He begins loosening the top lag bolts, regretting now that he made them so tight, then regretting his regret. That’s a death spiral if there ever was one. Just keep your mind on your job, he thinks. Both jobs: the one in front of him, and his larger responsibility to the family. But there’s so much he hasn’t done, and now there’s so little time. He always thought he’d go back to Alton. He’d walk into the hotel lobby and she’d be sitting at the bar like the first time he saw her, reading a magazine, legs crossed, one high-heeled shoe dangling from her foot, jiggling like bait on a line. She’d look up at him and smile, and say, “About time you got here.”
He yanks the bolt from the wood with a squeal. Mad at himself. He knows the difference between fantasy and memory. He knows this will never happen. September 4 is coming, and he’s never going to see his true love again.
Buddy is twenty-three years old when he tells Frankie that they need to visit a riverboat.
“You fucker,” Frankie says.
“What?” He didn’t foresee this reaction.
“You don’t talk to me forever, giving me the silent treatment, and the first thing you tell me is you want to go on a fucking boat?”
“It’s not just a boat,” Buddy says. “It’s a casino.”
This gets Frankie’s attention. “Where?”
“It’s opening in six months. On the Mississippi.”
Frankie tilts his head. His arms are crossed, because it’s cold in the garage. And maybe they stay crossed because he’s suspicious. “What did you see, Buddy?”
Buddy tells him about the Alton Belle, the first riverboat casino allowed in Illinois. Full of slot machines and table games, just like in Las Vegas.
“Table games?” Frankie says.
“Roulette,” Buddy says.
The word hangs in the air. Finally Frankie shakes his head, says, “No. No! You know I can’t do that shit anymore.” When Frankie gets nervous, nothing works. It’s only when he forgets himself that he remembers who he is.
“I saw chips,” Buddy says.
“Chips?”
“A pile of chips.”
“In front of me?”
“Stacks,” Buddy says.
Now Frankie’s pacing, though there’s not much space to move with all the junk and machinery: a snowblower (defunct) and lawn mower; a pile of lumber for a never-assembled shed; a band saw; a chest freezer; sleds and bikes and garbage cans and Mom’s old gardening supplies. Frankie’s come over because Buddy can’t drive to Frankie’s house (or anywhere). And they’re out in the garage because Buddy didn’t want Dad to overhear them.
Even though it’s cold in here, Frankie’s sweating just thinking about it. He’s broke, his business is failing, and lately cash has been evaporating at his touch. “When did you start seeing stuff again? I thought that was gone.”
Buddy shrugs.
“Jesus Christ,” Frankie says. He sits down on a cooler. Stands up again. Makes Buddy go through everything he saw.
Buddy fills in details, getting quickly back to that stack of chips. “They think it’s a lucky streak,” he says. “But it’s you.”
“Me,” Frankie says.
“All you.”
“Fuck,” Frankie says. Pacing again. “I don’t think I can do this. I’m rusty, man. Way out of practice.”
“So practice. We leave in six months.”
“I’m going to need a lot more information,” Frankie says. “Everything you’ve got.”
“Don’t worry,” Buddy says. “I’m coming with you.”
“You’re leaving the house,” Frankie says skeptically. “To go to a casino full of people.”
“I need to be in Alton,” Buddy says, and that’s the truth. For that’s where he will meet his true love.
Teddy is watching with an exasperated expression as Buddy sweeps up the sawdust. “Jesus Christ, you making a bomb shelter?” One of the windows is in place, attached to a heavy-duty hinge. Soon he’ll install a lever that will allow him to flip the steel shades up and out of the way.
“Can you just tell me why?” Teddy asks.
Buddy shrugs.
“No, God damn it. You do not get to just look at me with that dumb look. What the hell are you doing?”
Buddy makes a sound deep in his throat, a smothered moan.
“I can’t take it, Buddy. I can, not, take it. This house used to be fit for human beings.” Teddy starts listing the damage, the rooms his son has torn apart and left unfinished. And what about the huge hole in the backyard! What the hell was that for?
