The Fallow Season of Hugo Hunter (23 page)

“You drive down today?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“How was the weather?”

“Just cold. How’s it been here?”

“No snow yet. Kind of strange. Wind, though. Wind all the time. That makes the snow bad, when it comes.”

I smiled.

“What?” she said.

“We didn’t come here to talk about the weather, did we?”

She shrugged. “We came to talk. The weather came up.”

I nodded. “Yeah. There’s something I need to tell you, OK?”

“OK.”

“And I’m probably going to mess it up a few times, so just bear with me.”

“OK, Mark.”

I swallowed, and then I did it again. I set my hands on the table, clenched them together, and wrung them out.

“We’re having a baby, my wife and I. Lainie. That’s her name. My wife.”

Marlene looked at me, waiting. I thought maybe I saw a little quiver in her chin, but that was it. She was otherwise a lake on a day without wind.

“I want you to know I think about him every day.” I said this, and now she reached for a napkin to dab her eyes, and I tried not to see it happen so I could just keep going and not lose control. It was harder to say than I expected, and I expected it to be hell.

“He was so much like you, and that means he was the best part of us,” I said. “I’m so sorry that I—”

“You didn’t.”

“I did. In a way, I did. That day, I did. I can’t forget the things I said. I denied you the best effort I could give. That wasn’t fair. I want you to know that I know it, and I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

I dropped my head. “I feel like I don’t deserve what’s happening now,” I said. “The good things.”

Marlene reached for my hand, and I looked up again.

“What’s
deserve
?” she said. “Things happen for a reason, or for no reason at all. You can’t go back and do them again. You can ask why you get another chance, but who’ll give you an answer? Nobody.”

“I’m scared,” I said. I hadn’t intended to admit such a thing, but it felt right to acknowledge it.

“Maybe that’s a good thing,” she said. “I never knew you to be scared before. Of anything. Maybe it means something now.”

“Maybe that I’m not ready.”

“Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe that you finally are.”

I bit my lip. Her grace was such a gift.

She let go of my hand. “I still read your stories sometimes,” she said.

“You do?”

“Yeah. Hard habit to break.” She smiled again, and I tried to remember to treasure it. “Mark, I want you to know something. I don’t blame you for Von. I think I wanted to because I thought it would make me feel better about everything after, but I don’t. It crushed us both. I know that.”

“Yes.” It was all I could do to hold it together.

“I just hoped yo
u’d
be OK. I couldn’t stay, I couldn’t help you with that, but I hoped that for you. For me, too.”

“I did, too. For both of us.”

I don’t know what I wanted from the trip, except to satisfy an urge I had to see Marlene again. Closure? Sure. But what’s that, really? I guess it’s what I got that day in Casper.

Marlene looked out the window. Hugo had gotten out of the car and was now pacing the sidewalk, careful not to make eye contact.

“He watches over you,” she said.

“He’s a good friend.”

She stood, and I stood to meet her. “Thank you for coming to see me, Mark. I’m glad you did. And I’m glad for your happiness. I really am.”

“Thank you.”

She paused in the doorway to put on her sunglasses, and then she headed for her car, waving to Hugo. The car door opened, and she folded herself into the seat. I watched through the café window as her eyes found me, and she smiled. I lifted a hand in a wave, and she responded in kind.

She backed out of the parking spot. I kept my hand up. She drove out of the frame, and that was it.

42

Lainie and I made it through Christmas without the wheels coming off our private enterprise. We had made a pact that we wouldn’t tell friends and family members about Zygote Westerly until after the first trimester screen, which lay just beyond the new year. That would be just about the time Lainie would begin to show in a way that made circumspection a moot point anyway.

So it was that we cooked up a big holiday feast, stuffed the stockings, and listened as Tony and Jo told us about their impending happiness, the child who would be born four or five weeks after his or her uncle or aunt. Hugs and handshakes came out in public, and Lainie and I saved the maniacal giggles for later, when we were alone in bed. What a surprise we had in store for them, and what a twenty-first-century family we had shaping up.

Left to my own devices, I became intimately familiar with Google searches on terms like
amniocentesis
, and saw that our immediate life would be cast against an every-two-weeks measuring stick: the obstetrical history appointment, the obstetrical physical appointment, the chromosomal testing, the childbirth classes that w
e’d
fit in on Tuesdays (my only option given the crappy split-day schedule I was working at the
Herald-Gleaner
), quad screening, AFP testing, GTT, and the rest of the alphabet soup.

At twelve weeks, on a gloomy day that blew snow sideways in Billings, we got the pronouncement we were seeking. There’s nothing easy about carrying a child to term; when you figure all of the things that have to happen just so, it’s amazing we’re as successful as we are at propagating the species. At Lainie’s age, the caution, for her doctors and for us, ratcheted up considerably.

The ob-gyn gave us the news, in words I ended up using for the e-mail that announced the impending arrival to our friends: “Looks like the kid has done this before.”

Before work, I carried a few celebratory cigars over to Feeney’s. The pull of family and obligation had changed the spheres I operated in, but when it came to singular news I had to unload, Frank Feeney was as good a friend as
I’d
ever had, next to Hugo.
I’d
wanted to hate him after he punched me out, after he said what he did to Lainie, but I couldn’t. Too much history. Too much knowledge. Too much.

