Rules For Becoming A Legend Part 6

"Do it again, make nine shots in a row."

So Jimmy picked up the ball and started shooting. He didnt make all of them, but he made enough, including two streaks: one of five and another of seven.

"Jesus," Princ.i.p.al Berg said.

Later in his office, he started making phone calls. He couldnt help it. And new news in a small town is lighter fluid on a barbeque.

At Van Eyck Beverages, Todd "Freight Train" Kirkus accidently cut his thumb with a box cutter. As he took his time wrapping it with medical tape, he worried about how his son Jimmy was doing at his first day of school. He could feel his heart through the wound in his thumb.

The phone rang on the loading dock and Todds boss, Ronnie ORourke, picked up. After a little talking, the pitch of his voice rose. He put down the phone and walked over to where Todd was loading up a truck for a solo run to Fred Meyer.

Ronnie slapped him on his broad back. "What say, Freight Train?"

Todd shrugged him off. "Hows that, Ronnie?"

"Just got off the phone with Shawn, and she just got off the phone with Nell, who ran into Mrs. Lilly. People are talking about your boy Jimmy. He was wowing over at Grey School today. Theyre saying hes a basketball natural."

Todd had long known this was going to happen. He did. What kid in Columbia City could go to school and not play basketball? It wasnt death and taxes in this little town-it was basketball and rain. Still, gone were the hopes he could protect his boys a little longer from the game that would be anything but a game for them. Todd breathed in. Kept telling himself, It doesnt mean anything. Stay calm, you knew it was going to happen. You knew. It doesnt mean anything.

"Yeah," Ronnie slapped Todd on the back again. "They say hes a chip off the old block, or an apple not far from the tree, or . . ." He tilted his head slightly to see how far he could take this. Todd was grimacing, face in profile, so maybe old Ronnie mistook it as a smile, because for some reason he kept going. "Lets hope hes not too close to his old man." Ronnie nudged Todd with his elbow.

A kid from across the loading dock joined in, "Yeah, hey Todd-" but he stopped because he could almost see the anger dance off Todds ox shoulders, heat on cement.

Somehow Ronnie didnt get it. Took the kids half-said sentence as backup. "Lets hope we dont get another Kirkus letdown! Columbia City couldnt handle that, although I bet old Dianed get wet for the headline potential." He bent his fingers in the air in front of him like he was bracketing a newspaper headline. "Kirkus Curse Strikes Columbia City Again."

That was how they kidded at Van Eyck Pepsi Plant. Mocked one another about the old days. The time you tried to get the girl, drink the booze, win the fight, land the job, and you failed. It was their catharsis. Their therapy. A manly portal into talking about their feelings. The guys kid you, so you kid em back, and at the end of the day, everything is out on the table. No couch. No bill.

It wasnt that way with Todd, though. Ronnie remembered too late. It was never that way with Todd.

"Hey, Todd." Ronnie looked around the loading dock but got nothing. The rest of the workers avoided his eyes.

Todd slowed in his actions. Carefully he placed the last crate of Pepsi liter bottles into the back of the truck. He breathed out. Then in again. His shoulders flexed. He wasnt the lithe basketball player he used to be. Years of loading heavy crates into the back of trucks had stacked him up comically top-heavy. Arms so big they didnt lie flat if he put them to his sides but angled out instead, like he was about to curtsy. Chest a barrel, neck a series of thick cables. And angry, Todd seemed even bigger. The other men on the loading dock hurried to busy themselves. An alarm had been tripped in Todds mind and they were picking up on it. Theyre gonna use him, it screamed. Todd started s.h.i.+vering. Theyre gonna use my boy!

Todd slammed the back door of the truck shut, kicked a crate of Pepsi cans off the edge of the loading dock. They dropped the three feet to the ground and skittered about the tires like fizzy demons. He leapt down after them, breathing hard, climbed into the cab. Engine took on the first turn and he was off.

Ronnie was yelling, stomping, spitting mad. "Get back here G.o.dd.a.m.n it, thats company property!"

And Todd floored the truck, middle finger out the window, whole rig tipping on his first turn, his daughters old cow skull, his accomplice, grinning from the dash. He was gone, renegade.

Jimmy came home but his pops wasnt there. Instead his mother, who should have been at work by then, was pacing in front of the bed, phone at her ear. She wrapped and unwrapped the cord around her arm. It made little white lines in her skin. She wore her nursing uniform. It looked impossibly crisp and clean. Her hair in clips and makeup perfect. Amazing. Dex was on the carpeted floor, watching her.

"I realize that, Mr. ORourke," his mother was saying. "But I dont think calling the police is necessary."

Jimmy crept up and kneeled in front of his brother. "Dexy?"

"Pops didnt come home," Dex said.

