The Crazy Horse Electric Game

  Willie saw his dad’s Bronco out on the street and knows he’s around somewhere. As his eyes adjust better, he spots him down at the end of the bar, nursing a draft beer, reading the Helena Times. Big Will doesn’t look up. “I need to talk to him,” Willie says, nodding toward his dad.

  “Can’t serve you without ID.”

  “No ID,” Willie says. “I just want to talk to that guy. He’s my dad.”

  The bartender looks surprised. “You Willie?”

  Willie nods and walks down the bar to the stool beside his dad, who hasn’t even looked up from his paper. He sits. “Dad?”

  Big Will looks up, his eyes watery and bloodshot. He looks older than he did, vacant. Willie can’t believe the emptiness, the despair written on his face. Their eyes meet and Willie holds his gaze. Big Will is confused, glances back to his paper, then again to Willie. “Get out of here,” he says. “You get out of here.”

  “Dad, it’s me, Willie.”

  “I know who the hell you are. Get out of here.”

  “No.”

  “I’ll kick your ass,” Big Will says.

  Willie didn’t expect this. It doesn’t match any of the hundreds of scenarios that ran through his head on the long bus trip back. And he’s not going to accept it. He feels a surge of power; anger. “You might try,” he says. “You don’t look up to it.”

  Big Will whirls on his stool to face Willie straight on. “You little shit,” he says. “You little shit. You run away without a word and leave us here to let our lives fall apart. Then you walk in here over a year later saying ‘Dad?’” He mimics the last word, spits it out like a turd under his curled lip, his voice whiny. Willie wants to slug him.

  “Well,” Big Will says, “your mom and I aren’t married anymore and I’m not your dad.” He turns back to his paper and his beer.

  Willie’s stunned. He doesn’t want to leave without talking, but has no idea what to say, so he just nods slowly and rises to go. “I’ll be back, Dad. Or I’ll catch you over at your place. But we’re going to talk, you and me, whether you like it or not.” Then he’s out the door. His gut aches and burns; his heart, like an African drum, beats out a desperate message he can’t understand. Pain and rage swell in him until he thinks he’ll burst, but there’s nothing to do but sit on the curb and take deep breaths until it feels under control.

  “You got wheels?” Willie asks Johnny as he marks his time on the time sheet, ready to leave work.

  “I got a car now, why?”

  “I need something to get over to see my mom if she’s at Badger Lake.”

  “You know how to ride your dad’s bike?”

  “Sure,” Willie says. “He taught me when he first bought it. Why? Is it still around?”

  “Yeah,” Johnny says. “It’s over at our place. We’re selling it for him. My dad just overhauled it and put it out front.”

  Willie’s mind involuntarily drifts back to the times behind his dad on the Shadow, pushing against the secure edges of their world, knowing they were safe just because Big Will was in control. He can’t believe the man on the bike and the man in the bar are the same. Tears well up, but he fights them back. He won’t fold.

  Johnny throws his grease rag into a bucket under the counter and hollers to Mr. Jackson in the back office that he’s out of there and they trot over to a perfectly reconditioned red-and-white ’57 Chevy in the side parking lot. “What do you think?” Johnny says, shoving his key into the trunk lock to reveal a cooler. He pulls out two cans of ice-cold beer and flips one to Willie. “Graduation party last night,” he says. “Leftovers.”

  Without consideration, Willie pops the top on the beer and puts it to his mouth. He hasn’t had a taste of alcohol since the night at Johnny’s party when the ground dropped out from under him. It tastes good.

  “Why don’t you go over to Badger in the morning?” Johnny says after hearing Willie’s rendition of the events in Dinghy’s. “Give yourself some time to think. God, I can’t believe how you look. I thought you were crippled for good.” He pulls against the curb in front of the drugstore and Willie jumps out to get his luggage. Johnny moves the cooler over and they stuff both suitcases into the trunk. “My folks would love to have you stay.”

  Johnny’s in the living room calling some of the old gang to come over for a surprise, and initially Willie considers stopping him, but lets it go. Whatever’s going to happen is going to happen and it might as well be now.

