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Fathers and Sons Chapter 6 I’d probably only been at the station 15 or 20 minutes Tuesday morning when the first goon---the one with the broken nose---walked in the door. He looked worse than I expected. He wasn’t real pretty to begin with, and the purple all around his nose and up on his forehead didn’t improve his looks any. I was standing by Betty’s desk. She looked scared all of a sudden. “Why don’t you take a break?” I said to her. “Go on down to Roberta’s and have some waffles.” I didn’t have to tell her twice. She grabbed her jacket and her purse; squeezed past the next goon in the doorway, and she was gone. I walked in my office and sat down. Got ready for my company. It was pretty much a repeat of the other day. The boss came in and sat down like it was his office insteada mine. He said, “Do you have my money for me?" “Nope.” He sighed. “I was hoping we could do this without violence.” “Me, too,” I said. “How can you expect me to believe that? When you bring your gang to hunt down my boys and beat them?” Gang? I had to laugh. “Say, Anthony….how many guys did it take to beat the crap outta you?” Anthony didn’t smile. He didn’t look as bad as the other two, probably ‘cause he passed out almost right away; but he was just as pissed. Ricci mighta had some odd ideas, but he was no fool. He looked at Anthony, who just glared. The other two sorta hung their heads. It only took the old man a minute or two to figure it out. “And the reason?” he asked. “They were outside my house. They were bothering my wife.” He sighed. “These the best guys you got?” He didn’t answer me. “Go into the outer room,” he said to the goons. “Go. Deputy White and I will speak man to man.” “Let me pop him,” Anthony said. He reached for his gun. I raised the one I’d been holding outta sight behind my desk and pointed it at him. “You do as I say!” Ricci said. “Or I’ll send you back to your father. Now go!” Anthony muttered and glared, he looked like it was all he could do not to try and jump me, but he finally went, and took the other two with him. Ricci shook his head. “They are my nephews.” He shrugged. “A deputy in a small Arizona town……I didn’t think I would need…..’my best guys’.” “It doesn’t matter what guys you bring. I don’t have your fucking money.” “It is your father’s debt. You must repay it.” “I ain’t sure it has anything to do with my old man, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve done all the payin’ I’m gonna do.” “You are repudiating your father? Your family? Your heritage?” I was polite. I thought about it a second or two before I said, “Yeah.” “It’s not so easy. Your father gave you life. You have his blood in your veins. You owe him.” I put the gun down between us on top of the desk. “I already paid him what I owed him.” He was quiet. I thought maybe he was thinking about letting it go, giving up. I was wrong. “You have been spending money you did not earn. We know this. Where did it come from?” “My aunt left it to me.” “And where did she get it?” “I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. It’s gone.” He rubbed his forehead with the tips of his fingers. “I am inclined to believe you,” he said. “You are an honest man, I think. But there is still my dilemma. I must have the money with me when I return to L.A., or someone must die. Otherwise I will be seen as an easy mark. Weak. More people will try to steal from me. Another boss will try to take my territory. Already, my brother……” He stopped. Didn’t finish that thought. “What would you do in my place?” “I’m never gonna be in your place. But the first thing I’d do would be to look up the guy who told you my old man took the money. Ask him some more questions. Harder ones.” “Of course, that is what you’d like me to do, look to someone else.” The goons had been talking ever since they closed my door, I figured they were telling each other how tough they were, but now there were different noises, different voices. They were talking loud at somebody, and there was some scuffling. I don’t know if Ricci kept on talking, I was on my feet and headed for the door. I opened it just in time to hear Herbert say, “Guns, boys,” and see him and his nephews pull their pistols almost in unison. It was a thing of beauty. Couldn’ta been better. Each nephew shoved a barrel against the back of a neck. Hands went up in the air. Anthony decided not to make it easy, and while I watched, Herbert flattened him, turned him over, and yanked his hands up far enough to make him yelp before he handcuffed him. That’s when I saw the Rev leaning against the wall on the other side of the room. He kinda slid down, almost in slow motion. When he was sitting on the floor he turned his head and looked at me. His eyes closed. I caught him before he toppled over. Herbert told Albert to call for an ambulance. I was kneeling on the floor, holding the Rev up when his eyes opened again. “Hang on, Rev, we got the cavalry coming,” I said. I think he tried to say something, but nothing came out. Dwight, Albert’s brother, shoved his goon into a cell and came back with a pillow and blanket. He convinced me it’d be better to lay the Rev’s head down flat, insteada holding him