My house is on one of the last remaining gravel roads in the county just off of highway 37 south of 465, the loop that circles Indy. I have ten acres of land, the back third wooded with a pond between the edge of the woods and the house. While I do not welcome the suburban sprawl as it grows ever closer, my privacy is reasonably assured by the long drive at the front and the woods at the back.
I tossed my mail on the table next to the door, checked the answering machine-no messages-and turned the shower on to steam the bathroom. Thirty minutes later I was back in the truck, headed downtown to the bar.
The bar my father and I own is very popular and draws a great crowd. I turned into the back lot, parked my truck at the far end and walked in through the back door where the kitchen area is located. The aroma of burgers and chicken halves that sizzled over an open broiler caused my stomach to gurgle and I suddenly realized I had not yet eaten today.
Robert, our Jamaican cook, looked over at me, flipped a burger on a bun then brushed the surface with his homemade jerk sauce, tossed on a slice of red onion, and held it out at arms length as I walked by. He gave me a skeptical look. “Dat shrimp, mon, it be comin’ by later tomorrow.”
“Was supposed to be today,” I said.
“Yeah, mon. But the truck already left. So tomorrow. Hope it good. Day say day raise it in a swimmin’ pool or some ting like dat. But it’s your money, no?” I took the plate, clapped him on the back and walked into the darkened atmosphere of the bar area.
The patron area of our establishment is long and narrow with high-back mahogany booths along one wall and the bar itself along the opposite wall with an aisle-way between the two sides. A large mirror runs the entire length behind the bar and gives the illusion of extra space when in fact there is none. Hand made stained-glass light fixtures hang low over the booths creating an intimate atmosphere that often conflicts with the mood of our customers. A blue neon sign displayed above the bar mirror advertises ‘Warm Beer amp; Lousy Food.’ Robert, our cook, still can not seem to grasp the meaning of the sign and has on more than one occasion pulled me aside and said “Dat sign has got to go, mon.” A small elevated stage at the back between the kitchen entrance and the restrooms provide just enough room for our Reggae house band that plays from midweek through the weekend. The lunch hour during the week is usually busy with downtown suits, and the weekend nights have been standing room only since opening day over three years ago.
The city of Indianapolis offers hundreds of small bars where you can eat and drink your fill, but to my knowledge our little bar is the only one that offers the true taste and atmosphere of a small island nation that has held a place in my heart most of my adult life. A few years ago on my last visit to Jamaica, while driving through the Hanover Parish, I experienced one of those rare moments which can change your life for the better if you are not too preoccupied to notice and let it happen. One of the tires of the rental car I was driving picked up a nail and I pulled to a stop in front of a ramshackle, multi-colored hut fashioned from scrap metal and drift wood at the edge of a town called Lucea which sits at the approximate half way point between the resort towns of Montego Bay and Negril. A handsome and well dressed bald man approached me and asked if he could help. His voice carried across the gravel lot with the musical lilt of his native land. “What you do, you?” he said. “Dat tire no good now, mon. Come inside. Have a drink and someting to eat. We fix you right up.” He held out his balled hand and we bumped fists and when we did, he said, “Respect, mon, respect.”
I shrugged, said ‘respect’ back to him and he smiled and led me inside the hut, his arm around my shoulder like we were old friends reunited after years of separation. Three and a half hours later I was full from too much Jerk chicken, slightly drunk from too many Red Stripes, but my tire was fixed and I had made two new friends.
But the story doesn’t end there. The owner of the establishment, the man who came out to greet me was named Delroy. He served the drinks and befriended his customers while his partner, Robert, handled the cooking, and apparently, tire changing. During the course of our conversation I learned they both longed to live in the United States. I listened politely to their stories, gave them my business card and got back in my car. Three weeks later after cutting through the red tape, Delroy helped me and my father set up the bar and Robert took over the kitchen. They both fly back to Jamaica twice a year for a week at a time to visit with their family and friends, and every time they do I panic just a little at the thought of losing them.
