The Skeleton Box

TWELVE

When I slipped into the rink through a door near the Zamboni shed, the game clock said eight minutes, seventeen seconds to go with the River Rats trailing Mic-Mac, 1–0. I peered down the boards to the Rats’ bench. They had a chance. It was only one goal. The Mic-Mac goaltender might’ve been playing the game of his life, but he still had a weak glove and he kicked rebounds right back out in front of the net. One little bounce, a deflection, a mishandled rebound, and the Rats could be back in the game.

But the disconsolate way they were sitting told me they were bracing for a loss. I’d seen it before, the heads down, the barely discernible slump to the shoulders, the eyes straying to the clock. Poppy had called a time-out and was barking orders at the skaters gathered around him. He wouldn’t have called a time-out with so much time left if the Rats weren’t struggling. Tex had his right glove off and was examining the blister he’d gotten digging at Tatch’s camp. I looked into the stands. Tatch usually sat one row beneath the press box at center ice, where he could easily see his nephew at either end of the rink. But Tatch was not there.

I watched from a corner of the arena where there were no fans and I was breathing Zamboni oil and gas. The rink was as packed as I had seen it since I’d played net for the Rats on our failed title run. The bleachers were dressed in Rats blue and the throng swayed along with gold banners blaring “Welcome to Starvation-we’re hungrier than you!” I saw Soupy and Wilf and Zilchy and Stevie Reneau, wearing their old, frayed, too-tight Rats jerseys and passing around a water bottle. In the past it would’ve been filled with Beam and Coke, but Soupy couldn’t afford the good stuff anymore, so it was probably cut with Ten High or worse.

Instead of joining Poppy at the bench, I decided to stay where I was. Poppy didn’t need me now, and I preferred not to be seen by someone who might tell Vicky I was there. And if Darlene called, I wanted to be able to exit without being noticed.

It quickly became obvious to me what the Rats’ problem was. They couldn’t get the puck to Tex. And if Tex didn’t get the puck, the Rats had trouble scoring. It was a team of grinders and muckers who were good at keeping the other squad off the scoreboard and, usually, finding ways to put the puck on the stick of our best player.

Mic-Mac had that figured out. Every time Tex touched the ice, Pinky Holcomb, number 9, was on him, always within a stick’s length, chirping in his ear between whistles. Before a face-off in my corner, Pinky sidled up next to Tex on the edge of the circle as the ref prepared to drop the puck. They were just a few feet away from me on the other side of the glass. Pinky turned his head sideways and talked into Tex’s ear. Tex fixed his gaze on the players taking the face-off.

“Hey, shit-teeth,” Pinky said. “Maybe I can fuck your mommy when she gets out of jail, huh? She’ll probably need it after licking all that prison pussy, eh?”

Tex turned his head to Pinky. I pushed my face into the gap between two sheets of glass. “Tex, don’t do it,” I said.

Tex glanced back at me, then turned back to the face-off. The ref dropped the puck. “Pussy,” Pinky told Tex.

Little Davey Straub, standing just to Tex’s left, had heard everything. As Pinky chased the puck into the corner, Davey chugged up from behind and pasted him across the boards. “Fuck you,” Davey said as Holcomb went down. Number 22 for Mic-Mac smacked the puck behind the net and around to the opposite corner. Holcomb got to one knee and watched Davey skate away as the refs cleared the zone. Then he jumped up and zeroed in. Coming up from behind Davey, Holcomb swung a vicious hack across the back of his left leg. Davey crumpled. Holcomb flew past, cackling. The slash was risky with a one-goal lead, but the refs didn’t see.

Tex did, though.

The next thing I knew, Tex was standing face-to-face with Holcomb at the near blue line. It was too far away for me to say anything, but I heard Poppy screaming, “No, not now, Tex, no.” Tex wasn’t saying a word. Holcomb was smirking and yammering and did not expect the punch. Tex’s gloved fist hit him square on the chin. He dropped. Tex turned and obediently headed for the penalty box. I looked over at Poppy. He had his eyes closed, shaking his head. Tex had done exactly what he’d been told, but his timing was not good. It looked like the Rats would have to play short-handed for the rest of the game.

But Pinky Holcomb, thank God, had an even nastier temper than Tex.

