Clean Slate

Chapter 28

One beauty of shuffleboard, Mac thought, was the 52-foot distance between the sets of players. This was close enough to allow a public conversation among all four players, yet far enough apart to permit private conversation between people at each end. Still, there was not much conversation for the first half hour or so. Mac, rusty and fighting frustration, was trying to get his touch back. Julie, always a decent player, kept them in the running. But Paul and Suzanne – who had a surprisingly deft touch with the cue – did much better. As the game drew to a close, Mac and Suzanne prepared to play what would most assuredly be the last round, with Mac's team standing at 68, to Suzanne's team's 74 – just one point shy of victory.

"You guys best give up now," said Paul, always going for the short-cut.

"The score isn't final till after the full round is played," Mac answered.

"Thanks, Rule Boy," Paul grunted.

Suzanne lined up her yellow disks for the final round. "This whole shuffleboard thing really freaked me out," she chattered, obviously basking already in her almost certain victory, "when I first came into the family." Stooping slightly, she lined up her cue and disk, and fired with an easy sliding motion. The disk hissed down the court straight and true and came to rest squarely on the 7-point space. Turning to Mac, she lowered her voice, narrow-eyed: "So you're buying the farm, I hear."

From down at his end, Paul, tall and gaunt in his wife-beater tee shirt and Civil War mustache, observed, "Probably thought it was an old-fart game, huh?"

Mac answered Suzanne, also too low for the others to hear: "Yes, I am."

"More like a full body contact sport," Julie, beside her brother at the opposite end, noted. Next in line behind Mac, she was very different from him physically: slight and dark like their mother, with a bit of height to her. She wore jean shorts, flip flops, and a pretty blue shirt, and her long dark gray-streaked hair was wound up into a bun behind her head.

Conscious as always of Suzanne's silent fuming, Mac looked at his sister. "You're right, Julie. Smash-mouth shuffleboard is what we play around here."

Suzanne whispered tartly to Mac: "Nice of you to tell me."

Mac lined up his black disk with the cue, and shot. He knew right away it was bad. Off line and underpowered, it just barely nicked Suzanne's disk, and came to rest on a line, scoring zero. Glancing at Suzanne, he murmured: "You said you had no interest. You call it a shit-hole."

"Nice try, Mac!" Julie called from the other end. "Hey, you guys remember that Thanksgiving?"

Suzanne, sliding her yellow disk into position, shot Mac a look, voice toneless but intent. "We're still married. Anything you buy is half mine." She beamed a smile toward her sister-in-law. "Don't even bring that up!"

Mac said quietly, "Not sure about that." Under their old system, he'd have apologized. But he did not.

Paul, ever defensive, said, "That idiot had it coming, and you guys know it!"

Watching Suzanne scowl as she prepared her shot, Mac added, "I'll run off another copy of the paperwork, get it to you."

"Just bring it to the house," she answered. Drawing back, she fired, obviously going for the 10. "I'll give it to my lawyer." Her disk overshot the 10 by a little and stopped on the center line; no score.

"Too bad, Suzanne," Julie said dutifully, and turned to her brother. "You're lucky you didn't get sued, Paulie."

Mac murmured, "I can't go to the house, Suze." He looked at his sibs at the other end. "Dad and Mom coulda gotten sued, too," Mac said. "It's their property."

Suzanne rolled her eyes. "Waaah, waah, waah," she whispered. "You know something, there comes a time to let go of things. We've got lives to get on with." Facing her in-laws, she commented, "I never once thought I'd ever see a fist fight around here, of all places."

"What fist fight?" Paul countered smugly. "One punch, over and out."

Mac said to Suzanne, out of the corner of his mouth, "From what you said, ‘getting-on' is something you've done plenty of." More loudly, he added, "Where have you ever seen a fist fight, Suze?" Lined up and ready, he shot, going also for the 10. And, like Suzanne, he overshot, driving her second disk away with a thock, leaving his scoreless on the line.

His wife hissed low: "You have no right to tell me how long to grieve!" Then, for public consumption, and archly: "You'd be surprised what I've seen. I've been around. I'm no nun."

"The idiot was fudging scores!" Paul whined. "He was doing it the whole game. I had to call him down on it."

Suzanne was giving Mac her patented flintly glare. At the top end of whisper she said, "Hey. Just so you know, I didn't break it off completely with my friend. Just put it on hold. I'm not blowing a chance like him while you sit on the fence."

