The Big Bounce

5

“HEY, YOU GOT TIME to have one with me?” Mr. Majestyk was swiveled around, heavy legs apart, his heels hooked in the rungs of the bar stool.

Ryan had noticed him, three stools away: the guy looked like an ex-pro guard hunched over the bar, leaning on his stubby arms and a dead cigar in the ashtray. He had been talking to the bartender about fishing, how the perch must have all been asleep today, and Ryan had listened because they were close and he could hear them. He was going to have another beer, so if the guy wanted to buy, it was okay. He could leave anytime he wanted. The guy moved over and it was funny how they got to talking right away: Mr. Majestyk mentioning the picture in the newspaper, Ryan with the baseball bat, and saying how he had recognized Luis Camacho.

“Sure, I see that spig before,” Mr. Majestyk said.

He had kicked Camacho and a girl spik off his private beach about two weeks before. “People walk by, that’s all right, along the water. But this guy spread out a blanket and him and the girl are laying there on private property. I tell him nice he’s got to leave, this is private property. And he gets abusive. Christ, you should hear the language. You’ve heard it, but I mean in front of the people staying at my place. I want to deck the son of a bitch, but how does that look? What kind of a place is this, the owner gets in a fight? You have to handle it better than that.”

“What have you got?” Ryan asked. “Cabins?”

“Cabins? The Bay Vista out on the Shore Road.” Like, what’s the matter with you? Cabins. “We got fourteen cabana units with two bedrooms, bath, living room and kitchenette, all with a screen porch, and seven motel units. We also got a swimming pool, shuffleboard, and play area for the kids.”

“So what’d you do about Camacho?”

“Well, the girl, she’s nervous as a whore in church and says something to him and they leave. But walking away, he turns and sticks his finger up in the air, you know, like this is what you can do, buddy. I almost took after him.”

“He was begging for it,” Ryan said. “If it wasn’t me, it would’ve been somebody else.”

“That’s what I thought,” Mr. Majestyk said. “You got time for another?”

“I guess so.”

“How about at a table? We can stretch out more.”

Ryan went along. It was nice here. There was a smell of beer in the place, but it was not a small-town tavern or a shot and a beer kind of bar. It was a beach bar, a marina bar, with a fishnet and life preservers and brass fixtures on white walls and a good view of the boat docks. It was quiet but not too quiet. There was record music and people were talking, having a good time, nobody dressed up: people who’d been out in their boats and stopped off for a couple. It was a nice place. He had spotted the waitress right away and that was nice too: blond ponytail and tight red pants. She had passed close to him going to the service section of the bar, where there were curved chrome handles like the top of a swimming pool ladder.

Then at the table with a pitcher of Michelob and a couple of bags of Fritos and some beer nuts: Mr. Majestyk asking questions about Camacho and what kind of a crew leader he was-saying spig for spik and hid for hit, like “when you hid the son of a bitch”-talking easily but talking a lot.

Then he didn’t say anything for maybe a minute. Ryan looked around and sipped his beer and finally Mr. Majestyk said, “Listen, do you want me to tell you something?”

“Go ahead.”

“Sitting at the bar, I wasn’t going to say anything to you. And then I figured what the hell.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you know they got a movie of you belting the guy?”

“I heard about it.”

“I saw it the other day. Three times.”

Ryan was looking at him now. “What’d they show it to you for?”

“Well, if they hadn’t dropped the charge and you came to trial? It would’ve been in my court.” Mr. Majestyk paused. “I’m the J.P. here, justice of the peace.”

Ryan kept his eyes on him.

“I’m telling you why I saw the movies, that’s all.”

“What’s the beer for?”

“I’m on the Chamber of Commerce.”

Ryan didn’t smile. “I got to get going.”

“Buddy, if you’re nervous about it, maybe you’d better.”

“I’m not nervous about anything.” Ryan sipped his beer.

“But they told you you had to leave.” Mr. Majestyk waited, letting him relax a little. “There’s no charge against you. How can they make you leave if you want to stay?”

“They phony something up. Vagrancy or something.”