Something very bad happened, Jimmy thought. Maybe he died. In this moment his mouth went dry and he felt very small. Jimmy had a sister who died-he knew that-and it meant you never got to know them or see them.

There was a picture on his mothers bedside table of his sister, thumbs up and grinning, standing in a rain puddle, wearing a blue jacket with the hood up. It was behind the cradle for the phone, so when his mom hung up she blocked it out for a moment with her hand and sleeve. "Come on, boys, we better get your father."

"You know where he is?" Dex asked, face slack with relief.

Genny Mori ignored Dexs question and snapped to look at Jimmy. He was pulling threads from the carpet. "Stop that, Jimmy-boy. You know how carpet is?"

Jimmy didnt know and he didnt care.

Freight Train drove across the bridge from Columbia City into Warrington. Past Fred Myers and over the next bridge into Hammond. He looked out and noticed how sparkly the mud was at low tide. He remembered a story about a man who got sunk waist-deep into that mud when he was out clamming and the tide started coming back in. They couldnt pull him out without ripping him in two, but if they waited, hed drown.

Past the s.h.i.+pyard Bar and Grill, the green soccer fields and the turnoff for Camp Kiwanilong, he arrived in Fort Stevens State Park, skidded past the winter-deserted campsites and burst into the Area C parking lot.

His truck was the only vehicle in the lot. He listened to the crates of soda s.h.i.+ft and fall in the back of the truck. Ronnie would dock his pay for each broken bottle on top of firing him. Todd didnt care. He was thinking of other things. It was strange to him how the swaying of the trees and bushes growing before the dunes echoed the sounds the crates had made sliding just before they crashed.

He sat in the cab and stared at the trees. Coming back to this place, this place where he had conceived and lost Suzie Q., this was his punishment. He had let her down, and now his boy too. He reached out for the keys to turn off the truck. Hands shook so bad, it took him three tries. Just a beer, he thought to himself. Cool the nerves and then home.

While Van Eyck Beverages exclusively bottled PepsiCo products, they also distributed a wide variety of beers and wines. Todd Kirkus opened the back of the truck, smelling evil sea, and broke a can off a sixer. He drank the first beer quicker than he meant to. Gone in a blink. Hed go home, soon enough, he just needed to clear his head of his thoughts, so he drank another. Ronnie ORourke and the town putting pressure on his kid already? Another. Jimmy was just a baby. Five years old. And another. Still into bedtime stories and all that.

He started to feel warm and that was no good. He wanted to be cold. So he took off his coat. He took a bottle of red wine from the back of the truck and knocked the head off the bottle on the b.u.mper of the truck and drank from the uneven, sharp-edged neck on the way down to the beach. He cut his lip. He walked along the waters edge and it ceased being about cooling off.

He stopped when he thought he had found the right spot, but of course he could never be sure, the beach was always changing. Much better at moving on than he. Todd lay down in the wet sand, the waves touching his feet on each incoming breath of water. Jimmy had been born three months after Suzie died. And so however many years his son had was also how long hed been without his daughter. A curse in the numbers. Todd stared at the sky. He drank, pouring the wine straight into his mouth from arms length, only bending his wrist. Red everywhere.

The seagulls screamed at him and the ballooned seaweed, tangled under his head, squeaked when he moved.

That Pacific Ocean up Oregon way, dont kid yourself, shes as cold as they come. As the tide came in farther Todd went numb. He rolled to his side, more weightless with each incoming wave. What a wonderful feeling for a man so used to causing tremors. She had sand everywhere, he remembered. Her ears and nose. He had hooked it out of her still-warm mouth with his pinkie. The tide was coming in now. He opened his mouth to the salty water. He swished it, tasted brine. Still, it was not enough to take his thinking away from his head, so with his numb fingers he scooped in the soupy sand and felt the grains jam deeply into the gaps of his teeth. It helped a little. He tried to swallow. Tasted fishy. He coughed and gagged. The polyester uniform with the Van Eyck logo on the front of the jacket turned dark blue, almost black, with the wetness of the sea.

The Kirkus family had only one car and it was parked down at the Van Eyck bottling plant. Bonnie couldnt give Genny a lift, she was already at work, and Caleb, the one taxi driver in town, was on a cruise in Mexico, so that left the neighbors. However, after years of feuding with the Flying Finn and then Todd over street parking s.p.a.ces and responsible lawn upkeep, bridges had been burned. Genny Mori couldnt bear the looks these neighbors would give her along with a ride.

So this new take-charge Genny Mori started walking, two boys in tow. It took an hour and a half, but they got there. All on their own, too. Who knew how many people actually saw her-up over the hill, past Peter Pan Park, down the other side, past the post office-and why no one offered to give her a lift, but rest a.s.sured everyone in town heard about it before nightfall.

You see poor Genny Mori and her two boys? Todd cant even get her a car of her own.

