Homefront. Part 4

Wasn't going to be a real boost. Waiting. C'mon. Then...Almost. Just a small caress of pre-rush foreplay. Her perfect lover trying to do it from the inside. Then fizzle. Just a small caress of pre-rush foreplay. Her perfect lover trying to do it from the inside. Then fizzle.

Get more.

The sensation clamoring now. Flushed, her face out of balance, with a streak of the makeup breaking down her cheek like a black crack, she jerked the towel around her. She paced down the hall, pa.s.sed the sounds of cyber carnage on the other side of her son's door, then went into the grim bedroom with its turgid blue wallpaper. Christ, the room where old Tommy and Adele made Jimmy. At least they got a new bed before...

She sat on the bed and stared at the phone. Caught herself digging nervously at her cheek with her fingernails.

Only one way to make it stop. And for that she needed more than Keith, her guardian angel. She needed her guardian devil.

Jimmy wouldn't like it. But then Jimmy just got knocked on his a.s.s. She'd lost the last hope of the mini rush, so it was with faint nausea that she picked up the phone and called her brother. It was her brother, after all, who had taught her to keep an eye out for people who didn't fit.

Especially now.

Chapter Five.

"Okay, Ca.s.sie; calm down," Gator Bodine said as he patiently listened to her lament about how little Teddy had been mistreated at the hands of a girl with a red ponytail. Gator Bodine said as he patiently listened to her lament about how little Teddy had been mistreated at the hands of a girl with a red ponytail.

"Hey, Ca.s.sie, get a grip. It's just kids at school."

She didn't hear. Just kept going. Now she was saying how Jimmy had been put on the sidewalk by the kid's father. An older guy.

Gator thinking: Jesus. Like father, like son. Serves them right. The fat spoiled f.a.ggots... Jesus. Like father, like son. Serves them right. The fat spoiled f.a.ggots...

"They made him bleed," Ca.s.sie said.

Aw, s.h.i.t. When Ca.s.sie got to talking about bleeding, it could turn into a long night, and it was still morning. "They, huh?" Gator asked, putting some concern in his voice.

"The girl's dad, after he knocked Jimmy down, he looked smug, like he was happy he did it...like it was easy. The way he looked, the vibes he put out; remember how you said to Jimmy and me to keep an eye out for people who stick out, who don't fit. Well, this is that kind of guy..."

"Oh?" Gator became a bit more attentive. His sister lurched around on her own personal drugged-up roller coaster right now; hitting all the swoops from manic to paranoid. But she always did have eyes like a hawk. "What about the way he looked?"

"The way he got on Jimmy, he looked trained trained."

"Trained like what?" Gator was now paying full attention.

"I don't know what, like he's used to knocking people on their a.s.s, that's what. And he don't look local. He was wearing one of Harry Griffin's crew coats. Everybody says Griffin has some dark bulls.h.i.t in his past. Maybe this guy is part of that. Point is, he don't fit up here. Making laborer's pay, paying the rent on a lakefront cabin, driving a brand-new green Tundra."

"Okay, okay; slow down, back up. Who is he? Where does he live?"

"I heard him talking to Keith."

"Oh, great, Keith was there. Wonderful. What'd Keith do?" Ca.s.sie had paused to organize her thoughts. So Gator read between the lines and said, "Jimmy tried to get smart with the guy, right?"

"He was upset seeing Teddy all b.l.o.o.d.y," Ca.s.sie said.

"C'mon, Jimmy bit off more than he could handle." As usual. When she didn't answer, Gator said, "Ca.s.sie, who wound up sitting in Keith's car afterward?" Still no answer. "Never mind. So where does he live, again?"

"It's the old Hamre place, off County Twelve on the west side of the lake. Griffin bought it way back and fixed it up."

"Gotcha. I know the property. You got a name?"

"Uh, his name is Phil. Phil Broker. Another thing. I called Madge Grolick at the school, and she said n.o.body's ever seen the guy's wife. He brings the kid, picks her up."

