Wins and Losses: Stories

By Peter Makuck

In Makuck’s fourth collection of short stories he once again explores the fertile territory of small, rural American towns. With tenderness and clarity, he excavates the mundane surface of everyday lives to reveal compassionate characters who are unexpectedly vulnerable. The stories in Wins and Losses are set in a car, a courtroom, a university English department, a sports bar, a jetliner, a laundromat. Characters struggle with regret, desire, expectations, and a need to win when loss is inevitable. A high school student whose father was killed in a car crash and who can speak openly only to his girlfriend delivers prescriptions for a pharmacy and learns much about people and values in the course of his deliveries. A lawyer recalls a dubious family friend, an undercover cop, who pressured him as a young boy toward guns and football. A recent widow finds a cardboard box on her front porch only to discover it contains the body of her dog. A young woman takes her mother to a cardiologist and, while in the waiting room, gets into an argument with a wealthy political conservative at great cost to both of them. In the tradition of Cheever and Updike, Makuck's stories give us characters struggling with questions of what really matters.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Syracuse University Press
• Release date: Sep 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9780815653912

Book preview

Gamesmanship

THE BASKETBALL COURT in the athletic club was empty. My jump shot banged off the rim. Waiting for the rest of the guys to arrive for a full-court game, I was playing a little one-on-one with Bunk. You had to win by two. I finally lost 13–15. Toweling off, I told Bunk I needed some advice about critters.

What kind of critters?

I described how two nights ago Meg and I were in bed, almost asleep, when suddenly on the ceiling we heard something like rain patter, but isolated, moving from place to place. Meg bolted upright. My God, what’s that? At first I thought birds had come through the louvered vents and gotten trapped in the attic. But the skittering was too loud for birds. I started to think squirrels. Our yard is full of them. I wasn’t in the mood to go upstairs, open the crawl-space door, and shine a flashlight around. What if they got out and into the house? Then the pattering stopped. We went back to bed. I told Bunk that in the morning I found droppings.

Mmmm. He shook his head from side to side: Was it bird shit? Except for faint bruise-like circles around his eyes and a few facial creases, Bunk looked younger than he was, a tumble of blond hair over his ears, a tiny diamond stud in the wing of his nose. He owned an exotic pet store and knew a lot about animals.

No, it wasn’t bird shit, I said.

What kind then?

You’re the expert on shit, you tell me.

Okay, what did it taste like?

We started laughing. It’s bigger than what a mouse would leave, I said. I’m thinking about phoning Rid-A-Pest or Critter-Gitters.

Don’t do that, Bunk said. I know a guy. He works for himself. He’ll be a lot cheaper. You got problems with raccoons, hornets, snakes, rats, bats—he’s your man. Everyone calls him Trapper. I’ll hook you up with him. How about tomorrow after work at Hammy’s?

Great.

Hammy’s Pub has atmosphere and good draft beer. If you live in your hometown, you need a secluded place like this to escape, not be seen by certain people. The bar was fairly quiet until Mayor Dray woke up. "Hey, for-get about it! he said with a deep growl. We call him Mayor because our real town mayor sometimes drops in and one winter night they got into a fiery argument. A retired newspaperman, Dray is capable of color and brilliant conversation if you catch him early enough. With winesap cheeks and springy hair, he has a huge voice and, like most alcoholics, argues with great authority about everything. After the strain of holding forth, he’ll sometimes drop his head on the bar and fall asleep. When he wakes up, he’ll look around, uncertain for a minute where he is, then bray his patented For-get about it!"

I looked at my watch. Where the hell was Bunk? The place was dim and felt like an aquarium, silhouettes moving about, disappearing and reappearing from the back room where a poker game was always in session. A high-definition TV hung over the end of the bar. Bald, bantering, and refilling glasses, Hammy moved back and forth with a polio limp, always ready with some kind of comedy. He pointed to my empty mug and asked if I wanted a little more joy in my life, so I had another beer, watched the sports news, then shoved off.

Meg was working late. I collected mail from the box at the end of our drive, gave it a glance—bills, ads, solicitations—and tossed it on the kitchen table. Our black cat, Bernadette, rubbed against my legs and meowed until I opened a can of Friskies and refilled her dish. The red light on our answering machine was blinking with a message from Bunk. He was sorry about Hammy’s. He didn’t realize it but Trapper is a teetotaler and didn’t want to be seen going into a bar. Trapper would come by the house in the next day or so. Or so. Wonderfully vague. Standard Bunk.

I was up to my neck in the athletic club’s hot tub. The pool area was noisy with kids playing Marco Polo. I wasn’t in the best of moods. Bunk was having some fun at my expense. You’re lucky Whitmer didn’t cuff you, he said, take you downtown and book you for assaulting an officer.

