Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar Part 27

By age seventeen I'd shot up tall as my cousin Drake who's six feet three though I would never get so heavy-muscled as Drake you'd turn your head to observe, seeing him pa.s.s by. And in his Beechum County sheriff-deputy uniform that's a kind of gray-olive, and dark gla.s.ses, and hair shaved military style, and that way of carrying himself like anybody in his way better get out of his way, Drake looks good.

I was never jealous of Drake. I was proud of my cousin who's a McCracken like me. Went away to the police academy at Port Oriskany and graduated near the top of his cla.s.s. Came back to Beechum County that's right next to Herkimer so he'd keep his friends and family. A long time Drake would visit us like every week or so, if Mom made supper he'd stay if he hadn't night s.h.i.+ft patrolling the highways. Mom teased Drake saying it's G.o.d's will Drake turned out a law enforcement officer not one to break the law. Drake would laugh at any remark of Mom's but he'd be p.i.s.sed at anybody else hinting his cop integrity isn't authentic. You wouldn't want to roil Drake McCracken that way. In school, saluting the American flag felt good to him. Reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Wearing the Beechum County Sheriff's Department uniform. Keeping his weapon clean. It's a .38-caliber Colt revolver weighing firm and solid in the hand, dismantling the gun and oiling it is some kind of sacred ritual to him Drake says know why? Your gun is your close friend when you are in desperate need of a friend.

I have held that gun. Drake allowed me to hold that gun. It was the first handgun I had ever seen close up. Rifles and shotguns everybody has, not little guns you can conceal on your person.

Hey man, I'd like one of these!

Drake scowls at me like this ain't a subject to joke about. You'd have to have a permit, Daryl. Any kind of concealed weapon.

Do you have a permit?

Drake looks at me like old Pop Olafsson, not catching the joke.

Ain't pulling my leg, Daryl, are yah?-I'm a cop.

Yah yah a.s.shole, I get it: you're a cop. (For sure, I don't say this aloud.) Drake's .38-caliber Colt pistol didn't help him, though. Drake was killed off-duty at age twenty-nine, in September 1972.

That long ago! Weird to think my big-brother cousin would be young enough to be my son, now.

Sure I miss him. My wife says I am a hard man but there's an ache in me, that's never been eased since Drake pa.s.sed away.

We did not part on good terms. n.o.body knew this.

There was always rumors in Beechum County and in Herkimer, who killed Drake McCracken. It was believed he'd been ambushed by someone seeking revenge. Friends or relatives of someone he'd arrested and helped send to prison. There were plenty of these. By age twenty-nine, Drake had been a deputy for four years. He'd acc.u.mulated enemies.

He'd testified as arresting officer in court. Some guys, the sight of a uniform cop makes them sick. Makes them want to inflict injury. Drake was beat to death with a hammer, it was determined. Skull cracked and crushed and his badge and gun taken from him.

That was the cruel thing. That was hurtful to his survivors. Knowing how Drake wouldn't have wished that. Even in death, to know his badge he was so proud of, his gun he took such care of, were taken from him.

They questioned a whole lot of individuals including some at the time incarcerated. No one was ever arrested for my cousin's murder. No weapon was ever found. Nor Drake's badge or gun. The Beechum County sheriff took it pretty hard, one of his own deputies killed. You'd think from TV the sheriff had known Drake McCracken personally but that wasn't really so. It was a hard time then. Drake's photo in the papers in his dress uniform. Looking good. At the funeral everybody was broke up. Guys he'd gone to school with. Girls he'd gone out with. Relatives who'd known him from when he was born. Mom was the most broke up as anybody, cried and cried so I had to hold her and later we got drunk together, Mom and me.

Saying, It's good Pop isn't here for this. It would kill him.

Back in July, this happens.

On Route 33 north of Herkimer, about six miles from Pop Olafsson's farm, over the county line in Beechum, there's come to be what locals call the Strip-gas stations and fast-food restaurants and discount stores, adult books & videos, Topless Go-Go and Roscoe's Happy Hour Lounge, E-Z Inn Motor Court, etcetera. A few years ago this stretch was farmland and open fields all the fifteen miles to Sparta. Weird how the look of the countryside has changed. There's biker gangs hanging out on the highway, drug dealers, hookers cruising the parking lots, getting cigarettes at the 7-Eleven, using the toilets at McDonald's, standing out on the highway like they're hitch-hiking. Just up the road from King Discount Furniture and Rug Remnant City, that acre-size parking lot between the Sunoco station and the old Sears, you see females in like bikini tops, miniskirts to the crotch, "hot pants," high-heeled boots to the knee. It's like a freak show, Route 33. High school kids are cruising the scene, racing one another and causing trouble. Mostly this is weekends after dark but sometimes during actual daylight so locals are complaining like h.e.l.l. Unless a hooker is actually caught soliciting a john, cops can't arrest them. Cops patrol the Strip and make the hookers move on but next night they're back. A few hours later they're back. Got to be junkies, strung out on heroin and what all else. Got to be diseased. Why a man would wish to have s.e.x with a pig! My cousin Drake who's on night s.h.i.+ft highway patrol says it's like running off any kind of vermin, they come right back. Kill them, next day it's new vermin taking their place.

None of the sheriff deputies care for this a.s.signment. The Strip is the pus wound of Beechum County. Sparta's the only city, population 15,000. Herkimer ain't hardly any city but it's got more people. Rookies are sent out on the Strip. Older cops, still a.s.signed to highway patrol, you know they f.u.c.ked up somewhere. There's this undercover team, Drake gets a.s.signed to. He's just backup, in an unmarked van. Five male cops, three females. Sometimes the male cops pretend to be johns, picking up hookers and busting them. Sometimes it's the females are hooker decoys. The female deputies are close in age, looks, behavior to the actual hookers. Sometimes a hooker has darkish skin like she's mixed race but usually they're white females like anybody else. s.l.u.tty girls you went to school with, dropped out pregnant and got married and divorced and turned up in Sparta, Chautauqua Falls, Port Oriskany living with some guy or guys, and have another kid maybe mixed-race this time, and turn up back home, and get kicked out from home, and move in somewhere else, and pick up a drug habit, hang out at the E-Z Inn or the Go-Go, Roscoe's, hang out on the Strip, get busted, serve thirty days in Beechum Women's Detention, get out and get back on the Strip, got to be pathetic but you can't feel sorry for them, pigs as they are. The female deputies hate undercover. No dignity in undercover. You wear s.l.u.t clothes, not your uniform. You wear a wire, not your badge. No weapon, if a john is some sicko wants to hurt you, you got to rely on backup.