"You ask how long they been here?"

"Transferred in January, right in the middle of the school year." Having delivered the information, Ca.s.sie's voice launched into her basic global plea. "Gator, I could use a little help here to make it stop, you know how hard I try..."

Gator smiled, loving her palpable need vibrating in the cell phone. d.a.m.n. It was like...fan mail. "Jeez, Ca.s.sie, you gotta back off on that stuff. Don't want to use too much, know what I mean."

"Please, Gator, What do I have to do, beg or...what?"

Gator shut his eyes and listened to his sister's voice, like she was right there with him, shrunk down and imprisoned in the oblong Motorola slab of cell phone plastic in his broad hand. Locked in and pleading to get out, his own private genie in a bottle, all mixed up in with the tiny jit-jit lights and chips and s.h.i.t. Like she was under a spell. Yeah, he could see that. So he let the ambiguity dangle on the connection for several delicious seconds, and then he said, "Okay, I'll check this guy out, now you just calm down. It'll be all right. You did good." Then he paused, letting the stress compound on the other end of the connection. When the silence was closer to snapping, he soothed. "I'll bring you something. But you gotta treat me right, understood." Then he ended the call before she could blubber thanks. He set the cell phone aside. He leaned back against his workbench, arms thrust back for support.

Gator stood five feet ten and a half inches in his stocking feet. He weighed 185. Once a month he went into town and had old Irv Preston run clippers over his scalp so his hair resembled a dark cap. Excess hair could get caught in moving parts.

Get him out of the greasy work overalls into decent clothes, and he'd be handsome in a saturnine way. His blue eyes could have a devilish Gallic twinkle. Had metis in his blood; his people sprang from the nomadic mix of French and Cree out of Canada. A lifetime working with machinery had given him a taut, dense body. His hands were square and powerful, with at least one signature mashed fingernail in evidence.

When he was in the Navy, a woman in a Pocatello, Idaho, barroom told him once he had a Steve McQueen look going for him, but darker, and he could see that-if McQueen packed more muscle, from a year lifting weights in Stillwater Prison after getting busted for transporting a kilo of cocaine with intent to sell.

Gator Bodine looked around his shop. Years back he'd had dreams of crashing the mechanic elite; getting on a pit crew at NASCAR or the Indy. When that goal proved out of reach, he had to face the facts. The most he could hope for was a berth at an auto dealership with a benefits package. Or start his own shop. And that required capital. His first attempt at alternative financing had fizzled when the cops kicked in his door.

He had tried real hard to learn from his mistakes. Brooding in jail, he'd realized he was sitting on a modest gold mine. All the antique tractors his dad had pack-ratted into the big junkyard behind the shop for forty years.

His eyes traveled to the wall where he had a centerfold page taped up out of a slick color Minneapolis Moline coffee-table-type book: looked like a hot rod with the distinctive flared tinwork, the fender sloping over the big rear wheels, grill, and cab. It was a rare 1938 Moline Model UDLX. Painted in an orange they called Prairie Gold. Gold was right.

Barnie Sheffeld, who displayed one of Gator's restored tractors at his implement lot in Bemidji, told him a UDLX, restored to mint, would bring a hundred grand.

The stripped-down tractor sitting in the shop under the picture on the wall didn't look like much now. He had the rusted cowling and the gas tank pulled off. Had unbolted the front half, legged it up, and pried it away from the rear section. Took out the engine. The cam and crank. Had the back end up on blocks and bottle jacks and had spent the day pulling the clutch.

But it was a vintage UDLX, and when he got done, it would look exactly like the one in the picture.

As perfect as he could make it.

Then he'd paint it the same color-Prairie Gold.

Methodically, he shook some Boraxo into his hand and worked it into his hands and forearms. Scrubbing up to the coiled green-and-red alligator tattoo that ran the length of his left forearm. When he wiggled his fingers, the bunched muscles rippled and the tattoo moved.

