As kids we’d played hundreds of games on that table. Soupy had nicknamed his goalie “Tommy Trapezoid.” When I started to play goalie myself, he started calling me Trapezoid, too, and soon shortened it to Trap, which he called me still.
“We’ll resume the series,” I said. “I’m up like two twenty to two hundred five.”
“Bullshit, man, I was way ahead. You couldn’t handle my right-wing-to-center move.”
“Whatever. When’s the garage sale?”
He’d been talking about having a garage sale for months. I couldn’t imagine Soupy actually going to the trouble of making price tags and haggling with old ladies over an ancient ottoman or toaster oven. More likely, he would load everything into his pickup and take it to the county landfill. Even more likely, load everything up and tote it around for a few months.
“Rethinking that,” he said.
“How come?”
“Not sure.”
He turned to the back bar and started rearranging schnapps bottles.
“Not sure about what?” I said.
He turned back around, glanced down the bar at Angie, lowered his voice.
“Really don’t want all these local assholes talking about my business,” Soupy said.
“You got a buyer?”
“Kind of out of nowhere. Yeah. Five above asking.”
That was a good price in Starvation, where houses for sale sat for months, even years, without an offer. The Campbells’ place, a two-bedroom with water-stained clapboard walls and a roof enveloped in vines, wasn’t even on the lake.
“They must love that knotty pine paneling, eh?” I said. “And the cigarette smell. Who’s the buyer? Do I know them?”
“I’m dealing with some law firm downstate.”
“You get me the name, I might be able to check it out for you.”
Soupy studied the rim of his bottle.
“Thanks. Don’t want to jinx it just yet,” he said.
You don’t know a guy for thirty years and not know when he’s bullshitting you. Especially Soupy, who, except when he had a hockey stick in his hands, wasn’t nearly as clever as he imagined. I let it go for the moment.
“Rats going to do it tonight?” he said.
“I think so.”
“Best thing that could happen around here, Rats win the state title. Good for the soul, good for the economy. Mrs. B would’ve wanted it that way.”
Mrs. B wouldn’t have given a rip, I thought. “I was just out giving Tex his skates,” I said.
Soupy flipped his empty at the overflowing barrel of garbage next to his office door. The bottle clanged off of another and nestled against a pizza box.
“Out where?” he said.
“Tatch’s.”
“Camp J.C.?”
“Yeah. A little spooky. Have you seen it?”
“Nope.” He reached into the fridge for another Blue Ribbon. “But I was out at Mom’s the other day and heard them making all sorts of noise.”
“They’re turning the hill into an ant farm. Got a backhoe going.”
“Bunch of crazy Jesus freaks, don’t want to pay their fair share.” It was Angie, shouting from her bar stool.
“Need a refill, Ange?” Soupy said.
She looked at her glass as if she hadn’t noticed it before. “Might as well.”
Soupy poured another tulip glass from the Busch Light tap and took it down the bar. When he came back, he said, “Where the hell was Tatch last night anyway?”
“He said family stuff.”
“Since when did Tatch give a shit about-” Soupy stopped and turned toward the front door as chilly air washed into the bar. Luke Whistler stepped in and closed the door.
“Gus,” he said. “Mr. Campbell.”
Soupy grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and slapped a shot glass down on the bar. “Chief,” he said, filling the glass and nudging it in Whistler’s direction.
Whistler looked at it for a second, smiling uncomfortably, then picked it up and drank it back in one smooth swallow. As he set the glass back down, Soupy held the bottle up for a refill. Whistler pulled the glass away. “No thanks.”
“I guess you guys know each other,” I said.
“I wouldn’t be much of a reporter if I didn’t know the town barkeep,” Whistler said. Then he said to Soupy, “You’re going to get me in trouble with the boss.”
“Who, him?” Soupy said. “He’s a goalie. He doesn’t worry about anybody but himself and his little net. Ain’t that right, Trap?” He grabbed the beer I had pushed away and shoved it in front of me. “Drink up. People are dying of thirst in Cambodia.”
I grimaced through another tepid sip.
“Saw your truck outside,” Whistler said. “Got a little info on that thing you asked about.”
Nye-less? I thought. “That was fast.”
“I wish I could take credit. This Google thing is pretty nifty.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Soupy said.
“Nothing,” I said, standing up and feeling justified in keeping something from Soupy. “Can I have a Coke to go? And a bag of Better Mades?”
“Out of Coke,” he said. He snatched the potato chips off a rack on the back bar and threw the bag at me. I caught it in my left hand. “Nice save,” he said.
“You going over to the shop?” Whistler said.
“Yeah.”
“I’ll meet you there in five.”
Soupy grabbed my bottle, downed the dregs, and flipped it at the trash barrel. It bounced off the pizza box and shattered on the floor.
“Fuck it,” I heard him say as I went out the door.
The Pilot front counter was buried. There were newspapers-the Free Press, the Times, the Traverse City Record-Eagle, shoppers from Kalkaska and Bellaire-the weekend mail, and our weekly bundle of memos from corporate headquarters in Traverse City.
Plus the remembrances for Mrs. B: Bouquets of flowers. Baskets of dried cherries and fudge. A frozen casserole that must have come from some well-meaning lady who didn’t understand that Mrs. B was Darlene’s mom, not mine, or who just didn’t know what else to do when someone died but bake something stuffed with cheese and potatoes and offer it to the bereaved.
I needed to hire a replacement but didn’t want to think about it yet.
Whistler was hunched over his keyboard, batting away with his two forefingers. The plastic clacks of the keystrokes were punctuated by the metallic clicking of a fat gold pinkie ring slapping the shift key. A foam cup of coffee steamed next to him; he wouldn’t touch it until the steam was gone and the coffee was about the temperature of that beer I’d choked down at Enright’s. He said he’d gotten used to lukewarm coffee on winter stakeouts in Detroit.
I went to my desk and dumped the mail across my blotter. There were three March of Dimes solicitations; the spring sports schedule from Pine County High School; and press releases from an advertising agency in Traverse, the Meijer supercenter in Charlevoix, the winter park in Petoskey. At the bottom of the pile lay a manila envelope tied with string. It contained the ad layouts for the next day’s paper. I already knew what it would tell me: We had barely any ads, which meant fewer pages and less space for stories.
“Hey,” Whistler said. “Just sent you a story.”