“You got money?”

Ryan looked at him. “Enough.”

“So how can you be arrested for vagrancy? You ever been picked up for that?”

“No.”

“They said something about you were arrested a couple of times. Car theft?”

“Joyriding. Suspended.”

“What about this resisting arrest?”

“A guy was giving me a hard time. I hit him.”

“The cop?”

“No, before.”

“With what?”

“I hit him with a beer bottle.”

“Broken one?”

“No, this guy tried to pull something. I didn’t get arrested for hitting him. It was after, when the cop told me to drop the bottle.”

“You didn’t drop it quick enough.”

Ryan was looking at the waitress. She had the masked look a lot of waitresses put on, telling nothing, letting you know you weren’t anything special. Probably a stuck-up broad who was dumb and didn’t know it. Broads like that burned him up. She looked nice, though: starched ruffled blouse and the tight red pants, like a swordfighter outfit. She came over with another pitcher of beer. He watched Mr. Majestyk give her tail a little pat and she didn’t seem to mind.

“What’s your name, honey?” His big hand resting gently on her red hip.

“Mary Jane.”

“Mary Jane, I want you to meet Jack Ryan.”

“I’ve seen him before,” she said, looking at Ryan as she placed the pitcher on the table. He saw her eyes and it gave him a funny feeling. She had seen him before. She knew about him. She had decided things about him. He watched her turn to the bar again, the nice tight shape of the red pants.

“Some guys I’d like to have taken and used a beer bottle on,” Mr. Majestyk said. “I had a tavern in Detroit-oh, fifteen years ago now. These guys would come off the shift from Dodge Main. They come in, every one of them, a shot and a beer. Set them right down the bar, every stool, then go back and pour another shot right down the bar again.”

Ryan’s gaze followed the waitress. A nice little black ribbon tied around the ponytail. Nice, the black with the blond hair.

“Then go back,” Mr. Majestyk said, “boom boom boom, pick up the dough. The third time just hit the guys that want another. This guy I don’t know is there one time and he says, ‘God damn, how do you remember what everybody’s drinking?’ Amazed. I just shrug like it’s nothing. Every Polack in the place is drinking Seven Crown and Strohs. Sixty-five cents.”

Ryan left his canvas bag at the bar and they went to a restaurant over on the main street for dinner, Estelle’s: a counter and booths with Formica tops and place mats that illustrated Michigan as “The Water-Winter Wonderland.” They ordered steaks with American fries after Ryan bet they wouldn’t have boiled potatoes and they didn’t.

Mr. Majestyk stared at him, hunched over with his arms on the table edge. “You like boiled potatoes?”

“Boiled potatoes, just plain or with some parsley,” Ryan said. “It’s like a real potato. I mean it’s got the most potato taste.”

“Right!” Mr. Majestyk said, with a tone that said it was the correct answer.

“When I was at home,” Ryan said, “on Sunday my mother would have veal roast or pork roast and boiled potatoes. Not mashed or fried or anything. Boiled. You’d take two or three potatoes and cut them up so they covered about half the plate? Then pour gravy all over it. But try and get a boiled potato in a restaurant.”

“Where did you live in Detroit?”

“Highland Park. Just north of where Ford Tractor was. Up by Sears.”

“I know where it is. Your father work at Ford’s?”

“He worked for the DSR, but he’s dead now. He died when I was thirteen.”

“I had some friends worked for the DSR. Hell, they started when they still had streetcars. All retired now or doing something else.”

“I don’t think my dad ever ran a streetcar. What I remember, he drove a Woodward bus. It’d say RIVER going downtown, you know? And FAIRGROUNDS coming back.”

“Sure, I’ve ridden it.”

