Harry Griffin passed a fitful night that was not altogether unpleasant. Sometimes, like now, when he’d get excited, this auxiliary energy kicked in. He woke up, ready; electric in the dark. And it seemed as if all twenty-five years of his sobriety surrounded him like a thick magnifying lens. Images from his past life jumped up huge, in aching detail.
Four-thirty A.M. He got out of bed, went into the kitchen, and heated water, ground coffee, put a filter in the Chemex coffeemaker.
Waiting for the water to boil, he went into the living room and sat on a cushion in front of the fireplace. He folded his legs in a half lotus, shut his eyes, and tried the TM trick: let his runaway thoughts stream away like rising bubbles. Tried to calm down.
Didn’t work. He startled when the teakettle shrieked, boiling over. So much for the tricks. He got up, poured the water into the ground coffee, and slit the cellophane on a fresh pack of Luckies. Since he couldn’t get his night horse back in the barn, he settled down to ride it out with coffee and cigarettes.
Sitting at a stool at his kitchen snack bar, he held out his right hand, thick-veined, bone prominent, absolutely steady. Vividly he remembered the last person he’d killed. Ten years ago, when he got talked into that last-minute hunting trip in Maston County…
Coming in on a dead run toward the shots and screams, seeing Chris Deucette, sixteen, working the bolt, ejecting the spent cartridge, then aiming the deer rifle at his stepdad, Bud Maston. Maston lying in the snow, already bleeding. Supposedly Harry’s buddy…
Felt again the smooth reflex swing, his own 3006 coming up.
Safety clicking off…
Snap shot, peep sight, eighty yards.
Easy.
The Maston County prosecutor didn’t even convene a grand jury. Called it self-defense.
The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese he’d slain were just numbers on a time card. A job. Didn’t bother him. None of them did, not even that whole family in Truc Ki, the night that stealth had required he use the knife. Broker had puked and walked away, struggling to believe there were still rules even down in the bottom sewer of guerrilla war.
Nothing he could remember bothered him.
Griffin curled his fingers into a fist.
It was the one he couldn’t remember…
That night, after the war; blacked-out drunk, walking the Cass
Corridor in Detroit, maybe a lingering scent of sweat and perfume from a stripper at the Willis Show Bar. Or maybe the hooker in Anderson’s Gardens down the street. Had his.38 jammed in his waistband because he sure as hell found it there in the morning with four rounds fired…trouble easy to find…all the jive punks on the street, flipping gang signs, pulling up their fucking shirts, showing off their 9-millimeters…
It was that single image of a zombie homicidal clown that haunted him; a mindless drunk composed of reflexes staggering around in the night. Reason he’d called Broker in Minnesota, got in his old cherry ’57 Chevy, and driven to the frozen North. Reason he’d sobered up with Broker’s help. Got to keep that jokester locked up…
Griffin squashed out his cigarette in the full ashtray and watched the sun rise thin over the lake. Okay. Be honest. Maybe the last one did get to him, the kid. There’d been a woman in St. Paul he thought he might marry, even start a family. Maybe Broker was right. He’d run away. After that scene in the woods, he’d quit his newspaper job and migrated up here. Do some honest work with his hands where there were fewer people.
Fewer people to hurt.
But there were exceptions. And possibly Gator Bodine was one them.
Quarter past nine Saturday morning Gator was dipping his toast in an egg yolk at Lyme’s Cafe, looking at a picture on the front page of USA Today-soldiers in chocolate-chip camo riding a tank all covered with red dust.
He looked up and saw Harry Griffin come through the door and walk straight to the booth where he was sitting. Stood there looking down with that shrink leather face, looking a little shaky with a wild aspect. Hadn’t shaved.
“We never been properly introduced, you and me,” Griffin said.
Gator tucked the toast in his mouth, chewed, then dusted the crumbs off his thick fingers. “That what this is, getting introduced?” he said, keeping his voice neutral, sizing Griffin up close. A real bad boy in his time, people said, but now he was starting to show his age. Still had this solitary yard-bull intensity to him, like a very few guys in the joint who stood their ground alone. With no group affiliation. The way you fought that kind of guy was, you caught him asleep with a club.
Griffin sat down in the opposite seat, casually leaned his elbows on the table, and said, “This is about proxies-you with me so far?”
“Like stand ins?” Gator nodded, working at keeping his face calm.
“Yeah, like for instance, if Jimmy Klumpe got into something he couldn’t handle and someone was to stand in for him. Say sneak into a guy’s house, steal stuff, and knife his truck tire. Chickenshit stuff like that.”
“You lost me,” Gator said, not real comfortable with the cold disquiet in Griffin’s ash-colored eyes. Sure had a lot of leftover balls for an AARP fart.
“Okay, let’s get you found,” Griffin said. “The house where Broker’s staying, that somebody was snooping in-it’s my fucking house. Anybody comes around, like in through the woods on skis, they’re gonna find me standing in.” Griffin paused. “What goes around, comes around.”
“Yeah, I recall reading that saying in a book about the sixties. And I think maybe you’re reaching a little, connecting the dots. What I heard,” Gator said carefully, “is they made up. No reason for anybody to do anything on it. Like dumping garbage.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Just so we understand each other,” Griffin said.
“Hey, you’re a badass old man, and I was brought up to respect my elders, what can I say,” Gator said with a straight face.
“You’re on notice; we’ll leave it there for now,” Griffin said, standing up. “Oh, yeah, and nice meeting you.”
“My pleasure,” Gator said in an icy fuck-you tone.
As Griffin turned to leave, he paused, raised his finger and pointed. “And, Gator?”
“Now what?”
Griffin smiled. “You got egg on your chin.”
Driving home from his weekly sit-down breakfast, Gator briefly entertained the notion of shutting Griffin off like an antique tractor. Then he calmed down and went over the story about Griffin beating up that bunch of drunks in Skeet’s with a pool cue. But that was three, four years ago. And he only heard it, he didn’t see it. So he decided the intelligent thing to do was let Griffin have his little senior moment, raffling wolf tickets, showing solidarity with his friend. Maybe drop a hint to Keith that Griffin was getting cranky with him. Off-his-meds kind of thing.
Had more important business to think about.
Griffin drove back to his cabin fast, drifting the Jeep around the turns with an almost adolescent glee. The whole aggravated knot of insult and age and punk-ass youth and past and present unraveled when you yanked one cord:
Okay. Now it’s personal. And he started it.
Don’t go off completely half-cocked. Wait for J. T.’s call.
And Teedo had given him directions how to come in on Gator’s place through the woods.
So go take a look for himself.
The notion toyed with him with a palpable prod of danger. Felt like this sleeping figure was waking up in his chest, unfolding its limbs, putting him on like a suit of clothes. Susan Hatch would counsel he was too old…
“No, I ain’t,” Harry Griffin said aloud. Hell, he’d always been at his best alone, on his own. Mindful that Broker was coming over in an hour, he decided to keep this one to himself. And if it turned out that Teedo’s story was true, he could tell Broker about it later.
Run away, my ass.