Gun Lake, page 22
She needed to be careful, she knew. She didn’t know much about this guy, not even his last name. There were sketchy details about why he was up here and what he was doing and some things he didn’t want to tell her, but she had been the same way with him. Maybe, in time, he would tell her. And maybe, just maybe, she would tell him things too.
She realized she wanted desperately to tell another person her story. And while it might be nice having a sister type or a motherly type to tell her story to, it also might be nice—no, it would be more than nice; it would be uplifting and freeing—to be able to tell another man her story and have him understand. She wanted to believe there were good men out there, men who didn’t beat women and treat them like objects and try to own them.
David might be that man, that person she could confide in. She just needed to take it slowly, and to get a grip on her emotions.
58
WHERE TO BEGIN?
Kurt wasn’t accustomed to writing. He didn’t know how to express things deep down inside of him. He turned to a blank lined sheet in the notebook and wrote the names, both of them, and then looked straight in front of him. The lake glinted in the afternoon sun, already heavily trafficked with watercraft—big power boats, pontoon boats, Wave Runners and Jet Skis. He sat and watched the people enjoying their days off, the beautiful weekend. And all he could do was sit there and dredge up years’ worth of memories and regret.
You never decide one day to be a bad person. And what did they mean, really, by calling you a “bad person”? Bad for society? Bad compared to whom? Kurt could look at Lonnie and say, and know, that he was a bad guy. But he didn’t really think of himself as a bad person. But he’d made choices, and those choices had led him to something unthinkable. Something unpardonable.
He was serving thirty years and would have been eligible for parole in another eight. But none of those figures mattered. Nothing did. How could you parole your soul? How could you release your conscience from a self-imposed gulag of thirty life sentences? Getting out, being on the outside like he was now—it didn’t matter. What was done was done.
The thought of starting over again occasionally played in his mind, especially the last day or so. But the truth of the matter was that he had no intention of starting over. Starting over implied that you had a chance of doing things right, beginning anew. Kurt knew that would never happen.
He thought for a moment of his lunch with Norah, of the first normal conversation he’d had with a woman in years. Their time together had felt terrifying and invigorating all at the same time. But Kurt was well aware that someone like Norah wouldn’t want to have anything to do with a guy like him if she knew the truth. Her beautiful, sweet smile would have to be dismissed. Where he was headed, she couldn’t go.
All he needed to do now was get this written. Get these thoughts on paper and get on to the next thing.
He always failed when he tried to write. Every time, the page was left blank.
But today was the day, he told himself.
Today the words were finally going to come.
“Think there’s any hope for guys like us?”
Sean opened his eyes. He’d been leaning back in the motor-boat, soaking up the massaging sunlight. “Hope?” he asked. “Hope as in what?”
“I don’t know,” Craig said uncomfortably. “I was just wondering—”
“Hope for that?” Sean pointed across at a pontoon boat driven by a tanned, bald-headed man. People of assorted ages were talking, laughing, looking up at the sky. “For a family? For a nice leisurely life here on the lake? For some grandpuppies and a place where everybody gets together and feels good about themselves?”
Craig didn’t answer. He looked like he regretted asking the question. Wes, sitting in the stern of the boat, acted like he didn’t even hear them.
“This is our hope, man,” said Sean. “You gotta get your head out of the dirt. Or outta wherever it is. This is the only hope we’re going to have. That summer snapshot on the lake ain’t gonna happen. Too many people know what that mug of yours looks like. Doesn’t matter if people up here are too stupid to notice. Someone will, eventually. In the meantime, this is hope. Right here. Being in this boat, on a day like today, with a couple of beers in our hands. You can’t get much better than that.”
“Says who?”
“Says a guy sent to the joint a few years ago because of some crack-headed thing he did. That’s who.”
Craig nodded.
“Look, they set the rules; we broke them and had to pay the consequences. Fine by me. I agree. And then we broke some more rules, and who knows? Maybe there’ll be more consequences. But right now we’ve got this boat and a lake and some beer, and that’s enough for me. If this is the only hope I got, I intend to take it. I deserve to have it.”
“Think so?”
“I know so. It’s all about the cards. All about the cards we’re dealt. And right now, my hand’s looking pretty good.”
There was a silence for a few minutes. The boat rocked back and forth. Sean looked back at Wes, who hadn’t said a word since they left the dock.
“You’re not thinking of doing something stupid, are you?”
Wes just looked at him for a minute, then shook his head and uttered an unconvincing no.
“Wes.”
“What?”
“That wife of yours on your mind? Your daughter?”
“No,” Wes said. “I mean, yeah, maybe just a little.”
“Wes.”
“What?”
“Look at me.”
“I’m looking.”
“No, I mean you look at me and look at me good. You better not end up like Lonnie. You got that?”
“Yeah.”
“You go off running, I’ll find you. And I’ll finish what I started.”
Sean stared at Wes, and the big guy’s eyes were the first to slide away.
