The Hanging Tree (12 page)

Jason gave me a mirthless wink. “You ought to know, eh, Carpie?”

Jason had been sitting on the opposing team’s bench when I allowed the goal that cost the River Rats the state title eighteen years before. He’d moved to nearby Mancelona with his parents as a teenager. He was quick and agile for a tall kid. And mean as a snake. Our coach begged him to defect from the Pipefitters to the Rats, but his parents had other plans—college hockey and then the NHL. He lived with a teammate’s family near Detroit during the Pipefitters’ season and spent summers up north. Our paths didn’t cross much.

While I was taking journalism classes at the University of Michigan, Jason skipped college for Canadian juniors. He played one game in the NHL and later wound up skating for two hundred dollars a game in minor-league towns like Raleigh and Baltimore, where people went to hockey games to drink beer and howl for players to spill one another’s blood. I had heard he was briefly a celebrity in Hampton Roads, Virginia.
Local youngsters wrapped their knuckles with white tape to emulate their brawling hero.

He was briefly a celebrity in Starvation, too, after he retired from the minors and moved to town to sell insurance in the early 1990s. By then I had been working in Detroit for years and planned to stay until, as I dreamed, the
New York Times
or
Washington Post
hired me away. I never quite understood how Jason managed to woo Darlene. In a matter of weeks, my mother had told me, their romance went from a few weekends in Jason’s cabin in the woods to a wedding in the Pine County Courthouse. After hearing that, I wasn’t able to bring myself to go back to Starvation for months.

Darlene didn’t like to talk about her years with Jason. Everyone in town knew that he was much better at video golf in bars than he was at selling insurance, which was why he and Darlene could manage only to rent the little apartment over Sally’s that she lived in now. I teased her once that she had married Jason because he had skated for the team that had made me the town goat, that she had wanted to make me jealous. She went silent for two long nights, which made me think that what I had said in jest might actually have been a fact.

Which meant I never had to bring it up again. It was all in the past anyway, I told myself. But here Jason was, sitting across from me, my girlfriend’s
husband
. I wondered what Haskell knew about it, whether Jason had told him or he had heard it around town. Hell, I wondered what Jason knew.

“So, first practice is what?” I said. “Boxing lessons? How to get the other guy’s jersey over his head?”

Jason folded his arms on the table and leaned forward.

“This is a whole new package, my friend,” he said. “I’m here to prepare young men to be winners in life, on the ice and off.”

“Precisely,” Haskell said, placing a hand on Jason’s arm. “Past is past, now is now, and the future for the Hungry River Rats is brighter than ever, with a new rink, a new coach, and some fine new players.”

“That’s right,” Jason said. He glanced at Haskell, who removed his hand from Jason’s arm. Then Jason turned back to me. “I’ll tell you the same thing I’ve been telling his son: Winners win. Players play.”

“And goons goon. Isn’t that what they say in the East Coast League?”

“I don’t expect you to understand.”

He seemed pretty cocky for a guy who’d lost his wife to me. I turned to Haskell. “How much are you paying him?”

Coaches normally received their annual pittance from the local hockey organization funded by parents and fans and silent auctions and sponsors like Enright’s and Fortune Drug. But I assumed that, if Haskell was handling the announcement, he would be writing Jason’s checks.

Haskell slid the manila envelope to me.

“Everything’s in there,” he said, and I knew my question wouldn’t be answered. “Press release, bio, photo, and other materials you may find helpful. It’s all yours. Nobody else has seen it.”

“How much is he getting to be coach? I don’t think Poppy makes more than like fifteen hundred.”

Jason started to answer but Haskell quieted him with a gently raised hand. “Candidly,” he said, “I don’t see how it’s relevant.”

“Look, if you’re paying him out of your pocket, or your unbuilt new rink’s pocket, then I guess it’s none of my business. But you said you might be seeking a ‘bit of help’ from the town, so I think—”

“Whoa,” Haskell said. “Hold on there, mister. That was off the record.”

“I understand, but I still heard what I heard, and my question—”

“No.” He wagged a finger back and forth in front of his face. “You don’t even know that, sir. I never said it. That’s what off the record means.”

Jason sat back and knitted his hands atop his head, enjoying the show.

“I know what off the record means,” I said.

