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  Jack had read that most cons who were released were scared ’cause they didn’t want to make a mistake but were too dumb or too unprepared to make it outside and got arrested and sent back after a couple weeks. T.J. said it was due to “gate fever,” a malady that caused fear, anxiety and grouchiness in the hapless convict.

  A lot of guys Jack met inside actually liked the “life.” Three squares a day, no worries about getting a job and paying bills, no responsibilities at all. And they liked their prison friends better than their friends back home.

  Jack lived on baked beans and canned spaghetti the first couple weeks in the halfway house, spicing up both with salt, pepper and Tabasco in the small kitchen, while he tried to find a job, interviewing at construction sites and trying to preserve his capital-now down to eight dollars and seventy-three cents.

  Nobody was hiring ex-cons on parole and he was close to desperate, thinking he’d have to revert to crime to make ends meet, when he saw a want ad and got a job at a place in South Tucson, building modular homes. The company was Eldorado Estates. A sign in the warehouse said: “Making the American Dream a Reality.” Jack wondering who in their right mind thought living in a trailer was attaining the American dream.

  Hank Bain, one of the owners, told Jack the job paid ten dollars an hour, but when he found out Jack was on parole, offered him seven, Hank saying, “You don’t like it, come over here, I’ve got a little spot on my ass you can kiss.”

  Jack cleared $205 a week after taxes and, after paying for his room at the halfway house, had a hundred dollars for food and entertainment. A line on the bottom of his paycheck said: “Eldorado Estates, built on family values of trust and loyalty.” Jack liked that. Everything was a lie.

  Hank’s son Donny was the crew chief, a skinny effeminate heroin addict who was trying to kick the habit and trying to get by on weed. Donny’d twist one on the way to lunch and offer it to Jack, Jack saying, “I’m on parole, man, I give ’em a hot urinalysis, they’re going to send me right back.”

  Donny said, “Fuck ’em, they can’t do that.”

  Jack said, “They can do anything they want.”

  And did, T.J. stopping by at the factory checking up on him while he installed windows in prefab walls, rousting him in his room in the middle of the night, waking him up and making him piss in a plastic bottle. Standing behind him while he did it. Jack saying it’s hard “to go” when someone’s watching you.

  “Come on, wake up, sleepyhead,” T.J.’ d say. “Let’s find out what kind of fun you’ve been having.”

  But Jack beat the odds, got through parole without screwing up and six months later was on a bus back to Detroit with a fresh outlook and the intent of staying out of prison. T.J. said he had to have a forwarding address and Jack gave him his sister Jodie’s.

  From the Greyhound station downtown, he took a cab to Sterling Heights, hoping Jodie would be there. He knocked on her front door, his only sister, he hadn’t seen in four years. She opened it, looking at him through the screen and said, “Oh… my… God.” Stretching it out like it was one word. “I do not believe it. What’d you do, escape?”

  Jack said, “I found Jesus.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Jack said, “The parole board believes I am a changed man.”

  She grinned. “Well, they obviously don’t know you very well.”

  He and Jodie had always gotten along, had always been close, closer after the death of their parents twelve years earlier when a fire broke out in their East Detroit home.

  Jack said, “Can I stay with you for a few days?”

  “I don’t know that I’d be comfortable living in the same house with a criminal.” She smiled now to show him she was kidding and opened the door.

  Jack stepped over the threshold and she put her arms around him, hugged him and held on. She kissed his cheek and said, “Jackie, it’s so good to see you. You can stay as long as you like. You’re welcome anytime, you know that.”

  She was a thirty-two-year-old divorcee with short spiked hair, dyed red and long fingernails that were light blue with flecks of color on them.

  “When’d you change your hair?” Last time he saw Jodie, she was blond.

  “Couple weeks ago. It’s an Emo style.”

  “Emo, huh?”

  “Stands for emotional punk movement.”

  “I can see it,” Jack said.

  “Listen, I’m in the business-I have to look the look. Did you know coloring your hair dates back to the ancient Romans?”