Or maybe, undercover is kind of fun. Like Halloween.

Sable Drago, a Beechum County second-year deputy (turns out she is an older cousin of Bobbie Lee Drago, the girl I will marry in 1975) is one of the undercover team who defends the operation. Sable was a high school athlete, belonged to the Young Christian League. Sable believes this is work that has to be done, enforcing the prost.i.tution, loitering, public drunkenness and "public nuisance" statutes. The Beechum County sheriff got elected on a clean-up platform. Sable has a missionary fever about undercover also it can be scary, it's a challenge you're not in your uniform almost you are naked, like any civilian. But when things go right it can feel d.a.m.n good.

On the Strip Sable is a look-alike hooker. One of those fleshy girls looking like grown women when they're fifteen, now at thirty-one Sable is busty and wide-hipped with beet-colored hair frizzed and sprayed to three times its normal size. Her hard-muscled legs thick as a man's she hides in tight black toreador pants. Hot-pink satin froufrou top tied below her b.r.e.a.s.t.s to display her fleshy midriff. Peach-colored makeup thick on her face to hide her freckles. Eye makeup to hide the steely cop-look in Sable's eyes and crimson lipstick s.h.i.+ny as grease. Hey mister wanna party?-wanna date? Hey mistah? Sable's cruising the parking lot by the old Sears, calling to guys in slow-moving cars, pickups, vans pa.s.sing through like they are intending to turn into the Sunoco station to just get gas, or drive on. Sable can't wear high heels, has to wear flip-flops on her size-ten feet but she has polished her toenails, her kid sister gave her some dime store s.e.xy tattoos to press on exposed parts of her body. Sable can't drift too near the other hookers, they'd make her as a cop. Sable's mumbling and laughing into the wire she's wearing down between her sweaty b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the guys in the van are her best buddies, hiding around the corner of the empty Sears. It's a hot-humid day. It's dusk. It's a time of quickening pulses, antic.i.p.ation. If you're a hunter, you know the feeling. Our country cops are into the kind of arrests where a suspect (drunk, stoned, plain stupid) has put up some resistance so you rush to knock them on their a.s.s, flop them over so their face hits the ground, if they don't turn their face fast enough their nose is broke. You are required to place your knee in the small of their back. You push, to restrain. All this while you are yelling, Hands behind your back! Hands behind your back! Required to bring the suspect under immediate control. If you lose control, you may be blown away. First thing you learn at the academy, Drake says, a police officer never loses control of the situation. An officer can lose his gun, he's killed by his own gun, it happens and it's a shameful thing n.o.body wishes even to speak of, and disgraceful to the family. Better blow away the suspect than get your own brains blown out, Drake says. For sure.

About 9 p.m. Sable is out at the highway thumbing for a ride. Trailer trucks rush past throwing up dirt in her face. There's a smell of diesel fuel, exhaust. Some vehicles, the drivers swerve like they're going to hit her, surprised to see her, or jeering leaning on their horn. Then this mud-splattered pickup comes along at about twenty miles an hour, and slows. Some kind of farm equipment rattling in the rear. Old bald guy at the wheel. The pickup brakes to a clumsy stop on the shoulder of the road and Sable strolls forward calling in a s.e.xy TV voice, Hi there mister! I'm hoping for a ride! And this old guy bald-headed and sweating in dirty bib-overalls, he's peering into the rearview mirror but doesn't say a word. Sable repeats she's hoping for a ride, mistah. Sable perceives this john is old enough to be somebody's granddaddy which is pitiful if it wasn't so disgusting. It takes like three minutes to get the old guy to tell her climb into the cab, he's tongue-tied and stammering and maybe has something wrong with him (speech impediment, hard-of-hearing, drunk), it's going to require Sable's undercover-hooker skill to get his a.s.s busted. (Right! It's Pop Olafsson. But Drake, in the unmarked van, doesn't know this yet.) Where're yah goin', the old guy asks. He's mumbling, shy of looking at Sable full in the face. Sable says, Where we can party, mister, you'd like that? Huh? There's such smells lifting off this guy, Sable has to fight the impulse to hold her nose. Almost, she's going to have to do this and make a joke of it, manure-smell, barn-feed smell, whiskey-smell, body odor and tobacco and something sweetish like maybe licorice? Oh man! Wis.h.i.+ng she could report to the team back in the van, what this scene is.

