One Shot Away (2 page)

What could his father say at one in the morning with his truck stacked full of fresh lumber?

They hit a watery pothole, sending the truck lurching forward. Jimmy's knees bang on the dash. At six-foot-one, he is lanky and lean, with broad shoulders.

Pops accelerates. “You know where you are, right?”

Jimmy stares at the dark stretches of rolling hills. His narrow face, gold crew cut, and blue eyes reflect back at him in the glass. “At the old horse farms?”

“So, if you have to run, you take Iron Ore Road. Stay low. If a car comes by, duck behind a tree. I'll meet you at the church on Molly Pitcher Road.”

“Which one, the one we don't go to, or the one we never went to?”

“Just be on your toes.” Pops enters a driveway, passes a gate, and stops the truck.

A stooped-over man shuffles toward them carrying a flashlight.

“What about this guy?” asks Jimmy.

“He's okay.”

“Define okay.”

“He's okay,” snaps Pops.

The man flashes the light in the truck's passenger window. Jimmy shields his eyes with his hand. Embroidered above the man's breast pocket are the words “Ever Vigilant Guard Patrol.”

Pops gets out and crosses in front of the truck's headlights. Jimmy cranks down his window. Past a rectangular work trailer and mounds of sand and gravel, a white sign reads
HORSEMAN'S ESTATES. COUNTRY LIVING IN A SUBURBAN SETTING. OPENING SOON.

Jimmy's palms are sweating, yet he's ice-cold. He just wants it to be over. He doesn't want to be here, and Pops knows this. It's Jimmy's senior-year season. The only one that really counts. He's ranked the best 160-pounder in the county. The favorite to win the New Jersey States. But he hasn't won anything yet.

“It's stacked a half mile on the right,” says the guard. “Take the exit after the dirt road, that'll lead you right back to town.”

Pops removes a wad of bills from his shirt pocket and hands it to the guard.

Jimmy's risking it all because his uncle Johnny is stinking drunk. Jimmy is the “stand-in” and it makes him hate his father, because maybe the truth is, Pops is a selfish prick who doesn't really care about him. Pops could be destroying his senior-year season, a wrestling scholarship, his way out of Molly Pitcher, New Jersey. Jimmy also hates himself for climbing into the truck tonight. But Pops, he's so good at getting over on everyone.

Pops gets back in and drives with the lights off. “Tonight's my only chance at the load,” he says. “Tomorrow morning, the carpenters will be pulling the pile apart.”

“And what do they do when it's not there,” scoffs Jimmy.

“I'm just saying it's tonight or never. You can't leave lumber sitting for too long. It warps.”

“Yeah, right, and this is just an educational father and son outing.”

“Whoa, what's with the attitude?” Pops drives slowly around new cement curbs. “Everything's going fine. I'm more scared when I look in the mirror.” He tries to laugh but coughs again. He's a smoker, something else Jimmy would never do.

At a curve in the road, a doe leaps and bolts into the darkness, its white tail flashing side to side in the moonlight.

“You're a good son. I'm proud of you. I think of you first, even before your mother and brother. Did you know that?”

“If you're so proud of me, then what am I doing in this truck?”

“It's one small favor, and do you think I'm doing this for me? I told you, I got bills.”

Jimmy's heard this before. With Pops, it's always, “all I need is this one small favor.” Tonight, at Jimmy's bedside, Pops said it was “this one small favor” or foreclosure on the house. “You want us living in a homeless shelter?” he asked. “You want that on you?”

Pops must know that everything Jimmy's worked for is on the line. Pops is practically the leader of the “Varsity Dads,” a clique of fathers who sit shoulder to shoulder at the wrestling matches and keep the Minute Men Wrestling website updated and the
Asbury Park Press
informed of wins and losses.

Up until tonight, Pops kept Jimmy away from his “side business.” Jimmy glances over at his father and doesn't see the handsome face that cheers him at his wrestling matches. This man scares him with his hair hanging over his forehead and his hands tense on the steering wheel.

The road becomes bumpier. Pops's cigarette bounces in his lips. He backs the truck to a dark pile, then shuts off the engine.

The November night is chilly and damp. Jimmy steps across the soft, raw earth, gouged from toppled trees and machines. The smell of the old horse farm fills his nostrils. Stars splash the sky. Jimmy chooses a bright one and wishes, “Get us home safe.”

Pops slits a tarp with a razor knife. The ties snap like stretched rubber bands. “You see, this isn't going to be difficult.”

“Pops, that's not the point. I shouldn't be here. Period.”

“You think you're too good for it?”

“I know I'm too good for it.”

“You're going to learn family comes first. I'm going to be paying the mortgage this month, and your mother, you, and your brother are going to have a roof over your heads.”

They lift the boards four at a time and slide them into the truck bed. Mostly two-by-sixes, over sixteen feet long, heavy and awkward. Dew seeps through Jimmy's Nikes. The work numbs him to what he's doing. He tells himself that soon he'll be back in bed, warm, protected.

Pops turns left after the nursery on Wright Street. Ahead, a police car is parked on the side of the road. The officer has the interior dome light on and is reading something. Jimmy's stomach levitates into his throat. “Pops, that's a cop.”

“Relax.”

“What if he stops us?”

“He won't.”

“But what if he does? Do I jump and run?”

“No, act normal. I'll talk us out of this. Just remember, we're going to a job site. We've got to be there at dawn.” When they pass the police car, its headlights snap on and it pulls onto the road. “We're doing a job in Bergen County,” says Pops, making it up, “building a deck, and we left early because the truck is loaded and we've got a long, slow ride. You got that?” The police car's headlights reflect in the rearview mirror. “You got that?”

“Got what?” Jimmy wants to run. He would feel better running than sitting in the truck waiting to get arrested.