Haskell looked at his watch. “My gosh,” he said. He picked up the phone again, punched two numbers. “Fel,” he said, “are you taking Taylor?” He turned away and lowered his voice, but I could still hear him. “Not—no. No. He needs to do his balance class. He has not been—dear? Dear? He hasn’t been getting from post to post like he—I’m sorry, but—please, Felicia, that’s simply not fair. He is not going to be playing in the New York Philharmonic so let’s just put that whole fantasy to rest.” He listened for a few seconds. I glanced at Jason, who’d let a barely disguised smile creep onto his face. “I understand that’s how you feel,” Haskell said.

He hung up the phone and pushed his chair back. “I’m afraid that’s all the time we have. Thank you for your time, Gus.”

“I had a few more questions.”

“I’m sorry,” Haskell said. “I didn’t realize how much time we’d already spent. But feel free to call me if you have follow-ups.”

“This afternoon?”

Haskell gave me one of his jury frowns. “Today is really not going to be good. Try me tomorrow.”

“I have a paper to put out.”

“Great,” he said. He pointed at the envelope. “You have a great front page story right there. Which reminds me. I have a question for you.”

“I thought you were out of time.”

Jason was smiling more broadly now.

“Have you been made aware,” Haskell said, “of our plans for advertising in your paper when the rink opens?”

“I don’t have a thing to do with advertising, Mr. Haskell.”

“Really?”

“Really. Love seeing it, though.”

The door opened and a buxom rail of a woman in jeans and a cashmere sweater the color of oatmeal appeared. I recognized her initially from the pictures on Haskell’s credenza; then I remembered seeing her at the rink, once with her son, another time with her son and husband. Her silver hair, drawn back into a billowy ponytail, belied the youth in her emerald eyes. Her left wrist was wrapped in an Ace bandage. Bracelets in silver and gold speckled with highlights matching her eyes covered her other wrist.

“Did you hurt yourself, dear?” Haskell said.

Her eyes darted from Haskell to Jason to me, where they lingered for an uncomfortable second before returning to her husband.

“Slipped on the back porch. Our plow crew missed a spot.”

“Let me see that.”

Haskell reached for her injured hand but his wife pulled it away.

“It’s fine,” she said. “I really would rather Taylor not miss another piano lesson.”

“Dear, I thought—”

“I went ahead and called his trainer and he said he’d move the balance session back an hour. So Tay can do both. I’ll have him back here for his pregame meal in plenty of time.”

Haskell gave her a look long enough to make me wish I was somewhere else. Felicia folded her arms. As she did, she took a tiny step backward.

“I see,” Haskell said. “We can talk about this later.”

“If you like.”

“Have you met Gus?”

I stood and extended my hand. “Gus Carpenter, Mrs. Haskell.”

“Of course,” she said. A smile flickered on her face. Her handshake dug a fat diamond into my palm. “Nice to finally meet you.”

For a second I wondered if she was being sarcastic. I figured she was the one who’d insisted that I stop calling the house for her husband.

“Yes, ma’am. Sorry for all the phone calls.”

“No trouble at all.” She looked at Jason. “It’s nice to see you, too, Jason.”

“Felicia.”

“I have to be going,” she said to Haskell. “But I can show Mr. Carpenter out.”

“Thank you, dear,” Haskell said. He reached for my hand. I shook without thinking. “Call if you need anything.”

“Not at the dinner hour, please,” Felicia Haskell said. “Come.”

I slid past Jason. Neither of us made a move to shake hands.

“See you,” I said.

“You going to be at the game tomorrow night?”

“I’ll be there.”

“Keep your head up.”

eight

You had to be hungry to eat at Riccardo’s Pizza, and not because the portions were especially large. The pizza tasted as if grease had been ladled on instead of sauce. The stromboli should have been served with a chisel and hammer. The mozzarella sticks lay in your belly like lead sinkers. But it was cheap. And I was curious.

I stood at the counter, breathing garlic as Aerosmith blared from a boom box in the back, the sole lunch customer at seventeen minutes after noon. Riccardo’s did most of its business late at night when the drunks came pouring out of Enright’s.

“Anybody home?” I called out.

There were three tight booths and a wall cooler filled with bottles of pop and chocolate milk. Next to the cooler was a small hole in the wall plaster that hadn’t been fixed since the last time I’d been in, with Darlene, weeks before. I remembered hearing it was made by a napkin dispenser flung across the room.