The old guy has the pickup in gear, doesn't seem to know what to do: drive on? Move onto the shoulder, and off the highway? Sable keeps asking him wanna party mister, wanna date me, hey mistah? but he's too confused. Or maybe just excited and scared, aroused. Not your typical john for sure. Flushed all over including his b.u.mpy bald scalp, you can surmise s.e.x is not too frequent with him. Looks to be late fifties, or older. His wife is old and fat and sick or maybe the wife has died, a long time ago the wife has died, some kind of tumor, she'd started off fat then ended weighing like sixty pounds, his memories of that woman, her last months, years, are not what you'd call romantic. You have to figure, maybe the wife was pretty once, maybe this old man was a s.e.xy young guy once, not a paunchy old snaggletooth grandpa reeking of barn odors, and maybe he's trying to remember that, lonesome for something he hasn't even been getting for thirty years. So Sable is fanning herself with her hand cooing. Ohhh man am I hot, I bet you are hot too, I know a real cool place, up the road here's the E-Z Inn you know where that is mister? in this husky singsong voice like Dolly Parton beating her eyelashes at him so the old guy is smiling, trying to hide his stained teeth but smiling, squirming a little like he's being tickled, happy suddenly this is an actual flirtation, this is an innocent conversation with a woman who seems attracted to him, seems to like him, he isn't thinking exactly where he is, why he's here, what his purpose must have been driving here, north of Herkimer out to Route 33 and the Strip across in the next county a twelve-mile detour on his way back to the farm from picking up the repaired sump pump, no more than he's thinking right now of his blood pressure he can feel pounding in a band around his head, makes the inside of his head feel like a balloon blown up close to bursting, heart racing and lurching in his chest like a pounding fist, almost he feels dreamy, he isn't drunk but dreamy, a pint of Four Roses in the glove compartment he's wondering should he ask the beet-hair woman would she like a drink? thinking maybe he will, he's wanting to grab the woman's hand and kiss it, kiss the fingers, a freckled forearm glowing with sweat, some kind of s.e.xy red heart-tattoo crawling up the arm, it's surprising to him, so wonderful, the woman is smiling at him, n.o.body smiles at Pop Olafsson especially no female smiles at him in this way, mostly he remembers Agnes scowling at him, staring at him like she was angry with him, crinkling her nose and turning her eyes from him not acknowledging him at all. He isn't thinking this is Beechum County, this is the Strip, sure he's heard about the Strip, been summoning up his courage to drive out here for months but now he's here, d.a.m.n if he hasn't forgotten why. HEY MISTAH says the beet-hair woman like waking him from a doze, know what you look like a real sweet guy, I'm into older men, see? leaning forward so he can see the tops of her heavy b.r.e.a.s.t.s straining against a black lace bra.s.siere like you'd see in a girly magazine, sweat-drops on her freckled chest he'd like to lick off with his tongue that's so swollen and thirsty. All this while the beet-hair woman is speaking to him in her husky voice trying not to sound impatient, the way his daughter is impatient having to scold him for dirtying the kitchen floor or leaving dishes in the sink not soaking, coming to the table smelling of the barn like he can't help no matter how he washes, actually Glenda (his honey-haired daughter, divorced and with a grown son) isn't his daughter but stepdaughter, all he has in the world having had no daughter or son of his own, he'd like to explain this to the beet-hair woman, maybe after they have a few drinks from the pint of Four Roses, the beet-hair woman is asking in a louder voice does he want to go somewhere with her? somewhere private? cozy? air-conditioned E-Z Inn? get acquainted? want to date? want to party mistah? what's ya lookin' at like that mistah? cat got your tongue mistah? or do you like maybe have to get home mistah, wifey's waiting for you is that it? and the old guy is stricken suddenly fumbling a smile trying to hide the stained snaggle teeth saying fast and hoa.r.s.e, Ma'am I buried my wife Agnes Barnstead back in '54, and Sable gives a little cry of hurt and disapproval, Ohhh mister that's not a thing to tell me, if we're gonna party and the old guy looks like he's going to cry, can't seem to think what to say, maybe he's drunker than she thought, so Sable says scornfully placing her hand on the car door handle, d.a.m.n mister maybe you don't want to party, huh? maybe I'm wasting my time in this c.r.a.p rust-buckle smells like a barn? and he's fumbling quick to say no, no don't leave ma'am, stammering, I guess-you would want-money? and Sable says sharp and quick, why'd I want money, mister? and he says, blurting the words out, Ma'am if-if-if we could-be together-and Sable says, Have s.e.x, mister? that's what you're trying to say? and the old guy says, winded like he's been climbing a steep stairs, yes ma'am, and Sable says it's thirty for oral, fifty for straight, it's a deal, mister? and the old guy is blinking and staring at her like he can't comprehend her words so she repeats them, deal, mister? is it? and he says, almost inaudible on the tape being recorded in the unmarked van, yes ma'am.

Okay, you're busted.

Like that it happens. Happens faster than you can figure it out. You're busted, mister. Step out of the truck, mister. Hey mister out of the truck keep your hands in sight mister, we are Beechum County sheriff deputies.

In that instant Sable is vanished. The woman is vanished, it's loud-talking men, men shouting commands, strangers in T-s.h.i.+rts yelling at him, impatient when he doesn't step out of the pickup quick enough, he's dazed, fumbling, confused looking for the beet-hair woman who was smiling at him, saying you ain't kiddin' me are yah? pullin' my leg are yah? blinking at flashlight beams s.h.i.+ning into his face confused he's being shown s.h.i.+ny badges. Beechum County sheriff he's hearing, informed he is under arrest for soliciting an act of s.e.x in violation of New York State law, under arrest he's on tape, keep your hands where we can see them mister, spread your legs Pops, y'hear you are UNDER ARREST, you been operatin' that vehicle while drinkin' Pops? He's confused thinking his picture is being taken. Flash going off in his face. Hey yah pullin' my leg are yah? he's more confused than frightened, more stunned than smitten with shame, like somebody out of nowhere has rushed up to him to shove him hard in the chest, spit in his face, knock him on his a.s.s, these young T-s.h.i.+rt guys he's thinking might be bikers, doesn't know who in h.e.l.l they are though they keep telling him he's under arrest there's this weird smile contorting the lower part of Pop's face like this has got to be a joke, nah this ain't real, ain't happening, he's clumsy resisting the officers, gonna have to cuff you Pops, hands behind your back Pops, under arrest Pops, blinking like a blind man staring at a sight he can't take in, tall burly young scruff-jaw guy in a black T-s.h.i.+rt-Drake McCracken?-he'd wanted to think was some nephew of his? in that instant Pop and Drake recognize each other. Drake is stunned like the old guy, sick stunned look in his face his sergeant sees the situation, understands the two are related, tells Drake back off, s.h.i.+ft's over he can report back to the station. One of the deputies has cuffed the old man, poor old b.a.s.t.a.r.d is pouring sweat moving his head side to side like a panicked cow, his wallet has been taken from his back pocket, driver's license, I.D., name Hendrick Olafsson that's you? Sable is walking away shaking her beet-frizz hair, laughing and shaking her head, the smell in that truck! smell coming off the old man! Sable's undercover-hooker partner is cracking up over the old john, oldest john they've arrested on the Strip, poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Sable is saying some johns, the guys are psychos you can see. This old guy, he's more like disgusting. There's guys with strangler eyes. Guys with c.o.c.ks like rubber mallets. Guys into biting. You can tell, there's johns any female would be crazy to climb into any vehicle with, drive off with, shows how desperate they are, junkie-hookers, asking to be murdered and dumped in a ditch and their kids confiscated by the state, Jesus it's hard to be sympathetic you mostly feel disgust.

