massive, big enough for my family and me. It has room after room after room, opening one into the other, three floors of Lincoln Log sunken living room, bedrooms with Lincoln Log Murphy beds, home gym, log theater and game rooms and a Lincoln Log burglar alarm that beeps and beeps and—
—I wake alone, curled up on my side on the floor, staring at my glowing watch, which sits on the floor in front of me, beeping. Did I set the alarm? Did I know the watch had an alarm? The dregs of sleep blow away and I look around at the paneled walls and remember—I am in the basement of Weedland. I agreed to wait down here for an hour before I called Randy and Lt. Reese and told them I was quitting, to give my old dealers a head start—and so I sat down here on the floor, listening to them move around up there, their footfalls on the floor above me as they rushed around packing bags…and I must have—
I sit up, dizzy. Reach for the watch. Turn off the alarm. It’s seven-thirty. I glance outside: daylight. I remember. Dave took my watch. He must’ve figured out how to set the alarm, brought it down here, seen me sleeping and—
Funny. I’ve finally gotten a good night’s sleep, and it’s in the basement of Weedland. Sure. The door to the grow rooms is closed, paneling replaced. I don’t hear anything upstairs.
I groan and ache as I get to my feet. Make my way to the stairs. “Dave? Jamie?”
Nothing. They’re gone. You can tell when you’re in an empty house. I remember when I found Dad in Oregon. I packed up and set him carefully in my car—took one more run through his cold house. There was nothing there either—an emptiness that felt unnatural. I think about all of those foreclosures out there: an empty house is an abomination.
I find my phone and keys on the little Formica table. There is, of course, no sign of my money. I suppose that was asking a lot—getting a $9,000 refund from the dealers you’ve betrayed. I pick up my phone and check the missed calls. Two from my house: one at 6 a.m., and one at 6:30, both from Lisa. One at 6:40 from a number I don’t recognize. And one from Jamie about ten minutes ago. There are no messages.
My car sits outside alone, in front of the house where I pulled up last night. Even the red Camaro is gone. I hesitate before leaving, wondering if I should lock the door behind me. I look up and down the street, at the houses in Weedland. There’s a line of old diseased trees lining the road, their trunks flaking bark, the sidewalk rising and cracking from their roots. I lock the door and go.
I get in my car. I consider calling Lisa—but I’m not sure what to say, where to start. So I just drive. The highway winds and straightens, flat farmland gives way to clusters of trees and I ease into the squat downtown of my city, a low fog hanging over it like a basement ceiling.
When I pull up to my house, there is a Stehne Lumber flatbed truck parked in front.
What kind of man was I?
I ease past the flatbed, pull into the driveway.
Chuck Stehne is standing at the end of my driveway, in a big brown work coat and brown gloves, thick arms crossed like rope. He looks uneasy, confused. Probably because he sees the same thing I see.
I climb out of my car. “What are you doing, Dad?”
It’s a stupid question; I can see what my father is doing. He’s doing what I should be doing: building his son a treeless tree fort. He’s got the plans open on the sidewalk, a brick holding the pages down; he’s just started to saw wood. An extension cord snakes out from the open front door.
I glance over at Chuck, but he won’t meet my eyes.
“When I pulled up he was already working,” Chuck says. “I told him you wanted me to take all of this back…but he told me to go to hell.”
Before I can remark on Chuck’s going to hell, Dad says, “Hold this,” and I take the end of one of the eight-foot posts and hold it over a corner of the woodpile while Dad scratches a straight line with one of Franklin’s Spiderman pencils. Dad’s hands are raw and red in the cold. He’s still wearing his pajama bottoms and his Go Army sweatshirt. He’s in socks. There’s no sign of his remote control. “Brace it with your leg,” he says. I do and Dad picks up a circular saw that I don’t own and makes a clean cut, straight down his straight line, the wood grain protesting at the end before it breaks and Dad’s end falls softly into the saw-dusted lawn.
When the saw is done humming, I say, as gently as I can, “Dad, where’d you get that?”
He looks up, confused. Then he looks at the saw in his hand. “Isn’t it mine?”
There’s also a framing hammer, and a heavy-duty electric drill. I pick up the drill, turn it over and see my neighbor’s name stenciled on the back.
Chuck Stehne shifts his weight in his work boots. So here we are.