“I’ll finish it just like I finished it back in Texas,” Sean said.
There was another long, hard silence. Then Sean opened the cooler and grabbed another beer. He threw it at Wes, made sure Craig was set, then took another.
“Hope,” Sean said, then laughed and looked up at the sky.
59
HER PICTURE WAS becoming blurry now after so many beers. His eyes were having a hard time staying open, and sometimes they’d shut and stay that way for a few minutes, and he’d lose all sense of where and what and who. Then he’d wake back up and shake his head and look back around the room and at the television and then at this picture.
If you don’t stop drinking, you’ll never see her again.
But it wasn’t that easy. He knew that. The trouble was, Collette didn’t know it.
The thing was, you didn’t just stop. You didn’t just wake up one morning and decide that something you’ve done for years, for decades, will suddenly just go away. It took a lifetime to become the man you were going to be, for better or for worse. Wasn’t that what marriage was all about anyway? For better or worse?
Yeah, maybe someone like Collette got a little more of the worse part. But Collette had her failings too. Sometimes she’d sit down and he’d see her chubby legs bunch up and see the cottage cheese thighs and he’d know he hadn’t gone and married some Victoria’s Secret model. Those girls weren’t even real, anyway. But the point was, Collette wasn’t perfect. Nobody was perfect. And this here, what he was doing, the drinking—well, it was just one of his imperfections.
Couldn’t she just get over it?
Don cursed in his mind and found himself waking up again. He took the can of beer and finished the contents and hated the lukewarm dregs.
Nobody’s perfect, he thought. Nobody’s ideal. You gotta work hard at marriage. You don’t just run off.
He stood up and went to the fridge. Empty.
What to do what to do what to do.
Don knew he had a shift tomorrow, had to be at work at seven. Seven to five. Driving around in the cruiser, sitting on his rear, doing nothing but looking and smiling and being bored out of his gourd. Maybe someone in a motorboat would cut some swimmer in half. He didn’t want that to happen, not really. But if something could happen, maybe things would get better. Maybe if he didn’t have so much blasted time to waste away.
Jeff.
Todd.
He thought of the boys and wanted to see them. He was tired of feeling guilty and feeling hurt for not seeing them. It was his right to see them. His legal right. They were his flesh and blood, and he’d done just as much to bring them into this world as Collette had. Well, initially, anyway.
Things hadn’t always been like this. He and Collette used to have good times. Lots of laughter. Collette used to be a different person back before Jeff was born, before they became parents, before Collette started giving all her attention to the boys and not to Don. Why did the laughter and the love have to stop? He understood that things change. He understood that she wanted to be a good mother, but come on. He was still her husband, and he still needed some love and attention.
Excuses. All excuses. All lies and excuses because you’re one lousy excuse for a husband and a father.
“Shut your pie hole,” he told the inner voice. It was like he had lived with Collette so long that her voice echoed in his head, even when she wasn’t here. Turn down that volume! Put the boys to bed! Get some milk! Stop drinking so much! What is your problem anyway? Naggy naggy nag. On and on.
He needed more beer. It was only eleven, and he still felt thirsty.
“Gotta get some more,” Don muttered to himself.
You need to stop.
“You need to just back off and shut it.”
Why are you doing this?
“I didn’t start it.”
Don…
He closed the door behind him and shut out the noise. It would be the start of another long night for him.
60
“WHERE ARE YOU GOING?” Sean asked Kurt before he had the chance to open the cabin’s door.
“Breakfast.”
“You’re going to that grill again, aren’t you? To see her?”
Kurt didn’t blink, but just stared back at Sean. Sean could tell he surprised the guy He also could tell that Kurt looked, well, different. He looked a bit more spiffed up. His hair didn’t look as grimy as it usually looked. He still had the beard, and that was good, but he had trimmed it around the edges.
“I know about your little love interest at the restaurant.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kurt said, moving past him and heading outside.
“Come on.”
“What?” Kurt said, his sunglasses on, the hot day already blazing.
“Where’s the trust?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m not an idiot,” said Sean. “Craig told me about the girl. You might just want to be careful.”
Kurt looked back at Sean. “The more times I go there, the less people notice me.”
“And this lady?”
“She’s fine.”
“Fine as in ‘hot mama,’ or fine as in ‘no problem.’”
“She’s not a problem,” Kurt said.
“You sure?”
Kurt looked defiant, his jaw stern and his gaze firmly on Sean. “Stay out of it. This is my business.”
“It’s all of our business.”
“Really? Like the reason we even came up here? Which you have so generously shared with us.”
“We’ve gone through this.”
“You have your business, and I’ve got mine.”
Sean tried to stare him down, but this time Kurt’s defiant gaze didn’t give way.
“Aren’t you the one who said that we’re in the middle of nowhere, that people aren’t looking for us up here? And that we should just enjoy it?”
Sean smiled. “Just don’t forget who you are, Kurt.”