  “…and come by yourself,” Johnny is saying. Willie knows he’s talking to Jenny, a subject they’ve avoided until now.

  He sits on the couch as Johnny hangs up. “She still with Rhodes?” he asks.

  “Naw,” Johnny said. “Not really with anyone. I think she felt really guilty after you left. She’s stayed pretty much to herself. Had a great year in basketball, though. She’s almost as good an athlete as you. Or as you were. Or whatever.”

  Jenny is the last to arrive and by then most everyone is over the shock and just pumping Willie for details about his life and catching him up. The doorbell rings and Johnny hollers, “Come in.” His parents have escaped for the evening.

  Jenny walks in through the kitchen, depositing a sack of chips and dip and chocolate-covered peanuts on the counter, and steps into the living room. “So what’s the surprise, Johnny?”

  “Just having a little party,” Johnny says, looking up from the couch beside Willie.

  Jenny doesn’t see Willie; doesn’t recognize him. “So what’s surprising about that? The surprise would be if you weren’t having a party.”

  Willie says, “Hi, Jen,” and she freezes, her entire muscular structure going slack. She puts her hand on the back of a chair for support. He says, “How you doing?”

  In that instant Jenny’s eyes go hard. “You son of a bitch,” she says.

  “You should go have a beer with my dad.”

  “You son of a bitch,” she says again, her hair flying as she whirls to run from the room.

  “Jen, wait,” Willie says, but she’s gone.

  Johnny runs after her, catching her at her car while Willie closes his eyes; drops his head back into the pillow on the couch; waiting. In seconds Johnny appears in the doorway alone. “Too much surprise,” he says. “She’ll be okay. She’ll get over it.”

  The party runs awhile longer, but the heart’s out of it and people begin drifting away early. Only Petey tries to keep it going; tries to relive the old days and the Crazy Horse Electric game. Only Petey has the will to make everything go back; and if left to his own devices, he could do it.

  Willie and Johnny stand at the door as their friends file out, telling Willie they’re glad he’s back and they hope things work out for him with Jenny and with his family and everything; giving him bits of encouragement. But Willie feels so apart from all this. The fact is that two of the four people he loved the most when his life was real here seem to hate his guts, and the jury’s still out on his mother. Only Johnny hung in for him. That’s not enough. He’s sinking.

  “You know where the key to my dad’s bike is?” he asks and Johnny gets it from the mantel. “I’m going for a little ride, like for a half-hour or so. Don’t go to bed yet, okay?”

  Johnny agrees and Willie slips through the hall door to the garage, where he takes the FOR SALE sign off the windshield of the Shadow and lays it on the workbench. He backs it out onto the concrete driveway and hits the starter button, hearing the engine roar to life like it always did. Cutting a tight turn in the driveway, he moves easily, carefully, through the neighborhood. Though he knows how to ride, he’s not Big Will and the bike is plenty big enough to scare him. He heads slowly out of town, away from the bluffs; away from where he and his dad used to ride.

  The night is warm and his confidence builds as the lights of Coho fade behind him; he pushes the Shadow up to seventy, then backs off, remembering what speed can do at just the wrong time and place. I’ve lost all I can afford to lose—his mother’s voice, at the lake before the acciden
t. Willie can’t believe there’s this much sadness in the world, when a guy is just doing all he can do to get by. He looks up at the stars and at the quarter-moon gently bathing the highway in grayish blue, and turns up the speed. What the hell.

  “You call your mother first,” Mrs. Rivers says to Willie at breakfast. “If Johnny just showed up after more than a year without warning me first, why, I’d snatch him bald-headed.”

  “She would, too,” Johnny says, his mouth full of corn flakes. “She snatches me bald-headed for not being gone more than a year.”

  Mrs. Rivers ignores him. “You call, Willie. Or I will.”

  Willie nods. He’s tried surprising people and so far that hasn’t worked to his advantage. “I’ll call her.”