Pinky bounced up, juked around a ref, and tackled Tex from behind. Tex tried to right himself, but Pinky grabbed the back of his jersey collar and slammed Tex’s helmeted head into the ice, once, twice, again. Tex took it. It took two refs to peel Pinky off. “Straight to the box, Tex,” Poppy was yelling. When Tex got there, I saw him wipe his mouth. He held his hand up for a ref to see the blood.

The officials took a few minutes to sort out the penalties. Tex got two minutes for roughing. Holcomb was assessed a five-minute major because he had drawn blood, a ten-minute misconduct, and a game misconduct. He skated off, still screaming curses at Tex and Poppy and the refs as he disappeared into dressing room 1. Later we would learn that he had turned to one ref and said, “Did the other coach suck your cock before the game?”

Thank you, Pinky. The Rats now would have a power play, five skaters against four, for the last three minutes of the game.

Everything changed then. Now the Rats were carrying the play and Mic-Mac was chasing. With one minute, forty-two seconds to go and the Rats swarming the Mic-Mac net, Davey Straub tipped a Tex Do-brick slap shot up and over the falling goaltender’s left shoulder to tie the game. The arena shook, our old runner-up banner trembling in the rafters. I glanced at the Mic-Mac bench. Now they had the slumped shoulders.

With just over thirty seconds to go, Tex scooped up a rolling puck at our blue line. Butterfly bandages had closed two cuts under his left eye. He leaned his long body into a churning circle, cradling the puck on his stick with one hand, then exploded out of the turn at center ice, blowing past a Mic-Mac winger as if his skates were set in concrete. Tex zigged left, cut right, head-faked a center, flipped the puck high off the glass, zoomed around a defenseman, and caught up to the puck with the other defenseman in futile pursuit.

The Rats on the bench jumped to their feet. I actually felt a fleeting pang of sympathy for the Mic-Mac goalie. He must have been praying that Tex’s shot would hit him in the head, the neck, the chest, somewhere, anywhere, because there was no chance that he was going to see it.

Tex dipped a shoulder. His wrists snapped. The goalie flailed. The black blur of puck grazed the inside of the near post and tore into the mesh at the back of the net.

The game ended twenty-seven seconds later, Rats 2, Mic-Mac 1.

Gloves and helmets and sticks littered the ice around the blue-and-gold mound of players swarming Tex. Some of the younger fans vaulted the glass and shuffled across the ice in their shoes and threw themselves onto the pile, while the rest of the fans stamped their feet, chanting, “Let’s go, Rats! Beat Pipefitters! Let’s go, Rats! Beat Pipefitters!” In Thursday night’s state semifinal, the Rats would face the Pipefitters, their old nemesis from downstate, the team the Rats had never beaten, the team that stole the title from us in 1981.

I slipped out through the Zamboni shed.

I called Mom as I walked to my truck.

“I’m going to bed,” she said. “The police keep driving by.”

“They’re just doing their job,” I said.

“They’re irritating.”

I wondered how she would even know they were driving by. She would have had to stand in the kitchen to see the road. She was usually in bed by nine.

“I’m coming over.”

“No. I’m fine. I have things to do.”

“I thought you were going to bed.”

The phone fell silent. Then Mom said, “Just be sure to lock the door. And make your bed in the morning.”

A single light burned over the kitchen sink at Mom’s. The house was quiet. I locked the kitchen door, slipped off my boots, turned my phone off, and tossed it on the snack bar. I opened the fridge. It was packed with platters and casseroles wrapped in cellophane and foil that neighbors had dropped off. I chose a chicken dish with broccoli and noodles and slid it into the microwave over the stove.

Walking through the bathroom with its doors at each end, I saw a balled-up clump of police tape in the wastepaper basket next to the toilet. The tile floor was bare, the Me Sweet Ho rug having been confiscated as evidence. The door to Mom’s bedroom was closed, but I inched it open and peeked in. She was asleep, faced away from me toward the lake side of the house. A paperback by Jacquelyn Mitchard rested on her nightstand.

It gave me a little start. Mom had given me my first book, From the Rocket to the Jet: Hockey’s Greatest Heroes, when I was six. I almost didn’t read it because the title didn’t include the greatest player of them all, Gordie Howe of the Red Wings. Mom told me not to judge a book by its cover. I read it. Gordie was in it after all.

Mom bought me another book, The House on the Cliff, and then another and another until I was reading them so fast that my parents couldn’t afford to keep buying them and I got my first library card. I thought of the sixty-year-old photograph I had seen at the clerk’s office showing a young woman, a nun, who had done the same for my mother. If Mom had ever said a word about her, I had missed it, or forgotten.

