Wolf River.
Mitch caught sight of Tommy Kastle leaning up against a rack of snowshoes, an unlit cigarette in his mouth, his dirty and raggedy Milwaukee Brewers cap cocked at a rakish angle on his head. Tommy had bought the cap ten years before and claimed he wouldn’t buy another until the Brewers took the pennant. He was chatting it up with some old man who was apparently trying to read the instructions for a flashlight he was buying.
The old guy looked over at Mitch. “Believe this crap? Goddamn instructions are in Chinese or some shit…what the hell’s this country coming to?”
Tommy didn’t seem to hear a word he said. “So they want both forties I got up on Pullman Lake Road. I go, well what do you got in mind? The paper mill guy, he goes, well, we’ll log off both forties and then replant ‘em both for you. I go, with what? I got hardwood up there. You boys clear-cut oak and birch and you re-plant fucking jackpine. He goes, sure but we pay you for your hardwood and we seed pine in there. I go, I don’t want no fucking scrub pine on my land. He goes, well that’s our offer. I go, well, shit, sounds more like rape than a deal to me. If you want to fuck me, how’s about kissing me first?”
Mitch laughed under his breath. Same old Tommy.
The old man went on his way, muttering about the goddamn Chinee strangling the whole country.
Tommy turned and saw Mitch. “Well, Jesus Christ, look what the frigging cat dragged in. How you been, Mitch?”
“Hanging in there. Saw your truck out front.”
“Well, what’re you thinking about this business, Mitch? Goddamn flooding? Ain’t it just the pisser?”
“Sure is.”
Tommy said that it wasn’t about to get any better, if what they were saying was true. Way he’d heard it, people were already pulling up stakes and getting the hell out of the Valley…not that you could blame them.
“Not you?”
Tommy laughed. “I ain’t going anywhere. I got me a boat and if worse comes to worse, I’ll be living on it. Got room for you, too, Mitch.” He pulled the unlit cigarette from his mouth and then put it back in. He looked suddenly uncomfortable. “Mitch. Christ, I heard about Lily’s sister and what happened. Damn, now that’s a tough spot. How’s the old girl doing?”
Mitch had a mad urge to lie. To lie his ass right off. But when he opened his mouth, all he could say was: “Not so good, Tommy. She’s having a hell of a hard time with it. You wouldn’t recognize her.”
Tommy just nodded. “They were tight, man. Even for twins they were tight. What was her name? Marjorie?”
“Marlene.”
“Right. Jesus, what a thing. I feel for you and Lily.”
That was followed by maybe ten seconds of uncomfortable silence. Poor old Tommy, he didn’t know how to handle things like this. He was your average blue collar guy with your average blue collar guy’s sense of compassion. It wasn’t that he was some hardassed redneck with no sympathy, it was just that he’d spent most of his life keeping his emotions on a high shelf in the closet where they wouldn’t cause any trouble and when he did take them out, they were damn rusty and he was damn clumsy trying to put them to work. Like pulling a car out of a garage every few years and turning it over, expecting it to pull a smooth and sweet idle when what it invariably did was sputter and shake and miss, cough lots of blue smoke.
But that was okay. Tommy Kastle was the salt of the earth, in Mitch’s opinion. He’d do anything for you. Give you the shirt off his back or an extra kidney, whatever you needed. Mitch could see it in his eyes, the warmth and empathy that just couldn’t get past his lips. And that’s all Mitch had to know.
Tommy cleared his throat. “All I can say is that I’m sorry about that mess, Mitch. And that’s all I’m gonna say. We go any farther with this, we’ll have to break out the fucking Kleenex and hold hands, watch goddamn Oprah together or something.”
Mitch burst out laughing. “God, but you’re an asshole.”
Tommy grinned, back on ground he knew well. “My mother said to go with your strengths.”