I took a stool at the mid-point of the bar and sat down with my burger and watched my father at the far end laughing with an attractive, middle-aged female customer. A row of clean beer mugs lined the drip trough on the tended side of the bar and when Delroy saw me he turned one over, set it under the tap and pulled a Red Stripe draft then placed it in front of me. My father walked down to greet me, looking back over his shoulder at the woman he’d been laughing with.
“Hey Pops. How’s it going?”
“Going just fine, son. Just fine.” He glanced back down the bar at the woman who was watching them in the mirror. “How’s the Governor’s main man?”
I sipped my beer and watched my father as he pulled two shot glasses from under the bar, and filled each with an ounce of over-proof rum. “I’m squeakin’ by,” I said, my eyes following his to the woman in the mirror. “Who’s that?”
“That’s Carol, you know, from over at County Dispatch. She’s going to help wait tables around here, mostly on the weekends. She answered the ad. Starts tomorrow.”
I felt a kernel of anger pop inside my chest and while I fought to contain it, in the end I put some teeth into my next question without really intending to. “Known her long?” I regretted the words as soon as I had spoken, but to my father’s credit he did not take the bait. Instead, he thought for a moment while wiping the bar between us. “You’re a grown man, son.”
“Point being?”
“Point being,” Mason said, “I was a grown man before you were ever born. I live my life, my way. Might not be your way, and that’s alright. But it’s mine.”
I looked at myself in the mirror and when I did, I saw my father’s face in my own, and sometimes wondered about who I saw staring back at me. I have always been comfortable with myself, but at forty-one years old I’ve noticed my hair already starting to turn gray at the temples, the lines in my face around my eyes growing more prevalent with the passage of time. I have a faint scar that runs the length of my jaw line on the left side of my face and it runs from under my ear then curves slightly upward to meet the corner of my mouth, a result of a boyhood injury I sustained many years ago. It is not nearly as noticeable as I sometimes think it is, but it flashes with white whenever I smile. I try not to smile, unless I want to scare someone.
I looked back at my father. “I just miss her, is all.”
“Jesus, Virgil. You think I don’t?” he replied, some teeth of his own. “One year, today. Not a day goes by, hell, not a minute goes by, I don’t think of her.” He was quiet for a moment, and when he spoke again, his voice was softer. “I can remember walking in the park with her. We’d see an old couple, not old like me, hell, I’m only sixty-eight, but I mean old, eighties, nineties even, holding hands. Your mom, she’d smile and say ‘see that, Mason? That’ll be us some day.’ Well, that day isn’t ever going to come for me, Virgil. Not ever. That part of my life is over now. I don’t know what you’d have me do, but I know what your mother would want. She’d have me honor the time we did have together by getting up and getting on with my life. So that’s what I’m doing.”
He picked up the shot glasses and held one out for me. We had toasted my mother once a month for the last eleven months. “She’s gone Virgil, but she’s not forgotten. Not for a minute. I love her and I always will. But I’m done toasting the past. So here’s to you and me, Son, and whatever waits down the line.” My father drained his shot glass and set it down hard on the bar then walked away, leaving me sitting there alone, staring at myself in the mirror.
I suppose my father grieves his loss in ways I do not yet and hope never to understand. But I also grieve in my own way and not a day will pass that when I think of my mother I do not also think of her father, my grandpa. He died long ago, and when he passed, to say that things were never quite the same with our family would be a gross misrepresentation of our ancestral history. He was quite simply the center of our universe and we circled happily around him like planets around the sun, as if when immersed in his shining love there was nothing ever to fear, no darkness that could not be illuminated and laid bare for what it really was.
I have a picture of my grandfather that sits on the mantle of my fireplace at home. In it, he is sitting in his finished basement, facing the camera, his arms stretched just so while speaking with someone out of frame of the photograph. His back faces the descending stairway that was lined with light colored natural pine panels, and hung at eye level on the walls in a diagonal fashion are pictures of his grandchildren and a few other people I do not recognize. But one picture in particular hanging on the wall behind him always gets my attention. It is a picture of my father as a young man, perhaps taken even before he and my mother were married. It is black and white, and I think it is the most handsome picture of my father I have ever seen. There is a look of quiet confidence on his face and the way it hangs just over my grandfather’s shoulder in the photo tells me the love he showered on me was not exclusive. If you were a part of his life, you were a part of his love.
