The Girl Who Ran Off With Daddy (13 page)

“Come here, I want to show you something else.”

“I’ll tell you what, darling,” she offered, struggling to climb out from under me. I wasn’t exactly helping. “Keep my side warm and I’ll be back before you know it.”

She was right, too. Kind of. I didn’t know it when she got back. I’d been fast asleep for an hour.

“Why did you run off with Clethra, Thor?”

Thor downed his shot of Wild Turkey and washed it down with a gulp of Rolling Rock. “I told you, boy. I love her.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, grinning at me contentedly. “I feel reborn. Possessing that fine, firm young flesh of hers. Feeling her heat around me, squeezing me, pulsing around me like a—”

“Shut up, Thor.”

He peered at me, taken aback. “Shut up?”

“You haven’t laid a hand on her and we both know it. So why don’t you drop-kick the reconstituted Henry Miller and tell me what the hell’s going on?”

Thor hesitated, scratching at his beard. Then he gave me a brief nod and signaled the proprietor, Slim Jim, for another shot. They called him Slim Jim because he was circus fat, 350 pounds easy. His place, which was up past Rogers Lake on the old Boston Post Road, was our nearest watering hole. A rustic log cabin with a potbellied stove that served shots and beer and corn nuts. Sort of a biker bar, only without the glamour. The slack-jawed boys all hung there, grungy and unshaven; the air was thick with their cigarette smoke. There was a pool table and a jukebox and a TV. It being a Saturday afternoon, Notre Dame was busy running up the score on some patsy. The dozen or so regulars were hunched over their beers watching them in bored, dumb silence, all of them young and big-boned and sullen. More of Thor’s Lost Boys. I recognized them. They were the ones who mowed the lawns and pumped the gas and rounded out the paving and roofing crews during the paving and roofing season. Most of them still lived with their folks, although if you wanted to contact them the best way was to dial 1-800-HUH?. This was where they hid out. Us they ignored, just as they ignored the pair of low-rent bar floozies who were shooting pool, both of them short and fat and forty, with raccoon eye makeup and bleached-out, sticky-looking hair.

“I can do this cool trick,” one floozie announced hoarsely to no one in particular. “All I need is two balls and a straight stick.”

None of the gang reacted, no doubt because they’d all heard it before eight or nine hundred times. Lulu, who was curled up at my feet, ignored her completely.

Even when she sidled over to me and said, “Hey, mister, can I borrow your balls?”

“Sorry, they’re in use.”

She let out a wicked laugh, which I suppose she thought was sexy, and which quickly turned into a hacking cough, which decidedly was not. And then Slim Jim waddled back with Thor’s whiskey and chased her off.

Thor stared moodily down into his glass, cupping it in his big scarred mitts. “I love her, boy. That’s all there is to it.”

“Then why won’t you have sex with her?”

“That,” he replied, “is none of your business.”

“Wrong, Thor. You made it my business when you showed up out here, begging me to help you. Besides which, she asked me to ask you. So I’m asking you.”

He tugged at his lower lip, his big chest rising and falling. His eyes were on the TV over the bar. “I’m over seventy years old. You’re barely forty. You can’t possibly understand it, boy. Maybe when you get to be my age you will. But not now.”

“Not good enough, Thor. Let’s try it one more time: Why did you run off with Clethra?”

“Just shut up about Clethra.”

“I’m sorry, Thor. I can’t do that.”

He tossed back his whiskey and smacked the shot glass down hard on the bar. “Bartender!” he roared, waving his big arms in the air. “A round for the house! Drinks for all my friends!”

This seemed to make everyone in the place happy. Everyone except me. It was my money. Slim Jim passed out the beers and the guys raised their bottles to Thor and he raised his to them. “To all of you lost little boys,” he toasted, launching into one of his lusty orations. “With your pickup trucks and your jet skis and your flaccid little dickies in your hands. You confused, misbegotten little jack-off artists, out of touch with your wild selves, afraid of women, afraid of your own manhood—”

“Ooh, this dude’s twisted!” cried one of the floozies.

“Far fucking out!” cried the other.

“I think he just called me a faggot,” one guy grunted, with acute Beavian logic.

“I think he did, too,” his friend muttered.

All of them were growing hard-eyed now. They knew when they were being dissed, free beer or not.

“Thor,” I cautioned. “Now wouldn’t be a good time to do this.”

“Nonsense,” he huffed. “We have nothing to fear from these little lonnie limp dicks.”