I shut Mom’s door.

Back in the kitchen, I scooped a heap of the chicken casserole onto a plate and poured myself a glass of milk. A set of headlights eased past the house. I went to the window and squinted into the dark to see if it was a Pine County sheriff’s cruiser but it was gone before I could be sure. I took my plate and glass into the living room and sat in the recliner and grabbed the TV remote. I clicked the volume low and pushed Channel Eight for the news. The set blinked on to a hockey game, the Wings playing the Blues in St. Louis, late in the third period, Wings up, 4–2, and Stevie Yzerman squatting for a face-off.

I tried to clear my mind for a few minutes of everything I had seen and heard and read in the long day behind me. The casserole was delicious. The Wings were about to win. I set the plate on the end table next to me and picked up the remote. Maybe I wouldn’t bother with the news after all. Maybe I could find a Seinfeld rerun instead. The Blues pulled their goalie for an extra skater. I shoved myself back in the recliner, thought I wouldn’t mind if I fell asleep right there.

Less than twenty seconds remained in the game when a ribbon of words began to scroll across the bottom of the TV screen. “CHANNEL EIGHT BULLETIN YOUR NEWS NORTH SOURCE CHANNEL EIGHT BULLETIN,” they began. Not another snowstorm, I thought. The string went blank, then these words rolled across: “BINGO NIGHT KILLING LINKED TO LATE PRIEST.” I bolted up in the recliner. “What the fuck?” I whispered. I waited. “CHANNEL EIGHT BULLETIN YOUR NEWS NORTH SOURCE CHANNEL EIGHT BULLETIN,” it repeated while my stomach

twisted into a knot. The next line rolled past: “POLICE INVESTIGATING CONNECTION TO FR. NILUS MOREAU. DETAILS AFTER THE GAME.”

I jumped to my feet, thinking, How the hell could they know that? It had to be Tawny Jane Reese reporting. There was no way that Darlene would have told her, or that D’Alessio would have known now that he was openly campaigning against Dingus. Vicky Clark? Could Vicky have figured out what I was really doing at the clerk’s office? And even if she had and then had thought to call Tawny Jane, Tawny Jane couldn’t have reported it based solely on a secondhand tip from a deputy county clerk.

The only other person who knew was Luke Whistler.

I went into the kitchen, turned on my phone, dialed Whistler.

“Where the hell were you?” he answered.

“Did you just moan it out when she was going down on you?” I said.

“Settle down, junior,” Whistler said. “I didn’t tell her a thing. She told me. I got it out of her. I tried to call you from her bathroom.”

“Bullshit.”

“I left you a message about twenty minutes ago.”

I pulled the phone away from my ear. The message light was blinking. Shit, I thought. “I don’t give a damn,” I said. “You told her.”

I looked through the kitchen and dining room to the TV. There was Tawny Jane on the screen, microphone in hand, doing a stand-up in front of St. Valentine’s. Goddamm it, I thought.

“The next time you accuse me,” Whistler said, “I’m gone, and you can fill your little rag by yourself. If you’d had your phone on-”

“Shit!” I said, spluttering it.

“If you’d had your phone on, you could’ve beaten her to the punch on the Web and I’d be getting my ass chewed by her instead.”

“Then how the hell did she know, Luke?”

“Are you watching her now?”

I walked into the living room. Tawny Jane was signing off, her brows furrowed into their deepest crease of seriousness. “Yes. Fuck.”

“She didn’t have anything more than what we already knew. I’m betting you’ve already made some progress in your reporting, am I right?”

“Some. But how did she know? Really.”

“She wouldn’t tell me. But I’m betting it was D’Alessio.”

“Come on. Dingus has got to be totally shutting him out.”

“Maybe he has his own department mole.”

I considered this, doubted it, but didn’t know what else to think. I shut the TV off.

“Should we pop something online?” I said.

“That would just be an admission of defeat. And it’ll be seen by about six people. Might as well stay on the trail and do a better story when we got it. Look, partner, T.J.’s good.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Enough,” he said.

He was right. Tawny Jane Reese could be a good reporter, as I had learned from hard experience. “All right,” I said. “Let’s talk in the morning.”

“Get back on the horse.”

The kitchen filled with the glow of headlights. I heard tires crunching snow. I started walking to the kitchen door.