Well, this old guy! Old-timey farmer. Not a biter for sure, you see those teeth?

Pop is taken into custody, cuffed. Pop is transported in a van to the sheriff's headquarters on Route 29, Beechum County. Pop is booked. Pop's picture is taken. Pop is fingerprinted. Pop is one of seven "johns" arrested by Beechum County deputies on the Strip, night of July 19, 1972. Pop is fifty-seven. Pop is identified as Hendrick Olafsson, R.D.3, Herkimer, New York. Pop is confused and dazed and (maybe) has a minor stroke in the holding cell crowded with strangers. Pop calls my mother on the phone, it's 11:48 p.m. and she can't make sense of what he's saying. Where? Arrested? Pop? Drunk driving, is it? Accident? Pop? Pop is wheezing and whimpering begging Mom to come get him, he don't feel too good. (It will turn out, Pop couldn't remember his own telephone number at the farm, he'd had for thirty years. A female officer on duty looked it up for him.) It's a twelve-mile drive to the sheriff's headquarters over in Sparta. Mom calls me (where I'm living in town, now I work at the stone quarry west of Herkimer Falls) but I'm out. So Mom drives alone. Arrives around 1 a.m. Mom is disbelieving when the charge is read to her, soliciting s.e.x, plus a charge of resisting arrest, Mom insists her stepfather is not a man to solicit prost.i.tutes, he must have thought the officer was. .h.i.tch-hiking, Pop is the kind of man would give a hitch-hiker a ride, Mom is so agitated she repeats this until the desk sergeant cuts her off saying, Ma'am it's on tape, it's recorded. In the meantime Pop has been taken from the holding cell to rest on a cot. The cuffs are off, his wrists are raw and chafed and he's disoriented but he's okay, Mom is a.s.sured he's okay, doesn't want to be taken to a hospital. Mom will be allowed to speak with him and secure a lawyer for him if wished but she can't take him home just yet, bail hasn't been set, bail won't be set until after 9 a.m. next morning when a judge will set bail at the county courthouse and Mom can return then to take her stepfather home. All this, Mom can't take in. Mom is looking for her nephew Drake McCracken who's a Beechum County deputy but she's told Drake is off duty, nowhere on the premises. Mom is beginning to cry like Pop Olafsson is her own father not her stepfather. Mom is wiping tears from her eyes pleading Pop isn't a well man, Pop has high blood pressure, Pop takes heart pills, this will kill him Mom says, there has got to be some mistake let me talk to the arresting officers, my stepfather is not a man who solicits prost.i.tutes! and the desk sergeant says, Ma'am, none of 'em ever are.

Ever after this, Pop Olafsson's life is run down like an old truck can't make it uphill.

Nineteen days from the arrest, sixteen days from the front-page story HERKIMER FARMER, 57, ARRESTED IN "VICE" SWEEP ON RT. 33 STRIP and photo of Hendrick Olafsson in the Herkimer Journal, Pop's life runs down.

He's so ashamed, he won't show his face. Any vehicle drives up the lane, Pop skulks away like a kicked dog. He's dizzy, limping. Some blackouts he can't remember where in h.e.l.l he is, wakes up in a mess of hay and manure and the cows bawling to be milked. He's drinking hard cider, whiskey in the morning. Heart pounds so he can't lie flat in bed, has to sit up through the night. Mom is disgusted with him she hardly speaks to him, leaves his meals on the back porch like he's one of the dogs. Other relatives who come around avoid Pop, too. I drove out to the farm, felt sorry for my mother but for the old man also he's so f.u.c.king pathetic. He's an embarra.s.sment to me, too. G.o.d d.a.m.n lucky my name is McCracken not Olafsson. At work the guys are ribbing me bad enough. Quarry workers, they're known for this. To a point, I can take it. Then I'll break somebody's face. My fist, somebody's face. Eye socket, cheekbone, nose, teeth. There's a feel when you break the bone, nothing can come near. Out back of the high school I punched out more than one guy's front teeth. Got me expelled, never graduated but it's one good thing I did, I feel good about remembering. Every scar in my face is worth it. At the house I asked Mom how it's going and Mom says see for yourself, he's out in the barn drinking. Mom's the one had to deal with Pop Olafsson at the court hearing over in Sparta, signed a check to the court for $350 fine, the old man pleaded guilty to the s.e.x charge, "resisting arrest" was dropped, now he's on twelve-month probation a man of fifty-seven! Mom is feeling bad we haven't heard from Drake, you'd think Drake would come see us, at least call, say how sorry he is what happened to Pop. Like Drake stabbed us in the back, Mom says. His own family.

My feeling about Drake is so charged, I can't talk about it.

Located Pop out back of the silo looking like some broke-back old sick man trying to hide what he's drinking when he sees me like I don't know Pop drinks? this is news to me, Daryl? Why I'd come was to tell Pop how sorry I am what happened, what a lousy trick the f.u.c.king cops played on him, but somehow seeing the old man, that look in his face like somebody who's s.h.i.+t his pants. I hear myself say Hey Pop: don't take it too hard in this sarcastic voice like I'm fifteen not going on twenty-five. A few days later Pop blows off the top of his head with the clumsy old 12-gauge, came near to missing but got enough of his brain matter to kill him. It was like Pop to take himself out in a back pasture not in any inside s.p.a.ce that would have to be cleaned afterward, and not near any stream that drained into the cows' drinking pond.

Pop left the dairy farm to my mother who never loved him. She felt real bad about it. I never loved the old guy either I guess but I missed him. For a long time I felt guilty how I'd spoken to him when he'd been in pain.