“What’s this?” he asked as I handed him a cigar.

“You can figure this one out,” I said. “I know it. Think hard.”

He gave me the finger. It was beautiful.

“I’m gonna be a daddy,” I said.

“No shit?”

“One hundred percent shitless.”

Frank came around from behind the bar and scooped me into a bear hug. My weight gain aside, the old boy could still throw me around like I was nothing. I really would have to think twice about taking a swing at him again.
“I gotta call Trevor,” he said. “He’ll get a kick out of this.”

I pulled another cigar from my pocket and handed it to him. “For Squeaky. But hold on a second.”

We settled into seats at the bar.

“Have you heard from Hugo?” I asked.

“Not sinc
e . . .
well, you know.”

“Really?”

“Yep.”

“That was, what, four months ago?”

“I guess.”

“I’ll call Raj. Hugo’s not answering the number I have for him.”
I’d
tried that morning, and in the car on the way to the bar. Nothing. I had news for him, and some work clothes that Lainie had picked out for Christmas. I hadn’t seen him since the trip to Casper. When we got back, time did what it tends to do. It dribbled away from us.

“I’ve seen the kid. Came in a few times with a girl he’s been seeing.”

“You ask him about Hugo?”

“No. Why would I?”

I was flummoxed. “Why wouldn’t you?”

That irritated Frank. He stood up and retreated to his usual spot. “I haven’t gone anywhere, you know? Somebody wants to say something to me, here I am. Like you, Mark. You found me. It ain’t hard. And congratulations to you.”

Raj didn’t get back to me until deep into my shift at the
Herald-Gleaner
, when the phones were popping every couple of minutes with a coach calling in a basketball result. I had to make it quick.

“Where’s your dad?” I asked.

“The patch, I guess. I don’t know.”

“When did you hear from him last?”

“A couple of weeks ago. Before Christmas. Said he was staying on to make some money. He sent me some cash.”

“He sound OK?”

“What’s with all the questions, Mark?”

I looked over the transom at Trimear, who was giving me angry eyes to indicate that I needed to dump this personal call and get back on the phones.

“Just wondering, is all,” I said. “When you hear from him, let him know I’ve got some stuff for him. Have him call me, OK?”

“Yeah, OK.”

“Thanks, kid.” I hung up, then immediately picked up a ringing line.

“About time,” Trimear said.

“
Herald-Gleaner
sports, this is Westerly,” I said. Trimear kept staring me down, and I mouthed, “Sorry,” then greeted the Twin Bridges basketball coach. “Great, Jim, ho
w’d
it go tonight?” Jim Cardwell downloaded the night’s box score into my ear, and I punched it into the waiting form on my computer screen. Nearly thirty years of journalism, and this was my lot at the
Herald-Gleaner
.

Getting old sucks.

Between editions, Trimear asked me to step into the conference room. I had a feeling what the subject would be. Perspicacity, that’s what it’s called.

“Don’t sit,” he said. “This won’t take long.”

“OK.”

“Phone’s for business use only.”

“I know. I—”

“It’s in the employee handbook. You signed the form saying you read the handbook.”

“You’re right. I did. It won’t happen again.”

“It better not,” he said.

“I assume you’ll be taking this up with everybody, then? Hop calls the brewpub to order dinner every night. Landry talks to his girlfriend. I heard you talking to your kid tonight.”

I looked at him. I didn’t dare smile or make any overt acknowledgment of how I was killing him. I didn’t need to. His neck was bobbing in hyperdrive.

“Just stay off the phone unless it’s business,” he said.

“You got it, Gene.”

“And don’t be a smart-ass.”

“No, of course not.”

He opened the door and sent me out, and then he rushed out the side door for his smoke break.

Excerpt from
Hugo Hunter: My Good Life and Bad Times

By the measures of the sport, I am a failed boxer:

I’m a silver medalist. That means somebody finished better than I did.

I had two championship matches as a pro. I lost both, in different ways.

To the extent that I’m remembered at all, a certain narrative threads through this. It’s one of incompletion. To the sportscasters and analysts, I had something lacking. I didn’t want it bad enough. I couldn’t control my impulses long enough. I wasn’t good enough. Any way you slice it all up, it comes down to passion. I didn’t have enough. That’s the story.

On one hand, I can understand that line of argument. It’s a breezy explanation for something that is otherwise inexplicable. But you know what? No contention makes me angrier than the one that suggests I lack heart.

I went from nothing in Billings, Montana, to the best amateur lightweight in the world. (Juan Domingo Ascencion and his gold medal will just have to accept that.) At my peak, as both a welterweight and a junior middleweight, I was the second-best professional fighter in the world. Seven billion people on the planet, and only one of them was better at what I did than I was.

How do you suppose that happens? Well, let me tell you: it happened because I had passion for what I did. Nobody runs the kind of miles I did, chops wood, punches heavy bags, gets in the ring with sparring partners, eats the way I did, and turns himself into a wrecking machine because he’s a dilettante. If
I’d
wanted to be average, I could have worked at an insurance agency or driven a truck. If you’re a professional fighter, average can get you killed.

What I had was not a lack of passion. It was an abundance of human frailty. You want to tag me with that, go right ahead. Guilty.

But don’t say I didn’t have heart.