“And look, I’m sorry,” I said. “But you’ve got to understand-”

“Yeah, I know, I know. I can see how you’d jump to the conclusion. But, look, I’m on your side.”

Darlene was standing outside Mom’s kitchen door. She didn’t look happy. I unlocked the door, swung it open, stepped outside, pulled the door closed. Her cruiser was idling, the exhaust a coiled wraith in the dark. “Good night,” I said into the phone, hanging up. Midnight cold enveloped me. I wrapped my arms around my chest.

“Checking in with T.J.?” Darlene said.

“That was Whistler,” I said. “We got scooped big-time.”

“Really? How would the TV bitch know about Nilus if you didn’t tell her?”

Oh, holy shit, no, I thought. “I didn’t tell her anything.”

“Do you get extra points at work for helping Channel Eight? Do the bosses send you an attaboy? Or maybe T.J. has one for you, huh?”

I couldn’t believe this was happening. “I’m not sleeping with Tawny Jane, Darl.” I decided against telling her about Whistler and T.J. “She knew on her own. Whistler’s as pissed as I am.”

“Uh-huh.”

She didn’t look convinced, but what else could I say?

“Did you hear what she said?” Darlene asked.

“I saw the bulletin and got on the phone. Why?”

“She said the Catholic Church may be implicated in my mother’s murder.”

“She what?”

“The Catholic Church, Gus. My mother loved the church. She believed. She had faith. She’d be horrified at this crap coming out of the TV.”

“That’s just TV hype,” I said. “As you may know by now, there was a Nilus here who was pastor at St. Valentine’s when our mothers were girls. But I don’t see how that connects him to what happened.”

“That’s all you know?”

“So far.”

“I believe, too,” Darlene said. She’d gone to Mass with her mother almost every Sunday. The church was a subject on which we’d long ago agreed to disagree.

“I know,” I said.

“This may force our hand.”

“What does that mean?”

“This is not easy for me. Please don’t make it any harder.”

“I’m not.”

“Just do your job, and I’ll try to do mine.”

I watched her taillights recede on the shore road toward town. When I turned to go back inside, I saw Mom standing in the kitchen in her bathrobe.

Mom sat on the footstool in front of the recliner, facing me. The remnants of my chicken and noodles sat on the end table.

“I’ll clean that up,” I said.

“Why are you here?”

“I told you I was coming over.”

“It’s late.”

“I’m here because of Father Nilus Moreau,” I said. “Does that name mean anything to you?”

Mom considered it. “He was at St. Val’s when I was a girl. I worked for him for a few years at the rectory. Why?”

“He was your boss?”

“I guess. Grandma Damico liked him, but she liked all the priests.”

She meant her adoptive mother, my grandmother.

“What’s Grandma D got to do with it?” I said.

Mom shook her head. “She never liked Rudy, you know.” My father.

“What? Why are you-”

“She would never let us be alone in the house. It was fine for my brothers. They could have their girlfriends in at all hours when Mama and Papa weren’t there. But Rudy had to stay away.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“You asked.”

“No. I asked about Father Nilus.”

“Grandma Damico liked him.”

Grandpa Damico died of a heart attack before I was born. Grandma D lasted until I was almost seven. I remembered how she looked too fat for her tiny kitchen and how her apron smelled of garlic and how disappointed I was that she gave me socks and underwear for my sixth birthday and then again for Christmas a month later.

“Why does that matter?” I said.

“She got me the job with Nilus. She said she wanted me busy, but really she just wanted me away from all the boys. ‘Boys bad,’ she used to say. ‘Boys bad.’ She was right, of course, as her own sons proved.”

“So you knew him pretty well?”

“Who?”

I told myself to be patient. It was late, Mom was tired, I was testing her.

“Nilus,” I said.

She placed her hands palms down on her knees and assessed them. “He was my friend, for a while,” she said.

“You never mentioned him before.”

“I suppose not. He went away when I was, oh, I don’t know, sixteen or seventeen? I wrote him a few letters, but he never wrote back. So I guess he wasn’t my mentor. Maybe I had the wrong address.”

“Where were you writing?”

“Why are you asking me these things?”

I studied her face. She wasn’t going to say more until I answered.

“During the break-in,” I said, “Mrs. B tried to call Darlene. Darlene didn’t answer so her mom left a message. She mentioned this Nilus. At least we think she did.”

Mom looked away. “Why?”

“Why what?”

