“There’s nothing I’d ever be scared to tell you,” McNally wrote in a letter to Ryan from jail on one occasion. “I could not ask for more of a friend.” Even so, there were always limits, and Ryan was trying to draw firmer, more boldfaced boundaries, as part of his plan to improve his own overall health.
“I can’t keep you out of prison this time around,” Ryan told him. “There’s just no way around your record anymore.”
“I get it,” he said. “Yeah, man.”
But did he really?
McNally convinced the judge in Washington County to lower his bond to $1,000, and then convinced another former girlfriend to post his bond. He was set free for a full week before charges were filed in Winnebago County against McNally for knowingly possessing methamphetamine precursors and waste. Inside this small window of time, our favorite lowlife performed another one of his magic tricks. He went up in a cloud of smoke, disappearing entirely from the face of the map. Just like Lucy Vasquez, and so many other clients Ryan represented, Rob McNally was on the lam.
This happened in September, and after that, he didn’t even contact Ryan, at least not until New Year’s Day, when he called from an anonymous number. “I’m down South, working the carnival again,” he said. “Got myself a new name. It’s Robin Marks. As in ‘robbing’ the easy ‘marks,’ playing the carnival goers till they’re broke.” A buddy fixed him up with a fake ID complete with a criminal record to match all his prison tattoos. But nothing too serious, just a few battery convictions—you know, beating the shit out of a few guys, no big deal.
I could see in Ryan’s face that McNally was on the line, and I could hear his voice as if he were right across the street at our Menominee Park against the blinking lights and stench of fried cheese curds.
“We’ll set you right up here. Come on now, don’t be a cheap date. Go for the big prizes. Get yourself a jumbo. Take home a teddy bear, come on now!”
When Sawdust Days, an annual Fourth of July festival featuring a flea market, historic village, music stages, and a carnival, descended upon Oshkosh, we increased our vigilance, locked our back doors, and refrained from playground visits. Our least favorite side effect of living on Hazel Street was Sawdust Days. On a daily basis otherwise, Ryan’s life in criminal defense tainted his attitude toward our neighborhood, but Independence Day festivities amplified his angst epidemically. Thousands of people, including the carneys, penetrated our facade of a safe haven, drinking, smoking, and fighting on our sidewalks until we called the police or closed the windows and fell asleep. We awoke to firecracker and cigarette butts in our gardens, air smoldering inside empty Faygo bottles on the terraces. In the historic village, Civil War reenactors blasted a cannon every hour or so, starting after breakfast. “Drummer Hoff,” we joked, “fires it off,” quoting from the children’s book by Barbara and Ed Emberley.
“We’re not taking the kids over there,” Ryan warned. “My clients are working the rides.” During his first full summer in criminal defense, while waiting in line for the Ferris wheel, as Irie and Leo flushed with claustrophobic heat, Ryan noticed a sheet of paper adhered with packing tape to a rickety fence post holding up the queue. The name of one of his clients—Willie Gago—appeared in bold print above a black-and-white xerox of his face. Somebody had written “RIP” in smaller print beneath.
Less than a year earlier, Willie Gago and his wife, Lucia, had frequented Ryan’s office, after Lucia drank too much and stabbed Willie at a park with a small knife on her keychain. They both regretted the public disturbance and were still in love. Ryan essentially offered them marriage counseling for free, and now that Willie had died, Ryan wondered, where was Lucia? He was a loyal attorney but not enough he’d want to acquaint our children with the drunk and disorderly.
That same year, Ryan glimpsed half a dozen former clients either working or chilling out at Sawdust Days. A lot of them were deep in the heroin scene. In fact, each year, the list of clients born from this days-long holiday celebration expanded, to include a classic case in which an overzealous security guard roughed up an intoxicated patron. Since our teen years, we’d referred to the crown jewel of Oshkosh festivals as “Dirtball Days,” a designation fully confirmed in our adult lives by Ryan’s work in criminal defense.
But we did feel a patriotic duty to observe the fireworks display at Menominee Park. We would begrudgingly take turns, every other year, chaperoning our kids through a maze of sparklers, glow-in-the-dark wands, and bottle rockets to the best viewing site up the block. Only one of us was lucky enough to remain home with our youngest child, whoever that happened to be. The other gritted his or her teeth against the missile launches and slow-burning punks until the air burned to a crisp and it was time to come home.
The summer Francis turned two years old was Ryan’s year to attend the fireworks. He set off on his journey with Irie, Leo, and Fern, leaving us behind in the boys’ room, a smoking porch converted to a bedroom. The air conditioner rattled as I rocked little Frank. I hummed with the machine, blocking out the festival music and heat. The greenhouse effect of this summer had reduced all of us to inanimate potted plants, sweaty and swollen with no energy stored up for anything else like talking or eating. We lived on a diet of Popsicles. It was like being trapped at the equator, sick with fever and nerve damage. The real temperature that day was 93 degrees. The humidity cranked temperatures even higher to a heat index of 106, cooling