Soon as she could, Mom sold the property and moved to town.

Drake showed up at Pop's funeral, at least. The church part. At the back of the church where he wouldn't have to meet anybody's eye. He was wearing civilian clothes not the deputy uniform. Soon as the ceremony was ended, Drake was gone.

A week after the funeral I'm at the Water Wheel with some guys from the quarry and there's my cousin Drake at the bar with some off-duty deputies. It's Friday night, crowded. But not so crowded we don't see each other. Two hours I'm waiting for my cousin to come over to say something to me, and he doesn't. And he's going to walk out not acknowledging me. And I'm waiting, it's like my heart is grinding slow and hard in waiting, like a fist getting tighter and tighter. It comes over me, Drake killed Pop Olafsson. Like he lifted the 12-gauge himself, aimed the barrels at Pop's head and fired. Drake and his rotten cop friends they'd sell their blood kin for a f.u.c.king paycheck. I'm thinking He is a guilty man. He deserves some hurt.

Even then, if Drake had come over to me, lay a hand on my shoulder and called me Daryl, I'd forgive him. For sure.

It's a few weeks later, I make my move. All this while I've been waiting. Past 11 p.m. when I drive to this place my cousin is renting in Sparta. For a while Drake had a girlfriend living there but looks like the girlfriend is moved out, this is what I've heard. Knock on the side door and Drake comes to see who it is, in just boxer shorts and T-s.h.i.+rt, and barefoot. Drake sees it's me, and lets me in. His eyes are wary. Right away he says, I know what you want, Daryl, and I say, Right: a cold beer. And Drake says, You want me to say I'm sorry for Pop, well I am. But n.o.body made Pop drive out to the Strip, see. I tell Drake, f.u.c.k Pop. I'm thirsty, man. So Drake laughs and goes to the refrigerator and his back's turned and the claw hammer is in my hand, been carrying it in my jacket pocket for five, six days. I come up behind Drake and bring the hammer down hard on his head, must be the d.a.m.n thing kind of slips my hand is so sweaty, it's just the side of Drake's head the hammer catches, and he's hurt, he's hurt bad, his knees are buckling but he isn't out, he's dangerous grabbing at me, and I'm shoving at him, and it's like we're two kids trying to get wrestling holds, and some d.a.m.n way Drake is biting me, he's got my left forefinger between his teeth biting down hard as a pit bull. I'm yelling, this pain is so bad. I'm trying to get leverage to swing the hammer again but the pain in my finger is so bad, almost I'm fainting. Drake is bleeding from a deep cut in his head, a stream of bright blood running into his eye, he's panting his hot breath into my face, groaning, whimpering, a big hard-muscle b.a.s.t.a.r.d stinking of sweat from the shock of being hit, outweighs me by fifteen pounds, and desperate to save his life but I've got the hammer free to swing again, I manage to hit Drake on the back of his neck, another wide swing and the hammer gets him high on the skull, this time I feel bone crack. Drake's bulldog jaws open, Drake is on the floor and I'm swinging the hammer wild and hard as I can, hitting his face, forehead that's slippery in blood, his cheekbones, eye sockets, I'm walloping him for the evil in him f.u.c.king deputy sheriff betraying his own kind Like this! like this! like this! so at last his hard skull is broke like a melon, I can feel the hammer sink in to where there's something soft. Such a relief in this, the hammer goes wild swinging and swinging and when I come to, the linoleum floor is slippery in blood. There's blood on me, work trousers, work shoes, both hands wet with it, blood splattered high as the ceiling, and dripping. I'm stumbling over Drake on the floor twitching like there's electric current jolting him but feebler and feebler. Making this high keening sound like Pop Olafsson singing, so weird Drake has got to be about dead but making this high sharp lonesome sound it finally comes to me, is me, myself. Not Drake but me, Daryl, is making this sound.

Then I see, oh man my finger's about bit in two. One half hanging to the other by some gristle. I'm so pumped up I don't hardly feel the pain, what I need to do is yank the d.a.m.n thing off, shove it in my pocket with the hammer, see I don't want to leave my f.u.c.king finger behind. I'm pumped up but I'm thinking, too. Then I want Drake's deputy badge, and his gun. f.u.c.king bra.s.s badge my cousin sold his soul for and f.u.c.king .38-caliber Colt revolver in its holster, what I'm doing is confiscating the entire belt heavy as a leather harness.

Last thing I tell Drake is, you did this to yourself, man. Not me.

Ain't pullin' my leg are yah?

These nights it's Pop Olafsson I'm missing. Weird how I hear Pop's voice like his nose is stopped up, thinking I am stone cold sober and awake but must've dozed off. Pop would blink them paleblue pop-eyes at me seeing the age I am, the face I have now.

My left forefinger, ugly stub-finger, it's a reminder. People ask what happened and I tell them chain saw and they never ask further even my wife, she'd used to kiss the d.a.m.n thing like it's some kind of test to her, can she accept it. A female will do the d.a.m.nest things for you as long as they love you.

It's a fact there's "phantom pain." Weird but a kind of comfort like your finger is a whole finger, somewhere. Nothing of you is lost.

These nights I can't sleep. I need to prowl the house downstairs getting a beer from the refrigerator, hanging out the back door staring at the sky. There's a moon, you think it's staring back at you. Some nights I can't hold back, like a magnet pulling me over to the garage. And in the garage I'm s.h.i.+ning a flashlight into a toolbox under my workbench, rusted old tools and paint rags and at the bottom Drake McCracken's bra.s.s badge and .38-caliber Colt pistol that's a comfort, too. The claw hammer (that was Pop's hammer) covered in blood and brains sticking like fish guts I disposed of in the Chautauqua River with the holster belt, driving home that night. My b.l.o.o.d.y clothes, I buried deep in the marshy pasture where Pop killed himself.

Pop's banjo that came to me, I kept for twenty years then gave to my son Clayton, d.a.m.n kid rightaway broke like he's broke about every f.u.c.king thing in his life.