She looked back at me. “Why would Phyllis say something like that?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you. Did she know this guy, too?”

“Of course. We went to the same school. We went to Mass every day.”

“Did something happen that would have-”

“A lot happened,” Mom said. “But then it was over, and we went on with our lives.”

“Are you talking about the nun? Sister Cordelia?”

Now Mom studied my face.

“How do you know about her?”

“I read about her at the-in old newspaper clippings.”

“It was quite a story.”

“You knew her?”

“We all knew her. She taught us.”

“Reading and writing and spelling, right? Did you like her?”

Mom nodded. “She was nice. She brought us cake on our birthdays.”

“Did Grandma Damico like her?”

“No. She thought Non-Sister Cordelia was too pretty to be a nun.”

“She did look pretty in the picture I saw. She took you on a trip for a spelling bee.”

“Really?” Mom thought about this. “I’m sure it will come as no surprise to you that we lost.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me about any of this?”

Mom lowered her eyes, and the fine features of her face-the high cheekbones, the thin-lipped mouth-narrowed into a concerted frown, as if she was trying to remember something. She began to rock gently on the footstool. She raised her right hand in front of her face and looked at the backs of her fingers. She rotated her hand slowly one way, then the other. Then she turned it over and curled her fingers into her palm.

“Mom,” I said.

“My fingernails,” she said. “I have to wash my hands. Look at my nails. They’re filthy.”

I leaned over and looked. Her fingers and her palm were clean. Her unpolished nails, too. “They look fine,” I said.

“I need the hard brush. The bristles get under the nails.”

I had learned not to argue about things she believed she saw or heard that no one else could see or hear. They would go away on their own. I wanted to put my arm around her, but that wouldn’t have done any good either. I waited. She stared at her fingers a little longer, then let her hand fall back into her lap. The rocking stopped.

“I wish Phyllis were here,” she said.

“So do I,” I said. “Can you tell me anything more about Nilus?”

“Why are you so concerned with a priest who’s been dead for years?”

“How did you know he was dead?”

“I don’t know. He was old.”

“I thought he never wrote you back.”

“He didn’t.”

“Where was he?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where’d you send your letters?”

“Detroit.” A muscle in her jaw pulsed. “The archdiocese.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. I’m tired.”

“That’s not why you stopped going to church, is it?”

“Because he didn’t write back to me? No.” She sighed. “No, he was a help after”-she paused-“after Sister Cordelia left. For a while.”

She’d never told me exactly why she had walked away from the church. She and Mrs. B had their occasional debates, of course, and almost every time Mom would say of St. Val’s, “There’s nothing in there but a frustrated man and his expensive geegaws.” I never knew if she meant the pastor or God himself.

“Nilus died in the U.P.,” I said. “In 1971.”

“Hmm,” she said. She looked past me and I turned to see headlights moving past the house again. “When will the police stop?”

“Why do you care so much?”

“I want my life to go back to normal.”

It would never be normal again without her best friend, but I didn’t need to say that. “You’d better get some sleep,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “How is Alden?”

My mother was one of the only people in the world who called Soupy by his given name. “He’s fine. I mean, you know, he’s in bankruptcy and his life’s a total mess, but nothing out of the ordinary.”

“I worry about him.”

“Why?”

“Because I do. He’s selling his parents’ property, isn’t he?”

“He has an offer. Why?”

“He needs to be careful.”

“Don’t hold your breath.”

Mom stood, gathering her robe around her. “I’ll stay at your place tomorrow night, if that’s all right.”

“Of course. Any particular reason?”

“I’m tired of the police watching my every move.”

“They’re not watching you, Mom. They’re watching over you.”

“Millie’s coming to get me in the morning,” she said. “We’re going to have breakfast at Audrey’s, then go to the funeral home.”

“I thought you were going there today.”

“Where?”

“The funeral home.”

Mom thought about this for a moment. “Well,” she said, “I didn’t.”

“How come?”

She looked past me into the kitchen again, as if she hadn’t heard my question. “Tomorrow night,” she said, “I’ll need you to help me with something.”

“All right.”

“After it’s dark.” She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “I love you,” she said.

“I love you, too.”

I scraped my plate and put it in the dishwasher, then dialed voice mail on my cell phone. Sure enough, there was Whistler’s voice, telling me at ten fifty-two that Tawny Jane Reese was about to clobber us with the Nilus scoop.

“Damn,” I said, and shut the phone off.