He shook his head and used a rag to worry the deeply ingrained grease from his thick fingers. As he cleaned his hands and arms in the work sink, he glanced out the window, at the sign planted in the yard in front of his shop. Next to a red 1919 Fordson with giant steel-treaded wheels.

Bodine's Old Iron.

The corner of his lips tipped up slightly as he imagined an invisible hand coming down out of the restless gray sky and painting a letter Y at the end of the sign. Bodine's Old Irony... Bodine's Old Irony...

Except for the dark perpetual four o'clock shadow that stubbled his cheeks and dimpled jaw, Gator Bodine resembled the garage bay in which he stood. On the outside, he was a compulsively tidy, meticulously organized man. The inside was more difficult to chart.

He had always loved machines. Loved taking them apart, putting them together. Loved puzzling out how they worked. Could spend hours watching the moving parts.

Sometimes he wished he could take people apart and put them back together. Be nice if he could see the moving parts behind their eyes. His own eyes. His sister's...

Thing about Ca.s.sie; she'd just keep working on a guy. It was like some wacko relentless religion with her; in the beginning G.o.d created p.u.s.s.y. He shook his head, took a fresh towel from the rack by the sink, dried his hands.

She'd been just about the most perfect-looking women he had ever seen in his life. Until she opened her mouth.

Until she f.u.c.king moved...

...toward some man...

Gator, make it stop.

He shook his head. Gotta fight her battles for her. That t.u.r.d she married sure wouldn't. And besides, he needed Jimmy to make the plan work. And he needed Ca.s.sie to keep her mouth shut. And, who knows, maybe she'd actually spotted something out of line with this new guy.

Due diligence dictated that he go see.