All this is so long ago now, you'd think it would be forgotten. But people in Herkimer remember, of a certain age. I need to switch off the flashlight and get back to the house, such a mood comes over me here. This lonesome feeling I'd make a song of, if I knew how.

ZZ Packer.

GEESE.

When people back home asked her why she was leaving Baltimore for Tokyo, Dina told them she was going to j.a.pan in the hopes of making a pile of money, socking it away, then living somewhere cheap and tropical for a year. Back home, money was the only excuse for leaving, and it was barely excuse enough to fly thousands of miles to where people spoke no English.

"j.a.pan!" Miss Gloria had said. Miss Gloria was her neighbor: a week before Dina left she sat out on the stoop and shared a pack of cigarettes with Miss Gloria. "j.a.pan," Miss Gloria repeated, looking off into the distance, as though she might be able to see Honshu if she looked hard enough. Across the street sat the boarded-up row houses the city had promised to renovate. Dina tried to look past them, and harbored the vague hope that if she came back to the neighborhood they'd get renovated, as the city had promised. "Well, you go 'head on," Miss Gloria said, trying to sound encouraging. "You go 'head on and learn that language. Find out what they saying about us over at Chong's." Chong's was the local take-out with the best moo goo gai pan around, but if someone attempted to clarify an order, or changed it, or even hesitated, the Chinese family got all huffed, yelling as fast and violent as kung fu itself.

"Chong's is Chinese, Miss Gloria."

"Same difference."

The plan was not well thought-out, she admitted that much. Or rather, it wasn't really a plan at all, but a feeling, a nebulous fluffy thing that had started in her chest, spread over her heart like a fog. It was sparked by movies in which she'd seen j.a.panese people bowing ceremoniously, torsos seesawing; her first j.a.panese meal, when she'd turned twenty, and how she'd marveled at the sas.h.i.+mi resting on its bed of rice, rice that lay on a lacquered dish the color of green tea. She grew enamored of the pen strokes of kanji, their black sabers clas.h.i.+ng and warring with one another, occasionally settling peacefully into what looked like the outlines of a Buddhist temple, the cross sections of a cozy house. She did not want to say it, because it made no practical sense, but in the end she went to j.a.pan for the delicate sake cups, resting in her hand like a blossom; she went to j.a.pan for loveliness.

After searching for weeks for work in Tokyo, she finally landed a job at an amus.e.m.e.nt park. It was called Summerland, because, in j.a.pan, anything vaguely amusing had an English name. It was in Akigawa, miles away from the real Tokyo, but each of her previous days of job hunting had sent her farther and farther away from the city. "Economic downturn," one Office Lady told her. The girl, with her exchange-student English and quick appraisal of Dina's frustration, seemed cut out for something better than a receptionist's job, but Dina understood that this, too, was part of the culture. A girl-woman-would work in an office as a glorified photocopier, and when she became Christmasu-keeki, meaning twenty-five years old, she was expected to resign quietly and start a family with a husband. With no reference to her race, only to her Americanness in general, the Office Lady had said, sadly, "Downturn means people want to hire j.a.panese. It's like, obligation." So when the people at Summerland offered her a job, she immediately accepted.

Her specific job was operator of the Dizzy Teacups ride, where, nestled in gigantic replicas of Victorian teacups, j.a.panese kids spun and arced and dipped before they were whisked back to cram school. Summerland, she discovered, was the great gaijin dumping ground, the one place where a non-j.a.panese foreigner was sure to land a job. It was at Summerland that she met Arillano Justinio Arroyo, with his perfectly round smiley-face head, his luxurious black hair, always parted in the middle, that fell on either side of his temples like an open book. Ari was her co-worker, which meant they would exchange mop duty whenever a kid vomited.

By summer's end, both she and Ari found themselves unamused and jobless. She decided that what she needed, before resuming her search for another job, was a vacation. At the time, it made a lot of sense. So she sold the return part of her round-trip ticket and spent her days on subways in search of all of Tokyo's corners: she visited Asakusa and gazed at the lit red lanterns of Sensoji Temple; she ate an outrageously expensive bento lunch under the Asahi brewery's giant sperm-shaped modernist sculpture. She even visited Akihabara, a section of Tokyo where whole blocks of stores sold nothing but electronics she couldn't afford. She spent an afternoon in the waterfront towns.h.i.+p of Odaiji, where women sunned themselves in bikinis during the lunch hour. But she loved s.h.i.+njuku the most, that garish part of Tokyo where pac.h.i.n.ko parlors pushed against ugly gray earthquake-resistant buildings; where friendly, toothless vendors sold roasted unagi, even in rainy weather. Here, the twelve-floor department stores scintillated with slivers of primary colors, all the products s.h.i.+ny as toys. The subcity of s.h.i.+njuku always swooned, brighter than Vegas, lurid with sword-clas.h.i.+ng kanji in neon. Skinny prost.i.tutes in miniskirts swished by in pairs like schoolgirls, though their pouty red lips and permed hair betrayed them as they darted into doorways without signs and, seemingly, without actual doors.

At the end of each day, she took the subway, reboarding the Hibiya-sen tokkyuu, which would take her back to the gaijin hostel in Roppongi. She rented her room month to month, like the Australians, Germans, and Canadians and the occasional American. The only other blacks who lived in j.a.pan were Africans: the Senegalese, with their blankets laid out in front of Masas.h.i.+-Itsukaiichi station, selling bootleg Beatles alb.u.ms and Tupperware; the Kenyans in Harajuku selling fierce tribal masks and tarry perfumed oils alongside h.e.l.lo Kitty notebooks. The j.a.panese did not trust these black gaijin, these men who smiled with every tooth in their mouths and wore their cologne turned on high. And though the j.a.panese women stared at Dina with the same distrust, the business-suited sararimen who pa.s.sed her in the subway stations would proposition her with English phrases they'd had gaijin teach them-"Verrry s.e.xy," they'd say, looking around to make sure women and children hadn't overheard them. And even on the tokkyuu itself, where every pa.s.senger took a seat and immediately fell asleep, the emboldened men would raise their eyebrows in brushstrokes of innuendo and loudly whisper, "Verry chah-ming daaark-ku skin."

