Ring Game by Pete Hautman Read Free Book Online Page B

haven’t even seen Axel since last summer, at the fair.”
    Sam ignited a wooden match by flicking it with his thumbnail, sucked the flame onto the tip of his cigarette. “According to Ax, that’s when you put in the bone.”
    Crow stood and faced his father. He had known him for nearly two decades, ever since Sam had reentered his life at his high school graduation, claiming to be his old man. Even now Crow had a hard time imagining his mother taking on this wizened old coot’s seed, though she had confirmed, somewhat reluctantly, the truth of Sam’s claim to parentage. Still, at times, he doubted it. Other times, he felt as if he was looking into a time-warped mirror, seeing himself in another thirty or forty years—three inches shorter, features obscured by massive wrinkling, and not giving a shit about much of anything. Whatever the facts surrounding Crow’s ancestry, the two had become friends.
    Crow looked back down through the trees. Axel had finished filleting the walleyes and was sitting motionless at the end of the dock, staring across the water at the last shards of sunlight. For a few seconds, Crow felt himself wrapped in silence. No sound, no movement, no sensation. Then a breeze crossed his neck and the hubcaps began to bong mournfully, and a twisting cloud of blue tobacco smoke floated into view.
    Crow said, “You want to tell me what the hell’s going on here, Sam?”
    Sam grinned through the veil of smoke, his weathered face crinkling in a hundred places. “Son, one thing you got to learn about Ax, you can’t take him too serious. He’s spent half his life mad at me, and we’re still fishing outta the same boat.”
    “So what am I supposed to have done?” Crow stepped off the porch and started pacing, scuffing pine needles with the toes of his canvas shoes, kicking at pine cones. One of them hit Festus, causing the hound to leap to his feet and bay.
    “Easy there,” Sam said. The hound shook its head, recognized Crow, and sank back down. Sam continued. “You didn’t do nothin,’ son. Ax ain’t been the same since this wedding thing.”
    “Wedding thing? What wedding thing?”
    “It weren’t your fault, son, no matter what that old cocker thinks. It’s that little gal Carmen that’s got his pecker in a twist.”
    Crow stopped. “I should have known this had to do with Carmen. What kind of mess has she made this time?”
    “She got herself knocked up and engaged is what.”
    “And Axel blames me? I didn’t knock her up, that’s for damn sure. She’s not my type.”
    “Well, you’re the one introduced her to the one that done it, son.”
    “I did?” Crow furrowed his brow, thinking back. He shook his head. “I don’t remember fixing up Carmen with anybody. I wouldn’t do that to anyone.”
    “That a fact? What about a fella named Holiday Hilton?”
    “Holiday … wait a second. Not Hyatt Hilton.”
    “That’s what I said.”
    “Carmen Roman and Hyatt Hilton?”
    Sam nodded. “You got ’er.”
    Crow climbed back onto the porch and sank into a chair, wearing a stunned expression. After a minute had passed he said, “I suppose it’s like atoms.”
    Sam said, “Say what?”
    “Atoms. The odds of any two of them colliding are trillions to one. But they’re running into each other all the time.”
    Sam’s lips parted slightly. He gave his head a quick snap, tossing off his son’s words. “Yeah, well, whatever. Anyways, that’s why Ax is acting like a jerkball. He says you’re the one put those two together.”
    “I was there when they met, but I didn’t introduce them.”
    “That don’t matter to Ax,” Sam said. “You was within a country mile of the deed, Ax is gonna put it on ya.”
    Crow nodded slowly as a memory returned.
    The way it happened, he recalled, he’d been minding his own business, just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, the same way he always got himself in trouble. He and Debrowski had decided to visit the Minnesota State