Homefront. Part 18

"What about you?," Griffin said slowly. "You been doing a little cross-country on the trails back of my place where Broker's staying, huh? Sneaking around puncturing his tires?" The hand hovered, ready to strike again.

"Not me," Jimmy said sincerely.

"Don't bulls.h.i.t me, Jimmy-"

"No bulls.h.i.t. I ain't been on skinny skis since high school," Jimmy said.

"I thought so," Griffin said slowly, watching Jimmy's eyes. When he moved his hand, Jimmy winced, but Griffin only softly rubbed the spot on Jimmy's chest where he'd poked him.

"I got no quarrel with you," Jimmy said, indignant. "What do you want, coming in here like this?"

"Keith wants to nip it. Make it stop between you and Broker. So what do you need?"

"No kidding?"

"Hey, Jimmy, I'm losing daylight here. What will get us over this hump?"

Jimmy thought about it. "He's gotta apologize to me and Teddy in front of people. At the school. How's that?"

"I'll talk to him, see what I can do," Griffin said. "If he meets you halfway, in front of people, you'll shake on it, okay?"

Jimmy narrowed his eyes. "And he buys Teddy a new shirt to replace the one that got blood on it."

Griffin held up his hands. "That's fair. I'll get back to you." He turned and started walking back to his Jeep. Then he turned and said, "You ain't been on skis since high school, is that a fact?"

Jimmy rolled his eyes. It was getting complicated. He shook his head, like a man trying to comprehend an absurd question. As Griffin drove away, Jimmy went immediately to the phone on the wall and called Gator.

"Griffin was just here throwing his weight around."

Huh? In five seconds flat. Throwing his weight around, how? "What do you mean mean?" Gator said, going from zero to max exasperation. f.u.c.king dummy. He had his cell phone wedged awkwardly between his shoulder and his ear as he jockeyed the clutch plate on the Moline. Actually hoping it was Sheryl who was calling.

"He was pushing at me. Accused me of messing with Broker's truck, giving him a flat tire. I didn't do that," Jimmy huffed. He was careful to leave out the ski part. The obvious part, because everybody knew he didn't cross-country. Whereas everybody knew Gator had a wall full of ribbons.

"Anything else?" Gator said.

"Ah, yeah," Jimmy said, spanning the sins of omission with a hint of relief. "He says him and Keith will get Broker to apologize to me and Teddy. He caved."

Moron, Gator thought, as he watched the black kitten wolf down the Chef 's Blend through the open office door. He said, "That's great, Jimmy. So you got what you wanted."

"Ah, what about Griffin? Coming around. I don't really want to mess with him, you know."

"Aw, he's probably just sticking up for his buddy. Nothing to it. We'll just let Keith do his thing, like I said."

"So everything's all right?"

"Yeah, Jimmy. Everything's cool," Gator said. When he hung up, he didn't share his brother-in-law's sense of relief. Griffin showing up as a wild card was far from cool. They'd never crossed paths, and Gator hoped to keep it that way.

Distracted, staring at the clock on the wall, then at the phone on his desk; he didn't think Griffin was anything to worry about. Yet. It'd blow over, the petty feud part. But the other thing...

He wiped off his hands on a rag and walked into the office. Chided himself. Stop watching the phone. Too early for Sheryl to check in. And she didn't deal in maybes. She'd wait until she had something definite.

When he reached down to stroke the kitten, she darted away under the desk.

"You'll come around," he said. "Because I feed you and give you shelter. You need me." Just like Jimmy and Ca.s.sie came around. He turned back to the tractor in his bay. It took time. Like the Moline. Be months before he could make it whole.

Gator held that the combustion engine resembled the human body; used fuel like food, used air just like lungs.

Then he paused and considered the plan he'd set in motion against Phil Broker's life. Well, there was one fundamental difference between people and machines: once they turned Broker off, no way he was going to start up again.

Chapter Twenty-seven.

Broker dropped Kit off at school, drove back through town, and turned north on Lakeside Road, which served as the frontage road for the west side of the lake. After about a mile, he wheeled toward the lake at the Glacier Lodge sign. A thick stand of balsam and spruce masked the empty parking lot in front of the gabled lodgepole pine building set on a rocky point. Didn't see Griffin's Jeep, just Teedo's black Ford. drove back through town, and turned north on Lakeside Road, which served as the frontage road for the west side of the lake. After about a mile, he wheeled toward the lake at the Glacier Lodge sign. A thick stand of balsam and spruce masked the empty parking lot in front of the gabled lodgepole pine building set on a rocky point. Didn't see Griffin's Jeep, just Teedo's black Ford.

Broker parked and walked around to the lakeside, where the carpenters had put up a shelter, two-by-sixes and two-by-fours supporting a tent of black insulated tarps. Inside this tent, warmed by a propane heater, Griffin and Teedo had been laying a flagstone porch and patio-winter work, the lodge owner's late February inspiration. He wanted the patio ready for fishing opener in May. Pallets stacked with Montana flagstone and sacks of mortar surrounded the tent. A Bobcat. The locker where Griffin kept his tools.

