The Risk Pool

he said, picking up the phone, motioning me to a chair by the window overlooking Main, one story lower and fifty yards closer to the Four Corners, but otherwise quite similar to the view I’d had from the Accounting Department. It occurred to me that if I wanted to find my father, the best plan might be to stay right were I was. He was almost sure to come strolling out of the pool hall or the Mohawk Grill or The Glove Tavern some time in the next twenty-four hours, his hands plunged deep into his pockets, rolling gently at the knees as he surveyed his domain.
    After he dialed, F. William Peterson swiveled in his chair so his back was to me. When my mother answered, he spoke softly, asif anticipating embarrassment. “Hi,” he said. That must have been all she let him get out, because he started to say something else, stopped abruptly, and just listened. “I know,” he said. “I know. Half an hour.”
    He swiveled around to make a face at me. His free hand went yap-yap-yap.
    “You know Fridays,” he said, when he sensed an opening. “Half an hour, the latest.”
    She must have hung up without saying goodbye, because he looked at the receiver as if they’d been disconnected. “What a woman,” he said, with red-faced cheer, and then, as if the two ideas were related, “Am I glad to see
you!
”
    “How is she?” I said. “Really.”
    I had spoken with him once or twice on the phone in the past few years, but my mother had always been there in the room with him, and of course her own protestations on the subject of her health I considered completely worthless.
    “Better!” he said. “Almost better! Almost completely better!”
    “That’s good,” I said, studying his performance.
    “Down to one pill a day,” he went on. “You won’t know her. Sometimes, she even skips the one. Those are rough days, but …”
    Something about the way he said this last suggested that the rough days were rougher on him than her. “Remember how she couldn’t do anything at first? Couldn’t decide ketchup or mustard? You should see her go now.”
    “I’ll bet it’s something,” I said.
    “What you’ll want to do,” he said, “is call her. Tonight. Tell her you’re in Buffalo or someplace like that. Give her the night to get used to it. Then come by tomorrow. She’s a trooper about day-to-day stuff, but surprises throw her.”
    “All right,” I said, relieved.
    His expression darkened. “Seen your father?”
    Suddenly, something made sense that had been nagging at me. “
You
gave Eileen my number—”
    He nodded, reluctantly. “If I’d called and your mother’d found out—” he drew his index finger across his throat. “I didn’t want you to leave in the middle of the term though. Did that foolish woman tell you to come right away?”
    “No,” I said. “It sounded serious though.”
    “What did she tell you?” he was watching me carefully.
    “That he’s a drunk.”
    He rolled his eyes. “Charming woman, Eileen Littler. The soul of delicacy.”
    “Is it true?”
    F. William Peterson leaned back in his chair, exhaled through his nostrils. “His most pressing problem is more immediate. He was in an accident last fall on the lake road. A young girl in the other car ended up in the hospital. Damn near died. A goddamn miracle everybody wasn’t killed, including Sam. It was a head-on collision. The good news is the girl was driving illegally, at night, on a learner’s permit and probably speeding. Her boyfriend lied to the cops, said he was driving, but we know better. The bad news is Sam was legally DWI. We’ll push the hell out of mitigating circumstances, but—”
    “He’ll go to jail?”
    “Almost certainly.”
    “For long?”
    “Probably not. And probably not for a while. The insurance companies are wrangling and the medical people are involved. It’s been six months already and it may be another year before it comes to trial. The other bad thing is that he’s been arrested twice in the meantime, the last time two nights ago. I just got him out on bail yesterday.”
    This didn’t make sense. “Why haven’t they taken his license?”
    “They did,” F. William Peterson said. “This is your father we’re talking about, remember?”
    Unfortunately, that did make sense. In fact, I had forgotten the way he operated. To take Sam Hall’s license proved only one thing—that you didn’t know him. If you didn’t want him to drive, you had to take his
car
, not his license.