Strange Highways

More than two years she withered from the cancer, but I never came. Never held her hand, never consoled my dad. Never saw him once in the last twenty years of his life. I called maybe six or eight times, no more than that. Half the time he didn't know how to reach me, because I didn't always give him my address or phone number. And when he did have my number, I always kept an answering machine switched on so I wouldn't have to pick up. I was a rotten son, Mr. Kadinska. I'm a drunk, a selfish shit, and a loser, and I don't deserve any inheritance, no matter how little it is."
     Henry Kadinska appeared to be pained to hear any man criticize himself so mercilessly. "You're not drunk now, Joey. And the man I see before me isn't bad in his heart."
     "I'll be drunk by tonight, sir, I assure you," Joey said quietly. "And if you can't see me the way I described myself, then you're a lousy judge of character. You don't know me at all - and you should count that as a blessing."
     Kadinska put his pipe in the glass ashtray again. "Well, your father was a forgiving man. He wanted everything to go to you."
     Getting to his feet, Joey said, "No. I can't take it. I don't want it." He started toward the door to the outer room.
     "Wait, please," said the lawyer.
     Joey stopped and turned to him. "The weather's miserable, and I've got a long drive out of these mountains to Scranton."
     Still slumped in his chair, picking up his pipe again, Henry Kadinska said, "Where do you live, Joey?"
     "You know. Las Vegas. That's where you got hold of me."
     "I mean, where do you live in Las Vegas?"
     "Why?"
     "I'm a lawyer. I've spent my life asking questions, and it's hard to change this late in the game. Indulge me."
     "I live in a trailer park."
     "One of those upscale parks with a community swimming pool and tennis courts?"
     "Old trailers," Joey said bluntly. "Mostly real old."
     "No pool? No tennis?"
     "Hell, not even any grass."
     "What do you do for a living?"
     "I'm a blackjack dealer. Run roulette wheels sometimes."
     "You work regularly?"
     "When I need to."
     "When the drinking doesn't get in the way?"
     "When I can," Joey amended, remembering his promise to himself to deal with all of this truthfully. "Pays well, with the tips from the players. I can save up for when ... when I have to take some time off. I do okay."
     "But with your work record, always moving on, you don't find jobs in the new, flashy casinos very often any more."
     "Not often," Joey agreed.
     "Each job is in a seedier place than the one before."
     "For a man who sounded so compassionate a minute ago, you sure are showing a cruel streak all of a sudden."
     Kadinska's face reddened with embarrassment. "I'm sorry, Joey, but I'm just trying to make the point that you're not exactly in a position to walk away from an inheritance."
     Joey was quietly adamant. "I don't deserve it, don't want it, won't take it. That's flat final. Anyway, nobody would buy that old house, and I sure as hell won't move back here to live in it."
     Tapping the documents in the open file folder, Kadinska said, "The house has little value. You're right. But the house and its contents aren't the meat of this inheritance, Joey. There's more than a quarter of a million dollars in liquid assets - certificates of deposit and money-market accounts."
     Joey's mouth went punk dry. His heart began to pound fiercely. The lawyer's office harbored a terrible darkness of which he had been dangerously unaware, and now it was rising up around him.
     "That's crazy. Dad was a poor man."
     "But your brother has been a success for a long time now. For about fourteen years, he's been sending your father a check every month, just like clockwork. A thousand dollars. I told you how it drove P.J. crazy that your dad wouldn't spend more than a little of it. Dan pretty much just banked check after check, and through what bankers like to call the miracle of compound interest, the principal has grown."
     Joey's voice was shaky: "That's not my money. That belongs to P.J. It came from him, it should go back to him."
     "But your father left it to you. All to you. And his will is a legal document."
     "Give it to P.J. when he shows up," Joey insisted,