  “I guess it’s okay then,” Jack said.

  They went in the kitchen and Jodie made them each a vodka and tonic.

  She said, “I’ll bet you’d like a home-cooked meal after all that time being incarcerated. I could whip us up some tuna noodle hot dish.”

  It was a joke between them. Hot dish was a casserole their mother from Minnesota used to make. She’d start with a can of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup and put in tuna and noodles or ham and lima beans, whatever she had handy.

  They had another drink and Jodie made hamburgers on a gas grill and they ate on TV tables in the living room, watching Jeopardy.

  At one point Jack said, “You still selling cosmetics?” Jodie had worked for Revlon and made good money, selling to high-end stores in malls around Detroit.

  She smiled and said, “No, I’m a nail technologist.”

  Jack said, “Why are you doing that? You had a good job.” He regretted it as soon as he said it.

  “You ought to talk.” She gave him a dirty look. “What did you say your current occupation was?”

  He tried to smooth things over by asking a couple questions. “What do you like about your job?”

  Jodie perked up a little. “You really want to know?”

  Jack said, “You bet I do.” Trying to put a little enthusiasm behind it.

  “Well, for one thing, it gives me a chance to be creative. I design decorative, colorful little things for fingernails and toenails. My favorites are gorgeous flowers made out of pink and green rhinestones and beautiful butterflies and ladybugs made out of crystal-clear teardrop rhinestones and pink round rhinestones.”

  Jodie was grinning. She couldn’t help herself; she was so excited.

  “I also do patriotic designs like American flags. They were very popular after 9/11. One of my customers met her boyfriend ’cause he loved the sunshine design I did on her toes. How about that? And I do New York manicures and French manicures and warm paraffin manicures. Once I did a pink ribbon for a breast cancer survivor. I do guys too, give them manicures and paint their toenails. I think it’s great there are men who are masculine enough to express themselves in such a fun way.”

  Jack had stopped listening after “teardrop rhinestones.”

  Jodie’s goal was to open her own shop one day. She was going to call it Ultimate Nails. “I think that says it all,” Jodie said, “don’t you?”

  He thought, that’s what happens, you try to be nice to someone, they bore the hell out you.

  The next day he drove Jodie to work and went out for a few hours, looking for a job. He was almost out of money and Jodie’d made it clear right up front, she wasn’t in a position to help him out financially.

  In his brief job search, he tried a couple used car lots on Gratiot, asking if they needed an experienced salesman. They didn’t. He tried a construction site, a landscaping company, and a painting contractor, saying he’d do anything they needed done and struck out each time. He tried two strip joints on Eight Mile, asking if they were looking for a bouncer. They weren’t.

  He stopped at a neighborhood saloon and sat at the dark bar that was crowded with afternoon drinkers. He sipped a beer and considered his options. Say he did get hired somewhere: now that he didn’t have the motivation to make probation, how long could he work some menial, chickenshit job? The answer was not very, if at all. He didn’t see himself showing up for work every day, doing something he didn’t want to do. He couldn’t see himse
lf starting over, like he’d ever started in the first place. He was the way he was and wasn’t going to change. Not at age thirty-eight.

  For the first time since leaving Arizona, he thought seriously about getting a gun and hitting party stores, small markets and retail shops that one person could manage. He’d just be more careful this time around, the fear of incarceration fading after six months on the outside.

  FOUR

  She remembered the day it happened, waking up to a creaking noise, the sound of someone coming up the stairs. She was in her bedroom at the lodge, varnished log walls and a cathedral ceiling with interlocking oak beams. The clock on the bedside table said 5:07 a.m. There was a log smoldering in the fireplace, giving off the faint smell of wood smoke. She got up, crossed the room and opened the top drawer of her dresser, took out the Smith amp; Wesson. 357 Airweight and went into the hall. She saw a man in mossy oak camouflage come up the stairs and head for Luke’s room. She snuck up behind him and aimed the pistol at his back.

  He heard her and turned.

