Shotgun Lovesongs: A Novel (30 page)

“Hey,” I screamed, “I want us to be good. You know? I want us to be…” I stopped, glanced at my wedding shoes. “I want us to be friends.”

He leaned in to my ear. “Come on,” he said, “finish that beer. Let’s get back to the party.” He slugged his back, set the tap glass down beside the frosted windowpane where the warmth of the neon lights seemed to soften the ice there. I followed him back out into the cold.

The night sky was perfect, the sound of music drifting through Main Street, car horns honking at they drifted away, out into the countryside, laughter.

“I figure that I can keep this thing afloat about another year before it sinks,” Kip said. He walked with his hands in his pockets. He looked at me, not sadly, but firmly, and I understood. “Turns out I bit off a little more than I could chew.” He blew out a cloud of steam, shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not asking for your help. This damn mill has failed before, and it’ll probably fail again.”

I walked along beside him, my sweat growing cold in the chill. The music back at the party was slowing, and I pictured couples moving in close, holding hands, women resting their heads on their partners’ shoulders. I thought of Beth, and then shook that thought away. Funny, that I’d think of Beth just then, and not Chloe.

“How much do you need?” I asked.

He shrugged again. “Christ, Lee. I’m up to my ass. Even if business picks up, I don’t think I can keep up with the payments. You understand? Renovating everything was one thing, revenue is another.” He kicked at a chunk of ice, waved his hand. “Forget I said anything. You probably got enough people looking for handouts. Let’s just have some fucking fun.” He picked up his pace, moved ahead of me, shook the hands of the Giroux brothers, out leaning against the side of the mills, smoking cigarettes. They nodded at me.

Back in the basement of the mill, everyone was slow dancing. And there were Ronny and Lucy, orbiting together, turning slow circles, her big, hard belly pressed against his very lean, narrow one. I watched them, watched Henry and Beth dancing, watched Felicia find Kip and drag him out to the floor, watched other wallflowers peeled away to join the rest of Little Wing, but no one came for me, and there was no bar there to retreat to and no fancy phone to hide my face in. Nothing but the lights of the disco ball, Louis Armstrong’s sweet growl, and the desire not to be alone.

“Hey,” a voice said, “you want to dance?”

I looked over to find a woman standing beside me. Her face was covered in freckles and I could see that she had long red hair. Her dress was pink, her shoulders very pale.

“Hi,” I said, “I’m Lee.”

“Rachel,” she said, shaking my hand. “I’m Lucy’s cousin. From Milwaukee.”

I pointed to Ronny’s Lucy. “Cousins?”

She bit her lip, nodded. “So you want to dance?”

“Yeah, sure.”

She led me out toward my friends, and we danced and for a while I wasn’t alone at all anymore and I stared at Rachel’s shoulders and sometimes the light of the disco ball sprinkled a confetti kind of light on her skin, and the only thing I wanted to do was to touch those freckles, each and every one, the rest of my life.

*   *   *

I slept at her motel that night, but in the morning, when I invited her back to my place for pancakes and coffee, she just smiled in a winsome sort of way, kissed me on the forehead, and said, “I’m going to take a shower.”

And so I drove home, through Little Wing, where the Sunday morning streets were quiet, a few cars already in the parking lot of the Lutheran Church, and a few more parked out in front of the Coffee Cup Café.

When I got home, I called about buying two tickets to Hawaii. Then I fell asleep on the couch, holding a pillow against my chest. By the time I woke up, it was already dark again, and spring a long time coming.

H

A
GIANT JAR
of pickled eggs. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of eggs, suspended in an amniotic green murk as if a great reptile had laid a clutch there, in that vessel, for some later hatching that might well never come at all. Two feet tall and one foot wide at the base, it sat behind the bar, against the same wall where an expansive mirror reflected the tableau of the long, narrow room. Just outside, the hot neons blinked on and off in the window, attracting fireflies, mosquitoes, moths. Inside, the jukebox cast a milky light in its corner, and the two felt rectangles of the pool tables bathed green under their own separate cones of light, players circling round with purpose, indicating their shots with long cue sticks, stubby fingers, toothpicks. At the bar, old men shook leather cups of dice, old men playing cribbage, singing: “Fifteen two, fifteen four, fifteen six, a pair for eight, and knobs for nine.” And outside on the street, the newly exiled cigarette smokers, standing in the spring mist, nodding their heads in conversation, kissing yellow filters, blowing blue-gray smoke at the night.

