In Mike We Trust
Authors: P. E. Ryan
P. E. Ryan
To Richard Ryan
They were just finishing dinner when they heard a screechâ¦
He woke in the morning to Hutch licking the sideâ¦
The next morning, after Garth's mom left for work, Mikeâ¦
Peterson's Department Store (“Fine Products and Good Eatin' Since 1947!”)â¦
Mike recognized the part of town they were in. Garthâ¦
The next morning, both his mom and Mike were goneâ¦
“MENINOSIS KILLS!” The words dominated the front page of theâ¦
Two days later, at Bone Sweet Bone, Garth told Lisaâ¦
The following Saturday, he was hurriedly slapping a broom overâ¦
Mike stood before Garth's closet, one hand holding a coffeeâ¦
The kitchen radio was tuned to an eighties rock station.
After dinner the next evening, he got up from theâ¦
His mom was at the table sipping coffee and staringâ¦
Garth opened his mouth, but no words would come. Whatâ¦
Honesty.
“Who are you?” she asked, coming up the steps. Jackie'sâ¦
For the first time since Mike's arrival, Garth dreamed ofâ¦
T
hey were just finishing dinner when they heard a screech of tires, followed by several taps of a car horn. The dog began to bark, and Garth's mom flinched and looked up from her plate. She glanced toward the window that opened onto the side street, then gave Garth the worried expression he'd grown so used to over the past year and a half.
Relax
, he wanted to tell her,
it's nothing
. They lived in the middle of Richmond, surrounded by other houses. Since when was the sound of a car horn a reason to flinch?
The furrow in her brow deepened at the sound of footsteps on the front porch, and she nearly dropped her fork when they heard the knock, same pattern as the horn.
“Who in the world could it be at this hour?” she asked, peering at the clock on the wall.
“I'll get it.” Garth got up from the table and crossed through the living room, focusing on the tall, lanky shadow on the other side of the door's beveled glass. He
shushed Hutch, who was circling his feet like a shark, and called out, “Who is it?”
“Santa Claus!” a voice said.
Garth looked back at his mom, then turned to the door again.
“Who?”
“Captain America! Come on, it's me! Open up!”
The voice sounded jovial and vaguely familiar. He undid the chain and the deadbolt, and eased the door open.
“Hey, hey, hey! Look at you, short stuff!”
At fifteen, Garth barely reached five feet two. He was aching for the growth spurt that seemed to have taken over all the other guys his age, and he
hated
being called “short stuff.” He hated “shorty” and “shrimp” and “little bit,” and he usually lashed out at anyone who used such nicknames. But he said nothing now. He stood frozen, amazed.
Standing before himâor so it seemed in that first, arresting momentâwas his dad's ghost.
Â
In general, Garth tried not to dwell on the accident. When he caught his mind drifting toward it, he would force himself, instead, to concentrate on his dad
before
the event, on the man Jerry Rudd had been. He made mental lists of attributes:
Well liked.
Calm spirited.
Hard worker.
Corny joke teller.
Sailing nut.
That last one was how his dad had described himself, anyway. He'd loved sailing more than anything else and he'd dreamed of one day building his own boat “completely out of wood, like they did it in the old daysâright down to the pegs that hold it together.”
He'd never gotten the chance.
Garth didn't share his dad's passion for sailing, but he'd inheritedâpossibly by sheer willâhis love of ships. In Garth's case, these were miniatures, usually made of plastic because the wooden models were so expensive. His room was filled with them. They were lined up along his windowsill and dominated his bookcase. The largestâa handsome, highly detailed
Batavia
âspanned the top of his dresser.
Most days, the ships made him feel connected to his dad, but the nights were a different matter entirely.
His recurring nightmare, he'd decided, was like being strapped into a movie seat in the front row of the scariest horror film imaginable. He was forced to watch, over and over again, his dad and his dad's friend, Mr. Holt, try to outrun the sudden storm on
the Chesapeake Bay. The sailboat was a twelve-foot Sunfish. Mr. Holt was manning the tiller; Garth's dad was working the line for the sail. Always, in the nightmare, they were enjoying themselves at first. Even as the dark sky rained down on them, they joked about man versus nature. Then things turned seriousâfast. They had to shout through the wind and the rain to hear each other. They tried one maneuver, then another, but nothing worked. There was a moment too awful for Garth to wrap his brain around wherein both men realized that, all jokes aside, they were up against a force they couldn't possibly beat.