up like I was, so we did that, and covered him up……and then I didn’t have anything to do. Herbert pulled Anthony to his feet. The prick grinned at me, and said, “Yeah, that old coot don’t have---“ and that’s when I cut my knuckles on his teeth. He fell down right away. I didn’t care, I was planning on beating the shit outta him whether he was awake or asleep, but Herbert got between us. “Now, Bud,” he said. I tried to push him outta the way, but he wouldn’t go. “You know you can’t do that in here.” If Anthony’d been awake, if he’d said anything, if he’d so much as looked at me wrong, Herbert wouldn’t been able to stop me, but the prick didn’t move a muscle. I stepped back. “We’ll take care of this, don’t you worry, Bud,” Herbert said. Ricci was standing in the doorway to my office. I looked at him, and said, “If he dies—“ He nodded. “I understand. It will be war between us. I would do the same in your place.” He took a deep breath, and walked to stand in front of his nephew on the floor. He waved an elegant hand toward him. “He may be an idiot, but he’s mine, my godson. My responsibility just as if he was my own son. I must stand with him, even when he’s wrong.” He looked at the Rev. “I thought you could not be without family. You’re not that kind of man. Is this the man who has your allegiance, the man you cast aside your father for?” I had to think about that for a while. I looked at the Rev., laying on the floor as gray as the blanket, watched him breathe, tried to see the pulse in his neck to make sure he was still alive. Put my hands in my pockets. “I guess so,” I said. Ricci nodded. “Then I am sorry. This is bad for everybody. Even Anthony. Although he doesn’t know it yet.” The glance he gave Anthony as he walked past him toward the door didn’t look affectionate. I suppose it was only about ten or fifteen minutes till the ambulance got there, but it seemed like a lot longer. I felt like I coulda picked him up and run to the hospital faster. And then they wouldn’t let me ride with him back to the hospital, ‘cause I wasn’t family. Lynn and the kids were there when I got there. I don’t know who called her. “Bud,” she said, and hugged me around the neck. “I just got here. What happened?” “I don’t know. He just……kinda crumpled.” “A heart attack?” “I don’t know.” Becky wandered up and down the corridor while we waited, making friends with all the nurses. Charles sat right next to Lynn and didn’t move. Toots was on duty behind the nurses’ desk. After about an hour just sitting and waiting, I asked her how he was, and she said she was sorry, but she couldn’t tell me anything, ‘cause I wasn’t a relative. Glanced back at the nurse behind her, Rowanda Bissell, a short starchy chunk of a woman that forgot how to smile years ago. “I’m sorry, I just can’t.” She looked like she wanted to tell me. I knew she was thinking about the night I brought her daughter home at 3:00 in the morning, crying and scared, but still in one piece. She told me then she owed me. Maybe not enough to go up against Rowanda Bissell for. “It’s against the rules. I’ll lose my job,” she said. She watched Rowanda go into a room across the hall, and curled her finger at me. I bent over the counter. “They’re still working on him,” she whispered. “He had a stroke.” “Then he’s alive, anyway.” She nodded. Rowanda spent only a second across the hall. She never looked at me at all when she went back behind the nurses’ desk, just took the papers Toots was pretending to rearrange out of her hands, and said, “I think it’s time for Mr. Griffith’s walk, Cynthia.” As soon as Toots scurried down the hall, Rowanda leaned toward me and said quietly, “The doctor is still with him. It hasn’t been determined yet how bad the damage is, but he’s holding his own for the moment. The doctor will be able to give you more specifics.” She dropped her gaze. “Reverend Skinner performed my marriage. And the funeral when my Tom died. We’ve had coffee together every Friday morning, rain or shine, for twenty years. We talk.” She reached out her hand, and awkwardly patted the one of mine that was on the counter, and then turned away toward the filing cabinets. Herbert stopped by for a minute, said to give him a call when we knew anything. Arbutus rushed in after that, breathless, her jacket buttoned wrong; I thought she was gonna cry. “I just heard,” she said. “How is he?” I told her what I knew, which was damn little. She looked a little lost. Lynn held out her hand, and Arbutus sat down next to her. “Granny?” Charles said. “Is the Rev gonna die?” Nobody said, Oh, no, honey, he’s gonna be just fine. Nobody said anything. After another hour or so, Becky got fussy, and Lynn decided to take the kids home. She said she’d call everyone she thought should know. The Rev’s sister was laying in the hospital herself, she’d fallen and broken a hip a week or two ago, so she wouldn’t be able to come here, but Lynn said somebody oughta let her know what we knew. Which was nothing much. After she left, Arbutus patted the seat next to her, but I shook my head. I couldn’t sit still. At noon, Betty brought a box of fried chicken from Roberta’s. There was more than enough for the three of us, so she stayed and ate with us. I sat down