He was Ca.s.sie's twin, born eighteen minutes after her. He always joked, half serious, about that. He always thought he should have been first.Not born really, more like hatched.He had seen this show on the Discovery Channel about how baby alligators get born in a swamp, and the trick was not getting devoured by their daddy. By the time he was a junior in high school, he had no doubts that he was living in his own private Everglades set down in the middle of the glacial lake country of northwestern Minnesota. He had come to view his father as a reptile subspecies of the Bodine strain of jack-pine savage white trash. Mom was no help at all; h.e.l.l, she was outa the same stagnant pool, the old man's first cousin. Everglades set down in the middle of the glacial lake country of northwestern Minnesota. He had come to view his father as a reptile subspecies of the Bodine strain of jack-pine savage white trash. Mom was no help at all; h.e.l.l, she was outa the same stagnant pool, the old man's first cousin.So the main challenge for him and his sister right from the start was how to survive their parents.In fact his father, Irv Bodine, looked like an alligator. He was thick in the trunk and stubby in the arms and legs. He was glint-eyed, scaly, and always lying in wait with his long snout half submerged in a slop of cheap whiskey. And Mom never even put up a fight. She just went along until she was so leached out by the booze she resembled a shrieking caged swamp bird, bouncing off the walls.It came as no surprise to the neighbors, to the teachers, or to the sheriff when their branch of the Bodine family went all to h.e.l.l. It happened in October, the night of a hard frost; with half the hay left to rot in the fields, with Irv's machine tools sprouting orange whiskers of rust amid the cobwebs in his repair shop. A colony of rats had taken over the sprawling tractor junkyard behind the shop.Junior year in high school. Before he got the gator tat on his arm. Back when he was just Morgun, Morg for short.Morg came home from his after-school job at Luchta's Garage in town, heard the feeder calves bellowing, starving in the barn, went in the house, and smelled more gas than usual. And not the gas in the coffee cans on the mud porch where Irv had tractor parts soaking. This was propane, in the kitchen. He went in and saw a bread pan full of raw meatloaf sitting on the kitchen table. His mom's thick fingerprints still squished in the red mush. He saw the oven door open. And he saw the box of Blue Tip matches for lighting the pilot, just sitting there on top of the stove. Which was as far as his mother got with supper before she wandered into the living room and pa.s.sed out drunk on the couch with raw hamburger smeared on her fingers.Then he heard the racket down the hall; Ca.s.sie screaming, the shower going. And he just knew. Knew before he kicked open the door-the old man still had enough bar whiskey prod going for him to corner Ca.s.sie in the shower again. shower going. And he just knew. Knew before he kicked open the door-the old man still had enough bar whiskey prod going for him to corner Ca.s.sie in the shower again.But this time he'd gone too far. Usually when he got to drinking and started feeling up his daughter, he kept his clothes on. Not tonight. There, in the steam from the shower clouding the tiny bathroom, he saw the old man grappling with Ca.s.sie in this mist, saw he had his overalls down around his knees as he bent her dripping wet over the sink."Ain't you slippery," the old man was howling and giggling over and over. He was trying to hold her steady with one burly hand and aim his business with the other.There was the shower gushing, there was the smell of gas, mildew, mold, whiskey breath. And there was this single lightbulb over the cabinet above the sink. Just the bare bulb, no shade on it. This cheap little chain jiggling down from the commotion. The weird split image of them there in front of him and coming at him again from another direction in the mirror. In the raw light Morg saw the old man's spit sprayed among the water droplets on Ca.s.sie's squirming back muscles. Gas, water, the mirror, and these raised blisters dotted with tiny bubbles. Maybe it was seeing the tiny air bubbles popping in the spit that set him off.Set him off so he finally reached in through the years of this bulls.h.i.t that had been going on since Ca.s.s started wearing a bra. He grabbed a fistful of his father's greasy hair and slammed his head down on the hot water faucet. Irv collapsed into a fetal b.u.t.t-mooning heap at their feet, out cold.She had turned and clung to him. And it was him in the mirror now with Ca.s.sie as she hugged him and cried, "Make it stop.""I will."He watched the shock drain from her eyes and get replaced by a hot mindless idle, like she had a runaway motor chugging deep in her guts that, once it got turned on, just kept going and going...maybe some jealousy mixed in there.Maybe a lot.And they were still holding on to each other past the point where she should be thinking about standing there naked. And Morg was caught up for a few seconds remembering the really interesting way they said it in the Bible, talking about the temptations of flesh and blood. where she should be thinking about standing there naked. And Morg was caught up for a few seconds remembering the really interesting way they said it in the Bible, talking about the temptations of flesh and blood.Cleave.Sharp knives. Room-temperature raw meat out there on Mom's lax fingers. Pictures like that coming to his head.And Ca.s.sie, eyes wide open; mouth open; her tongue moving in there arched up, this soft red question mark...like it had been the hot July afternoon last year, standing barefoot in the cows.h.i.t of the loafing shed behind the barn when she lured him into making her virginity stop...The shower and the gas and the naked light and Ca.s.sie still all wet and first trembling then melting against him and the old man's head shifting on the warped linoleum floor and beginning to snore between their feet.And she said, like real perplexed, "Ain't our fault that the two best-looking people in the eleventh grade have the same last name."He'd been halfway there, again, till she said that. Then she totally sobered him up with her follow-up line, tonguing the words into his ear: "You were first at something, remember."It was just possible her head was so empty because her brain had crawled down into her mouth, where it took up residence in her sucky tongue. It was enough baggage having Ca.s.sie permanently in your life as a sister. You'd have to be completely nuts to complicate it by doing the doggie in the bathroom with the shower running and the old man snoring on the floor.Morg could have a weak moment, but he was not nuts.It was plenty just to feel the cannibal gene slither up and load in his blood. It didn't have to go off, not at the exact moment. Ca.s.sie was the perpetual rain-check girl. Count on her to stay wet.But she was right about one thing. It had to stop.So he yanked a towel off the hook on the back of the door, covered her, and said, "You ain't thinking too clearly right now. Get dressed. We're getting out of here, over to Nygard's."She studied him, and it wasn't so much that the moment pa.s.sed. More like she slowly folded it up and tucked it in her pocket. Except she was out of pockets right then. "You smell gas?" she asked as she carefully stepped over the snoring heap on the floor. More like she slowly folded it up and tucked it in her pocket. Except she was out of pockets right then. "You smell gas?" she asked as she carefully stepped over the snoring heap on the floor."Yeah. Stay away from the kitchen. Use the back door. Go out to the barn and feed the d.a.m.n calves. Sounds like they're starving."They didn't take anything with them when they left and went over to the Nygards' house, because when they usually showed up-because Irv and Mellie Bodine got themselves outrageously drunk-they never brought anything. But the last thing Morg did, after he made sure no windows were open, was close the door tight behind him.And not turn off the gas.It was like that gas was meant to be, and Morg wasn't going to interfere with destiny. Uh-uh, not him. And the stove was working off a fresh tank, because he'd hooked it in two days ago.No one was surprised when the sheriff went out the next morning and found the Bodines with their lungs soaked with propane and their blood testing off the chart with alcohol. The medical examiner and the sheriff agreed, it looked like the kind of stupid accident that would happen to a couple drunks; pa.s.sed out, pilot light on the stove unlit. Irv falling down getting off the toilet, bruising his head on the sink, and breathing the slow creep of the rising gas. h.e.l.l of a sight, with his bibs down around his ankles. And n.o.body was surprised when Ca.s.sie and Morgun didn't cry at the pine-box funeral.The day after he buried his parents, he buried Morgun when he drove to Bemidji in his daddy's truck, to a tattoo parlor there, and got the alligator tattoo on his left forearm.

