The Risk Pool

know.
    “I’m smart,” my father said, grinning at him. “Smart enough to outwit that big ox, anyhow.”
    Then he launched into the story of how he’d got Drew a job shoveling snow and he’d tossed an icy block of it through a second-storywindow and then claimed it was an accident. This story led to another.
    I’d heard them all, so I didn’t listen. I knew what he was doing, of course. He was getting himself all pumped up for what he considered to be an inevitable confrontation. He may even have started up with Eileen again to make sure there’d be no avoiding it. So I let him rant. There was no point in trying to slow him when he got rolling down this particular memory lane. I just grunted now and then to show I was still there, and thought instead about Tria, up on one elbow, her slender fingers trying to make sense of my own ragged curls. The idea of waking up next to her for the rest of my life was tempting. I couldn’t think of many drawbacks, if I didn’t count the fact that, despite our successful lovemaking, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Tria Ward’s feelings for me did not run very deep. Her last remark—that things out there were always normal, no matter how abnormal—had stayed with me though. She’d delivered the observation like a punch line, but there’d been an edge to it, and I wondered if it was a warning I’d be foolish to ignore.
    I put it out of my mind anyway. When Wussy came in, I was glad to shake free of my reverie. He looked kind of in between. I couldn’t tell whether he was finishing up Friday night or starting Saturday. He slid onto the stool next to me, as he frequently did when the three of us were out together, a safe distance from the rockhead. “Guess who I just saw,” he said.
    My father got it right, the first guess.
    Wussy ordered breakfast, and we kept him company. Harry still didn’t have any other customers. I liked the diner early in the morning before it got crowded. In fact, I considered it almost worth getting up for. In another half hour, you wouldn’t be able to talk in a normal voice and be heard over the din of rattling dishes, but at this hour you could use your library voice and be heard. Neither my father nor Wussy possessed a library voice, but if they had, they could have used them.
    “You’re looking pretty pleased with yourself this morning, Sam’s Kid,” Wussy observed.
    I shrugged. Three guys came in from the poker game upstairs and joined us at the counter.
    “He’s just getting back with the car, I know that,” my fathersaid. “I asked him where he parked it all night, but he’s not saying.”
    “Somebody smell his pussy finger,” one of the newcomers suggested.
    “You think you’d remember what it smelled like?” asked another.
    “Better than you,” said the first. “At least my finger isn’t up my ass always.”
    “Nope,” Harry said. “Not always.”
    I stood to leave, showing them all the finger in question.
    “Where you going?” my father said. “Stick around. We’ll go out to lunch later.”
    “I’ll see you tonight,” I promised. I knew what he had in mind, which was to sit around and get himself worked up, then go over to Eileen’s, ostensibly to invite her out to lunch. If I was with him, it would be worse than if he went by himself. Wussy was on to him too, I was pretty sure, and when the time came he’d find something else to do. If my father was alone, Eileen would probably be able to head off trouble, but not if he had an audience.
    It was a nice morning now, and I was deliciously tired. My mother’s flat was a fifteen-minute walk and I was nearly there when a horn tooted and F. William Peterson pulled over. “Seen your old man?” he said.
    “Why?” I said.
    “Got some good news for him.”
    Since that was the case, I told him.
    “I tried to find him last night, actually,” Peterson said.
    “Strangely enough, he might have been home,” I said. My father had been clean-shaven and rested-looking at the diner, curious for a Saturday morning.
    “I never thought to check there,” the lawyer admitted. “Anyway, we got our break. One of the kids came forward and admitted they’d all been drinking and drag racing. We knew from the tire marks that there’d been a third car, but now it’s sewed up. All of a sudden everybody wants to settle. Looks like Sam may walk on this one.”
    “How’s the girl?”
    “Still in a wheelchair. That’s the bad part. Still, to be fair, I don’t