Playing right along, Chet said, Bunk’s right, man. You were lucky, very lucky. Chet was also one of the after-work hoop guys—a witty, red-bearded Irishman.

"Hey, guys, it was Officer Whitmer who assaulted me, I said. I get the lead pass, I’m going in for a layup, and the fucker runs me into the goddamn wall!"

The mat, Bunk said.

What are you talking about?

There’s a mat covering the wall, said Chet.

So that makes it okay?

Hey, it was game point, said Bunk.

How silly of me! I said. Break somebody’s neck? Win at any cost?

Next time I snagged a rebound, Whitmer was all over me. I let the elbows fly and caught him in the chops. We went at it. The guys jumped in and pulled us apart.

A lovely young blonde rolled her hips past the hot tub.

Bunk dangled his tongue and began panting like a dog.

Chet said, Jesus, you’re past forty. When the fuck are you going to grow up?

Bunk said, Why grow up? There’s no future in it.

Chet looked at me and laughed. Hey, hard to argue with that.

Then they swerved into speculation about the NBA finals. I needed to forget basketball, think about something else. When I walked into the club that afternoon, I saw Bev, an assistant manager, talking to a member at the front desk, handing him towels. Right away I noticed she was wearing a flowered silk kerchief to cover her head. When she handed me towels, I said, Bev, say it isn’t so.

Her clear blue eyes were wet. Chemo, she said. I’ve lost most of my hair.

God. I’m so sorry. I dated her for a while in high school, about five years before she married Whitmer, then divorced him after two children. She was still girlish in a way, as likeable as ever.

She told me she had had surgery, but not all of the cancer had been removed from her breast. I told her my neighbor went through the same thing and now had a clean bill of health. It wasn’t true, but I needed to say something positive. I walked behind the counter and gave her a hug. She wiped her eyes with a tissue. Sometimes I get real tired, she said, but I want to keep working, not give in to this thing.

In our bathroom, I evaluated myself before the mirror, reluctantly looked at the purplish red bruise over my cheekbone. No swelling, just the bruise. I thought of using Meg’s makeup to hide it. When the guys pulled us apart, Whitmer’s nose was streaming blood. Fine, I thought—tie ball game. Home from work, Meg noticed the bruise right away: Where did this come from?

I told her just enough. Little basketball collision.

She rolled her eyes. You’re not a kid anymore, she said.

Duh, really? What does that mean?

It’s easier to get hurt. She walked into the bathroom.

So you want me to quit playing ball?

I didn’t say that, she said. But jogging or swimming would be less risky.

Play it safe.

Well, you’re not exactly famous for sensible decisions.

When I opened the door, he extended his hand. I’m Trapper, he said. Framed by a trim white beard and unruly gray hair, his face, pleated with some deep lines, was the color of varnished wood. On the way upstairs, he asked me if I attended church. No, not one of those, I thought. Maybe this was Bunk’s idea of a joke. I lied and said yes, I was Catholic. In fact, I had been for years, but Vatican absolutes finally seemed so far out of synch with the gospels and the real world that I quit.

As long as you put your faith in Jesus, he said.

I’m putting my faith in you, I said, to get rid of these critters.

I thought he’d laugh, but he didn’t. He squeezed through the crawl-space door and shined his light around. When he emerged a few minutes later, he said that the droppings were definitely from roof rats. They had gotten in where copper flashing was missing by the dormer. There were several ways to deal with them: traps, glue boards, or poison. He recommended the latter. It was a potent compound that made them thirsty. They would leave the attic in search of water and die outside. I wouldn’t even see them.

Okay, let’s go with the poison, I said.

Don’t flash the dormer right away. They need time to escape.

Kip is another of our ballplayers—tall, fast, good hands. With most guys, talk is limited to sports, jokes, sex, money. With Kip, no subject is off the table. You’d never suspect he sells insurance. I watched him come out of the locker room and walk along the edge of the pool toward the hot tub. We had just had a good half-court game with Bunk, Chet, and a few other guys. Kip was getting back into shape. More than a year ago, his son Mike, a senior in college, had concluded that greed was out of control, hope dead, the planet doomed. He bought a handgun and committed suicide in the bathtub at home. Kip crashed. He quit our basketball games, disappeared. I heard that Grace, his wife, had left town and was living with her sister. Kip and I enjoyed talking about films, but after his son’s death, I could never get him to the theater with Meg and me. I periodically phoned to see how he was doing, but one day he told me not to call anymore. He knew I meant well, but there could be no communication, he said, between someone bereaved and someone not. When I was encouraging him to find a support group, he hung up. Kip’s got a few years on me. It seemed I’d never see him again, but now he was back. After he slowly sank into the tub, I said, So, what do you know?