  “Hey, Rambo,” Kate said, “better take this. Del Keane said he saw a bear last week.” She handed the automatic to Owen, and he slipped it in his pants pocket.

  “Del doesn’t need a gun. Bear probably smelled him and ran away. What’re you doing up?”

  “I’ve got to see my men off,” Kate said.

  Luke came out of his room, rubbing sleep from his eyes. They went downstairs and Kate made coffee, carrying steaming mugs into the room. A backlog burned in the big fieldstone fireplace. Owen was kneeling on the oriental rug, putting gear in his backpack. He closed the top and laid it next to his compound bow that had a built-in quiver of arrows. She handed Owen his coffee, pulled her robe closed, and stood over by the fireplace to get warm.

  Luke came in the room now, a skinny teenager dressed in Skyline Apparition 3-D camo, an iPod dangling from his neck like white plastic bling.

  Owen said, “What’re you listening to?”

  Luke pulled the earplug out and said, “White Stripes.”

  Kate said, “I don’t know that bucks are partial to Motor City garage bands.”

  Owen said, “Maybe he’s on to something. Rock instead of doe scent, the new deer lure.”

  Luke picked up his dad’s bow and tried to pull the string with its seventy pounds of draw, face straining. He couldn’t do it.

  “Lock your arms,” Owen said. “Use your shoulders.”

  Luke took a breath and tried again, and this time, drew it about three quarters.

  “You’re close, almost there,” Owen said. “Couple of months…”

  Kate put her arms around Owen. “Be careful. You don’t know who’s out there drunk with a bow or a rifle. Man has enough bourbon, I’d look like a whitetail.”

  “A cute one, too,” Owen said. “I’ll tell you that.”

  Now Kate hugged Luke and kissed his cheek. She could see sparse, blondish fuzz on his chin and upper lip. He squirmed and tried to pull away from her, a look of pain on his face.

  He said, “Mom…”

  She let him go. His voice had changed in the past few weeks. It was deeper now and she wasn’t used to it. “I’ll bet you don’t mind if Lauren kisses you.”

  Luke said, “We broke up.”

  Kate said, “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “I don’t know,” Luke said. He seemed embarrassed, eyes looking down at the rug.

  “Give him a break,” Owen said and winked.

  Luke walked out of the room. Owen grinned now and said, “I’ll get all the details, tell you about it later, okay?”

  Owen picked up his gear and Kate put her arm around him and walked him to the door. Luke was outside in the dark with Leon. Luke threw a stick and Leon charged after it and brought it back, looking up at Luke, ready to go again.

  Owen bent down and kissed Kate. She held his big stubbly face in her hands and said, “Be careful.”

  “What’re you worried about?”

  “Keep an eye on Luke, will you?”

  “You don’t do this,” Owen said. “What’s the matter?”

  Kate didn’t explain it, the feeling she had, because she couldn’t.

  Owen opened the door and said, “Leon, get in here.”

  The dog came running, banged into Owen, hit the rug, a Persian, slid across it, regained his balance and moved toward Kate, slobbering and pressing himself against her.

  Owen had been hunting since he was a kid, loved the woods and streams and wanted to pass the thrill on to Luke. For Owen, there was nothing like it, getting away from the shop, the track, the bullshit. He also loved it because it was the only place on earth you didn’t hear cell phones.

  Kate didn’t care much for hunting, but she didn’t impose her point of view too strenuously. What bothered her were all the bonehead stories about hunters getting hurt or killed. She’d just read one in the Traverse City Record Eagle about a man who was shot while he was going number two. The article said he answered a call to nature and was nearly done with his business, wiping himself with a white Kleenex, when another member of his hunting party shot the man in his backside, thinking he was a whitetail deer.

  “That didn’t really happen,” Owen said.

  “Want to bet?” Kate said. “I’ve got the article right here.”

  Another story told about a hunter who was gored by a deer and had to go to the hospital. The man had no hard feelings, though, and said he’d be ready with a load of double aught next time him and the deer’s paths crossed.

