The Risk Pool

good, but he’s completely worthless, that son of a bitch.”
    “Ignore him.”
    “He’s home all of twelve hours. What’s the first thing he does?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Guess.”
    “Forget him. Fuck him.”
    My father shrugs as if to suggest that fuck him is the right idea, but he can’t just now because he’s too busy remembering him. “He’s home all of twelve hours and two hundred dollars disappears from his mother’s dresser drawer. Do you believe that shit? Nobody there but him and his mother. We’re not supposed to suspect him, right? It’s been sitting right there in the drawer for a month, but the minute he comes home it’s suddenly gone. And nobody’s supposed to suspect him, the rotten son of a bitch. It’s not bad enough he’s got to rip her off. On top of it, we’re not supposed to suspect him. How come you suspect me, he asks her. How come you don’t ask Sammy where it went?” My father shook his head. “That’s not even the bad part. The bad part is all he’s got to do is ask her and she’ll give it to him. He’d rather steal it. Take it from her. Just take it. Never mind how hard she worked for it. Fuck you, Ma. I’m taking it. You know what he had the balls to say to me today?”
    I said I didn’t.
    “He says, Sammy, all I want is what’s mine. What’s
yours
, I ask him. I want to know what the hell he figures is his. Just what the hell do you figure you got a right to, I say. What’s mine is mine, he says. He keeps saying it over and over. What’s mine is mine. What’s mine is mine.”
    Mike came over with two plates of spaghetti and put them in front of us. My father pushed his away. “Jesus,” he said, running his hands through his hair. “I don’t think I can eat.”
    “Eat a little,” Mike said. “You’ll feel better.”
    “I can’t drink the hard stuff,” my father said. “I know I can’t, but I do anyhow.”
    “You all right?” I said. He’d suddenly gone absolutely gray.
    “All I can see is that big dumb face. What’s mine is mine.”
    My father drew his plate toward him, twirled strands of spaghetti absentmindedly. “It’s not just him. Everything’s fucked up all of a sudden.”
    “Not everything,” I said. “You aren’t being sued, for instance.”
    “I never was,” he said. “Just my insurance company. Fuck them.”
    “You have,” I said. “Over the years.”
    “Good,” he said. “I’m glad. They only want to insure people like you who don’t have accidents. It’s up to people like me to make sure the bastards don’t keep every last dollar for themselves.”
    “Thanks,” I told him. “I guess the rest of us owe you one.”
    He surrendered half a smile. “Yeah,” he said. “You and Skinny. Great favor I did him, huh? Or didn’t you hear.”
    I said I hadn’t heard anything.
    “I bought him breakfast. He left just before you came in yesterday morning.”
    “This morning?”
    “Whenever. Told me they were going like hell on the road. Pouring half a mile a day, pretty near. Saturdays overtime. I say great, Skinny, that means money, right? He’s got the shakes, but off he goes. He gets up there, gets out of the car, grabs his flag, steps out from behind the trunk and gets run over by the first cement mixer of the day.”
    “Jesus Christ,” I said. “Is he in the hospital?”
    “They don’t put dead people in the hospital. They need the beds.”
    “Jesus,” I said. “Skinny?”
    “They ran right over him,” he said. “Him and his red flag. First fuckin’ thing they did today. Then they poured concrete until five, or so they tell me.”
    It refused to sink in. Not Skinny Donovan, I kept thinking. In my mind’s eye I kept picturing the dusty road, the stalled truck, the silent men gathered into a semicircle, Skinny’s legs and feet visible, the way I’d see them when I rounded the corner out back of Our Lady of Sorrows where he liked to sleep, his back up against the cool stucco. Who’d have guessed Skinny would die working, I asked my father.
    Wussy came in then and slid into the booth next to me. “Word of advice, Sam’s Kid,” he said. “Don’t let Sam Hall pay for dinner. He’s bad luck.”
    “That’s what I was just telling him,” my father said. “He should go back to Arizona. As far as he can get from his old man.”
    “You’re a menace all right,” Wussy agreed. “You don’t scare me though. In fact, I’ll eat your own goddamn spaghetti, since you aren’t going to do