Authors: Scott Carter
When the phone buzzed at seven the next morning, Dave scrambled out of bed as if he’d been waiting for the call. Having dreamed of arguing with Amy, his subconscious tricked him into believe she was calling, but when he answered, the gruff voice on the other end was anything but her. It took him a moment to tune into what the man said.
“Mr. Bolden, there’s been an incident with your father.”
“Is he okay?”
“He’s fine. This has nothing to do with his health. How soon can you be here?”
“Uh, half an hour.”
“Very well.”
Dave hung up wondering what his dad had done. Had he set up more betting pools? Was he running another card game? Or was he back to proposition betting? Whatever the case, he knew it had something to do with money. They’d never assumed the traditional father-son roles when it came to worrying and the worrier. He always felt a tingle in his stomach when his dad would leave the house, fearing that it was the last time he would see him. The feeling had started when he was a kid, and even the confines of a senior’s home couldn’t stop that angst.
He signed into 29 Palson, and a new receptionist with close-cropped brown hair escorted him down a hallway to an office he vaguely remembered as the place where he’d signed the contract to have his dad admitted years earlier. The room had no windows, and the director, a man he’d met over the years only in passing, turned down the volume on a jazz station as he entered.
“Thank you for coming, Mr. Bolden. You may not remember me. I’m Daniel Clarry. I’m the director here at 29 Palson.”
“It’s been awhile, but I do remember you.”
Clarry slicked back what was left of his black hair as if he were in the Fifties. His face looked relatively young, but his hair betrayed him by providing a sneak peek into his declining years.
“Mr. Bolden, the reason we asked you to come today is because your father assaulted a staff member during breakfast this morning.”
“Assaulted?”
“That’s correct.”
“How can my dad in his condition assault anyone?”
The director leaned back into storytelling mode. Apparently, for two months Jack and the afternoon attendant, Chris, had been making a series of hockey bets.
Chris had grown up playing hockey, so he wouldn’t back down from a rematch each time he lost. Jack had started with double or nothing, moved to triple or nothing and made it to a week’s pay or nothing, when eight weeks later Chris found himself down eleven hundred. Pride wouldn’t let him stop, and a salary of twenty-four thousand a year before taxes wouldn’t allow him to pay.
“You said you needed two weeks, and it’s been three, I want my money,” Jack said with a firm grip on the cuff of Chris’s sweater as he delivered his oatmeal and orange juice.
Chris pulled free with a sneer. “Since when do you know the difference between two weeks and two months, you crusty fuck.”
Jack tipped his orange juice and oatmeal to the floor. Neither the glass or bowl broke, but juice and oatmeal splattered across the tiles.
“Jesus Christ,” Chris cursed, grabbing a rag from his pocket. “You want to be an asshole? Fine, then you’ll be a hungry asshole.”
Jack waited until Chris bent over to pick up the food then whacked him over the head with the tray. He hadn’t felt that strong in years, but between the adrenaline pumping and his eyes bulging with rage, the swing flowed naturally. Chris wrapped his hands around the bloody point of impact and took a moment to get to his feet. The exertion caused Jack to erupt into a violent cough, which saved him from Chris’s retaliation when another attendant entered the room after hearing Jack struggling to breathe.
With the story finished, Clarry leaned forward to get to the matter that concerned him. “Now, Chris is going to be fine, but he did need a few stitches.”
Part of Dave wanted to leap out of his chair. That was the dad he remembered. He was thinking of his dad invigorated and full of life when Clarry pulled a folder out of a drawer, which snapped Dave back to the moment.
“No one’s interested in pressing charges against your father, but given his history here, and his obvious disregard for the verbal warning, he is no longer welcome here effective the first of the month. And to be fair to you, I’ll tell you now that if any other facilities call requesting a reference, I will be thorough and honest in my opinion of your father.”
Dave opened the door to his dad’s room, and Jack’s head snapped towards him. He was anxious about who might enter the room, but Dave decided against sympathy.
“I thought we agreed, no more trouble.”
“He was holding out on me.”
“You shouldn’t have been betting.”
“He thought he didn’t have to pay me because I’m an old man.’
“You promised me you wouldn’t bet in here again.”
“Get off your high horse will you, for Christ’s sake. Who are you to tell me anything?”