There’s nothing to do but wait for his father to tire. They both know how this will end: Teddy will storm out, and Buddy will go back to work. It’s a mystery why Dad hasn’t put a stop to the project. In all his memories, there’s nothing to tell him why his father hasn’t thrown him out of the house or threatened him with violence.
“Okay, how about this,” Teddy says. “Just tell me when it’s going to end. Can you do that? Look at me, Buddy. Look at me. When are you going to stop?”
Buddy’s lungs cramp in his chest. He opens his mouth to speak and quickly closes it. How can he explain?
After ten seconds of painful silence, Teddy growls and leaves in the usual way.
Buddy sits on the closed toilet, pondering. He hates to make anyone angry, even if it’s for their own good. For a couple of years, before Mom died, Buddy had given his father every Cubs box score he could remember. Once he wrote, in crayon, all the digits to a future Illinois lottery ticket, though he wrote a 6 instead of a 9 and his father won nothing. (Or perhaps, he realized later, Buddy remembered the way he’d written the numbers in the future, and so the memory was an accurate re-creation of his mistake. These things were so difficult to untangle.)
Somehow Mom found out about the lottery. She got so mad that his father stopped asking him for predictions. Young Buddy was mystified by the ban, especially because he was still allowed to work the Wonder Wheel onstage. But it wasn’t until The Mike Douglas Show that he understood how dangerous the future could be.
Buddy is five years old and Mom is alive. There she is, so tall, holding his hand, looking down at him with blue eyes. Her silver dress sparkles in the stage lights like magic. “We’re on TV, Buddy,” she says. But it doesn’t seem like TV at all. It’s just like being onstage at all the theaters they’ve been performing at. There’s even an audience. There shouldn’t be an audience for TV, should there?
Mom says, “When Mr. Douglas comes over, you can do your spinner trick.” The Wonder Wheel has spokes that make a clackety sound, and on each wedge of the wheel is a different picture: duck, clown, fire truck. People applaud every time it stops on the picture he’s predicted, and that’s almost every time. His favorite part is starting the wheel spinning, not saying where it will land.
He’s getting ready to spin the wheel when a memory hits him like a slap to his head. He remembers his sister holding his hand while they stand at the edge of a grave, looking at a coffin. Their mother’s coffin. Suddenly the gleaming box drops into the hole, too fast, and people shout. There in the TV studio, Buddy cries out with them, a wordless shout of fear.
Mom says, “Buddy! Buddy!” She crouches down, and tells him not to be scared. But of course he’s scared, because all the memories are coming now, in a rolling wave: Astounding Archibald walking out onstage, calling them fakes. But Mom isn’t there to perform the showstopper trick, and because of that she ends up in a coffin.
Mom, alive, says, “Can you put away your tears?”
He can’t, because the memories are still coming, and now he’s remembering the night, months from now, when Mom falls in the kitchen and hurts her head. He remembers the medal she hangs around his neck. And he remembers dressing up to go see her in the hospital, and then the coffin falling, and Irene squeezing his hand.
The memories come that fast, bam bam bam, from Astounding Archibald’s dramatic entrance to the casket disappearing into the dark. If one thing happens they all happen.
Five-year-old Buddy doesn’t know how to make his mother’s death not be true. What can he do at this size, at this age? He has memories of being big, tall enough to look down on Frankie, to loom over his father, and he wants to be that huge man right now. He could stop crying, and the future could be different.
“Jesus Christ,” Teddy hisses. They’re in commercial. Dad doesn’t know it, but Astounding Archibald is about to walk onstage, and Mom is going to die. Buddy collapses onto the floor, and the man wearing a headset steps back in surprise. “Get him out of here,” Dad says.
Buddy’s worked himself into a blubbery, boneless state. He can only think of the hole in the ground, swallowing his mother. She carries Buddy out on her hip, and he doesn’t release her even after they reach the greenroom. He’s still crying, unable to stop.
He hasn’t learned to invent stories yet. If he were older, if he were smarter, he could find some clever way to explain the coffin and keep his mother alive. But he’s too afraid, and his body is not in his control. He’s failed.