Teedo Dove, Griffin's apprentice, was feeding pieces of familiar split oak into a fire he'd started in a length of steel culvert. That oak was Broker's main contribution to the crew he was supposed to work on. Put all the days he'd actually handled the stone in a string, and it wouldn't stretch two weeks for the whole winter. A mound of masonry sand heaped over the culvert with a half fifty-five-gallon drum of water heating on the top. A gasoline-powered cement mixer and wheelbarrow was positioned alongside. Teedo, at twenty-seven, stood six-two and went around 250. A Red Lake Ojibwa, he was soft-spoken, bearlike, light on his feet, and a quiet drinker. Hounded by Griffin, he sporadically attended the local AA meeting. He originally blamed his drinking on his decision nine years ago not to take the full-ride scholarship he'd been offered, playing right tackle at Bemidji State. Griffin's simple advice on alcoholism was typically blunt: "Don't put it in your mouth."

He'd taken Teedo on as a reclamation project. Griffin was big on stuff like that. Interventions. Rescues. He'd been resocialized by Alcoholics Anonymous. Up to a point. Sometimes Broker glimpsed edges of the old Griffin, the brilliant but erratic risk taker in Vietnam. Broker had looked on their war as a job with really s.h.i.tty working conditions. Griffin was more the dark romantic, in Broker's opinion; a man who had been more than a little in love with death.

"Morning, Teedo," he said. "Where's the boss?"

"Ain't here," Teedo said with blank Zen presence. "Feed the fire. I'll set up some stone. Then we'll mix some mud." He disappeared into the tent to arrange the stone.

After tossing more wood on the fire, Broker unscrewed the cup from his thermos and poured some coffee. He looked out over the lake, felt the warm sun on his face, saw it sparkle on the calm water. The temperature was thirty degrees and rising. If this kept up, they wouldn't need the fire to warm the sand and water. They could peel back the tarps and work in the morning light.

The sunlight dissolved the harsh cold out of his crystallized breath. Panes of thin ice glistened, about to melt in the puddles. He could almost smell a softness in the air-sap rising-hear the tentative bird calls. A faint hush of green buds trembled in the branches of the aspen and birches.

Buoyed by the caress of the sun, he thought, d.a.m.n. It was just possible, that, like Persephone emerging from the underworld, he and Nina and Kit had survived their black winter.

Teedo plugged his radio into an outlet in the porch siding and filled the tent with a wail and groan of country music, punctuated with news of the war. Broker mixed mortar, shoveled it into the barrow, and wheeled it out of the sunlight into the limbo of naked lightbulbs strung in the tent. Teedo troweled the mortar down and leveled the patio flags.

Broker was mixing the second batch of mud when Griffin arrived and waved Broker over to his Jeep, then handed him the new improved bunny and the cat's collar. Broker stuffed the collar in his pocket and, after inspecting the subtle repair job, said, "Thanks. I'll tell her I found it jammed under the seat." He put the stuffed toy in the Tundra, came back.

"I stopped off to visit with Jimmy Klumpe this morning," Griffin said.

"You been busy," Broker said carefully.

"Here's the deal. You gotta come up with a face-saving gesture, something he will accept as an apology."

Broker shrugged, "No sweat, sure. After what I saw and heard last night-"

"And he wants you to replace the shirt Teddy got b.l.o.o.d.y."

"Jesus, you got me running the gauntlet," Broker made a mock show of protest.

Griffin laughed. "Do you good. An exercise in making amends. Practice some humility. C'mon. Time to work."

As the morning continued warm, they fell into a rhythm. Griffin sliced the flagstone sheets into irregular slabs with his heavy diamond-blade saw. Broker loaded the wheelbarrow, ferried the pieces into the tent, and arranged them in a pattern on the concrete patio footing. Teedo followed Broker, adjusting the s.p.a.cing, leveling, and mudding them in place.

As Broker loaded the raw stone, he watched Griffin work. Years ago he'd speculated Griffin would watch Jeremiah Johnson Jeremiah Johnson one too many times, give up entirely on people, and migrate north clear through Manitoba into the territories. one too many times, give up entirely on people, and migrate north clear through Manitoba into the territories.

Griffin reminded Broker of a story from his youth about a hermit who'd lived in the canoe country north of Ely, who resisted being relocated when the government created the Boundary Waters canoe area. When it became clear that the law would come in and forcibly move him, the guy had forted up on an island with a crate of dynamite, sat down, and lit the fuse.

Rather than return to civilization.