The pizzeria sat on a steep rise above the river. I stepped to the window and peered down on downtown Starvation Lake. My gaze fell upon the door to Darlene’s apartment, set atop a set of outer stairs leading down to a railed sidewalk that ran along the river. I recalled the night before, how she’d grappled with me before we slipped into our lovemaking.

“I thought you don’t eat here no more.”

Stefan Bellissimo stood behind the counter in a white apron streaked with spaghetti sauce, hands on his hips, a butcher knife in one hand. Beneath the apron he wore a threadbare River Rats T-shirt. A hairnet mashed his black ringlets to his forehead. A ballpoint pen protruded from behind his ear. Flour powdered his thick eyebrows and mustache.

“Belly,” I said. “How are you, buddy?”

“Don’t give me that shit. You know what you did.”

The men’s hockey team I played on, the Chowder Heads, had for years ordered postgame pizzas from Belly’s joint. But I had finally persuaded our captain, Soupy, to switch to Gordy’s in Fife Lake. The pizza was better and Gordy usually threw in fried mushrooms.

“Hey,” I said, “I still bring Darlene in.”

“Darlene brings Darlene in. I’m one of your paper’s biggest customers. You can’t even bring your boys by?”

“What? One ad a week?”

“Look at that,” he said, pointing at his booths, where he used old
Pilots
as tablecloths.

“Ah. Well, I’m here. What’s good?”

“Don’t be pulling on my dick. The pizza’s good.”

I squinted over his head at the backlit menu on the wall. Belly had owned the place for something like ten years, in which time it had been called Zito’s, Sicoly’s, Fat Tony’s, Provenzana’s, Enzo’s, Mizzi’s and, for a time while he dated an Irish woman from Sandy Cove, Hickey’s. He kept changing the names, he said, for marketing reasons. The pizza stayed the same.

Today’s “Rats Special” was a grilled cheese sandwich with pepperoni. Too risky, I thought. Maybe a cold sub. Just $2.95 with chips. Pretty hard to screw up.

“What did Darlene have the other night?” I said.

“What she always has. Small Greek salad, ham-and-pineapple pie.”

“What about Gracie?”

“What?” Belly said. “You want food or not?”

I wanted to know what Gracie and Darlene had talked about there. The minute I had left Haskell, I’d forgotten about his little announcement and returned to the questions about Gracie swirling in the back of my mind: Why the fresh groceries if she’d planned to off herself? How did she manage to hang herself on a high branch without a ladder? What about the calendar with the dates crossed out in February but not January? Was she counting down the days till her death, and if so, why hadn’t she crossed off the final day? What about the single baby shoe left in her hiding place? And the key attached to the ribbon? Her ever-present Wings cap was hanging in the Zam shed; had she made a conscious decision to leave it behind? Or had she been forced to leave? And if so, why? Why would her worthless little life matter that much to anyone?

“Yeah, yeah,” I told Belly. “Italian sub, extra peppers.”

He waved the butcher knife around. “I’m not hearing a lot of enthusiasm.”

“You want me to sing?”

He put the heels of his hands against the countertop and leaned forward. Beads of sweat along the tops of his eyebrows glistened in the overhead light. “Let me ask you a question: You got a problem with us?”

“No problem,” I said. “I just happen to like Gordy’s—”

“Not that. That pissed me off but I mean like the whole thing. You got a problem with the whole town. It’s like we’re some bunch of fucking hooples who can’t do anything right, and you’re going to set us straight.”

“Hooples? What are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m fucking talking about. You know how much the game means to this place.”

Belly, who did not play hockey but attended every Rats game and supplied half-price pizzas for team functions, always referred to hockey as “the game,” in the same sort of bizarre sacred intonation that baseball freaks used about their tedious sport. I loved hockey, loved watching it, loved playing it most of the time. But love to me didn’t require reverence. It was just a game.

“What’s your point, Bel?”

He plucked the pen from behind his ear, a greenish order pad from an apron pocket. “My point is, why do you got to jam this guy up in the paper?”

“What guy?”

“The guy who’s building the rink. You seen his kid play yet? Patrick Roy rolled into Kenny Dryden.”