Ari found another job. Dina didn't. Her three-month visa had expired and the j.a.panese were too timid and suspicious to hire anyone on the sly. There were usually only two lines of work for American gaijin-teaching or modeling. Modeling was out-she was not the right race, much less the right blondness or legginess, and with an expired visa she got turned down for teaching and tutoring jobs. The men conducting the interviews knew her visa had expired, and that put a spin on things, the spin being that they expected her to sleep with them.

Dina had called Ari, wanting leads on jobs the English-language newspapers might not advertise. Ari agreed to meet her at Swensen's, where he bought her a scoop of chocolate mint ice cream.

"I got offered a job at a pac.h.i.n.ko parlor," he said. "I can't do it, but you should. They only offered me the job because they like to see other Asians clean their floors."

She didn't tell him that she didn't want to sweep floors, that too many j.a.panese had already seen American movies in which blacks were either criminals or custodians. So when they met again at Swensen's, Dina still had no job and couldn't make the rent at the foreign hostel. Nevertheless, she bought him a scoop of red bean ice cream with the last of her airplane money. She didn't have a job and he took pity on her, inviting her to live with him in his one-room flat. So she did.

And so did Petra and Zoltan. Petra was five-foot-eleven and had once been a model. That ended when she fell down an escalator, dislocating a shoulder and wrecking her face. She'd had to pay for the reconstructive surgery out of her once sizable bank account and now had no money. And Petra did not want to go back to Moldova, could not go back to Moldova, it seemed, though Ari hadn't explained any of this when he brought Petra home. He introduced her to Dina as though they were neighbors who hadn't met, then hauled her belongings up the stairs. While Ari strained and grunted under the weight of her clothes trunks, Petra plopped down in a chair, the only place to sit besides the floor. Dina made tea for her, and though she and Ari had been running low on food, courtesy dictated that she bring out the box of cookies she'd been saving to share with Ari.

"I have threads in my face," Petra said through crunches of cookie. "Threads from the doctors. One whole year"-she held up a single aggressive finger-"I have threads. I am thinking that when threads bust out, va voom, I am having old face back. These doctors here"-Petra shook her head and narrowed her topaz eyes-"they can build a whole car, but cannot again build face? I go to America next. Say, 'Fix my face. Fix face for actual.' And they will fix." She nodded once, like a genie, as though a single nod were enough to make it so. Afterward she made her way to the bathroom and sobbed.

Of course, Petra could no longer model; her face had been ripped into unequal quadrants like the sections of a TV dinner, and the st.i.tches had been in long enough to leave fleshy, zipper-like scars in their place. The j.a.panese would not hire her either; they did not like to view affliction so front and center. In turn, Petra refused to work for them. Whenever Dina went to look for a job, Petra made it known that she did not plan on working for the j.a.panese: "I not work for them even if they pay me!"

Her boyfriend Zoltan came with the package. He arrived in toto a week after Petra, and though he tried to project the air of someone just visiting, he'd already tacked pictures from his bodybuilding days above the corner where they slept across from Ari and Dina.

Petra and Zoltan loved each other in that dangerous Eastern European way of hard, sobbing s.e.x and furniture-pounding fights. Dina had been living with Ari for a month and Petra and Zoltan for only two weeks when the couple had their third major fight. Zoltan had become so enraged that he'd stuck his hand on the orange-hot burner of the electric range. Dina had been adding edamame to the udon Ari was reheating from his employee lunch when Zoltan pushed between the two, throwing the bubbling pot aside and pressing his hand onto the lit burner as easily and noiselessly as if it were a Bible on which he was taking an oath.

"Zoltan!" Dina screamed. Ari muttered a few baffled words of Tagalog. The seared flesh smelled surprisingly familiar, like dumplings, forgotten and burning at the bottom of a pot. The burner left a bull's-eye imprint on Zoltan's palm, each concentric circle sprouting blisters that p.u.s.s.ed and bled. Petra wailed when she saw; it took her two weeping hours to scour his melted fingerprints from the burner.

And still, they loved. That same night they shook the bamboo shades with their pa.s.sion. When they settled down, they baby-talked to each other in Moldovan and Hungarian, though the first time Dina heard them speak this way it sounded to her as if they were reciting different brands of vodka.

After the hand-on-the-range incident, Zoltan maundered about with the look of a beast in his lair. The pictures from his bodybuilding days that he tacked on the walls showed him brown, oiled, and bulging, each muscle delineated as though he were constructed of hundreds of bags of hard-packed sugar. Though he was still a big man, he was no longer glorious, and since they'd all been subsisting on crackers and ramen, Zoltan looked even more deflated. For some reason he had given up bodybuilding once he stepped off the plane at Narita, though he maintained that he was winning prizes right up until then. If he was pressed further than that about his past, Petra, invariably orbiting Zoltan like a satellite, would begin to cry.

Petra cried a lot. If Dina asked Petra about life in Moldova or about modeling in Ginza, she cried. If Dina so much as offered her a carrot, this, too, was cause for sorrow. Dina had given up trying to understand Petra. Or any of them, for that matter. Even Ari. Once she'd asked him why he did it, why he let them stay. Ari held out his hand and said, "See this? Five fingers. One hand." He then made a fist, signifying-she supposed-strength. She didn't exactly understand what he was driving at: none of them helped out in any real way, though she, unlike Petra and Zoltan, had at least attempted to find a job. He looked to her, fist still clenched; she nodded as though she understood, though she felt she never would. Things simply made all of them cry and sigh. Things dredged from the bottoms of their souls brought them pain at the strangest moments.

Then Sayeed came to live with them. He had a smile like a sealed envelope, had a way of eating as though he were h.o.r.n.y. She didn't know how Ari knew him, but one day, when Dina was practicing writing kanji characters and Petra was knitting an afghan with Zoltan at her feet, Ari came home from work, Sayeed following on his heels.

"We don't have much," Ari apologized to Sayeed after the introductions. Then he glared at the mess of blankets on the floor, "and as you can see, we are many people, sleeping in a tiny, six-tatami room."