“Funny—it’s only been recently that I started to remember.”
Kurt walked off and headed down the street.
Sean watched him go. Then he crossed the room and poured himself another cup of coffee from the pot that Ossie had brewed. Ossie had found a drip-style pot in a Wayland thrift store and had gotten in the habit of starting it when he got up early to pray and do whatever it was he did.
He drank it strong and black and stood there and knew that things were falling apart. The tight fist of his control had turned into more of an open palm. Soon things would be falling out of his grip entirely. It wasn’t just Lonnie he had to worry about. Wes was getting restless. Ossie was moping around. And now Kurt was losing his mind and thinking he could—what? romance a woman? What was he thinking?
But it was all right, Sean thought. There would still be time to do what he needed to do before everything fell apart. The more he thought about it, in fact, the more he realized that tonight would be as good a time as any.
He had waited long enough.
For the third morning in a row, Kurt walked into the Lakeside Grill and nodded to the young girl who showed him to his table. And for the second morning in a row, he asked if he could have Norah as his waitress, meaning the girl had to show him to another table.
Kurt sat and looked around, feeling like a junior high boy looking for the girl he gave a valentine to. As much as he hated to admit, Kurt knew that Sean had it right, urging him to not forget who he was. What had he said in reply? That he was only starting to remember who he was. Could that be true? Starting to remember what? How to feel? How to be an ordinary man with emotions and needs?
You can never be an ordinary man.
He didn’t need to look at the menu, but he scanned it anyway. Soft footsteps walking up to his table made him look up.
“Good morning, again,” Norah said to him.
She looked different this morning. She wore a little more makeup perhaps. Not bad. Not bad at all. She looked—and Kurt had thought this might have been impossible—even more beautiful than previous times he had seen her. Her hair looked shiny and full, pulled back into a long braid that trailed down her back.
“Hi,” was all he could manage.
“So, are you stalking me?” Norah asked him with a smile.
The joke actually made him freeze up. He knew she intended humor; he could tell from her smile and eyes. But was there a little truth to the accusation? Was she worried? Should she be? Yesterday he had spent two and a half hours in the restaurant. They had talked off and on, during her breaks. But in the end, Kurt had not been able to ask her out again. Or ask her to do anything. He’d left her with a nod and a smile. Would today be the same?
“I’m really kidding,” she said to him. “I was wondering if you were going to come in today.”
He ordered something at random. He didn’t come here to eat, anyway, but to feel like a normal human being, like a decent man. The coffee and the waiting and the relaxing—these were such good things. And the lovely woman who actually knew his name—well, the name he’d given her, anyway—and who enjoyed talking to him and kept coming by his table and sharing little bits and pieces of conversation—she was almost miraculous.
Today he would ask her out.
Are you crazy?
Yes, maybe he was crazy. Maybe this was a fantasy just like getting out had been. And look at him. Look at him now. He was on vacation—from his life, from the law. From everything, including the future.
You can do anything you want on vacation.
As he waited for his plate of eggs and toast and watched No-rah pour another cup of coffee, the heat rising from the cup, Kurt decided he would ask right then. It never hurt to ask, right?
“Do you have any plans today?”
She stood holding the coffeepot, looking at him. “I do have to work.”
“After work.”
She smiled, almost as if she couldn’t help herself. He felt like a loser, like a little kid.
“No,” Norah said. “I don’t have plans.”
“Would you like—I don’t know—I don’t know the area very well—but would you want to maybe—”
And before he could mumble anything else, Norah gave him one quick reply.
“Sure.”
61
KNOCKS. FAINT. DISTANT.
she’s coming back finally I’m sorry for everything I’ve done let me kiss your feet don’t ever leave me I need you to go on and without you I can’t—
Then the door opening and footsteps, heavier than he might have thought them to be.
He drifted back down through clouds and past the murky air and onto firmer ground.
Don opened his eyes, and the light in the room struck him as blinding. It took him a good few minutes to manage opening them fully.
“Don,” a voice said, and it didn’t sound like Collette.
“Don, man, get up,” the voice said again and he managed to keep his eyes open and get adjusted to the light. He propped his body up on the couch, and the whole world swayed back and forth like he was on a pirate ship in a typhoon.
This was a bad one.
“Don,” the voice said, and he looked and saw Steve Reed staring at him. Staring hard.
“Man, you look like a walking nightmare.”
Don sucked in a breath and tried to fight the urge to throw up. He was a pro at fighting it off, but this truly was a bad one.
What’d I do now?
“Do you know what time it is?” Steve asked him.
Don shook his head. Then regretted it.
“It’s close to noon.”
Did he have to work? Oh, yeah. Oh, no…
Don cursed out loud.
“I told them you called in sick this morning. It’s fine.”
Don squinted and wondered how his living room could get so bright. He just wanted darkness again. He needed to sleep this off.
“You don’t remember, do you?”