But when he died and we were forced to carry on without him, without his guiding influence in our lives, things slowly began to change. We began to drift apart, our exaggerated steps taking us further away from each other instead of closer together. Earlier when I spoke of the influence he had in our lives I used the analogy of the sun and the planets, and after he died if felt as if we no longer had his gravitational force around us to hold us together. Everyday we were together I remember a sense of anticipation and wonderment at what lay ahead, but after his death those hopeful days began to diminish as if our world had stopped turning and we were now stuck on the edge of an eternal night, locked in a phased elliptical orbit on the dark side of a place I thought I might never escape.
Eventually I learned a lesson from what happened to our family after my grandfather died, a lesson that clearly my father had learned along the way as well. I would honor his life and the lessons he tried to teach me by living my life to the fullest, the way he did.
Bottom line, if my father wanted to date another woman, who was I to judge?
A few minutes later I got up and put my rum behind the bar, and moved down next to Carol. We watched each other in the mirror for a few seconds, and then I turned on my stool so I could face her and said, “I’m Mason’s son, Virgil. Everyone calls me Jonesy. You must be Carol.” I smiled when I said it though I really didn’t intend to.
As the night went on I worked the bar with my dad but neither one of us had much to say to the other about a shared loss we continue to grieve in very different ways, which is, as I suspect, the way it should be. We had a decent crowd, and our band brought the house down with their original and covered Reggae. With two hours to go until closing my father took off his apron and walked over to where I stood and ruffled the hair on top of my head like I was still a little boy. “See you tomorrow, Son.”
I watched him and Carol as they walked out the door, then took my shot glass of Rum from the drip tray where I had left it earlier in the evening, held it up for a second and then drank it down. “See you tomorrow, Dad.”
Delroy walked over and put his arm around my shoulder and said, “Your father…he loves you, no?” He patted me twice on the chest then went back to work, singing along with the band, his voice carrying across the bar. A few minutes later he looked over at me and smiled, still singing, and just for a moment I could have sworn I was looking at my grandfather.
Half an hour later Miles, Donatti, and Rosencrantz came in and took a table in the back. I drew two pitchers of Red Stripe, placed them on a tray with four frosted mugs and joined them at the table.
“Alright,” I said. What have we got so far? Ron?”
“Well,” Ron said as he took a long pull of beer, then let a small belch escape his mouth, “to put it as professionally as possible, we ain’t got dick.”
We all sat with that for a moment. “He’s right,” Donatti said. “We got nothing on the canvass from this morning out at Dugan’s. The houses are all too isolated, and well, hell, Jonesy, you know that crowd. They’re good people and all, but when you’ve got that kind of jack, unless you’re at one of those fancy social functions, everyone keeps to themselves. And besides, it was just early enough that most of the husbands were gone, the wives weren’t up and the help hadn’t arrived. All in all, I’d say that whoever did this had it pretty well planned out.”
“What about the print off of the shell casing?”
“Blank. Who ever it was, they’ve never been printed.”
“So,” Miles said. “I stand by my original statement. We ain’t got shit.”
“You said ‘dick’ the first time,” Rosencrantz said.
Miles looked out over the top of his glasses. “I’m pretty sure I said ‘shit.’
“No, no,” Donatti said. “He’s right, you said ‘dick.’ I heard it.”
“Yep,” Rosie said. “I think you’ve got dick on the brain. Is there something you’d like to talk about?” He wiggled his eyebrows at Miles.
Put four cops around a pitcher of beer, I thought, and this is what you get. “Maybe we could stick to what’s important here?” I said. “Rosie, do you have anything at all?”
“Yeah, your sign’s wrong. The food’s good. And the beer is ice cold too.”
“Tell me again why I hired you.”