Chapter Six.

They came through the door and immediately smelled the cigarette smoke. Kit rolled her eyes, made a resigned face, ran up the stairs, and slammed the door to her room. Broker took the long view and accepted it as the exhausted breath of insomnia that inhabited the house. Along with the TV blaring in the kitchen. and immediately smelled the cigarette smoke. Kit rolled her eyes, made a resigned face, ran up the stairs, and slammed the door to her room. Broker took the long view and accepted it as the exhausted breath of insomnia that inhabited the house. Along with the TV blaring in the kitchen.

Part of the healing process.

He made a signal of shutting the front door forcefully behind him, telegraphing their arrival. Then, methodically, he removed his coat in the living room.

Give her some time...

Didn't matter. She barely noticed him come into the kitchen; still in her robe and slippers, one of his old T-shirts she'd slept in. Hair askew, her face puffy with backed-up caffeine, nicotine, and fatigue; she slumped at the kitchen island, worrying at her cigarette with her thumb. She stared at the TV he'd installed in the corner above their one houseplant, a hardened snake plant that thrived on her erratic watering regimen of dumping cold coffee cups, many containing soggy cigarette b.u.t.ts.

The television screen flashed an image of military vehicles coated in that signature third-world red dust. Some breathless embedded reporter riding in a Bradley, yelling about taking small-arms fire...

Day two of the War in the Box.

"How're the Crusades going?" Broker nodded toward the TV.

Nina slowly shook her head, and a spark of interest sputtered in her eyes. "Looks cool on the tube. Road race to Baghdad. But I got a feeling they shoulda listened to Shinseki, going in light like this. Those Army kids are going to wind up taking up the slack for the politicians again."

Broker nodded. "Let's hope the fix is in." She saw the war as inevitable. He thought it was a mistake. They agreed on one point; during the run-up to the invasion they'd a.s.sumed that the Iraqi generals had been bought off, that they'd resist symbolically to preserve their honor, then turn over Saddam and his inner circle. So far that hadn't happened. Any other plan was just too dumb, given Iraq's history and ethnic composition.