long enough to eat a couple of pieces. “I hope I did the right thing,” she said. She looked uneasy. “What’s that?” “Leaving you there alone with those gangsters. I maybe could have helped the Reverend if I’d stayed.” “It wasn’t your fault.” “I didn’t think they’d let me call Herbert from the office. I guess maybe I should have come back after I did that. But I didn’t know the Reverend was gonna be there.” “It wasn’t your fault,” I said again. “And I was scared.” She fumbled in her purse for a hanky. “They scared me. I guess I’m not very brave. But if I’d been there, they mighta left the Reverend alone.” “Betty.” Her eyes were moist when she looked at me. “Maybe they wouldn’ta left the Rev. alone. Maybe they woulda hurt you both. You did the right thing.” She nodded, and sniffed into her hankie. “He’s gonna be OK, isn’t he?” she asked. What could I say? “Sure he is,” I said. “He’s a tough old bird.” Arbutus fell asleep about the middle of the afternoon, curled up on the couch in the waiting room. I put my jacket over her legs. I never thought about anything ever happening to the Rev. Kinda stupid, probably; but he survived a bullet in the chest, point-blank and at close range, and after he recovered from that, I guess I thought…….I guess I didn’t think about it at all. He was always there, even when you didn’t want him to be. No matter what happened, he was always there, in the background, or poking his nose in where it didn't belong. You didn’t even have to ask him, most of the time; he’d hear about it, whatever it was, and he’d be there. Probably why he was at the station. I couldn’t remember if I’d mentioned the goons were coming back on Tuesday. It coulda been somebody on the street saw ‘em drive up. The way gossip flew in Bisbee, everybody in town probably knew about it before they got outta the car. He was there, and got in the middle a’ something he didn’t understand and couldn’t handle, just like always. Always trying to do something for somebody else, even if he didn’t have any idea what was going on. Goddam nosy old bastard. Yeah, this is what happens, this is what you get for meddling all the time. Dammit. I probably shoulda tried harder to keep him outta my messes, whether he liked it or not. Too much bad shit, too many things that followed me and wouldn’t let go…….way more than a small-town minister oughta have to handle. I probably shoulda given him the boot a long time ago, just kept him outta my life completely; woulda been better all the way around. Maybe he wouldn’t be laying in there on a gurney if I’d done that. I thought about it, more than once. I just never could quite make myself do it. A coupla months before, we’d been sitting on his front porch, drinking ice tea and watching the sun go down. You can see the western horizon from his place; the sky was blue and the clouds were purple and pink. Nice. The sundowns mighta been blue and purple and pink in LA, too, I don’t know. I never looked at ‘em. Anyway, we were sitting there, and the Rev all of a sudden said, “Things have been more exciting since you moved to town than in the entire two decades before that.” “Yeah?” He nodded. “Definitely.” “Sorry.” “No—I’m not sure it’s bad. I actually can’t make up my mind. On the one hand, of course, are the incidents that have been dangerous, not just to you, but to others as well. But on the other hand…….having someone with a totally different viewpoint, an entirely foreign manner, seems to have had an invigorating effect on many of the townspeople.” “Yeah? How’s that?” “I don’t know exactly why or how; I just know it’s so. Perhaps you are a spiritual catalyst for delight, a new ingredient God is stirring into our little community to invigorate us through friction.” He looked at me like he expected me to say something. What the hell was I supposed to say to that load a’ horseshit? “You’re pulling my leg, right?” He laughed. Looked up at the sky and heehawed. “OK, that was pretty good. You had me going there for a minute.” “No, no,” he said, and chuckled a little more. “I meant every word of it.” “Yeah, right. You know, ministers aren’t supposed to make fun of people.” He laughed again. Pretty soon we were both laughing. Sitting on the porch, watching the colors of the sky fade and darken, laughing. “Your humility is commendable, I suppose,” the Rev said. “Who, me? Who’re you trying to kid?” “You have a tendency to underestimate yourself, and your worth to others.” He picked up his glass of tea and took a drink. “Me, for instance. I’m not sure if you realize it, but you mean a great deal to me.” I shoulda said something. It was kinda the same sorta moment as when a woman says I love you, and waits. And if you don’t say I love you back, then what is she supposed to think? It felt like that. Right then, I didn’t know what you say when a man says that kinda thing to you. After a minute, he got up, picked up the empty ice tea pitcher, and went in the house. That’s what I was thinking about when the doctor came through the double doors, headed toward the waiting room. It wasn’t the Doc. It was the squirt I’d slammed against the wall when Lynn was in the hospital the first time. Great.
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