Apologize, Apologize! - By Elizabeth Kelly Page 0,19
consumed, most of the time our house was something lost at sea, aimlessly floating and drifting, rocking gently back and forth like a cork in a bathtub full of gin.
It was an unholy baptism, Tom getting grotesquely drunk every month, submerging himself body and soul in the stuff, a full immersion, evangelical in its fervor, part of a weeklong ritual, passing out, coming to, drinking some more, passing out, drinking until his small government pension money ran out.
He kept his cash in a discarded peanut-butter jar under his bed surrounded by a moat of mousetraps, a familiar sequence of snaps, in quick succession, signaling his deposits and withdrawals. It was an intense operation. He used a cane to trigger each one, going in like a demolition expert. Bang. Bang. Bang.
“Tom must be doing his bang-king,” Pop said to Bing and me, eyes rolling upward in the direction of each tiny blast. It was early evening. We were in our mid-teens, sitting around the kitchen table eating an evening meal of vanilla ice cream, the only thing Pop knew how to cook.
“Look out, the world’s about to get shook. Bingo, there’s no choice, you’re going to have to sneak in there and take what’s left. You’re the only one allowed in the inner sanctum. If he insists on getting sloshed the way he does, he’s going to kill himself.”
Bing was trying to squirm out of it. He didn’t want to steal from the old reprobate even for a good cause.
“I do not.” He frowned and, giving me the finger, headed up the stairs. Bingo resented any suggestion that he might possess character or integrity.
“You’ll need to stay hidden in the stable for a couple of days,” Pop said when Bingo, looking paler than usual, handed over the dough. “He’ll be gunning for you.”
“Here he comes.”
The stable was located on the acreage behind the house. I was perched at the window, eyes peeking above the ledge, as I caught sight of Tom and his drinking buddy Swayze heading in our direction, the pair of them making up an arthritic posse, not quite two men, more like front and ass ends of a donkey costume.
Before she married Pop, Ma was an equestrian, competing internationally, specializing in three-day eventing. She rode a big black Irish draft horse called Lolo, pidgin for crazy. He used to try to come in the kitchen, Ma encouraging and coaxing him all the way. No one else could go near him. Bing and I grew up thinking of him as a psychotic older brother, his teeth marks decorating my ass well into adolescence.
Bing, giddy, scared, and excited all at the same time, scrambled to hide himself under a pile of straw in Lolo’s box stall, Lolo mulling over a course of action, pawing the floor and snorting, tossing his head, thinking about turning in Bing for the reward. Lolo was staring at me, and I was staring back at him, hoping for the best—that horse had no moral center.
“Where is he?” Tom said, his face inches from my own, eyes taking on the color of malt liquor. “We’re here to perform a citizen’s arrest. He stole my money. He’s going to jail and he’s going to make full restitution.”
“I don’t know where he is,” I said, stepping away from him. “He’s probably with friends.”
“How would you like me to arrest you as an accomplice?” Tom said, grabbing the collar of my shirt.
“Uncle Tom, for crying out loud . . .”
“Swayze.” He turned to his tipsy deputy. “Cuff him.”
In the final analysis, there wasn’t much to choose between Pop and Uncle Tom when it came to their old buddy booze. “Those damn Dolan boys got me drunk,” Pop used to say to Bing and me—one way of explaining what happened on my fourteenth birthday when he crawled into a neighbor’s chimney, where he got stuck and passed out. He’d still be there except that Sykes, his white bull terrier, refused to come home and barked for hours at the roof in a high state of excitement.
I was the first to figure it out. Bingo scrambled up the eaves trough, waving madly when he reached the chimney, choking with laughter, shaking so he could hardly stand, and hollering that he’d found him.
“Pop says to call in the army,” he shouted. “He says he’ll need expert extraction. He doesn’t trust the locals