Griffin preferred to work alone. Or in Teedo's large, quiet shadow, which was the next thing to being alone. And Broker wasn't sure if the repet.i.tious lifting and placing of the heavy stone was a meditation or a form of solitary penance. One morning, returning for a second consecutive day, he noticed that Griffin had torn apart a mosaic of stone Broker had laid out on the concrete base and then rearranged it to his own satisfaction. The gesture was consistent with a theory Broker had about his friend; that Griffin constantly tore himself down and reshaped his image.

Because he couldn't accept who he really was.

It was a persistent point of tension between them, going all the way back to the old days when they first operated together in Vietnam. More than any man he knew, Broker believed Griffin should have stayed in the Army. Not a particularly kind observation. But a true one.

Half past eleven. Break time; they retrieved their lunch bags and thermoses, sat in a corner of the tent, ate sandwiches, and poured coffee. Then the jive games began.

Griffin squinted through the smoke from the Lucky in his lips at Teedo. "You notice how Broker kinda creaks when he moves, like's got sand in his crank case? Hey, Broker, when's the last time you got laid, anyway?"

Broker fired back without missing a beat. "I don't know about you transplants from Detroit, but up on the North Sh.o.r.e, where I grew up, a guy only gets allotted about five hundred million erections. What can I say-when they're gone, they gone."

Undeterred, Griffin winked at Teedo. "He ain't seen all the ads on TV; v.i.a.g.r.a, Cialis..."

"That's 'cause they ain't aimed at him; they're for old farts like you who can barely eat a little p.u.s.s.y between naps," Teedo said.

Broker grinned and held up a Ziploc bag full of raw cut broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots.

Teedo pa.s.sed, wrinkling his nose.

Griffin grinned. "He don't eat vegetables, among other things."

Teedo grunted. "We got a word for people who eat too many vegetables."

"Yeah, what's that?" Griffin needled.

"Bad hunter," Teedo said with flawless timing.

Broker felt the muscles of his face loosen in a genuine grin. Not to be outdone, Griffin appraised Teedo and said with great formality, "What I heard is you Indian guys don't go in for oral s.e.x."

Teedo's round face revealed nothing. "My daddy always said that Ojibwa can eat beaver and stretch it too."

Griffin hung his head, laughing, unable to top that. After a pause, he turned to Broker. "Speaking of p.u.s.s.y, you ever find the cat?"

"No kitty; one way or the other, she's gone," Broker said. "Kit's pretty b.u.mmed-the cat was all she had to play with."

"Want me to find another?"

Broker ground his teeth lightly. "Might be best to get one back in Stillwater."

"Oh?" Griffin raised his eyebrows. "You got something to tell me?"

Broker shrugged. "Things are looking better. Let's wait and see..."

Hearing that, Griffin studied Broker for a moment and added, "Uh-huh." Then he signaled that the break was over. "Enough graba.s.s, we got work to do."

The early afternoon pa.s.sed quickly, and Broker felt himself loosening up, enjoying the work tugging at his muscles. The tease and dig of easy male company was an antidote to the estrogen bends, he decided; he'd been too far down in that house with Nina and Kit. When he prepared to leave to pick Kit up from school, Griffin caught up to him at his truck.

"You know," Griffin said, "I was thinking about what you said-the cat being Kit's only playmate..."

"Yeah?"

"You met Susan, right, at school?"

"Yeaahh..." Broker drew it out, watching the wheels turning in Griffin's eyes.

"So I was thinking. Susan's got this daughter, Amy, same age as Kit. Maybe we could line them up so Kit's got somebody to hang with...might make it go easier."

Broker worried his lower lip between his teeth, his eyes weighing the idea. "I'll think about it."

"If we get the kids together, could be a good idea for Susan and Nina to maybe talk..."

"This one of your half-a.s.sed interventions?" Broker smiled when he said it, amiable.

"Can't hurt," Griffin said.

Broker turned and headed for his truck. "We on for tomorrow morning in the torture chamber?" Once a week Broker joined Griffin in his bas.e.m.e.nt weight room, where they went through a lifting routine.

"Sure."

"We'll talk about it then, along with how much politically correct crow I gotta eat to make the peace with that a.s.shole Klumpe," Broker said, getting in his truck.

Teedo walked over to Griffin. They stood watching Broker drive off.

"You heard what's been going on?" Griffin asked.

Teedo nodded. "Heard the gang talking it up at Skeet's. How Broker put Jimmy Klumpe on the ground. Started when Broker's kid knocked Teddy Klumpe on his b.u.t.t at school. Then yesterday Broker dumped his garbage at Jimmy's garage, right on the welcome mat."

"There's more. Two days ago, after the scene at school, somebody came in on skis through the woods, punctured a tire on his truck, tried to poison his dog"-Griffin paused-"maybe got in the house..."

"Country payback. Except he ain't got a dog," Teedo said.

"Yeah. But they took some stuff, a kid's toy, maybe the cat. Weird, huh? Can you picture a klutz like Jimmy going in on skis?" Griffin picked up two empty gas cans, started to put them in the open lift door of his Jeep.