“Watch your mouth, pops,” snarled a hulking kid in a flannel shirt and jeans.

“Or what, you little twit?” Thor snarled back. “You’ll punch me? Go right ahead. This I’d pay cash money to see!” Not that he had any cash money. He swaggered down the bar toward the kid, his hands loose at his sides. A man on a quest, all right. He was trying to prove to himself he was still rough and tough. He was also, I was well aware, trying to duck my questions. “Or
what,
pussy boy?” he jeered, shoving the kid in the chest.

“Keep your hands to yourself,” the kid warned. His face reddened.

“Or
what?
” Thor shoved him again. “Tell me what you’ll do. Go on, tell me.”

“This guy’s mouth needs shutting,” the boy threatened, clenching his fists angrily.

“Think you’re the man for the job, do ya?!” screamed Thor, going face to face with him. His eyes blazed. Sweat glistened on his bald dome. “C’mon, pussy, show me what you’ve got.”

“All right, cool it!” ordered Slim Jim, coming out from behind the bar with a baseball bat. “Leave the man alone, Kirk.”

“He’s the one’s hassling me!” Kirk protested.

Thor shoved him again, backing him up against the jukebox.

“I don’t want to fight you, old man,” Kirk warned between gritted teeth.

“I may be old,” bellowed Thor, “but I’m still
twice
the man you’ll ever be. Christ, boy, don’t you have any capacity for human outrage? Don’t you know you have the right to remain violent? Don’t you even know when someone’s calling you a worthless piece of dogshit to your face?!”

Three of Kirk’s husky friends were edging toward Thor now, jaws and fists clenched. If Kirk didn’t want a piece of him, they did.

Slim Jim turned to me. “Mister, get him out of here right now or I’m calling the trooper.”

“C’mon, Thor. You’re already violating your parole by being in here. You don’t want to get in a fight or they’ll send you back.”

Kirk’s eyes widened. “You been doing time?”

Thor let out a laugh. “No, he’s just playing mind games with you.”

“He’s right, I am,” I admitted. “Unfortunately, it takes two to play.” I tossed some money on the bar. “Let’s go, Thor. These guys are twenty years younger than I am. They’ll kill us both.”

Lulu certainly knew this. She was already halfway out the door.

But Thor wouldn’t budge. “Not until this here boy gets up on his hind legs and howls.”

“Call me crazy but I don’t think he’s going to.” Indeed, I think at that point we had a better chance of getting ol’ Kirk to dress up in a red velvet dress with white stockings, a garter belt and matching pumps. “So let’s go.”

But by now a half dozen of them were circling us.

By now I realized we weren’t going anywhere.

Kirk moved first, charging Thor and ramming him into the bar, fists digging into his ribs. Someone grabbed my arms from behind me. Someone else punched me in the nose, which immediately went numb. And then in the stomach, which didn’t. I struggled free and did a little damage. I know I hit someone square in the mouth. And I know Lulu, the noted barroom brawler, had her jaws clamped around one kid’s ankle, snarling like a stuffed animal possessed. But I’d have to say the three of us were, well, getting killed. Until, that is, one kid jumped in on our side.

Dwayne Gobble was a fearless scrapper. He punched, he kicked, he hurled guys bodily over the pool table. “C’mon, Mr. Gibbs,” he gasped, pulling Thor from the fray. “Man of your stature shouldn’t be mixed up in this shit.”

“Wait, what about a man of
my
stature?” I wanted to know.

I can’t tell you if Dwayne answered me or not, because that was when Slim Jim knocked my head clean over the left-field fence with his Louisville Slugger and the crowd cheered and they turned off all the lights in the stadium. When I came to I was lying out in the gravel parking lot with blood on my shirt and Cole Slawski standing over me looking most imposing and certainly no more than twelve feet tall.

