Jack said, “I found Jesus.”
“Yeah, right.”
Jack said, “The parole board believes I am a changed man.”
She grinned. “Well, they obviously don’t know you very well.”
He and Jodie had always gotten along, had always been close, closer after the death of their parents twelve years earlier when a fire broke out in their East Detroit home.
Jack said, “Can I stay with you for a few days?”
“I don’t know that I’d be comfortable living in the same house with a criminal.” She smiled now to show him she was kidding and opened the door.
Jack stepped over the threshold and she put her arms around him, hugged him and held on. She kissed his cheek and said, “Jackie, it’s so good to see you. You can stay as long as you like. You’re welcome anytime, you know that.”
She was a thirty-two-year-old divorcee with short spiked hair, dyed red and long fingernails that were light blue with flecks of color on them.
“When’d you change your hair?” Last time he saw Jodie, she was blond.
“Couple weeks ago. It’s an Emo style.”
“Emo, huh?”
“Stands for emotional punk movement.”
“I can see it,” Jack said.
“Listen, I’m in the business-I have to look the look. Did you know coloring your hair dates back to the ancient Romans?”
“I guess it’s okay then,” Jack said.
They went in the kitchen and Jodie made them each a vodka and tonic.
She said, “I’ll bet you’d like a home-cooked meal after all that time being incarcerated. I could whip us up some tuna noodle hot dish.”
It was a joke between them. Hot dish was a casserole their mother from Minnesota used to make. She’d start with a can of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup and put in tuna and noodles or ham and lima beans, whatever she had handy.
They had another drink and Jodie made hamburgers on a gas grill and they ate on TV tables in the living room, watching Jeopardy.
At one point Jack said, “You still selling cosmetics?” Jodie had worked for Revlon and made good money, selling to high-end stores in malls around Detroit.
She smiled and said, “No, I’m a nail technologist.”
Jack said, “Why are you doing that? You had a good job.” He regretted it as soon as he said it.
“You ought to talk.” She gave him a dirty look. “What did you say your current occupation was?”
He tried to smooth things over by asking a couple questions. “What do you like about your job?”
Jodie perked up a little. “You really want to know?”
Jack said, “You bet I do.” Trying to put a little enthusiasm behind it.
“Well, for one thing, it gives me a chance to be creative. I design decorative, colorful little things for fingernails and toenails. My favorites are gorgeous flowers made out of pink and green rhinestones and beautiful butterflies and ladybugs made out of crystal-clear teardrop rhinestones and pink round rhinestones.”
Jodie was grinning. She couldn’t help herself; she was so excited.
“I also do patriotic designs like American flags. They were very popular after 9/11. One of my customers met her boyfriend ’cause he loved the sunshine design I did on her toes. How about that? And I do New York manicures and French manicures and warm paraffin manicures. Once I did a pink ribbon for a breast cancer survivor. I do guys too, give them manicures and paint their toenails. I think it’s great there are men who are masculine enough to express themselves in such a fun way.”
Jack had stopped listening after “teardrop rhinestones.”
Jodie’s goal was to open her own shop one day. She was going to call it Ultimate Nails. “I think that says it all,” Jodie said, “don’t you?”
He thought, that’s what happens, you try to be nice to someone, they bore the hell out you.
The next day he drove Jodie to work and went out for a few hours, looking for a job. He was almost out of money and Jodie’d made it clear right up front, she wasn’t in a position to help him out financially.
In his brief job search, he tried a couple used car lots on Gratiot, asking if they needed an experienced salesman. They didn’t. He tried a construction site, a landscaping company, and a painting contractor, saying he’d do anything they needed done and struck out each time. He tried two strip joints on Eight Mile, asking if they were looking for a bouncer. They weren’t.
He stopped at a neighborhood saloon and sat at the dark bar that was crowded with afternoon drinkers. He sipped a beer and considered his options. Say he did get hired somewhere: now that he didn’t have the motivation to make probation, how long could he work some menial, chickenshit job? The answer was not very, if at all. He didn’t see himself showing up for work every day, doing something he didn’t want to do. He couldn’t see himself starting over, like he’d ever started in the first place. He was the way he was and wasn’t going to change. Not at age thirty-eight.
For the first time since leaving Arizona, he thought seriously about getting a gun and hitting party stores, small markets and retail shops that one person could manage. He’d just be more careful this time around, the fear of incarceration fading after six months on the outside.
FOUR
She remembered the day it happened, waking up to a creaking noise, the sound of someone coming up the stairs. She was in her bedroom at the lodge, varnished log walls and a cathedral ceiling with interlocking oak beams. The clock on the bedside table said 5:07 a.m. There was a log smoldering in the fireplace, giving off the faint smell of wood smoke. She got up, crossed the room and opened the top drawer of her dresser, took out the Smith amp; Wesson. 357 Airweight and went into the hall. She saw a man in mossy oak camouflage come up the stairs and head for Luke’s room. She snuck up behind him and aimed the pistol at his back.
He heard her and turned.
“Hey, Rambo,” Kate said, “better take this. Del Keane said he saw a bear last week.” She handed the automatic to Owen, and he slipped it in his pants pocket.
“Del doesn’t need a gun. Bear probably smelled him and ran away. What’re you doing up?”
“I’ve got to see my men off,” Kate said.
Luke came out of his room, rubbing sleep from his eyes. They went downstairs and Kate made coffee, carrying steaming mugs into the room. A backlog burned in the big fieldstone fireplace. Owen was kneeling on the oriental rug, putting gear in his backpack. He closed the top and laid it next to his compound bow that had a built-in quiver of arrows. She handed Owen his coffee, pulled her robe closed, and stood over by the fireplace to get warm.
Luke came in the room now, a skinny teenager dressed in Skyline Apparition 3-D camo, an iPod dangling from his neck like white plastic bling.
Owen said, “What’re you listening to?”
Luke pulled the earplug out and said, “White Stripes.”
Kate said, “I don’t know that bucks are partial to Motor City garage bands.”
Owen said, “Maybe he’s on to something. Rock instead of doe scent, the new deer lure.”
Luke picked up his dad’s bow and tried to pull the string with its seventy pounds of draw, face straining. He couldn’t do it.
“Lock your arms,” Owen said. “Use your shoulders.”
Luke took a breath and tried again, and this time, drew it about three quarters.
“You’re close, almost there,” Owen said. “Couple of months…”