"Call him down, Paulie," Mac answered his brother. "Not knock him down." He lowered his voice. "I'm not sitting on the fence, Suzanne. I'm trying to resolve that question I asked you."

"Well," Paul grumbled down there, "I paid for it plenty."

"Still seven for you guys," Julie observed. "Getting nervous, Mac."

"Not to worry, babe. We got 'em where we want 'em."

Lining up her third shot with great concentration and purpose, Suzanne asked Mac, "Just how are you going about that?" She shot, and this one, Mac knew, had winner written all over it. Sure enough, it came to a stop in the 8-point spot on the left. Admiring it, Suzanne beamed: "We got it, partner. We're in."

"Huzzah, Suzanne!" Paul boomed.

"How long did you wear that cast, Paulie?" Julie asked. "Six weeks?"

As Suzanne faced him, still beaming, Mac said softly: "I hired a detective."

"Eleven weeks," Paul said. "They had to re-break and re-set the hand bone."

Suzanne stared, blinked, calculations whirring: "You can't be serious," she said, almost too low to hear. "Well, you're wasting your money. Our money." In utter disbelief she turned away from him, fussing with her blond hair. "Hey y'all," she asked her in-laws, "who was that guy Paulie hit, anyway?"

"Friend of Tina's?" Mac answered, and moved closer to Suzanne, speaking low into her damp blond hair. "I hope you're right, Suzanne. I honest to God do."

"What was his name," Paul chimed in. "Had purple hair."

Suzanne leaned down at Mac as he prepared his third shot, and hissed, "You know something, you're a real asshole for not calling me or asking me out. You make me feel like a bone you buried and forgot about."

"Tatts on both arms," Mac remembered, lining up. He knew what his problem was. He was too tight. He remembered Coach Cain, who ran the high school team on which Mac's job, as backup center, was to block as much daylight as possible. Coach's exhortation was always: Stay loose. Don't think.

Repeating that to himself, he added for Suzanne's ears, "Haven't forgotten. Not for a minute." And he hadn't. And today, this close to her, he felt something new, a faint physical stirring. It startled him. I'm hot for her? he wondered. My own wife? Go figure.

Gathering his thoughts as best he could, he fired, and once again knew from the instant the disk left his cue that he'd blown it. Aiming for Suzanne's 8-pointer, he missed it completely and ended up straddling a line again: zero points.

"Nice try, bro," Julie called. "We'll get 'em."

"Didn't he always wear sandals, the guy Paulie hit?" Suzanne asked. Sweeping her fourth and final disk over to position, she answered her husband: "You know what we need to do, we need to go ahead and start dating again. Every Friday night. I'll clear my calendar."

"Uhh," Mac hesitated, "how about we start with lunch."

"Yeah yeah," Julie said. "Slacker-Boy, Mom called him."

Voices sounded from the direction of the house, and just then several family members strolled around the edge of the hedge into view. Leading the way as always was Marie McGladrey, weathered and slight in dark shorts, sandals, and a flimsy white top. Nick, Todd and his wife followed, along with Ross and Caryn.

Suzanne: "Lunch? Sure. When?" She raised her voice. "Mac's right, Julie. He was a friend of Tina's."

"My goodness," Marie crowed, eyeing the chalk scoreboard. She was smoking a cigarette, which was no surprise to Mac. No effort to quit had worked; she'd even tried hypnosis once, and on her way home from the session smoked five. "You're getting your little fanny beat, Mac. Imagine that."

"He's lulling them into a false sense of security," Nick told his wife. "It's an old McGladrey Confederate trick."

"Only true Confederates," Paul said, "are at this end of the court."

"‘The Union forever,'" Julie sang, "‘hurrah, boys, hurrah.'"

Smiling dutifully, Suzanne bent, focused, aimed, and shot. It was a gem, the yellow disk gliding straight, tapering off speed right on time, coming to rest smack in the middle of the 10 point triangle.

"Byoo tee full!" Paul crowed. "We got it made! That's 25 for us and zero for you!"

"You're toast, my boy," Marie said. "Boom! Done!"

Aware of Suzanne's triumphant glance – she was as competitive as any blood McGladrey – Mac said, "Reckon there's not much point in playing my last one, but I think I will anyway." He added quietly to Suzanne, throwing a date out as far as he thought reasonable: "Thursday."

"That guy Paulie hit that time, Mother?" Julie asked. "He was a Tina drag-in, wasn't he?"

Whatever Marie said was canceled out by Suzanne's whisper to Mac: "L'Auberge?"