Actually, Lyme’s resident state trooper was a chiseled six-feet-six, not counting his broad-brimmed, rather silly hat. And he was a celebrity anywhere he went in the state of Connecticut. He’d been a swingman on UConn’s 1990 dream team, the one that would have made it to the Final Four if Duke’s Christian Laettner hadn’t drained that buzzer beater and broken the entire state’s heart. Tate George and Scottie Burrell were the stars of that team, Slawski a scrapper with no outside shot who played tough defense and hustled after every rebound and loose ball. Not a lot of natural talent but a world of desire and blah, blah, blah—all the usual coach-speak you hear when they’re trying to say something nice about the white kid who comes in off the bench. Except Cole wasn’t white. He was black. And his name wasn’t Cole. It was Tyrone. Until, that is, ESPN’s resident genius, Chris Berman, dubbed him Tyrone “Cole” Slawski one night on
SportsCenter
and it stuck. Not that Slawski was what you’d call much of a kidder. He looked like he’d tried to smile exactly once in his entire life, when he was perhaps three, and didn’t like it and vowed never, ever to do it again. The man had a pair of hot coals for eyes and shoulders out to here and a nineteen-inch waist. His uniform, of two contrasting shades of muck, looked like it been painted on. It was somewhat unusual to have a black resident trooper in such a rural part of the state, but Slawski was a big hit. Not just because he was a former basketball star but because he was bright, efficient, courteous and fair. Everything you’d want in a resident trooper or scoutmaster. He had everyone’s respect. He also had a master’s in criminology and ambitions to move up. As was standard throughout the state, the community provided one half of his salary and a house. Slawski’s was a snug, two-hundred-year-old cottage across the road from Lyme Town Hall, where he lived alone.

Unless you counted his K-9 Corps partner, a 135-pound German shepherd who was even more no-nonsense than he was. Lulu, the little flirt, was yapping at the four-legged officer girlishly. He just stood there at Slawski’s heel, ignoring her big-time. Probably preferred tawny, long-legged show bitches. Or maybe he just didn’t go for girls who got in bar fights in the middle of the day.

“Will you be requiring the services of an ambulance?” he barked at me. Slawski, not his partner.

I shook my head, which was a big mistake. Something rattled around in there, like it does inside an aerosol paint can.

Thor and Dwayne were over leaning against Slawski’s kidney-colored Ford Crown Victoria cruiser. Dwayne’s shirt was torn to shreds and Thor had lost himself another tooth. But both of them seemed to be in better shape than I was. In fact, Thor seemed positively juiced, laughing and crowing like a boy.

The Lost Boys were crowded into Slim Jim’s doorway, watching us. Especially watching Slawski, who got down on one knee so as to look me over. My head wasn’t bleeding. My nose was.

Lulu was still trying to turn his partner’s head. She was over on her back now, dabbing at the air with her paws. It was a shameless display, really. I know I was embarrassed for her.

“What’s his name?” I asked Slawski hoarsely.

“Whose?” he asked, frowning at me.

“Your partner.”

“Klaus.”

“Klaus?”

“You got some particular degree of difficulty with that?” he demanded, his voice booming and most authoritative.

“Not at all. Klaus is a nice name. Aryan.”

“It’s a dumb name. Fool trainer give it to him.” He glanced down at Lulu irritably. “She may as well knock that off. He’s a trained police officer. Won’t pay her no mind while he’s on duty.”

“What about when he’s off duty?”

Slawski climbed back up to his full height and took off his hat and examined the brim. He wore his hair in a high-top fade that looked like it had been shaped with a T square. “Why, you looking to mate her?”

Lulu gulped and let out a whimper. She’d witnessed firsthand what Merilee went through—and that was to produce a litter of merely one.

“I just thought maybe they could get together sometime. She’s going through a rather rough transition, and she doesn’t know many dogs out here who she can relate to.”

“Uh-huh.” Slawski gave me a knowing nod. “Okay, I done
heard
about you.” Ah, yes. One of the non-joys of small town life. Everyone knows you—or thinks they do. “You’re that writer dude’s married to Miss Nash. Got you a farmlike configuration up off Joshua Town, all the time goofing on people and talking piffle.”

“Piffle? I didn’t know anyone still used that word.”

“Yeah, well, there’s a lot you don’t know. Like how to behave yourself in public. That goes for you, too, Mr. Gibbs,” he added, raising his voice for Thor’s benefit. “Don’t know how you figure into this but—”

“He started it,” I said.

“Now don’t you be passing the blame off on some old man,” the trooper fumed.

“No, no, he’s absolutely correct, officer,” Thor said. “It’s all my fault—if you wish to call it that.”

“What you call it?” demanded Slawski, peering at him.

“An awakening,” Thor answered, beaming.

Slawski turned back to me, perplexed.

“And you thought I was the weird one,” I said.

“They’re fast asleep,” Thor explained, gesturing to them. They were still crowded there in the doorway, yucking it up. Although when Cole looked their way they grew silent. “I was trying to wake them up.”