“I’m the one who pays the bills.”
“Then put me out of my misery.”
The words ground the banter to a halt. He’d wanted his dad to feel like a king, yet the tirade had treated him like a high school freshman. “They want you out at the end of the month.”
“How many days is that?”
“Six.”
“Six too many.”
He wished he’d inherited his dad’s irreverence. Six days meant little time to find another place for Jack to live, that was if anyone would accept him.
Thirty-One
Dave stepped out of his apartment building, surprised to see Grayson at the wheel of a blue mini-van idling in front. He slid into the passenger seat and turned to see Thorrin in the back with a coffee and newspaper. Grayson wore a black bubble jacket with a fur hood, while Thorrin wore sheepskin that made Dave think of Vikings.
“What’s with the mini-van?”
“No one follows mini-vans.” Grayson tossed a black toque into Dave’s lap. “You’re going to need this.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re heading north.”
“Where?”
“Only about an hour outside the city, but it’s windy today.”
Dave turned to get Thorrin’s take, but the man just nodded as he worked on a crossword puzzle. Grayson pressed play on the stereo, and his Japanese lessons poured from the speakers for the next hour. Dave didn’t take his eyes off the window, and as the terrain changed from buildings to farmland and from concrete to snow covered fields, a part of him thought again that he was going to be murdered and buried in the woods. But as they passed a frozen bog with the remnants of a yellow canoe sticking up from the ice, a sense of calm flowed through him. They needed him.
He figured they wanted him as a symbol of their life philosophies, as much as for the extreme betting, and to kill him would be paramount to admitting they were insane.
That thought soothed him until the van turned onto the bumpy road of a farm with a dilapidated barn and a trailer where a house should have been. Thorrin set down his newspaper and tapped Grayson’s headrest with excitement.
“What am I going to be doing?” Dave asked.
“Nothing you can’t handle,” Grayson said, turning the music up.
Dave turned the stereo off. “You should know before we start whatever you have planned, that I have proof that I’m not lucky.”
“Proof?” Grayson scoffed as he opened a pack of almonds with his teeth.
Dave ignored Grayson and turned to Thorrin, whose eyes danced with mischief. “I took fifty grand to the racetrack in hopes of working my way up to your buyout price, and I lost on the first race.”
Thorrin raised his eyebrows at Grayson. “That just tells me you don’t want to leave us.”
“Are you listening to me? I lost.”
“You wanted to lose.”
“No, I want out. You’ve talked about how I need to have something at stake, well, there’s nothing I want more in the world than to get out of this situation, and I lost.”
The van hit a hole, and everyone in the car bounced before Grayson steadied the wheel. He turned to Dave with complete disregard for the road. “It’s you who isn’t listening. If you really did lose, and you’re not just saying this to make us doubt you, then you lost because you wanted to.”
“You should hear yourself.”
“You’re afraid of your own success, Dave,” Thorrin interjected. “You always have been, or you wouldn’t need me to reveal your gift. You hate risks, and your own mind turned on you when you made that bet to protect you from any real challenges.”
“I’m
in my mind, not you. You heard me tell you I lost fifty grand, right?”
“I don’t care. Here’s the situation. Senthur’s waiting with Elango, the man you watched escape the dog that day. A man he claims has phenomenal fortune. Senthur’s willing to bet a large amount of money that Elango’s luck outweighs yours.”
Grayson stopped the car beside the trailer, and for the first time, a large, frozen pond became visible. “You’d be best to focus on the task at hand.”
“This is so stupid.”
Thorrin stepped out of the van, let out two whistles of excitement and greeted Senthur with a hug. Senthur wore a fur hat with the ears down and a scarf that covered his chin. The temperature was at least ten degrees colder than in the city.
Elango sat on the trailer’s steps with a black skull cap and a grey hoodie too thin for the weather.
A man the size of a sumo wrestler stepped out of the trailer and braced himself with the railing until Senthur gestured to him. “Bring the scale.” The man returned to the trailer and reappeared a moment later with a scale that looked more like a Frisbee in his massive hand. The stairs creaked from the strain of his weight as he huffed down them and across the thin layer of snow, careful not to slip on hidden ice.