They didn’t talk much eating the steaks and fries. Ryan pictured the Sunday dinners again in the dining room that was also his bedroom: his mother and his two older sisters and most of the time one or the other’s boyfriend; his dad not always there, not if he had to work Sunday. It was a two-bedroom apartment on the fourth floor, the top floor, of an old building; his mother and dad in one bedroom, the two sisters in the other one, which was always messed up with clothes and magazines and curlers and crap. He slept in the dining room on a studio couch with maple arms and kept his shirts, socks, and underwear in the bottom drawer of the secretary in the living room. He’d be sitting there at the dining room table doing his homework hearing the television in the living room, and his dad would come in carrying his changer, his blue-gray DSR hat on the side of his head and crushed in like a World War II fighter pilot’s hat. If he had stopped for a drink, just a couple, you could tell it. On his day off his dad would sit at the dining room table with a clean sport shirt on, his hair combed and his shoes shined, and play solitaire. He would play it most of the day, with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, his head raised and his eyes looking down half closed. In the afternoon he would drink beer and read the paper. The paper was the only thing he read.

“You want some A-one?”

“No, just ketchup.”

His dad never looked like a bus driver. He was nice looking. Dark hair. Sort of a slick guy. Good dresser. But he was a bus driver in his forties, making about a hundred and a quarter a week with a wife and three children and living in an apartment building with kitchen smells and peeling plaster out in the hall. He could crush in his hat and wear it hotshot on the side of his head and pretend he was piloting a 707 or a truckload of explosives up the Alcan, but it was still a DSR bus and there was no way to make it something else.

“How about dessert?”

“I don’t think so.” Ryan sipped his water. “You know, my dad died when he was forty-six.”

“Well”-Mr. Majestyk was looking at his hand on his water glass and now Ryan’s eyes dropped to the hand, a thick, toughened hand with swollen knuckles and cracked, yellowed nails, a hand that made the heavy restaurant tumbler seem thin and fragile-“I don’t know. I guess a person just dies.”

“Yeah, I guess we all have to die.”

“I don’t mean that,” Mr. Majestyk said. “I don’t mean it that way. I mean we’re supposed to die. You can’t kill yourself, but that’s what we’re here for, to die. Are you a Catholic? With your name, I mean-”

“Yeah. I was.”

“Well, don’t you know what I mean?”

“I never was an altar boy or anything.”

“You don’t have to be an altar boy, for Christ sake. You were taught, weren’t you? You went to church.”

“Let’s not get into all that.”

Mr. Majestyk’s serious gaze held, then began to relax, and he smiled with his perfect-looking false teeth. “What’re we talking about dying for. Come on, let’s go over the Pier.”

He didn’t see the waitress in the red pants. She was gone and a dumpy Indian-looking waitress was serving the tables. There were girls scattered around the place, but none of them seemed to be alone. There was more noise, the lights were on and there were a lot more people now. There was a long table of beer-drinking college-looking Hermans who had probably been out sailing or cruising around in their cruisers and were loud and never shut up. It wasn’t as good as before.

When they were at a table again with a pitcher of beer, he saw Bob Jr. come in with the girl. He didn’t recognize the girl right away because he was watching Bob Jr. as they moved through the people down to the end of the bar. Bob Jr. was all slicked up in a real slick checkered sport shirt with the collar tips pointing out to his shoulders, short sleeves turned up once, silver expando watchband and everything, big can hanging over the bar stool now and his hair combed back like Roy Rogers. The girl with him went on to the ladies’ room.

“You get these guys from Dodge Main off the shift,” Mr. Majestyk was saying. “But get them in at night, that’s the trick.”

Bob Jr. looked this way, toward the front end of the bar, and, sure enough, his forehead was pure white.

“Well, it was August, so we figure how about fresh corn? All you can eat for fifty cents with this sign out in front. Now we only have one pot,” Mr. Majestyk was saying. “On purpose. One that would hold maybe a dozen and a half ears. So the guys come in and order the corn; they’re going to see how much they can eat, see? Fifty cents, you can’t beat it. But they got to wait because only with the one pot we can’t cook more’n a dozen and a half ears. So while they wait they’re drinking, I mean throwing it down. We make money on the booze and, listen, we make money on the corn. Because, see, we get it for twenty-five cents a dozen out by Pontiac and these guys, they pay fifty cents, right?” Mr. Majestyk sat back, the winner. “But none of them eat more than twelve, fourteen ears apiece!”