I saw her up by Peter Pan. The little, chunky one, Dexter? Poor girl had to carry him. I thought shed be squished!

After all the chances that man had. And her, she was always so beautiful and smart-different, but pretty too.

She could have had things better. But you know her parents couldnt stick so I dont know what to think.

At the lot the van wouldnt start. Genny Mori got it going by having her boys both push against the back b.u.mper while she pushed from the open drivers side door. Ages five and four, hands already dirty. The car lurched forward when the engine caught. Dex fell down, started to cry.

"Shut up a second," Genny Mori said, leaning out of the van, engine revved. "We need to find your father."

And Dex, skinned knees and all, he shut up.

There was a surety in Gennys thoughts that she knew exactly where her husband was-the same place he always ran to. Still, she strained to keep it a deniable surety. Genny Mori hadnt yet lost all she had for Todd. There was still enough lightning in his bottle that she could hope for the shock of not finding him on the beach where their daughter had died. An electrical derivative formed from pity for what hed witnessed and also guilt at her inability to feel as acutely as he had for the loss of their daughter rubbing together inside her. Also a hope that things were not as bad as they might be. She could pull up and find only sand and sea; and the only thing mourning would be the twisted driftwood left behind. Her husband could be waylaid somewhere with a flat tire-perfectly understandable, perfectly loveable. Not some man in a hurry to hurt, five years distant from the blow.

Still, at the edges, a black doubt that things were just as bad as she imagined. A slow-approaching cold front of anger that she felt for her husband. Their little girl never should have died. Their life would still be right side up, if not for him. It was a feeling she disallowed herself to feel-anger. Bonnie had told her that anger was the right way to feel. But no. Letting even just a little of that in would blow the hinges off the whole thing and shed suffocate.

Jimmy had rarely ridden with his mother behind the wheel and he was surprised at how fast she went compared to his pops. He and Dex sat in the middle bench seat, not saying a word. Their eyes itched and Dexs jeans were ripped where hed skinned his knees. Their mom turned the radio on, whistling as she drove. Jimmy watched her lips move in the mirror, wis.h.i.+ng he could be closer. Maybe whistle along, or become the actual sounds that started in her mouth and ended in the air. It was a game he and Dex sometimes played. Pretend youre a dog, sleep on the floor. Pretend youre a storm, go blowing through the house. Pretend youre a bird, fly from chair to couch. Why couldnt he be his mothers sounds?

She knew exactly where she was headed, exactly where their pops had gone missing. In around twenty minutes they pulled up behind a Van Eyck Pepsi truck in the otherwise empty parking lot of Area C where their popss truck was.

Genny Mori moved with a quickness Jimmy couldnt pin to her. She was different than the mom who was always on the phone or sleeping large swaths of the day away. She took out two Pepsis from the back of the truck, rare treats for the boys whose father refused to feed them sweets, and shut the sliding door by pulling on the tether. She had to hang with all of her weight to get it to come down, but she got it. She could have gotten anything. Out of nowhere she was amazing. In all his years watching her, he hadnt seen this. "Drink these," she said to her sons. "Wait here and dont go near that." She pointed to the broke-off head of a decapitated wine bottle. "Jimmy, youre in charge while Im gone."

"OK," Jimmy said. As he watched his mother climb over the dunes toward the beach, he thought, I like her best now.

All their lives they hadnt been allowed to go to the beach on account of what had happened to Suzie, but it was still a presence. Only nine miles away, on the sunny days it s.h.i.+ned on the far-off horizon out their kitchen window like lamplights bounced off tinfoil. On the windy days salt air blew through Columbia City and across their faces. Far off. A made-up place. Now to actually be standing near sand, the oceans roar in the background, it was overwhelming.

If it were up to Dex, they probably would have stayed in the parking lot and ripped through the Van Eyck truck, getting sugar-sick on pop. He was like that. However Jimmy knew something was wrong-horribly, horribly wrong-to make this big of a change in his mom this fast, and he was going to see what. He did something out of the ordinary-h.e.l.l, the whole day was wobbly anyway-and he took charge. Off he went the same way his mom had gone.

"Where you going?" Dex asked over the top of his Pepsi bottle, breath catching a whistle at its lip.

"For a walk."

"Mom told us stay; she said."

"OK, Dexy, stay here."

Jimmy went to the dunes. It was strange, to sink in the sand when he walked. He felt foreign in his own body. Used muscles he didnt know he had.

"Wait, Jimmy!" Dex yelled and started to run, but the bottle slipped from his hands and shattered on the cement parking lot. He stopped and watched brown soda fizzle at his feet. He started to run again, crying, to catch up to his brother. He fell many times in the strange sand.