  When he does call, a man answers, telling him his mother’s not home but that she should be within the next half-hour or so. Willie identifies himself and after a short silence the voice on the other end says, “Well, come on over here. And you hurry up. Your mom will be thrilled.” A pause. “She’s married now, you know…”

  “I know,” Willie says. “You must be Don.”

  “Yes. Yes, I am. And I’m anxious to meet you, Willie, so hurry on over. Have you got transportation? I could come get you…”

  “No, I’ve got transportation,” Willie says. “Thanks anyway.”

  The day is hot, but Willie goes into the garage to get his old helmet, meant to be sold with the bike, because he never wants his mom to see him without one again, never wants to scare her, or keep anything from her. On the outside of town, he stops to remove his shirt, and momentarily thinks of strapping the helmet to the sissy bar until he gets close, but that’s just like the old days and he keeps it on.

  Though it’s a two-lane highway to Badger, traffic is light and the twenty-mile trip is quick. He may wear his helmet, but Willie Weaver still likes speed.

  Willie and his mom walk along the man-made beach in front of the condominiums that she and her husband Don now own. Don was cordial, easy to talk to, though Willie couldn’t shake that almost otherworldly feeling in the pit of his stomach, seeing this man who is his mother’s husband now, thinking of them kissing and close; intimate; and he had to keep forcing his head movies out. Finally, he just asked his mom if she’d go for a walk.

  “You fish?” he asks. Badger is one of the better rainbow-trout lakes around.

  “Some. Not like I used to. Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Willie says. “Just wondered, I guess. Just looking for some connection to the old days.” He’s put it off for more than an hour, and finally he asks. “What happened? With you and Dad, I mean.”

  “Oh, Willie, it was so bad. I got crazy. Your dad got mean, started drinking. We were sure you were dead, and we each saw all the ways we’d killed you. We blamed ourselves, we blamed each other. There was so much confusion; so much anger. Everything that was swept under the rug when Missy died came out, and pretty soon I was taking cruel shots at your dad that reduced him to nothing and he was beating me up.” Sandy shakes her head, absently kicking sand into the water. “Then I ran away. There was nothing left.”

  Willie stares into the water, then over at his mom. “I couldn’t stay,” he says. “I would have died. I’m sorry I didn’t contact you; I still don’t know for sure why I didn’t, probably because I thought you would have talked me back before I was ready. All I know is I did what I could. And it saved me.”

  Sandy nods. “I know. You can’t blame yourself. Your father and I were supposed to be the adults.”

  “Still, you couldn’t have expected…”

  “No, but you don’t always get what you expect. I wish someone, sometime when I was growing up, would have told me what expectations would get me. I wasn’t ready for any of this, Willie, and neither was your father. The most significant thing that happened to him in all the time before we were married was a stupid football game named after a bowl of flowers. And to tell the truth, I thought it was as important as he did.” Sandy shakes her head and they begin walking again. “Our parents, schools, everyone tells us things will be a certain way when we’re adults and if they’re not that way, we should make them be; or at least pretend. But after a certain point that just doesn’t work.”

  “Yeah,” Willie says. “I know.”

  “You know, we went to see your counselor after you left. Mr. Wheat. He laid it out for us—said not many families survive one death, let alone two. He was helpful, but your dad got angry, called him a wimp and quit going. It didn’t do a lot of good for me to go alone; in fact, it just caused more trouble.”

  “So what about Don?”

  Sandy smiles a sad smile. “Well, I don’t love him like I loved your dad once, but we might only get one chance like that in a lifetime. Who knows? But he’s a good man and he pulled me out when all there was for me was despair. If it hadn’t been for him, I’d probably be at the other end of the bar in Dinghy’s competing with your dad to see who gets liver disease first.” She puts her hand on Willie’s head. “Give Don a chance. You don’t have to make him your dad. Just know he’s my friend.”

  Willie agrees to stay for dinner, where he meets his four-year-old stepsister, who is with Don for the week. Her name is Molly. She is afraid of Willie and stays very close to her father’s leg when Willie talks to her.