Ryan smiled and laughed a little bit, but he wasn’t picturing any Polacks eating corn; he was watching the dark-haired girl coming back from the ladies’ room, recognizing her and suddenly having a funny feeling shoot through him from his scalp right down to his hind end.

Ryan let the smile fade and said, “You know Bob Rogers, works for Ritchie?”

With a heavy knuckle Mr. Majestyk was wiping the moisture from his eye. “Bob Junior? Sure, his old man and I play pinochle.”

“He’s down at the end of the bar.”

Mr. Majestyk glanced around. “Yeah, I see him.”

“Who’s the girl with him?”

Now Mr. Majestyk straightened and looked over his shoulder again. He came back slowly, gazing around, so no one would think he was staring. He took a sip of beer. “That little lady’s in some trouble.”

“Who is she?”

“I forget her name. Nancy something. She’s supposed to be like a secretary to Ritchie, but that’s a bunch of crap.”

“He keeps her here?”

“That’s the word, buddy. He keeps her.”

“Whereabouts?”

“In this place he’s got on the beach. His wife comes up, he moves the broad over to his hunting place up by the farm.”

“She looks young.”

“How old do you have to be?”

“I mean for him. Ritchie.”

“Ask him-how should I know?”

“What’s she doing with Bob Junior?”

Mr. Majestyk glanced around again. “That dumb bastard. He’s got a good job, a nice family, a speedboat. His old man leases all the cucumber land to Ritchie Food and all Bob Junior’s got to do is work the crews-”

“He’s a horse’s ass.”

Mr. Majestyk shrugged, making a face. “He’s all right, he’s a big kid. He thinks he’s the Lone goddamn Ranger or something.”

“You said the girl was in some trouble.”

“Reckless driving. She’s got to appear in my court sometime next month.”

“What’s so bad about that?”

Mr. Majestyk leaned over the table on his forearms. “I’m not talking about running a red light. She almost killed a couple of kids.”

“You know it was her fault?”

“All right. These two Geneva boys are out in their car, a piece of junk just riding around looking to raise some hell, you know, or somebody to race. They spot the broad cruising along in her Mustang, so naturally they pull up alongside and start giving her the business, making remarks, asking her if she wants to race or go in the bushes, I don’t know.”

“So what happened?”

“Well, they don’t get a rise out of her, so they pass and go on wherever they’re going. But a couple of miles later they’ve turned off the Shore Road and they’re on this county road, gravel, and they see these lights coming up behind them. They expect the car to pass, but the car doesn’t pass, it bangs into their rear end. They don’t know what’s coming off. They speed up and the car-it’s the broad-gets right on their bumper and guns it. These guys they try to go faster, they try to shake her off, you know, swerving, but she hangs on and now she’s pushing them sixty, seventy miles an hour.”

“Yeah?”

“They try to brake and they burn the linings right off. They can’t do anything, this crazy broad keeps pushing, gunning it, and she’s going a good seventy-they both swear to it-when she backs off. She must have seen it: the road dead-ends at a crossroad and beyond is this plowed field. Well, these guys try to swerve, they fly over the ditch and hit the plowed field and roll over three times.”

“What happened to the guys?”

“One of them’s okay, a few cuts. The other kid’s got two broken legs and some internal injuries.”

“How’d they know it was her?”

“They saw her, for Christ sake.”

“I mean they could be lying.”

“Yeah, with her front end all banged the hell in.”

Nancy said, “I thought you told him to leave.”

“Who?”

She brushed the hair from her eye, nodding toward Ryan’s table. “The one today. You know.”

“Son of a gun. I don’t believe it,” Bob Jr. said.

As Bob Jr. looked around, his broad back, the checkered shirt tight across his shoulders, was close to her and she rested her hand lightly on his arm.

“He’s taking his time about it, isn’t he?” the girl said.

“He’s taking more’n I gave him.”

“Maybe he’s decided to stay.”

“He’ll leave if I got to run him down the highway with a stick.”

