He nodded his head up and down, very slowly.
“Okay, you’ll be first,” I said. “Anybody does something stupid, you get the first one.”
He smiled at me. I did my best to smile right back.
“What are you guys doing up here? Besides buying pills and beating people up?”
“Your buddy jumped us,” Brucie said. “What are we supposed to do?”
“Shut up, Brucie,” Cap said.
“I’m just saying.”
“Don’t even try. I’ll do the talking here.”
“All right,” I said, “let’s try to focus, guys. We need to come to an understanding here. The next time you’re thinking about coming up to one of the reservations, or to Sault Ste. Marie, or hell, let’s just say anywhere in Chippewa County…”
“You got us all wrong,” Cap said. “We’re just some guys on vacation.”
I pointed the gun at him. “How about this, Cap? The next time you say that, I’m going to shoot you in the face. Do you really want to give me an excuse? Because I’ll do it with great pleasure, believe me.”
He looked at me for a long, long moment. Brucie was staring at the gun in my hand. Harry looked like he was about to be sick.
“Okay, here’s your problem,” Cap said. He sat back in his seat and ran his hands together. “You’re not convincing at all. I mean, just listen to you…” He slid into an exaggerated Yooper accent. “‘One false move, I shoot you, eh?’ It doesn’t work.”
I was about to tell him that I didn’t talk like that, that I was from Detroit just like him. But then I realized that the last thing I should do was start arguing with him. This whole thing was not going the way I wanted.
“You can’t say ‘shoot,’ anyway,” he went on. “It’s an extremely lame word. It just sounds like you’re avoiding what a gun really does, which is kill somebody. You see what I’m getting at? It’s Alex, right? Isn’t that your name? If you’re the real thing, Alex, you’d be pointing that gun at me and saying, ‘I’m going to kill you.’ Doesn’t that sound a lot more believable?”
I smiled at him. I could feel the sweat on my hands now. It was already getting to the point where I might have to do something drastic, like fire a round and take a little chunk out of somebody. But then all hell might have broken loose and I’d really have a serious situation on my hands.
Before I could decide, I saw something change in Brucie’s eyes. He was looking over my shoulder.
I was about to turn when I felt the cold steel pressed against my temple.
“Drop it now,” a voice said from behind me, “or I’ll blow your brains out.”
I dropped the gun. There was a bearskin rug on the floor. The gun hit the rug with a soft thud.
“Pick it up, Cap.”
Cap pulled himself off the sofa. “Hello, Mr. Gray,” he said. He moved slowly, looking me in the eye as he bent down to pick up the gun. When I was safely disarmed, the man took the gun from my head and stepped around me.
He was tall. He was heavy. He was wearing a gray suit. His hair was gray. His eyes were gray. The fact that his name was apparently Mr. Gray was a bit more than my mind could handle at that moment. I had no idea what kind of trouble I had gotten myself into this time.
Mr. Gray looked down at me like I was something on the bottom of his shoe. “Where do I begin?” he said.
I was expecting a few questions from him, but he walked away from me and stood over the three men on the couch. He had put his gun away, somewhere deep in the recesses of his jacket.
“Number one, what the hell happened to your head?”
“A little accident, Dad.”
“A little accident.” He turned back at me, like suddenly I was his sympathetic audience.
“In the boat.”
“You had an accident in the boat.”
“Yes.”
“Which boat would you be referring to?”
Harry didn’t answer.
Mr. Gray looked at me again. “Something tells me I’m not going to like this.”
“It was the wooden boat.”
He nodded his head. “My antique Chris-Craft. The one I refinished by hand myself.”
“I’m sorry. There were these pilings in the water.”
“I called your roommates last night,” Mr. Gray said. “When I finally got a straight answer, imagine my surprise when I found out you were up here.”
“I couldn’t do it anymore. I’m sorry.”
“You left school?”
“Yes.”
“What’s your name?” he said to me.
“My name is Alex.”
“You have kids?”
“No, I don’t.”
He nodded his head. “Good thinking.”
“I was going to tell you,” Harry said.
“Oh, I’m sure you were intending to,” Mr. Gray said. “I have no doubt about that. I’m just wondering if that would have actually happened before you came up here and got yourself killed.”
Harry didn’t answer.
“Let me guess,” his father said. “You wanted to see the real world. Hang out with two tough guys. Drink some beer. Play some blackjack at the Indian casinos.”
Harry stayed silent. He looked down at the floor.
“How about hookers? You get any hookers up here yet?”
“Mr. Gray,” Cap said.
“I’m not talking to you yet,” he said. There wasn’t a hint of anger in his voice. He sounded almost amused. Cap shut his mouth and kept it shut.
Yeah, this was the effect I was going for myself, I thought. Now here was the real thing, in person.
And I am totally fucked right now.
“Harold,” Mr. Gray said, “I would like you to go out and wait in the car for me.”
“I can’t stand up,” he said.
“Why would that be?”
“I sort of wet my pants.”
“You wanted some real life, Harold. Here it is. Now go get in the car.”
“But I have my car here.”
“You can leave it for now.”
“I need my car.”
“I said you can leave it here.”
“Can I go upstairs and change, at least?”
“No, I think a ride back to Detroit in wet pants will be a good object lesson for you.” He looked at me again. “Don’t you agree?”
I didn’t say anything.
Harry stood up. The dark stain down his pants was unmistakable. He gave Cap and Brucie a small nod and then left the room. I heard the front door open and shut. Now it was just the four of us and somehow the room felt ten degrees colder.
“Caplan,” Mr. Gray said. “Bruce.”
Cap looked up at him. Bruce didn’t dare. Mr. Gray went over to Bruce in two quick steps and grabbed him by the neck. With his back to me now, I couldn’t see what took place between them. A few seconds later, he moved over to Cap. He stood over him for a while, but didn’t touch him.
“Before we discuss what you guys have done to my house,” he finally said, “and to my boat, and why in the