“The story!”

“I'm going to be sick.” His voice is high and cracks. He feels panic from his balls all the way to his throat.

“Get a hold of yourself.” Pops's eyes dart from the rearview mirror to the road. The police car speeds up. It's directly behind them. The emergency lights flash on.

“He's pulling us over!” Jimmy unlocks his door.

“Just calm down.”

“Should I run?”

“I'll handle it.” Pops pulls the truck over in front of an abandoned vegetable stand stacked with wooden boxes. Gravel crunches under the tires. “Jimmy, keep your mouth shut, you understand?” He stamps his cigarette in the overflowing ashtray. “Sit back and listen. You might learn something.”

The policeman stands to the rear of the truck cab, shining his flashlight into the driver-side window. “License and registration.”

“What's the matter, officer?” Pops fumbles through his wallet. Jimmy grips the door handle; one flick and he's sprinting.

“You've got no warning flag on the back of that lumber. It's sticking ten feet off the truck.”

“Jesus, my son forgot the flag. Didn't I tell you about the flag?”

Jimmy wants to yell
You're blaming me?
Jimmy looks across his father, trying to locate the policeman's face. All he sees is his flashlight's beam shining into the truck.

“You haven't been drinking tonight?” asks the officer. “Have you?”

“Of course not. We're on our way to a job.”

“Why don't you step out of the truck?”

Pops opens the door. “I haven't had a drink since last Sunday's Jets game.”

What a liar! He was drinking at dinner and after dinner.

Pops laughs, coughs. “Right, Jimmy? That's my son in there.” The flashlight shines on Jimmy's face. “We're heading to a job site in Bergen County. I'm real sorry about the flag. I can tie on something.”

The policeman holds his flashlight on Pops's driver's license. “Your son, is he the wrestler Jim O'Shea?”

“He sure is.”

“I've seen him wrestle,” says the policeman. “We get to work those events.” He hands Pops his license. “How's the team going to do this year?” calls the policeman into the truck, his voice easy, like a regular guy.

“We have a meeting tomorrow.” Jimmy's voice is choked and dry. “I just want to get home.”

“He means Monday,” says Pops.

“Well, hang something on that load and good luck.” The officer walks back to his car.

After tying a handkerchief on the longest board protruding from the truck, Pops gets back into the cab. “What the heck, a meeting tomorrow? I just told him we were going to a job. You could have blown it.”

Jimmy stares daggers at him. “Don't ever ask me to help you again. You just put my season on the line. Do you realize that?”

D
IGGY
M
ASTERS FINISHED DINNER AN HOUR AGO AND IS STILL
starving. He rises from the couch and peeks out the window. Randy Masters stands on the deck with a cigar between his fingers watching the dark golf course that extends from their backyard. His tan-colored drink in a fat glass drips on the rail.

Diggy scans the kitchen. Apple pie on top of the refrigerator at twelve o'clock. He retrieves it, opens the box, and plows his fingers into the cut side, into the gooey apples, and scoops the filling into his mouth. He shovels another handful and swallows it, then checks on Randy, who is still gazing at the golf course as if something besides someone whacking a golf ball is going to happen.

Diggy and his brother, Nick, call their father Randy. When he put them in wrestling, he told them to call him “Coach Randy” instead of “Dad.” Their mother thought it was ridiculous. “I'm the coach of Team Masters,” he said. After they moved to the Hills, he built a wrestling room in their basement. He put together a library of wrestling and coaching books. Diggy was in the sixth grade. Nick was two grades ahead. So they called him Coach Randy. They forgot that it was a goof. He became their coach. Now his brother doesn't wrestle anymore and they call him just plain Randy.

Everything that means anything in the Masters' family is somehow linked to wrestling. Example: Diggy's real name is Devon. Nick's first year on varsity, the team picked a Kid Rock song as their team's anthem. A dumb song, which was sacked by the team the next season, but that year, Nick and every wrestler chanted the lyrics like shorted-out robots: “Bawitdaba da bang a dang diggy diggy diggy said the boogy said up jump the boogy.” Diggy was in seventh grade, already wrestling on the high school freshmen team. Not because he showed great talent, but because Randy convinced Coach Greco it would be better to keep his sons together. So Nick and Diggy wrestled in the same gym. Diggy on freshmen. Nick on varsity. Devon morphed to Diggy and it stuck like a wet paper towel on a locker room ceiling.

Diggy slips into the bathroom to wash his hands and figures he might as well puke. A lot of wrestlers do this during season. He turns on the sink water for background noise, then kneels in front of the toilet and shoves two fingers into his throat. He gags, waits, then sticks them in farther. His eyes water. Nothing. He washes his face and gives the toilet another look. Maybe he can sneak up on it. He tries again, this time more quickly. He gags. Bingo. The pie and some of his dinner blow into the water.

“Diggy!”

It's Randy.

“Diggy!”

He returns to the kitchen. The pie is on the island.

“What's this?” asks Randy.

“That?”

“Yeah, this.”

“Pie.” He's stalling, trying to figure a way out.

“I know it's a pie. Why does it look like someone just stuck their fingers in it?”

Diggy shakes his head and does his best “beats the hell out of me” look.

“Come on, let's go,” says Randy.

“Now?”

“Yes, right now.”

Diggy follows him down the basement stairs. Randy turns on the light. The floor is wall-to-wall wrestling mats, with a separate room for weights. A balance scale is at the foot of the stairs. Not a twenty-five-dollar department store scale, a real black-and-white doctor's office scale with sliding weights. Randy sets the larger weight at 150, then slides the other weight to two pounds. One-fifty-two, that's Diggy's wrestling weight. He wrestled 152 last season, his junior year, and had a winning varsity record. Last winter, it felt good to be Diggy Masters.