He smiled. Just about nothing is what I know. Stealing light from a window beside the tub, his green eyes with rusty slivers were intense. He said the last year made him less certain about a lot of things, a lot slower to conclude. Everything was slippery, evasive. Maybe Kip didn’t any longer conclude, but I did, and was thinking about Whitmer. I cleaned his clock was an expression I overheard him use more than once in the locker room to describe a tough arrest, an argument, or even the recent sale of his Corvette. Most of Whitmer’s day consisted of cleaning clocks and being certain.

As if reading my mind, Kip said, I heard you and Whitmer threw a few punches.

I told him it was true.

He shook his head. The need to win in this country has become a disease.

The water jet massaged my back. The surface bubbled, and steam wavered up. After a minute or so, I asked Kip if he ever hated anyone.

Not long ago I hated God, I hated my son, my wife, you, everybody.

I shook my head. Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.

Don’t apologize. Hate will poison you—not a bad thing to remember.

A group of noisy kids left the pool. For a few minutes there was only the sound of water in the hot tub. I closed my eyes and tried to empty my mind. Then from the locker room, Whitmer and his cop buddies loudly swaggered in, all but tripping over their joysticks. Our town pays their club membership tab. One after another, they dove into the deep end. Whitmer has a thick face, a protruding lower lip, and a lot of forehead pushing back his hairline. He stood on the diving board, his back to the water, then launched himself into a high arching flip.

While I was slicing broccoli for a stir-fry, Meg said, What did you do about those things in the attic?

They’re roof rats, I told her.

"We’ve got rats?"

I told her to relax. I had somebody taking care of it.

Unloading the dishwasher and clacking plates back into the cabinet, she said, I saw the Rid-A-Pest truck leaving our street.

Not those guys.

Who did you get?

I told her I had a guy who worked on his own and would be a lot cheaper.

Who recommended him?

When I said Bunk, she shook her head: Bunk! Lovely. I just hope we don’t have any commotion upstairs tonight. I have a tough day tomorrow.

I explained Trapper’s plan of attack—the problem would be quickly solved.

Voices and splashing water from the showers were fairly loud. We were putting our street clothes on. Chet told Bunk, Jim here had a Catholic education. Ask him if he knows the difference.

What difference? I said.

Well, the difference between sin and shame, Bunk said.

I should have known better. I give up.

Bunk said, Well, it’s a sin to put it in, and a shame to take it out!

Laughter bounced off the tile.

When he left the locker room, Chet said, Do you think it’s true, what Bunk said about Whitmer arresting the guy who attacked Kat McKenzie?

I said I hadn’t heard anything. I knew Kat slightly from the mall bookstore where she worked. Chet did too. About five months ago, she was attacked by a carjacker in the parking lot. He put a knife to her throat. She fought the guy and wound up with fifty-one stitches from her neck to the corner of her right eye. Hank Whitmer was lead detective on the case. In a TV interview after her recovery, she had a number of good things to say about Whitmer, things I found hard to believe. Hank was compassionate?

Chet said, Bunk and truth are incompatible. I’ll believe it when I see it on TV.

Everybody laughed. We traded stories and agreed how terrible it is when you can’t depend on somebody for the truth, how impossible it is to be friends with—

A pre-var-icator? Chet said.

It was Meg’s birthday. We went out to dinner at the Blue Moon, then to a sentimental movie about a racehorse. Back home I turned on the late local news, thinking there would be something about Whitmer’s arresting Kat’s attacker. Nothing. But there was a story about a retired police detective who had been shot in the ass while riding his lawn mower. The weapon was an air rifle. I understood how somebody might enjoy giving a cop a little sting or two. A sixteen-year-old had been arrested. He claimed it was an accident. But the detective had been shot twice—no accident. According to his parents, the boy was mentally handicapped and had been paid for the shooting by a neighbor. The reporter concluded by saying a motive was not yet clear. I concluded somebody had an old score to settle with that cop.

Chet told me over a beer in Hammy’s that Bunk wasn’t bullshitting about Kat’s carjacker. Had I seen the noon hour news? I hadn’t. Hank Whitmer, our basketball buddy, had stood with the police chief in front of the cameras. I was happy for Kat. A friend of hers told Chet she had been so afraid she bought a handgun. The perp, Chet said, was being held without bond. Convicted, he’d be in the slammer for twenty-five years, at least. No big surprise he was a drug addict. A woman from the neighborhood said the same guy had earlier been in trouble for molestating several children. Saying it, Chet wore a