A Monday night, the door flung open to Main Street. Lee and I sat at the bar, looking at each other in the mirror, behind all those bottles of liquor. We drank our beers quickly, not sure how to talk to each other anymore, not sure whose
turn
it was anymore. A heavy rain had come earlier in the day, and the sparse traffic on Main made a pleasant vernal noise as the wet tires passed—
swwwooossssh.
My planting done, I was happy for the rain.

We cracked peanuts, the shells collecting beneath our stools. Both of us sullen, our hearts heavy in our chests, both of us wanting somewhere inside to be friends again, but unsure what was even possible anymore, what we might or might not be able to forget or undo. I think it’s fair to say that we both felt, without saying so to each other, that after thirty-plus years, our childhoods had finally come to an end. That the steady easy friendships of our youth were at last coming undone. We had gone a half-hour without exchanging so much as a hundred words. We didn’t even make small talk about the weather. There was a desperation to the gulps we took. We drank to get drunk, to get loose.

*   *   *

“I’m going to steal that jar,” Leland said.

I peered over at him. “Oh yeah?” I popped a peanut into my mouth. “How many eggs’re even in that jar do you think?” I brushed some peanut debris out of my arm hair, considered the jar.

It had been months since I’d taken anything he said seriously. I no longer had the patience. There had been a time when I’d not only been his friend, but his
fan
too. Now all that seemed so long ago, so childish. It was embarrassing to think how much I’d adored Lee, the way my young son Alex adores Green Bay Packers players, the way he unabashedly wears their jerseys, hangs posters of them from his walls. All day I’d been dreading this—meeting him at the bar, having to make conversation. Earlier in the day I had stood behind a cow marked #104, attaching milking equipment to its teats, when it took a huge shit not a foot and a half from my nose. And yet—that didn’t bother me.
This
bothered me. You’d have thought I’d be eager to get away from my cows and crops, to have a few hours with an old friend, drinking some cold beers, but really, all I wanted to do was take my boots off, ease back in my chair, and close my eyes while blue television light washed over my face, numbing me off to sleep.

“I don’t care,” Lee said. “But I’ll tell you, I’m going to steal that jar tonight.”

“I bet there has to be a thousand eggs in that jar,” I said. “You think you can even carry that thing? You’re looking a little skinny these days.”

The eggs floated on, the pickle juice a brackish pond water.

He pointed a finger at the jar. “And you’re going to help me steal that jar.”

What he meant to say was,
We’re going to do this together
.

“Fuck
that,
man. I don’t have to help you with anything. It’s gonna take a lot more than a few beers to get me in a thieving kind of mood.
And,
” I went on, sticking my rigid index finger into the scant meat of his right bicep, “I figure I damn near have the right to kick your ass right out of the bar right now, as much of a friend as
you’ve
been to me.” I hadn’t meant to snap at Lee, but I also frankly didn’t much care anymore. What could he do to me that hadn’t been done already?

“Well, keep drinking.”

“I am.”

Craaack!
A rack of billiards balls broke. On the television: a fast break slam dunk. And outside, a ’79 Impala wheezed by without an excuse for a muffler, though the wet street seemed to do something to mellow the hoarse sound of that decrepit automobile. Lee slugged back his beer. He looked away from me, wiped some foam away from his lips.

“I owe you an apology,” he said.

“I’d say so.”

“I shouldn’t have done what I did, and I’m sorry.”

“Listen, I really don’t want to talk about it. You know? Don’t really want to dwell on how you slept with my wife.”

“You weren’t married—I mean—
Christ,
Hank!
Goddamn it
.
Ten years ago
. What was I supposed to tell you?”

“That you were a fucking asshole? For starters. That I sure as hell couldn’t trust you. Want me to keep going?”

We each took a long swallow of beer.

“I mean, you want to fight?” he said. “Is that it? ’Cause shit, I’ll let you just beat the crap outta me, if it means we can be friends again. I don’t really care.”

“Well, that wouldn’t really be much of a fight then, would it?”

“No. I suppose not. So what do we do?”

