I never would have suspected anything if it wasn't for all the jail time I had to do.
"You're in for it now, you thieving polecat," the nine year old in Western duds told me as he slammed the makeshift gate of the "jail" closed. He turned around to give a man, probably his father, a high five.
I looked around the pokey. There were three dads there, all buried in their phones. Another man was grinning as he watched all the activity of the Western Fair outside the styrofoam bars wrapped in silver crepe paper.
"How long are we in for?" I asked, grinning myself. His smile was infectious.
"You'll be in here for twelve minutes," he sighed. "That's how long a ticket is good for."
"Why the big sigh?" I asked him.
"You'll be out soon," he said. "I'll probably be in here another hour or so."
"Why's that?"
"This booth is run by my fifth-grade class." he said. "They get a real kick out of locking me up in here. Who's yours?"
"I don't have one," I said. "I'm Dorsey's patient uncle."
"You really are," he said. "These kind of things are a long haul for the parents, let alone anybody else."
"Don't I know it," I said, leaning back on the bench and crossing my legs to wait.
~~~
Carla and I had been married for six years, and we were both twenty nine. It had been a rather rocky time, at least for me, but I think I was at least reasonably happy.
To sum it up, Carla ran hot and cold. We'd talk about it, she'd apologize, she'd change for a week - two at the most - and then it was back to life as usual. Of course I didn't like it, but the good times were really good, and I wasn't a guy who pushed things.
In six months and fourteen days I was going to be rich. Stinking rich. My father died seven years ago, and his will stipulated that I'd receive my inheritance when I was thirty. It was his way of making sure that I made something of myself. I, of course, never pushed it. It seemed reasonable, and nobody said he had to give me anything anyway. I had learned not to expect things in life.
The only help he gave me - and it was a big help, lets not minimize - was to line up some interviews with companies that wouldn't ordinarily have been willing to give me a look when I graduated from college. One of them, back in my home town, bit, and I was doing very well. I was young to have been promoted three times already, but Wally Macomb swore that my father had nothing to do with it, citing my near perfect performance evaluations and willingness to pitch in on shit jobs. I never said anything, just put my head down and got the job done.
In this corporate America, it usually takes much longer to get ahead that way. The flash always got noticed. That's not me, and it was more important to me that I did an excellent job. That way, if anything did perchance get back to my father, I could hold my head high.
After my third promotion, I asked again if my father had anything to do with my rapid rise.
"Not like you think," was the answer.
"Russ, what your dad did for you was get you noticed," Wally said in response to my raised eyebrow. "He recommended we take a look, and I've never stopped looking. What I've seen is you have a helluva work ethic, you make excellent decisions under pressure and you treat all the girls in the office with a lot of respect. They like that and I've paid attention."
"I guess that's what makes you such a great boss," I said, rising to leave.
"And you suck up just enough, but not too much," he said with a grin.
We both laughed as he showed me out, and his PA couldn't help but smile and join in.
~~~
"Ah HAH!" my nephew, Dorsey, screamed in triumph. I was just getting ready to exit when he came running up in his Indian headdress, ticket in hand. "Don't even think about it, Uncle Russ," he shouted, giving the ticket to his friend. "You're in jail. You're in jail forever."
"SUCKER!!" he yelled and peeled out.
"Looks like the start of a beautiful friendship," Pat, the teacher, said and gave me a another smile.
~~~
Dorsey was the only son of my sister-in-law. There was something off about him. I thought it was probably something on the autism scale, but the family refused to face it. It frustrated me no end, because they always treated him pretty shitty, like they were sick of him - Carla included - but wouldn't do anything to try to make it better. I loved that kid and always reached out whenever I could. Everyone knew I would do just about anything for him; so much so that I was often saddled with him whenever we all got together. That's unkind, but that is what it felt like. I, as always, went along with the flow.
To make my time in stir even more boring, I didn't have my phone. I couldn't check my email or at least play Device 6 or something. Carla had insisted I leave it in the car.
"Oh, no you don't, Russell Maine," she said as I was putting it in my jacket. "You are not bringing that thing. I don't care what crisis they're having at work. This is Saturday. You are spending the day with the family and that's it."
Or maybe some time alone.
In jail.
~~~
I have been pretty lucky in my life in some ways. I'll admit it, why not? My father had married late. He wanted to make his mark before getting entangled, and what a mark he made. He took over a small, failing hardware store from his uncle when he was twenty-three, and by the time he was forty, he had expanded his business to include everything from real estate to trucking to garbage disposal. Everyone thinks the mob when they hear waste disposal, but, as far as I knew, it was all on the up and up. Now his business empire was worth about forty million.
Not that I held any of it yet. He had married a much younger woman, and I was born late in his life, when he was fifty-five. His plan had been to wait for marriage and children when he wouldn't be spending all his time obsessively empire building and have more time for the finer things. Apparently he'd never seen the second Godfather movie and didn't know how much harder you have to work to stay on top.
I didn't see much of him, but I never doubted he loved me. When I was eleven, he caught my mother in an affair, apparently one of many. She explained to me later that you had to expect something like that to happen. My father was so old, she could hardly stand to touch him.
He would have kicked her out without a dime, but I was there, so he treated us fairly. I never wanted for anything. I saw even less of him, and I should have had that typical teenage anger towards an absentee dad, but I remembered the look on his face when he told me he was leaving. My mother had broken him, a man who used to be a force of nature. He needed to be away, and even seeing me much would hurt him terribly. I understood.
I wasn't anything like either of my parents on the surface, but underneath, I was exactly like them. My father was a driven man, and, somewhere, I had inherited that singleness of purpose. My mother was a classic gold digger, devious and actress extraordinaire. This necessitated a shrewd intellect and insight.
Me, I had learned to go with the flow, and over the years had evolved into a laconic, laid-back kind of guy. I was quiet and unassuming, but that didn't mean I was a wimp. That "decision making under pressure" line from my boss implied that I could be a ruthless son of a bitch and had the balls to do things none of my colleagues would.
~~~
I looked up to see Dorsey's evil smirk. He was waving a ticket in my face.
"Ha ha! Ha HAH!" he chanted.
"Yer in fer the long haul, ya mangy varmint," his friend, the jailer, said.
"Life sentence, life sentence," sang Dorsey as he started to skip away.
"Dorsey! Hey, Dorse!" I yelled after him. "Where's your mom?"