And then it happened. In one version, the mast snapped off. In another (like last night's), the boat just turned sideways, sail and all, throwing his dad and Mr. Holt into the water. Either way, the ending was the same: they tried to cling to the sinking hull; they fought to survive. But eventually the stormy bay filled their lungs.
Just another nightmare,
Garth always told himself as he tried to fall back to sleep.
Get it out of your head.
But there was no getting it out completely, because although he hadn't witnessed it, the accident was very real. His dad had been dead for over a year and a half. His bodyâalong with Mr. Holt'sâhad been recovered in a search-and-rescue mission following the storm,
and their funerals had been held one day apart.
Nothing had been the same since then. Regardless of whether or not he dwelled on the event, or how many ships he built, life had become one steady, uphill climb.
Â
The ghostâdressed in faded jeans, scuffed-up sneakers, and a yellow T-shirt that bore a cartoon dragon eating ice creamâwasn't a ghost, of course. But it took Garth a moment to realize this.
“You're Uncle Mike,” he said, still holding on to the door.
His uncle grinned and held his hands out like a showman. “And you're Nephew Garth. Is there a door prize?”
No beard,
Garth thought.
That's what's different. When he had his beard, it was hard to even tell they were twins.
Not that he'd seen the guy too often; his dad and his uncle hadn't been very close. Four, maybe five times over the years, Uncle Mike had shown up out of the blue for a visit. And he'd come to the funeral, of courseâarriving at the last minute, having driven from some other state.
“Well,” Uncle Mike said, chuckling, “are you going to invite me in, or should I justâ¦get lost?”
Garth snapped out of his trance and pulled the door
open wide. “No! Don't goâcome in. Mom, it's Uncle Mike!”
His mom was standing at the entrance to the living room, the fingers of one hand touching her lips. She appeared to be in a trance of her own. Finally, she brought her hand away and said, “Mikeâ¦what in the worldâ¦I mean, what are you doing here?”
“Scaring the heck out of you two, apparently.” He tapped a fist against Garth's shoulder and winked at him. Then he crossed the living room, opened his arms, and enfolded Garth's mom in a hug. “You look
great,
Sonja.”
She hesitated a moment before returning the hug. “It's such a surprise seeing you, Mike. What brings you to Richmond?”
“I wish I could say business. It would mean I had something going on. But I'm between spots right now, on my way from one thing to another. You know me, I like to mix it up.”
If there was any substance in that string of sentences, Garth couldn't pick up on it. He glanced at his mom to see if she'd understood, but she only asked, “Can I get you anything?”
“Some water would be great.”
“Nothing to eat? We just finished dinner and there are leftoversâif you like meat loaf.”
“That's really nice of you, but I stopped for a burger on the way into town. I'm good.”
“I'll get you some water, then.” She walked back into the kitchen.
Garth tried not to stare at this clean-shaven, near replica of his dad, but he couldn't help himself. Uncle Mike was dressed like a teenager. He had Garth's dad's straight, dark hair, but it was shaggy and scattered in a manner Jerry Rudd never would have worn it. He had his dad's nose and mouth, but the lopsided grin didn't match the wide, balanced smile Garth so clearly remembered his dad having. And yet the eyesâ¦piercing, trusting, kind. They were his dad's eyes right down to the flecks of blue in the green.
Uncle Mike squatted down and patted the spaniel's head. “Hey, there, Starsky.”
“That's Hutch,” Garth told him. “Starsky died five years ago.”
“Right, right. So how's the ol' schoolwork coming along?”
“It's summer.”
“Good for you, then.” Uncle Mike straightened up, pushed his hands down into his pockets, and rocked on his sneakers, gazing about the room.
He's wondering why we don't live in the house anymore,
Garth thought.
He's thinking this place is pretty crappy.
The apartment was the first floor of a chopped-up, three-story row house. There was an old water stain the shape of Texas on the living room ceiling that the landlord had been promising to have painted for months. The screen on the back door was held up on the outside with duct tape (feathered around the edges with dead moths). Half the windows didn't open; the other half opened but needed to be propped up with a stick. The place was a big step down from their old house, but it was all they could afford. Garth understood that, but he still felt a little embarrassed, watching his uncle eye the blemished ceiling.