I didn’t know what we were supposed to do, and somewhere, in my gut, I had decided months before that there was nothing
to
do, that we were done. Every time I got even close to something like forgiveness, I’d conjure some image of him and Beth together in bed, and it drove me crazy. I would get so livid, my only tonic was going to the four-lane bowling alley in Whitehall, where I could throw a sixteen-pound ball as hard as I could at ten pins, bent on shattering something into smithereens. I’d drive as fast I could there and back, over a hundred miles per hour and then, approaching a four-way country intersection, slam on the brakes just to feel the seat belt dig hard into my chest and lap, just to hear my Firestones scream in protest. Just to feel something other than jealousy and rage.

I ran a hand through my hair. Finished my glass of beer and ordered another pitcher. “I don’t know, Lee. I don’t have any idea.”

“Well, somehow I got this notion that stealin’ those eggs is the key.”

The pitcher came and the barkeep moved away again, tallied our damage. I refilled our beers, and, I have to say, something in me softened for a moment, just adding beer to Lee’s glass, doing something familiar and kind for him. Because it was true, we had passed many hours, days even, doing just the thing we were now doing: drinking and talking. And yet.

“So you’ll do it, then? Steal that jar of eggs with me?” he asked.

“No.”

“Will you, sir? Will you please just steal that jar of eggs with me?” He was being playful now, and I may have even smiled, wondering what his grand plan was exactly, leaving the bar encumbered by a giant glass jar full of pickled eggs.

“Nope, I ain’t quite there yet.”

“But you’re at least
considering
the heist, right?”

“Possibly. Possibly I am a little intrigued. And, possibly I think you’re, ah, totally full of shit.”

“Because you’re an accomplice now. You have no choice in the matter, except to report me to the proper channels.” I could see he was getting drunk now, guzzling that cheap pale beer. “The proper authorities, so to speak.”

“You’re serious.”

“I’m drunk—I don’t know. Maybe I don’t know what I’m saying.
Yes,
I’m serious. Those eggs are taunting us, right now. Look at them. Also, I’m desperate. All right? I don’t see how else you and I can get right without some sort of juvenile act of, you know, mutual solidarity. And sitting here beside you, gazing over at those disgusting fucking pickled eggs, I suddenly had the notion that, you know, maybe we could just steal the fuckers.”

“You’re a complete moron.”

“So, how many eggs you suppose are in there?” He began pointing at the jar with his index finger, his eyes squinty with mock concentration, his brow almost comically furrowed.

“Look—no!” I snapped, slapping his finger, suddenly angry again. “This is fucking infantile.” I stopped, lowered my voice a little. “You, you fucked up my marriage! You fucked up my family. And now we’re sitting here counting eggs? Sitting here counting fucking eggs, talking about stealing some goddamn jar of pickled eggs, as if
somehow
that’s how you’re going to make everything okay again? Like that’s gonna make everything go away?”

Lee looked at me now, directly in the eyes, and I could see they were misty, that he had nothing more to say, that he was indeed sorry. That there was nothing left to do.

“Christ,” I said. “So this is the real world.” I clenched my fist, wanted so desperately just to pound him.

“I’m sorry,” Lee said. “I really am. I thought I’d found my wife in Chloe, and well, things just didn’t work out. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. But I hope that you can find it, you know, find it in yourself, to trust me again. And honestly, I guess I’d understand if you never did. But you’re my best friend in the whole world, all right? And I love you. I just don’t know what the hell else to say.”

Then Lee stood up from his bar stool, drank an entire glass of beer, and moved toward the back of the bar where the bathrooms were.

I sat there, examining the wood pattern of the ancient mahogany bar and then outside to Main Street, where the streetlights cast a pleasant glow on the slick, wet asphalt. I sighed. Because there was nothing left to do, and sometimes that is what forgiveness is anyway—a deep sigh. I loved my father very much, but was never as strong as he was, and I couldn’t imagine my life without Leland or Ronny, for that matter, or even Kip or Eddy or the Girouxs. I
wanted
Lee back inside our house,
wanted
him to come over for bonfires and dinners,
wanted
to hear about his life and travels and the music he was making. So what was I supposed to do? Go through life harnessed to some yoke of anger? And what would
that
do to my marriage, to Beth, to the kids?