"Nina," he said softly, "give it a break." Did she really miss it? Want it more than being with him and Kit? Did she feel left out, flawed because she'd been left behind? He found the remote among the unwashed breakfast dishes and thumbed off the TV. He faced her and said, "The thing at school-Kit got into a fight. This kid wouldn't stop pushing her, so she punched him. One-day suspension. There's a readmission conference tomorrow."

Nina stared at him, and he could almost see his words methodically crawl over her face, searching for a way to get inside. Finally she focused and said, "Did she get hurt?"

Broker shook his head. "Skinned her knuckles. But the boy she hit wound up with a b.l.o.o.d.y nose."

Slowly she nodded. Then she dropped her cigarette into the sink. "I'll go up and talk to her." The words had no force, seeping out like a last puff of smoke.

"Let's wait, do it over supper. Maybe, ah, you should take a shower and try a nap," Broker said gently.

Nina slowly raised her right arm and touched her fingers to her right temple in a smirk of a salute. She let the arm fall back to her side and walked from the kitchen.

Broker smiled. Two months ago she would be wincing with the effort when she hit the painful range of motion at shoulder level. Would be trembling by the time she got her hand up to her forehead. The ROM therapy had made slow but steady progress rebuilding the shoulder. She was healing. The shoulder faster than the rest of her. But healing.

He turned the exhaust fan on over the stove. Then he opened the patio door to the deck and the side windows and turned on the ceiling fan. To air the place out.

Next he emptied the dishwasher, put the plates, gla.s.ses, cups, and bowls away. Then he rinsed off the dishes in the sink and started loading the washer.

Kit came down the stairs and into the kitchen carrying her school backpack. "Mom's taking a nap," she said.

"How's your hand?"

Kit looked at her raw knuckle. "Don't think I need a Band-Aid anymore. Mom put some hydrogen peroxide on it."

"Stung, didn't it?"

"A little." She held up her hand so he could see the white residue of disinfectant etched into her knuckle. Then she stared at him.

So he debated whether to address the unsaid question hanging over her. Should he do it now, or wait? Whatever he said would be tempered by the fact that he'd knocked the kid's dad down. "We'll talk about the fight at dinner," he decided. "Put on your stuff. We'll go outside so we don't wake her. Maybe you could put some wax on the skis."

Kit brightened when he said that, walked to the patio door, and studied the thermometer fastened to the deck rail. "Twenty-two degrees. Purple wax."

"Sounds about right," Broker said.

As Kit worked with the skis in the garage, he took a white package of venison round steak from the freezer and set it on the counter to thaw. Then he checked the pantry and the refrigerator to make sure he had all the ingredients he'd need. Satisfied, he put on his coat and went outside.

As he pulled on his cap and gloves, he checked the overcast sky and the surrounding woods. Griffin bought this parcel of land with frontage on the west sh.o.r.e of Glacier Lake twenty years ago, when it was cheap and the lake was almost totally uninhabited. Broker had spent part of a summer helping him put the kitchen addition on the gutted house. Not much older then than Nina was now, not long out of his own war.

Broker returned to his maul and chopping block, knocked apart a few armloads of kindling, took it into the kitchen, and stacked it in the wood box next to the Franklin stove. When he came back out, he saw Kit come out of the garage, lean the skis against the side of the building, and use a cork to smooth out the long stripes of wax she'd applied. His were the long skinny Nordic racers. Hers were shorter, combos for both Nordic and skating.

Kit came back with the ski poles. Lined everything up, then turned to him and held up her hands, palms up, in a question. In addition to being quiet, the west end of Glacier was only a couple hundred yards from fifty winding kilometers of some of the best cross-country ski trails in the state.

"After lunch," he said. She went inside, and he went back to his wood.

As the maul rose and fell and his woodpile grew, he went back over the morning. The tiff on the playground didn't concern him that much, and his first impression was that the princ.i.p.al and that chubby kid's mom were overreacting. Kids had to learn how to work out problems for themselves. Should think about that, though. How maybe his approach was too old-fashioned for the current social climate.