  “You’re welcome to stay as long as you want,” Don says over dessert. “I don’t know your plans, but I could get you work over the summer if you want.”

  Willie thanks him politely and says he thinks he’ll stay with Johnny, for a few days at least, to think. He’s irritated at himself that he judges this man by the fact that he wears dress socks with his Bermuda shorts while doing lawn work; that he wants Don to be cool if he’s going to be his mother’s husband, though he fully trusts his mother’s judgment that Don is a decent man. You feel what you feel, as Sammy says.

  Willie pulls into Coho, deciding to take a run past the Ranch Motel on the off chance his dad is there. The tiny kidney-shaped pool in the yard is cracked and filled with leaves and other winter sludge, and wild shrubbery grows out onto the parking lot. Big Will’s Bronco is parked in front of Cabin 3 and Willie pulls the bike up beside it. After three knocks the door opens and there stands Big Will, just awakened, his eyes so bloodshot from alcohol and sleep that he looks to Willie like a special effect. Willie takes a deep breath. “Why don’t you let me come in?” he says.

  Big Will stares evenly, then relaxes a little. “Because I don’t want you to see,” he says. “Wait out here and I’ll get my shoes on.”

  Willie leans against the Bronco hood for less than a minute before his dad appears in the doorway again, saying, “Let’s get some coffee. I been thinking. You’re right, we should talk.” He notices the Shadow. “Found the bike, huh? You can have it if you want. I don’t dare ride it anymore; I found a slower way to kill myself.”

  They walk across the street to Jackie’s Home Cookin’ and order up a “bottomless pot of coffee” and two orders of Big Will’s “usual.”

  “Guess you never thought you’d see your old man come to this, huh?” Big Will says, breaking a long silence.

  “Guess not,” Willie says. Then, “God, Dad, what’re we gonna do?”

  “I don’t know. I spent all that time teaching you to be responsible and for the life of me I can’t remember why. I just can’t make myself care anymore, Willie. I’d quit drinking—I really could—but it feels too shitty to be sober. I always played it so goddam tough, but I don’t think I can make it without your mother. And even if she weren’t with Don, I couldn’t make it with her now; not after the way I treated her. I don’t want to sound melodramatic, but I’m just waiting it out.”

  “She said it got bad.”

  Big Will nods. “A mistress of the understatement. It got terrible.” He takes another deep breath. “I’ve been thinking since I yelled at you in the bar. I wanted to apologize, try to work something out with you. I’m apologizing, but I don’t think I can work anything
out right now. I mean, you can’t stay with me or anything. I’m barely keeping alive.”

  Inside, Willie’s heart is broken, but he doesn’t show—takes himself away like Sammy taught him—because he doesn’t want to make things worse. “I understand that,” he says. “Is there anything I can do? Anything you need from me?”

  Big Will shakes his head.

  Willie reaches into his pocket and pulls out a sealed, crumpled envelope that Lacey gave him just before he got on the bus. “Don’ you go readin’ this,” Lacey had said. “Jus’ give it to you daddy.”

  “Guy I stayed with in Oakland wanted me to deliver this to you,” Willie said. “I haven’t read it.”

  Big Will opens the envelope, reads the short note with no visible reaction and lays it in front of Willie. “Black guy, huh?”

  Willie nods. “Yeah.” He reads the note:

  Dear Mr. Will Weaver

  Here you boy back. He fix. Be careful how you treet him, he specal. If you don’t want him, send him back.

  Sinserly,

  Lacey Casteel

  Willie smiles at the thought of Lacey composing the letter exactly the way he talks, leaving out all the emotion, writing tough and to the point.

  They talk awhile longer; Willie tells how he got himself back together physically and his dad seems interested, even mildly impressed. He tells Willie he did a hell of a job. After they eat, Willie walks his dad back to the motel and says he’ll see him again.

  He calls Johnny’s house to let them know where he is and that he’s already had dinner, so not to hold anything for him. Then he rides the bike over to Jenny’s. Might as well get it all out of the way today.