"A Tina relic? Wow," Paul said, feeling of his hand like it was still sore. "That long ago, huh?"

Mac, lining up his final disk, thought it aggressive of Suzanne to select L'Auberge, which had been "their" place. Stay loose. But it was, he had to admit, convenient to both their jobs. Don't think. "Sure. L'Auberge. Noon."

In the utter silence that fell – even the distant traffic sounds from Route 33 seemed to fade – Mac fired. He didn't really have a plan. All he hoped to do was reduce the size of the defeat. His black disk flew with more power than he'd intended, and smacked Suzanne's 10-pointer good and hard, rocketing it away. But his missile had not finished its work. In rapid succession it caromed into Suzanne's 8-pointer, and then her 7-pointer, sending the latter toward the 10-off zone before coming to rest in the 7-point area.

After a moment's shocked silence, the clan hurried over, hovering in a circle around the scoring area. Mac strolled after them. "Holy shit, Mac," came Julie's voice amid the huddle. Suzanne's 10-pointer was history. Her plus-7yips had become a minus-10. What had been her 8-pointer was in the 7 zone now, closely crowding the line. Mac's disk was in the opposite 7 zone, also perilously close to the line.

"I think we're still in," Suzanne said nervously.

"Yeah, yeah, we still got it," Paul said.

"Not so fast," Julie countered. "Dad? We need a ruling. You'd best take a look."

"No-no-no," Paul countered shrilly. "It's a slam dunk. We've got the seven, plus that eight there. Mac's is touching the line; no score. We win 80-68."

"Math-challenged as always," Ross observed. "No wonder people wince at your drywall quotes."

"I think Paul's right," Marie said.

Nick McGladrey, stocky and imperturbable in his khaki pants and white open-necked dress shirt, positioned himself first over Suzanne's eight, studied it intently, then moved over Mac's seven and did likewise. Straightening, he looked around at his family encircling him. "The yellow is out," he declared. "The black is in."

Chatter, commotion, debate broke out. Over it Julie, scribbling on the chalk scoreboard, announced: "Which gives you guys seven plus minus-10, or minus-3 for the round. We've got plus seven. Final score 75 for Mac and me, and for Paul and Suzanne 71."

"Oh man!" Paul moaned. "That's unbelievable!"

"Victory from the jaws of defeat," Marie said, shocking Mac with an abrupt nod of approval.

"Better to be lucky than good, huh Mackie?" Ross asked, clapping Mac on the back.

"Got that right, bro," Mac answered, watching his wife stomp away toward the house. "Nice game, guys. Thanks."

---

Earl Bucaro sat across the cluttered desk from Joe Pipestone, hating this whole thing.

He disliked starting his Monday by coming over here to Fannie Annie, hat in hand, so to speak, to entreat others, as it were, for information. In Earl Bucaro's world, entreating was for losers, never him.

And he disliked the risk of exposure he was running. If there was ever a time to lie low and let events blow on by, this was it. All weekend, he had struggled with this, and thought he had convinced himself, through brute logic and calculation, to stay well clear. And yet here he was.

But most of all, Earl disliked Joe Pipestone. Not just Joe himself – though Earl was by no stretch of the imagination a fan of any Indian – native American – whatever the fuck. What Earl loathed was what Joe represented. Was a time, Earl reflected, when the Department of Probation and Parole was staffed with men. White men. Most were former coppers retired on disability, or former corrections officers mustered out with the jail house yips. Most were narrow-eyed thin-lipped hard-bitten old coots, Earl remembered, in suits and ties and salt-and-pepper brush-cuts. To them, probation and parole was an extension of the jail house, not this touchy-feely I'm okay you're okay romper room of fools giving each other hand jobs, the better to wallow in each other's pain. Staffed not by men, but with girls, too, kids, even. And fringe people like Joe Pipestone, rotund, cherubic, beaming, and dark, dressed not for business but in a white shirt with pearl buttons, bolo tie with beads, hair braided with leather thongs and still more beads down his broad back, and a bright yellow ball cap with some kind of felt marker signature across the bill.

At least, Earl observed grudgingly, Pipestone was brisk. He clickered keys on his computer terminal, all the while chattering. "My head count is 51 right now. Being not Mac McGladrey of the awesome powers of memory, I tend only to remember the super-good folks, and the real pains in the ass, nobody in between. . .oh yeah. Yup. She's mine, all right." Pipestone's dark eyes flickered to Earl. "And yours, too, over in the work program. Navacarrada, Clarisa. What about her?"