As if he'd read his mind, Uncle Mike called out in a chipper, sincere-sounding voice, “Hey, these are nice new digs, Sonja.”
“Oh,” Garth's mom said, coming back in from the kitchen with his water. “They're okay. Pleaseâsit down.”
She handed him the glass and motioned toward the couch. He sank into it, crossed his long legs so that one ankle was perched on the opposite knee, and wobbled the sneakered foot that hung next to the coffee table. In a series of gulps that made his prominent Adam's apple rise and fall, he drank all of the water down.
“That may have been the best glass of water I've ever had,” he said. Then he focused on Garth's mom.
“You really do look great, Sonja. Ever think about going back to modeling?”
She laughed gently. Garth couldn't remember the last time he'd heard her laugh. “You're remembering wrong. I never modeled, Mike. I wanted to when I was a teenager, but I didn't pursue it. I must have mentioned that to you once.”
“Well, you could pick it up in a heartbeat, if you wanted to.”
“Thank you.”
Garth didn't think his mom looked so good. She'd seemed tired ever since she'd taken a second part-time job. There were almost always circles under her eyes, and she'd begun to slouch (something Garth didn't think she was even aware of, since she was the one who'd taught him that slouching made a poor impression).
Because he didn't want her to worry about giving him an allowance (she was already putting what little she could into the college fund he'd need in a couple of years), Garth had gotten his first job ever that summer. He worked at Peterson's, a downtown department store/cafeteria. But Mr. Petersonâa tightwad with a dandruff problem, and the only business owner Garth could find who was willing to hire someone under the age of sixteenâwouldn't pay him more than minimum wage and rarely gave him more
than three shifts a week.
Uncle Mike was still wobbling his foot, still gazing around the room. What was
his
job? Garth wondered. He didn't even know where the man lived. His dad, who'd almost never said anything negative about anyone, had once referred to Mike as a “drifter.” Another time, he'd called him a “lost soul.” “He refuses to settle down,” he'd said. “It's going to catch up with him one day.”
“I'm glad you were listed in the phone book,” Uncle Mike told his mom. “Otherwise, I might not have been able to find you.”
“Well, you should have just called ahead. Our number didn't change.”
“I wanted it to be a surprise. Soâ¦you just got tired of the house?”
She looked at the striped pattern of the wallpaper that was curling away in spots. “It was time to move,” she said with determination. “Maybe it was because the house held too many memories. I don't know.”
She
did
know, and so did Garth: the house held plenty of memoriesâmost of them good onesâbut the bank had taken it.
“That makes sense,” Uncle Mike said. “Are you doing okay, though? In general?”
She took a deep breath that turned into a sigh as
it leaked out of her. “We take what comes, and make the most of what we have,” she said, quoting her own motto for survival. “How about you? Are you still in Nevada?”
Nevada,
Garth thought.
That's where he'd driven from when he came in for the funeral.
Uncle Mike shook his head. “Nope, I haven't been there in over a year.”
“Oh. Where are you living now?”
He shrugged as if the question made no difference. “Here and there. I don't like to be rooted in one spot.”
She nodded her head, but seemed unclear as to how she should respond. After a moment, she said, “Isn't there a word for that?”
“There is. A beautiful word.
Wanderlust.
About the furthest I ever got from it was when I was engagedâdid you know I was engaged once to this girl who lived in New York? But it didn't work out. In fact, it sort of became the
opposite
of wanderlust. There wasn't much lust, and all I wanted to do was wander.” He chuckled.
Garth's mom cleared her throat. “So you came here from New York?”
“It's so good to see you guys,” Uncle Mike said, shaking his head and reproducing his lopsided grin. “No, New York is ancient history. I came here from Houstonâwhere I did pretty well. Enough to make
me a happy camper for a while, anyway.” He turned suddenly to Garth. “How about you? You're pretty quiet over there. How old are you now, Short Stuff, fourteen?”
“Fifteen,” Garth said, feeling himself bristle at the nickname.
“Height's a sensitive subject around here,” his mom informed Mike. “Somebody got himself into a fight over it at school this past year.”
Uncle Mike cast Garth a wry look. “Is that right? So who won?”
“Me,” Garth lied. If anything, he'd been on the verge of getting pulverized when Mr. Selgin, the assistant principal, pulled the two of them apart. Kevin Dougherty was half a foot taller than Garth and outweighed him by nearly twenty pounds.