Mitch was feeling better. Those creeping heebie-jeebies seemed to have crawled off his spine now. He felt okay. He felt hopeful and wasn’t entirely sure what had been squeezing his nuts in the first place. It was good to be with Tommy. They’d grown up together. Traded skinned knees and Little League baseball for long hair and Black Sabbath records and then traded them again for the trappings of the working class: callused hands, mortgages, and middle-aged paunches, all that wonderful childhood idealism buried in the same hole with plans to be rock stars and NFL running backs. Maybe that stuff was buried, but if you looked real close at Mitch and Tommy, you could still see it twinkling in their eyes when they were together. There was a connection between them, an understanding. They’d grown from the same roots and all these years later flowered the same buds.
Tommy asked Mitch how things were going over at Northern Fabricators where he worked. Mitch was a machinist, a C amp; C lathe man.
Mitch just laughed. “Well, you figure that one. Northern is over in Bethany and we’re closed until things dry up.”
Tommy said it was the same at the wireworks out on Junction Road. Goddamn flooding. Closed until further notice. “I’m just glad I’m a single guy. No mouths to feed. All I got is me.”
Mitch just nodded. Tommy liked to say things like that, but underneath you could almost hear the sorrow of his existence echoing out like a slow and distant thunder.
“Lookit goddamn Hubb over there, will ya?” Tommy said.
Mitch did.
Hubb Sadler was the last remaining Sadler brother, Chum having dropped dead behind the counter almost fifteen years before from a coronary occlusion. Hubb sat on a metal folding chair behind the long glass counter, sucking off a bottle of oxygen to ease his emphysema which was greatly acerbated by the fact that he went in at over three-hundred pounds. Not a good thing when you were on the downside of seventy. His eyes were gray marbles pushed into narrow draws, his head shaped roughly like a jar and capped with a crewcut that was startlingly white. His face was seamed and deeply-etched with diverging lines. The only time the oxygen mask came off was when he needed to reel out a string of profanity at someone.
The Sadler brothers had done well for themselves, yes, but they’d both been miserable, evil-tempered sonsofbitches every day of their lives. A legacy Hubb kept alive.
Some college girl, maybe eighteen or nineteen, was working the cash register. She had brilliant blue eyes and a head of long, curly black hair that hung over her shoulders. Her breasts were large and high, pulling her shirt up even as her jeans rode low on her hips. Every man in the place was getting an eyeful of her flat belly and pierced naval.
“Jesus, lookit that shit, will ya?” Tommy said. “I don’t remember ta-ta’s like that when I was young. Bet she makes her own gravy. Look at Hubb! He’s just eating that up, sitting back there while she shakes her can in his face.”
Hubb did look pleased. But Mitch was thinking it wasn’t because of the girl, but because of the sales he was racking up. People were standing in line with raincoats and boots, lanterns and freeze-dried food packets, sleeping bags and plastic tarps. Old Hubb hadn’t made a killing like this since Y2K.
“What would you say if I told you I was taking her out tonight?” Tommy said.
“I’d say you were a lying sonofabitch.”
“And you’d be right.”
Hubb sat there, holding court with a couple other old-timers: Hardy and Knucker. Both in their seventies, they were regulars at Sadler Brothers. Hardy was probably one of the finest bullshit artists in Crandon and Knucker, well Knucker was just Knucker. For many years she’d been known simply as “Knucker’s Old Lady,” but after Knucker himself-Pauly Knuck-had passed on, she inherited the coveted crown.
More people came through the front door, a blast of wet chill coming in with them. They joined the twenty or so that were already mulling around, ready to spend their money and flash their plastic.
Some guy neither Mitch nor Tommy even knew came right up to them, rain dripping off the brim of his bright yellow baseball cap. He looked worried, his eyes darting around. “Phone’s are all dead,” he said. “TV’s off the air. What the hell’s going on? Is it the weather?”
“I’m thinking so,” Tommy told him.
“Well, I’m not liking it,” was all he said to that.
