and then spread it out on floors, mixing mortar and grout and installing the tile in fancy homes and offices that my father would never live or work in. They were arms that got scratched and cut and bruised as a matter of course. They were also arms that folded across a chest at the end of the day when my father could step back and look at what he’d done that day, seeing it there right in front of him — progression toward something real, tangible, finite, and immediately recognizable by everyone as something accomplished through a man’s labor and skill. What did I have at the end of each day? Nothing but abstractions.
I opened my beer and took a sip.
My father shook his head as he spoke. “I don’t get it. I mean, they convicted the guy. He appealed and lost. What more is there to say?”
My feet were back up on the stool. I was unsure what to say. I rotated the seat from side to side and took another drink. “Yeah, well, it doesn’t look like his lawyer investigated everything he should have.” Even I didn’t believe that. “And that’s just it, everyone’s entitled to a proper defense or else you can’t be sure that the system is working right.”
“Yeah, but doesn’t sound like there’s any other evidence. Hell, it seems like this guy got his shot and now he’s trying to get another.” My father took another swallow. “Figures, rich executives like that, they think they can buy their way out of everything. Then he’ll get off and it’ll be Double Jeopardy if they go after him again.”
“Well, that’s not exactly right,” I countered. “If we win, it only means the process that convicted him was faulty, not that he was innocent. So it’s not the same as an acquittal.” I could hear Carver’s words echoing in my head, and I tried to mimic them, to capture their self-assured authority. It was only much later that I realized how petty and pretentious I sounded. “Double Jeopardy only comes into play if you’re actually acquitted of the crime.”
Before anyone could point out what an ass I was being, my seventeen year old brother, Rick, walked into the kitchen. He paused for a second to observe his father and older brother drinking beers at the kitchen counter while his mother cooked in the background. He only managed to utter a “Hey” before grabbing a sack of potato chips from the pantry. He stuffed a handful of Ruffles into his mouth, studied us all for a second more and, realizing nothing of interest was going to happen, quietly turned and disappeared back down the hall to his room and the incessant chatter of his television.
“Kid eats almost nothing but pizza,” my father mumbled and shook his head, smiling at me. “He makes ‘em, delivers ‘em, and eats ‘em.” He finished his beer and squeezed the empty can, crushing it in his powerful hands. “It’s amazing he doesn’t weigh five hundred pounds. Ten thousand calories a day and he stays skinny as a rail.”
My old man looked at me as if we should obviously share the same bewilderment. Then he turned and reached into the fridge for two more and handed one to me. I remained on my stool, my feet up and rotating the seat from side to side, occupying some strange generational space between Rick and my old man. Not quite either of them, and unsure of myself, I took the beer as my father walked by me back toward the sliding glass door and the backyard beyond.
“C’mon,” he said, “help me out with this damned boat.” I slid from the stool and followed him through the door, caught in some netherworld between childhood and manhood.
There was a detached two-car garage at the rear of the backyard. Next to the garage was a paved parking space where the boat sat on its trailer, and had sat almost without interruption for the last nine of ten years since he’d bought it. The purchase was a hard won concession from my mother, who swore, correctly, that it would never get used. But my father was determined to buy it and convinced her that it would permit them to do more family things together. I always imagined the boat represented something more to him. Though it was small and used, it showed in some minor way that he was a success in the world, that through his hard work he’d