Dad has just started work on the base of the fort, cutting the first eight-foot four-by-four in half. I breathe in sawdust and cool morning air. He hasn’t done enough to keep me from returning the wood, of course; I can always pay for a single cut four-by.
I take another whiff of sawdust. It’s a nice smell, like something cooking. I have a vague memory of the smell, but there’s nothing visual to go with it. “I’m sorry to make you come all the way out here,” I tell Chuck. “But it looks like we’re keeping the wood.”
Chuck nods and his cool, blue eyes drift up to the second story of our house, then back to the woodpile and the senile old man wielding a circular saw. He starts to move away, and then seems to stop; he hasn’t taken a step—it’s more of a flinch. “You know,” he says. “I could help…if you want.” He quickly adds, “Or not.”
Then Chuck Stehne sighs, looks once more at the house and says, quietly, “Look. For what it’s worth? I didn’t tell her about…you know…the whole pot thing?”
I have no idea what to say. Thanks seems a little much.
Dad goes back to reading the plans.
Chuck goes on: “I think you should know…” He sighs. “I mean…I guess I’d want to know…if I was you…first of all, we didn’t…and it wasn’t something anyone…you know…what I mean is…” He screws up his face. “And whatever did…you know…happen…it was my fault…Lisa, she didn’t…what I mean is…”
“It’s okay,” I finally say—putting myself out of my misery by holding my hands up. Christ, I’d rather he showed me pictures than leave all those unfinished sentences.
Then Chuck Stehne, Prince of Lumberland, nods, sighs again, and starts for his truck, although he still seems desperate to say…something. He pauses, then seems to think better of it, then gives a what-the-hell shrug, and finally says it: “I really do love her.”
There it is. My head falls to my chest.
“It wasn’t something…I mean, we weren’t…Anyway…” And then, when he has done all the damage one person could possibly do with nothing more than sighs, nods and stammering, unfinished thoughts, he starts for his truck again.
Then Chuck Stehne climbs into the cab of his flatbed truck, pulls the door shut, sits for a minute before starting it and—finally—pulls away. And I look up at our bedroom window, but all I get is a flat reflection of the gray sky.
“You gonna help or you just gonna stand there holding your dick?”
And so my father and I continue to build the base of Frontier Fort II. I get him some shoes and gloves. We saw some more posts, then lay two of them on the ground, four feet apart, and then we put two more on top of those, perpendicular to them, and two more on top of those.
I look up every few minutes, and once I catch Lisa in the window, staring down on us. I hold my hands up…in a double wave, or a sign of surrender. But she just backs away from the window. A few minutes later
, the boys come out, in coats and hats and gloves. The door closes before I can catch Lisa’s eye.
“I thought you said this wood was a mistake,” Teddy says.
“Sometimes you just make the best of your mistakes,” I say, accidentally parenting.
“So…we can keep it?”
“Sure.”
“No way!” says Franklin, and he picks up one of the spikes and swings it like a sword.
The fort comes together pretty quickly. I’m surprised how often Dad refers to the plans as we work. At first I think it’s the dementia—that he’s forgetting what he reads, but then I flash on a long-ago Christmas, Dad returning every few seconds to the little folded Japanese instructions as he built me a slot-car racetrack. I guess it’s one of those things I’m supposed to learn, maybe the only thing—pay attention to the goddamned instructions. Follow the rules, dipshit. I watch Dad drill 3/16-inch pilot holes, watch the way he eyes it and lines it up so the drill goes straight down through the base beams. He has Teddy hold a framing square on the base to make sure we’re at 90 degrees and then he has Franklin go get one of the six-inch spikes.
“How big is—” Franklin starts to ask.
“Big as your foot,” Dad says.
Steam escapes from the mouths of the Prior men.
Dad drives the first spike through the base of our fort and then the next one. It’s a simple base—sixteen posts, eight going in each direction, spiked crosswise to form a nice, solid foundation. The spikes echo like gunfire as Dad pounds them.
“Floor next,” Dad says, reading the plans. We lay out eight of the longer posts, the eight-footers. Dad shows the boys how to use spikes to make sure the floorboards are uniformly spaced.
We’ve been out about two hours and are about two-thirds done when I look up and see a newer four-by-four Ford pickup truck coming down our street slowly, as if looking for an address. The truck parks in front of my house. A very unhappy Lt. Reese climbs out, wearing a heavy coat, a watchman’s cap and a scowl.