“Maybe he’s not afraid of you.” She ran her hand up his arm to the shoulder. “Look what he did to the Mexican.”

“He doesn’t have to be afraid,” Bob Jr. said. “Just have some sense.”

“Are you going to talk to him?”

“If he isn’t out of here before we leave.”

“I’m ready anytime,” Nancy said.

Mr. Majestyk was studying his glass. He said, “Listen, what I was thinking-what if you came to work at the Bay Vista?” He looked up at Ryan, as if surprised at what he had said. “Hey, what about it? Forty bucks a week-no, I’ll pay you fifty, also you get room and board, nice room you can fix up.”

“Doing what?”

“Anything needs to be done. Painting, taking care of the beach, repairs. I got this arthritis in my hands. See them knuckles?”

“For the rest of the summer?”

“Rest of the summer, maybe longer. I’m thinking of staying open for hunting season. Get these guys up from Detroit, give them nice rooms, feed them. You ever cook any?”

“I worked in a place once. Like a White Tower, only bigger.”

“You cook, huh?”

“Fry chef.”

“After hunting season, I don’t know. If we had good hills for the skiers, but that’s all up by Petoskey.”

“Who’s there, just you and your wife?”

“She’s been dead two years. But my daughter, she lives in Warren, comes up a couple times a year with the kids. Ronnie and Gayle-boy, those kids. It was my daughter fixed the place up for me, you know, picked out the drapes and the studio couches and all the pictures, everything.”

“Yeah, well I don’t know.” The girl with Bob Jr., Nancy, was looking at him again and it gave him a funny feeling, as if, like the waitress in the red pants, she knew all about him. More than he knew about her. He watched her slide off the bar stool and he watched Bob Jr. stand up and look right at him.

Mr. Majestyk leaned into the table. “Do you want me to tell you something?”

“Just a second. I think we got company.” Mr. Majestyk straightened and looked up as Bob Jr., coming first, edging past the people at the bar, reached the table. The girl stood by the bar, waiting for him.

“What’re you trying to pull?” Bob Jr. said to Ryan. “Are you trying to get cute with me?”

“Jesus Christ,” Mr. Majestyk said. “Who would want to get cute with you?”

“Hi, Walter.” Bob Jr. was serious. He didn’t smile.

“Hey, where’s your Lone Ranger hat?”

“Walter, you mind if I have a word with this guy?”

“Let me see,” Mr. Majestyk said. “Yes, I think I would.”

Bob Jr. was looking at Ryan, not listening to Majestyk. “You know what I told you this morning. I said at the time I wasn’t going to tell you again.”

“Then, what are you telling him for?” Mr. Majestyk asked.

Bob Jr. said to Ryan, “We better step outside a minute.”

Mr. Majestyk moved his hand across the table toward Ryan. “Stay where you are.”

“Walter, this is company business.”

“What company? Does he work for your company?”

“We paid him off and he agreed to leave,” Bob Jr. said. “On the strength of that agreement, I’m going to see he lives up to his end.”

“Hey, Bob,” Mr. Majestyk said, “don’t give me any agreement crap, all right? You paid him because you owed him the dough. Now he don’t work for you anymore and there isn’t anything you can do to make him leave if he don’t want to.”

“Walter, you’re a friend of my dad’s and all, but this is between me and him.”

Ryan finished the beer in his glass and poured it full again. He was keeping a good hold, but it was almost too much, and it would be easy to let go, Bob Jr. standing close to the table with his hands on his hips and his big silver cowboy belt buckle shining level with his eyes.

Ryan said, not looking up, “Why don’t you quit standing there? Why don’t you and your friend sit down and have a beer?”

Mr. Majestyk smiled. “Now, that’s a nice suggestion. Bob, what do you say? It’s early.”

“We’ve had ours. We’re leaving now and I expect this fella’s leaving the same time we are.”

Ryan looked up at him. He said, “Don’t press it, all right? Not anymore.”

“Listen, boy, if I didn’t have somebody with me, I’d pick you up and carry you out.”

“No you wouldn’t,” Ryan said.