Sayeed didn't seem to mind. They all shared two cans of a j.a.panese soft drink, Pocari Sweat, taking tiny sips from their sake cups. They shared a box of white chocolate Pokki, and a sandwich from Ari's employee lunch. Sayeed stayed after the meal and pa.s.sed around cigarettes that looked handmade, though they came from a box. He asked, occasionally gargling his words, what each of them did. Having no jobs, they told stories of their past: Petra told of Milan and the runways and dressing up for the opera at La Scala. But mostly she recalled what she ate: pan-seared foie gras with pickled apricot grib.i.+.c.he sauce; swordfish tangine served with stuffed cherries; gnocchi and lobster, swimming in brown b.u.t.ter.

"Of course," she said, pertly as.h.i.+ng her cigarette, "we had to throw it all up."

"Yes yes yes," Sayeed said, as though this news delighted him.

Zoltan talked of Hungary, and how he was a close relation of Nagy, the folk hero of the '56 revolution. He detailed his bodybuilding regime: how much he could bench-press, how much he could jerk, and what he would eat. Mainly they were heavy foods: soups with carp heads, bones, and fins; doughy breads cooked in rendered bacon fat; salads made of meat rather than lettuce. Some sounded downright inedible, but Zoltan recalled them as lovingly and wistfully as if they were dear departed relations.

Dina did not want to talk about food but found herself describing the salmon croquettes her mother made the week before she died. Vats of collards and kale, the small islands of grease floating atop the pot liquor, cornbread spotted with dashes of hot sauce. It was not the food she ate all the time, or even the kind she preferred, but it was the kind she wanted whenever she was sick or lonely; the kind of food that-when she got it-she stuffed in her mouth like a pacifier. Even recollecting food from the corner stores made her stomach constrict with pleasure and yearning: barbecue, Chong's take-out, peach cobbler. All of it delicious in a lardy, fatty, condiment-heavy way. Miasmas of it so strong that they pushed through the styrofoam boxes bagged in brown paper.

"Well," Ari said, when Dina finished speaking.

Since they had nothing else to eat, they smoked.

They waited to see what Sayeed would do, and as the hours pa.s.sed, waited for him to leave. He never did. That night Ari gave him a blanket and Sayeed stretched out on a tatami, in the very middle of the room. Instead of pus.h.i.+ng aside the low tea table, he simply arranged his blanket under it, and as he lay down, head under the tea table, he looked as though he had been trying to retrieve something from under it and had gotten stuck.

Over the next few days they found out that Sayeed had married a non-Moroccan woman instead of the woman he was arranged to marry. His family, her family, the whole country of Morocco, it seemed, disowned him. Then his wife left him. He had moved to Tokyo in the hope of opening a business, but the money that was supposed to have been sent to him was not sent.

"They know! They know!" he'd mutter while smoking or praying or boiling an egg. Dina a.s.sumed he meant that whoever was supposed to send Sayeed money knew about his non-Moroccan ex-wife, but she could never be sure. Whenever Sayeed mused over how life had gone wrong, how his wife had left him, how his family had refused to speak to him, he glared at Dina, as though she were responsible.

One night she awoke to find Sayeed panting over her, holding a knife at her throat. His chest was bare; his pajama bottoms glowed from the streetlights outside the window. Dina screamed, waking Petra, who turned on a light and promptly began to cry. Ari and Zoltan gradually turtled out of their sleep, saw Sayeed holding the knife at her throat, saw that she was still alive, and looked at her hopelessly, as though she were an actress failing to play her part and die on cue. When Zoltan saw that it had nothing to do with him, he went back to sleep. Sayeed rattled off accusingly at Dina in Arabic until Ari led him into the hallway.

She sat straight up in the one pair of jeans she hadn't sold and a nearly threadbare green bra. Ari came back, exhausted. She didn't know where Sayeed was, but she could hear j.a.panese voices in the hallway, their anger and complaints couched in vague, seemingly innocuous phrases. They have a lot of people living there, don't they? meant, Those foreigners! Can't they be quiet and leave us in peace! And I wonder if Roppongi would offer them more opportunities meant, They should go to Roppongi where their own kind live! Ari tried to slam the door shut, as if to defy the neighbors, as if to add a dramatic coda to the evening, but Zoltan had broken the door in one of his rages, and it barely closed at all.

"He probably won't do it again," he said.

"What! What do you mean by 'probably won't'?"

Zoltan sleepily yelled for her to shut up. Petra sat in her corner with a stray tear running in a rivulet along one of her scars.

Then Ari was suddenly beside Dina, talking to her in broken English she hadn't the energy to try to understand. He turned the light out, his arm around her neck. Soon they heard Petra and Zoltan going at it, panting and pounding at each other till it seemed as though they'd destroy the tatami under them.

Dina and Ari usually slept side by side, not touching, but that night he'd settled right beside her and put his arm around her neck. Ari smelled like fresh bread, and as she inhaled his scent it occurred to her that his arm around her neck was meant to calm her, to shut her up-nothing romantic. Nevertheless, she nudged him, ran her palm against his arm, the smoothest she ever remembered touching, the hairs like extensions of liquid skin. He politely rolled away. "You should wear more clothes."

She tugged the sheet away from him and said. "I can't take this."

She hated how they all had to sleep in the tiny, six-tatami room, how they slept so close to one another that in the dark Dina could tell who was who by smell alone. She hated how they never had enough to eat, and how Ari just kept inviting more people to stay. It should have been just he and she, but now there were three others, one of whom had just tried to kill her, and she swore she could not-would not-take it anymore.

"Can't take?" he asked, managing to yell without actually yelling. "Can't take, can't take!" he tried to mimic. He turned on the light as if to get a better look at her, as if he'd have to check to make sure it was the same woman he'd let sleep under his roof. "But you must!"

She had nowhere else to go. So she and Sayeed worked out a schedule-not a schedule exactly, but a way of doing things. If he returned from a day of looking for work, he might ask everyone how the day had gone. In that case, she would not answer, because she was to understand that he was not speaking to her. If she was in one corner of the room, he would go to another.