  Kate said, “If that isn’t proof of the stupidity of hunting, nothing is.”

  Owen said, “Most hunting accidents-fifty percent-involve falling out of a tree stand, either climbing up or down.” He looked at her and grinned.

  Kate shook her head. “Oh my God.” Leon moved in close and bumped her. “Listen, if you guys aren’t home by dinner, I’m going to Big Buck Night at the casino.”

  Owen said, “What’s that all about?”

  “Roman Brady, a soap star from Days of Our Lives, is going to be there.”

  “He’s the big-buck stud, huh?”

  Kate said, “Ever seen him?”

  “Not that I recall.”

  “You’re not missing a whole lot,” Kate said, “but the ladies love him because he’s on TV.”

  Owen said, “So you’re not going?”

  “I’m just warning you,” Kate said. “That’s what hunting widows do-get their picture taken with Roman and play blackjack.”

  She stood at the window, listening to Leon’s wet irregular breathing, watching Owen and Luke cross the yard, two contrasting shapes in the dim light of a half moon-like Lenny and George in Of Mice and Men, a book Kate had just read again. They moved toward the tree line, disappearing into the thick foliage like they’d entered another dimension.

  That was the last time she saw Owen alive.

  FIVE

  Luke kept rewinding the scene in his head. Kept seeing himself wigging, hands shaking, trying to draw the bow, but no strength to do it. He couldn’t think of any experience in his life that was like it. It was more than that he’d freaked out, it consumed him. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. Had no strength to pull the bowstring. His dad had described the symptoms, but Luke didn’t believe it would ever happen to him. But it did, and in his soul, he knew if he hadn’t lost his nerve trying to shoot the first buck, his dad would still be alive.

  The whole thing was a blur after that, like a video in fast motion. Instead of going back to the lodge to get his mother, he ran toward farm buildings he’d seen from high ground in the woods. The farmer, a big man in a red flannel coat and a cap that said CAT DIESEL on the front, called EMS.

  His mom arrived at the hospital and he felt worse than he ever had in his life. She hugged him, but he couldn’t look at her. Didn’t know what to do or say and that’s the way it had been since he walked out the back door of the lodge with his dad to go hunting.

  Owen McCall died on the operating
table. The broadhead had severed an artery before piercing his lung. He’d lost too much blood. The surgeon telling Luke he didn’t think they could’ve saved his dad even if they’d beamed him into the operating theater right after the accident. Luke wondering if the doctor was talking like a Trekkie to impress him.

  He had to meet with a sheriff ’s deputy, too. Luke, his mom and the deputy, whom his mother seemed to know, met in the surgical waiting room. The deputy took his Smokey the Bear hat off and placed it on the end table next to him. He had a sweat crease where the hat gripped his head.

  Luke told them what happened in straightforward sequence, leaving out the part about getting buck fever. What difference did it make now? The deputy wrote everything he said on a notepad in a leather case. He could feel his mom’s eyes locked on him during the interview, boring into him like lasers. He never looked at her the whole time. When he finished, the deputy, whose name was Bill Wink, closed the notebook that had an embossed western sheriff ’s badge on the front and fixed his gaze on Luke’s mom.

  “I’ve been hunting most of my life and I’ve never heard of anything like it.”

  “What’re you saying?” his mom said.

  “Mrs. McCall, I’m saying it was a bizarre accident.” Now he looked at Luke and said, “I know you’re hurting, and I feel for you, son.”

  Luke watched him put his hat back on, finding just the right position, the brim an inch or so above his eyes, the hat the same dark brown color as his shirt. The pants were light brown and had a dark brown stripe that ran down the legs. Luke couldn’t imagine wearing a uniform like that, but Bill Wink looked good in it, with his Marine haircut and muscular arms and his black leather gun belt, the handle of an automatic, a Glock-it looked like-ready to draw.

  Out in the hall, Luke heard Deputy Sheriff Wink talking to his mother in hushed tones.