Mr. Majestyk was watching him. His gaze shifted to Bob Jr. and he said, not hurrying it but before Bob Jr. could say anything, “I invited this guy to have a beer with me. I’m not through yet and he’s not through. Maybe we’ll have a couple more pitchers, maybe we’ll have ten more. I don’t know. But what I want to know is if you’re going to stand there until we’re finished.”

“Walter, I told this guy this morning what he had to do.”

“Fine, you told him. Now, Bob, either sit down or stand someplace else, all right?”

“You’re saying I’m butting in. Walter, I’m saying this guy and I have business.”

“Let’s say we’re both right,” Mr. Majestyk said, “and neither of us will give in to the other. Meanwhile you left that nice-looking young lady standing by herself. Is that nice, Bob? What would your father say? What would your wife say?”

Bob Jr. hesitated long enough to show them he wasn’t being forced into anything he didn’t want to do. And when enough time had passed, looking at Ryan and slowly moving his gaze to Mr. Majestyk, he said, “I’ll run her home, but don’t be surprised if you see me again.” He had to give Ryan another look before turning away.

The girl waited with her arms folded, watching Ryan, then looking up at Bob Jr.’s tight, serious expression as he came toward her. She said, “Wow,” and walked out ahead of him.

“Do you want to know something?” Mr. Majestyk said. His eyes were a little watery; he was feeling the beer, but he spoke quietly, well enough controlled. “You probably wonder why I want to hire you. Why you. Do you want me to tell you why?”

“Go ahead,” Ryan said. The guy was going to tell him anyway.

“This might sound nuts, I don’t know, but I saw the movies, right? And I talked to the sheriff’s cops about you and I said to myself, ‘That’s a good kid. He stands up. Maybe he’s had a rough life, bummed around, and had to work. No chance to go to college, no trade-‘ You don’t have a trade, do you?”

“Not that pays anything.”

“Right,” Mr. Majestyk said. “No college education, no trade. I think to myself, ‘What’s he going to do? He’s a good one. He’s got something other guys don’t have. The son of a bitch stands up. But listen, I know this. It isn’t easy always to keep standing up. I mean, it’s better if you got somebody to help you once in a while. You understand what I mean?”

Just picturing the girl standing there, waiting by the bar, and the way she looked at him before she walked out, gave him the funny feeling again.

“Do you understand what I mean?”

“Yeah, I understand.”

“So I said to myself, ‘Do you want to see him throw his life away, bumming around, getting into trouble, or you going to help him? Give him an opportunity, a place to live, something to do.’ “

“That’s what you said to yourself.”

“Maybe not in those words.”

“I go to work at the Bay Vista.”

“Say till Labor Day, then we see what happens.”

“Janitor at a motel.”

“Not a janitor.”

“Handyman. I become your handyman and I’m all set.”

“Listen, I’m not giving you anything. You come to work for me you work. Maybe I find out you’re a bum and I got to throw you out.”

“If I take the job.”

“If you take the job, right.”

“You going to protect me from Bob Junior too? See nothing happens to me?”

Mr. Majestyk stared at him. He did not move or show anything in his eyes, though a line seemed to tighten down the sides of his nose. He sat hunched forward, not taking his eyes from Ryan, and finally he said, “You can stand up, but Jesus Christ you’re dumb, aren’t you?”

“I never asked you to stick up for me.”

“Forget it,” Mr. Majestyk said. “All right?” He said it quietly, his expression dead. “I’m going home. Come with me or stay, I don’t care. If you feel like it, think over what I said and if you want to work, come by my place tomorrow morning eight o’clock. If you don’t want to, don’t. Either way you’ll do what you want.”

He went to the bar to settle their bill and walked out without looking back.

“What’s the matter?” the Indian-looking waitress said to Ryan. “Doesn’t he feel good?”

“He went home, that’s all.”

“He said you could have whatever you wanted.”

Ryan looked at her. “I never asked him for anything.”

“Who said you did?” The Indian-looking waitress took away the empty pitcher and glasses. A few minutes later she watched Ryan pick up his bag and walk out.