“My superior investigative skills.”
I stood from the table. “Work it out, guys. We need leads and I want a plan of action by tomorrow morning. The Governor and the press are going to be breathing down our necks, so let’s show ‘em something.”
As I walked away I heard Rosie tell Miles again that he was positive he’d said ‘dick.’
Twenty minutes later I was ready to pack it in for the night. I told Delroy I hoped to see him tomorrow, but I couldn’t be sure.
‘Dat alright, mon. Every ting come in its own time, no?”
“I guess so, yeah.”
“Your father, he worries about you.”
“Is that right?”
“Yeah, mon. Of course dat’s right. He wants you here, run the bar wid ‘im. Safer for you here, you know what I mean?”
“He’s never said anything like that to me, Delroy.”
Delroy laughed. “Yeah mon, you two a couple of talkers, you are.”
“I don’t get it,” I said.
“Hey, what do I know? Probably not my bidness anyway, mon.” He nodded over my shoulder toward the front entrance of the bar. “Dat probably not my bidness either, but here come your woman.”
I turned and looked around just as Sandy slid onto a stool next to me. She wore a loose blue halter dress that hung almost to the middle of her thighs and a pair of platform sandals.
“Delroy,” Sandy said, her hand over her heart, “that voice of yours melts me every time I hear it.” Then to me: “Buy a girl a drink?”
I leaned over the bar and drew two Red Stripes from the tap. My eyes met Sandy’s in the bar mirror and I thought they were about the sexiest damn eyes I’ve ever seen. Ever. I set the mugs down and took a seat next her. “You don’t look too worse for wear. How you holding up?”
Instead of answering me right away, Sandy took three long drinks from her mug and set the half empty glass back down on the bar. Then she turned her head and saw the rest of the investigative team at the table in back. She looked back at me, picked up my mug and started toward the back.
“Hey, where are you going?” I said.
She stopped and turned back. “Gonna see what’s shaking back there. I love working for you, Jonesy. Have I told you that yet? But I’m either in or I’m out, you know what I mean?”
I thought her eyes were made of liquid blue. “Sandy, it’s not that.”
“It’s not what?”
“Well, it’s not…uh, well, hell, I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I just sort of thought-“
Sandy walked toward me and leaned in close, her mouth right next to my ear. “I know what you thought, Jonesy.” She kissed me on the cheek, then leaned away. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?” Then, almost as an after thought, “You look pretty good your damn self.”
I watched her cross the bar. So did everyone else in the room.
I moved behind the bar and pulled Delroy aside. “A minute ago you said something.”
“What’s that, mon? Delroy always saying one ting or another, no?”
“When Sandy came in. You said, ‘here comes your woman.’
Delroy laughed and shook his head. “I also say it probably not my bidness.”
“Yeah, you did. But she’s not my woman. She just works for me.”
“Yeah, mon. Dat’s all right. You keep telling yourself dat.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
Delroy put his hand on my shoulder. “I’m just a happy go lucky Jamaican bartender. What do I know?”
I scratched the back of my head. “I don’t understand.”
“Hah. I tink you do. I grew up wid my family, you know? We live right by the beach. When I was little, after school get out, I’d run and play in the water. Sometimes when I do I see a fish and tink to myself, ‘there go a fish.’ Simple as dat, mon. Plain as day, no?”
“But what did you mean about Sandy?”
“Delroy mean what he say. I say here come your woman, then it mean here come your woman.”
I thought I saw a twinkle in Delroy’s eyes. “But you said my woman.”
“Uh huh. Dat’s true.”
“Is there something I should know, Delroy?”
“Yeah, mon. There sure is. Maybe I draw you a map. You and that one,” he tipped his head toward Sandy, “you were meant to be together. It’s simple. Plain as day. Just like the fish, no?” Delroy made a swimming motion in the air with his hand and grinned at me the whole time.
When I glanced over at the table in back I saw Sandy watching me and Delroy. I thought about going over and joining her and the guys, but then someone else walked in the front door and I discovered my evening was far from over.