Riordan man.
Alphonse, Frank’s blue-eyed Siberian husky, growled at first, but calmed down when he saw how pathetic Culann was, bleeding drunkenly on the rug. Frank administered “Alaskan first aid” by covering the cuts on Culann’s forehead with a rag and duct-taping it into place. Culann pulled himself onto the shabby couch that formed the centerpiece of Frank’s tiny living room, while Frank stepped out into the even tinier kitchen and returned with two cans of Molson.
“Here you go, Culann. Not like you need any more. Might as well get it out of your system now, cuz you’re gonna work your ass off in a couple of days.”
Culann thanked him for the beer, and Frank plopped down on the couch. Alphonse got up and lay across Frank’s feet, never once taking his eyes off Culann.
Frank didn’t have a TV, so they listened to the radio, an AM country-western station out of Fairbanks. Though this broad-bellied mountain man looked different from the boy he remembered, Frank’s gem-green eyes glittered familiarly from under the brim of his cap.
“So my mom says you’re some kind of child molester,” Frank said.
“It was just a misunderstanding.”
“You accidently fell into some little girl’s panties?”
“First off, I didn’t get into anyone’s panties. And second, she was sixteen.”
“I’m just messing with you, Culann. What happened?”
Culann sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He took a swallow from his beer can and rested it on his knee.
“It was over spring break,” Culann said. “I didn’t go anywhere. I just stayed in town. There’s this tavern about half a mile from my house called DeLuca’s. I like it because I can walk home if I get too inebriated.”
“You always were so responsible.”
“I went over to DeLuca’s for lunch. It was a weekday, Thursday I think, so the place was pretty crowded over the lunch hour, and then there were only three people left after everybody else went back to work. Vic DeLuca, the owner, he’s a nice guy. I’ve been frequenting his place since I got out of college. Well, his daughter was on spring break, too, so she was helping out with the lunchtime rush. I never put two-and-two together, but his daughter is Kat DeLuca, who was in my class last year. Good student.”
“I bet she really polished your apple,” Frank said while stroking the air with his right hand.
Culann stood up, drained his beer and headed into Frank’s kitchen for another.
“Get me one,” Frank shouted.
“Fuck you,” Culann replied, but came back with two beers.
“Okay, so you got caught stroking this pussy-Kat?”
Culann silently sipped his beer.
“Come on, cuz. You got to sing for your supper. Tell me the story, or I’ll make you sleep outside. Let the mosquitoes suck you dry.”
Culann was not exactly enjoying Frank’s teasing, but he appreciated how they’d fallen instantly into their boyhood banter. Plus, Culann relished the opportunity to tell his side of the story to someone inclined to give him a fair hearing, wiseass comments aside.
“So Kat DeLuca was waiting on me, which was really weird for both of us because we were used to seeing each other in a completely different context. We’d spent hours together in class, but we really didn’t know one another at all. She’s used to seeing me in a tie everyday, and here I was dressed in a t-shirt and jeans, not to mention a long sight from sober on a Thursday afternoon.”
“I bet you made quite an impression.”
“I suppose I did. So, anyway, we were talking, and I was drunk. I was a lot more gregarious than usual. I was asking her questions, like what teachers didn’t she like, and then I was agreeing with her when she told me. These were the kinds of things a teacher shouldn’t be saying. And she was delighted because kids rarely get to hear adults speak so freely around them.”
At this point in the narrative, Alphonse let out a putrid fart. Frank shoved him away with his foot, but there was no escaping the smell in the tiny shack.
“He’s your dog all right, Frank,” Culann said with a cough.
“We can’t all be refined little pederasts like you.”
“I’m going to buy you a dictionary, you dumb hick. A pederast is into young boys, not sixteen-year-old girls. Although I’m not into sixteen-year-old girls either.”
“Okay, Noah Fucking Webster. What kind of perversion do you got?”
“I don’t have any kind of perversion.”
“So what do you call a guy with a hard-on for sixteen-year-old girls?”
“An ephebophile.”
“I knew you’d know it. So then what happened?”
“Well, we were really having a good time. I was telling tales outside of school, as they say—this teacher was arrested for drunk driving, that teacher cheats on her husband, this teacher is gay. And she was laughing and saying ‘I didn’t know you were so funny, Mr. Riordan.’ And then she started touching my arm when she was talking, and I realized we were getting into dangerous territory. Her dad was behind the bar, and he had to have seen this. So, discretion being the better part of valor and all that, I decided to take my leave.
“I just stood up and put my coat on. I played it cool. And then Kat said, ‘It was really nice talking to you, Mr. Riordan.’ And she gave me a hug. She was just the right height that the top of her head came up to my chin, and I wasn’t thinking or anything, I just gave grazed my lips across her hair. It was like an autonomic reaction, but there was nothing dirty about it. It was just a little peck on the top of the head.”
“If it was nothing, what are you doing in my living room?” Frank asked.
“Her dad saw it and went berserk. He came tearing out from behind the bar, and I didn’t have to think about it. I just pushed Kat away from me and ran. I banged into a table and bruised my thigh. It was at that point that Vic caught up with me and started punching me in the side of the head. He’s an older guy, but defending his daughter’s virtue gave him strength. I was saying, ‘Take it easy, Vic,’ and trying to push him away while heading for the door. I finally broke away from him, and he said he was going to get his gun, so I ran as fast as I could. I just left my car parked out front. As far as I know, it’s still there.”
This was more or less how it had all happened.
“That’s just precious, Culann. You give a girl a little smooch on the head and now you’re a wanted sex offender. You might as well have bent her over the bar for all the trouble you’re in.”
“That’s life. You get in as much trouble for almost doing something as when you actually do it. Let that be a lesson to you.”
“Hell, almost doing something has never been my problem.”
They both got good and drunk that night. Culann planned to dry out the next day.
Alphonse started to warm to him, or at least was no longer staring by morning, but Culann still didn’t dare pet him. He knew animals to be exceptional judges of character.
None of this would have been possible without Worner’s cannonball. He thought it was his good luck charm — the good luck charm that got him killed.
The Orthrus men were a superstitious bunch, which isn’t surprising given their collective lack of education. More importantly, though, they work the kind of job where one piece of bad luck spells death. I don’t blame them for trying to tip the scales of luck in their favor.
Worner had the cannonball his grandfather had given him.
Frank had a lucky rabbit’s foot, which was nothing like the fake rabbit’s feet I used to buy at the novelty shop. No, this was the foot of a real-life rabbit Frank had found in a badger trap out in the woods. The rabbit had evidently gotten caught in the trap, and then some other creature came by and ate the rabbit, leaving just its trapped paw behind.
Why Frank would consider this lucky was never explained to my satisfaction.
McGillicuddy, in a surprisingly-romantic gesture, kept a lock of his wife’s hair tied with a strip of lace from her wedding dress. He showed it to me once and told me he’d tear out my “pink little nuts” if I told anyone. I don’t