Genny Mori Kirkus found her husband sobbing and rolling back and forth in the soupy tide. He looked to her in that moment a huge baby, face knotted up and red, fists pounding the sand. There was blood on his face and his thin hair was in his eyes. Black sand drooled from his lips. His pants, heavy with sand and sea, had come down, showing half his b.u.t.t. Genny sat on a nearby log. She shook her head and laughed to herself. Was this how her mother felt when Gennys father split town? Why hadnt she got out before it was too late? What was it? Had she been scared or just lazy? What a choice. Funny, in a small, sour way.

She was tired. Felt destined to take care of this man for always. She was level, she was fine-it was he who had the binges and purges. He who needed the guiding hand. Maybe she didnt run around the house playing Cowboys and Indians with the boys, but she was consistent while he was one phone call away from breakdown. There was a sucking feeling in her heart for him and on one hand it depressed her, but on the other it proved she felt something still, and this relieved her. If life was not going to plan-no out from Columbia City, Oregon, for her-at least she still had the capacity to be devastated by the man she married. "Feel better?" she asked.

Todd was too out of it for Gennys presence to be a surprise, and he said the first thing that came to mind. "Youre drunk."

"Says the man eating sand. I think what you meant to say is, 'Im drunk."

"This isnt funny."

"Get up, Todd. Ronnie ORourke is missing his truck and your son wants to tell you about his first day of school. Rumor has it hes inherited your basketball skills."

Todd sat up, his back making a suction sound. The wind came in. Cold hit him hard, teeth chattered. It felt good to have his wife, his Genny Mori, sweep in, but he couldnt give in this easily. Something in him needed to push. "I guess you love this."

"I dont." Genny Mori looked off down the beach, the wind taunting her eyes.

"I guess our kid could be the best in the league. Everyonell want a piece and hes only five." Todd wanted to be mean to her. He needed to be mean to her. "Maybe Jimmy makes it to the NBA. Maybe he doesnt let you down like I did . . . How much money you figure youll need off him?"

"Hes five f.u.c.king years old. NBA? Im not the one putting pressure on him." Then, strange, Genny Mori started to cry. She pinched the bridge of her nose. "You dont think I miss Suzie too?" She slid her hand up and she was palming her forehead. "I wasnt here, you were. You were here with Suzie."

The name hit Todd hard, as did her tears, but mostly the blame. Something shed withheld from giving, even when it had rightfully belonged to him. Here it was. Hed wanted to push, but not this much. He looked past her to buy time, and there he saw his two boys standing on the top of the dunes. When Jimmy met his eyes, his son turned and disappeared, sweet Dex not far behind.

"He saw me," Todd said, tears welling, but Genny didnt understand him. She offered her hand. He took it and stood. The wind picked up, making the cold so piercing, he felt bitten. He hugged her, and her warmth and the breathing of her body shocked him, as did her willingness to be hugged. In her ear he whispered, "It was my fault."

"Dont say that."

"She was wearing a blue coat."

"I know, I dressed her."

"I bought it for her."

"I know, I was there."

"It was too much money. But I bought it for her."

"I know. I know."

And he was happy that she knew.

They stayed like that, almost perfect, for three seconds maybe, and then Genny Mori pushed her husband away.

Cracked heart versus broken one.

"Come on," she said, "Youre soaked and we got a lot to do."

Todd squeezed the cut on his thumb from earlier in the day. If he pressed hard enough, blood still came to the surface. He knew she was right, there was too much to do.

At home, Genny Mori drew Todd a warm bath and put the boys in front of a movie. She made him tea and left to go smooth things over with Mr. ORourke by bringing a pint of clam chowder from Normas, his favorite. Mrs. ORourke watched suspiciously from just inside the door.

"The funniest thing, Mr. ORourke," Genny said, "Todd got two front flats while going the back way to Fred Meyer, and, you know how that back road is ever since the new highway opened, hardly anyone uses it. One flat, fine, he can use the spare, but two? Im just glad I got there when I did."

Down the block, porch lights lit up, window curtains tugged to the side. Genny could feel peoples eyes.

Whos that at the ORourkes so late?

Its Genny Mori, poor thing, come to beg for Todds job.

Mr. ORourkes eyes told her that he too noticed people noticing. Genny saw how his temper melted with the shame of her standing like a beggar at his door, the salty aroma of the chowder and her pretty face. "Make sure Todds ready for work tomorrow." He took the bag with the chowder inside. "And tell him Im switching him to night s.h.i.+fts with the high school kids." He looked down the street and then back at Genny, speaking louder. "And Im docking every single broken bottle."

Todd listened to Genny come home, feed the boys, and tuck them in. He was under the covers, still s.h.i.+vering slightly. Finally, she came into the bedroom and changed into pajamas. Todd watched her and was reminded of what had attracted him to Genny Mori in the first place. She had a brain in her head and guts in her stomach.