“Gentlemen.” Senthur addressed Dave then Elango. “Time to weigh in.”
Dave looked at Grayson for a hint about what was going on, but all he got was a shrug. Thorrin walked over to the trailer, back to the van, and paced around. Elango stepped to the scale first, slapping his clearly fit stomach. Even with a hoodie on, the man’s taut physique stood out.
“One eighty-two,” Senthur announced. Dave was next. He stood on the scale, worried that they were headed for a boxing match. He had never thrown a punch before. “One seventy-four.”
“Get the belt.” Senthur pointed at the large man leaning on the railing.
The man waddled over to the trailer again only to resurface with a weight belt adjusted to eight pounds. He handed the belt to Dave.
“What’s this for?”
“To even the weight. We don’t want any advantages.” Senthur pointed past Dave to the frozen pond, and everything became clear. They were going to run across the ice. He couldn’t help but stare. The pond must have been a hundred yards long and another fifty wide. Directly across, wind-bent evergreens lined the edge, and at the entrance, a stripped maple provided scale. A ripple of fear made Dave’s fingers tingle.
Grayson stepped beside him and leaned in close. “Now I know nothing is going to happen to you, but even if you believe you might lose, I want you to understand that falling into freezing water is nothing compared to what can be done to your father if you don’t participate.”
Dave took a breath so deep the icy air hurt his lungs. “Where am I running to?”
“Just run straight ahead.”
He considered that it might be the best moment to strike Grayson for telling Amy that he’d said he would leave the city. If this was the moment before he plunged into freezing water, he figured it should also be the moment of his revenge.
But that would guarantee a slow death for his dad and the end of anything he had with Amy, so instead of swinging at Grayson, he bent down to stretch his tight calf muscles. He’d been the fastest guy on his high school baseball team, but he couldn’t remember the last time he’d run full speed, or if he’d ever run on ice.
“Let’s do it,” Senthur said with a clap.
The large man limped forward to set a briefcase beside Senthur, who waited for Grayson to match it with a duffle bag.
Elango took his position at the pond’s lip, and Dave looked at Thorrin before joining him. The weight belt fit snugly around his waist, but the thought of anything slowing him down or increasing his chances of breaking through the ice made him wince. Dave joined Elango at the lip, and they stared straight ahead as if they were at a track meet.
“We start on three,” Senthur said. Both men nodded. “One. Two. Three.”
The men burst into a full run, and although Elango was faster, he ran like he didn’t run often. With his elbows out and arms flailing, no one would mistake him for an athlete. About a quarter of the way across the pond, a loud crack in the ice threw off their strides. Dave didn’t know whether to stop or keep running, but he knew he was behind Elango, and that made him push even harder, until three more pops from the ice warned him to stop. His feet skidded across the ice to the cracks beneath him. Elango kept running. He looked over his shoulder to see Dave standing still and broke into a smile, but then his left foot blew through the ice and sank his leg to just above the kneecap. The ice was sharp enough that it tore through his pants.
Elango thrust upward. The gash grated against the jagged ice until he pulled free. Blood was running from a cut that looked like he had just kicked through a glass door. He was shifting his weight to try and touch the wound when his right arm broke through the ice and sent him cheek-first to the frozen ground, where it splintered underneath his face.
Dave wanted to run for Elango, but the water began to bubble beneath his feet, and the ice released primal sounds as it spidered in front of him, so he pivoted and ran for shore.
Elango pulled his hand from the water and was trying to get up when the ice shattered and his body plunged into the water. A series of pops, like firecrackers, followed Dave to shore, where he dove at the maple tree’s base.
Expressionless, Thorrin picked up the briefcase and entered the minivan. Grayson stood over Dave until he was ready to stand, and Senthur turned from the pond and went into the trailer. None of them tried to save Elango, and none of them spoke about watching a man die.
Thirty-Two
The Japanese lessons played loud in Grayson’s car, too loud for Dave’s liking, but he didn’t have the resolve to say anything. His body was exhausted. He tried to replay running across the ice, but it had happened so fast that he’d only retained flashes like the cracks under his feet, how heavy his legs felt, and the sound Elango had made just before he submerged. The man had died, yet Grayson listened to the Japanese phrase for “Thank you for your time” as if it were a routine drive.