The Quiet Game

I think of my father and his trouble, of Ray Presley and the gun I hope to have in my possession by tomorrow. "I don't know yet."

His eyes flash with dark knowledge. "You know you lying. Get out of my fucking car."

Before I can close the door, the cruiser screeches off into the night.

My father is waiting in the kitchen with a bowl of melted ice cream in front of him, smoking the last of a cigar in his boxer shorts and a tank T-shirt. Beside the ice cream lies the pistol he wore to the party, a 9mm Beretta.

"Everything okay?" I ask.

"Are you sure you want to try to buy that gun from Ray? I'd rather throw myself on the mercy of the court than get you involved in this."

I shake my head. "It's the only way. You just call Presley in the morning and set up the meeting."

"You'll have to go to his trailer. He lives out toward Church Hill, past the Indian mound. It won't be pretty. He's a bitter son of a bitch."

"You say he gets around okay?"

"Yeah. The home-health people see him a good bit. And I hear he's got a private nurse now. I've made a couple of house calls to give him shots for pain. Trailer calls, I should say."

"Fifteen-mile house calls for Ray Presley?"

"I've treated the man for thirty years, Penn. He doesn't call unless he's hurting bad. And if Ray says it's bad, it's bad."

This is vintage Tom Cage, making house calls on a man who is blackmailing him, not out of fear but because he feels he should.

"Prostate cancer was about the worst thing for Ray to get," he reflects. "He's got the biggest dick I ever saw on a white man, and he likes to brag about it. I think the surgery probably made him impotent. He says no, but he's twice as surly as he ever was. More dangerous, if anything."

"Worrying won't help. Come on. We both need some sleep."

He stubs out his cigar, then stands looking at me, his eyes unreadable. I long to tell him what Ike Ransom said about Leo Marston, but this isn't the time. Get the gun first. Without quite meaning to, I step forward and put my arms around him. The embrace surprises him, and he stiffens. Age has changed the shape of him, this body that once lifted me as though I weighed nothing.

"Dad, tomorrow you're going to find out what being born again really means."

He pulls back and looks me in the eye. "I'll let you go see Ray. But by God, you're going armed." He picks up the Beretta. "And if he gets squirrelly, you shoot first and ask questions after. Okay?"

"Okay."

My mother is curled up in bed beside the smaller lump of Annie in my old room. My old baseball trophies gleam in the dark on the shelves above them, like little watchmen. I creep in and touch Mom on the shoulder, and she stirs in the shadows.

"Tom?"

"It's Penn, Mom. Go on to bed. I'll sleep with her."

She rubs her eyes. "All right, honey."

I reach out and stroke Annie's hair. Mom is already asleep again. I gently push her leg with my knee. "Mom?"

She opens her eyes again and smiles blankly, then gets up and sleepwalks toward the hall.

I quickly brush my teeth, strip to my shorts, and climb into bed beside Annie, who is already stirring. In seconds her hand finds my shoulder, reestablishing her early-warning system.

As I lie in the dark, her shallow breathing troubles rather than soothes my heart. Sleeping with Annie always brings memories of Sarah. After the funeral I had to move Annie's bed into my room because she couldn't fall asleep alone, and still she wound up in my bed most nights. The pulse of her life so near always stirs my dreams. I dream of Sarah before the diagnosis, before fear entered our lives and took away the most precious gift, which is not hope but youth. Immortality. The sense of unlimited possibility. It's an illusion, of course, the most precious illusion of life.