The Risk Pool

I sometimes felt a strange yearning to see my father again, I didn’t want him turning up and upsetting things. I kept imagining that late some afternoon, when my mother and Father Michaels and I were all sitting on the front porch before she went in to fix dinner, my father would careen around the corner in the same old bullet-riddled white convertible and come to a rocking halt, one wheel over the curb, his blackened thumb tapping time on the steering wheel. For some reason I feared this scenario even more than a second kidnapping or the resumption of his nightly marauding when my mother and I would be alone. Not that Father Michaels wasn’t prepared for the sort of man my father was. I just didn’t want them to meet. The young priest might have had the courage to stand up to the old Monsignor, but I doubted he’d be a match for my father.
    One morning after breakfast I found Skinny in the shed sharpening the long-handled cutting spade he used to trim the terrace along the street. The Monsignor did not believe in allowing grass to grow over the edge of the sidewalk, so every third week or so we dug a small two-inch trench along the border of the walk. Skinny enjoyed the job about as much as he enjoyed mowing. Early morning often found him in a bad mood anyway, and he was sometimes sharp with me then. I knew he felt insulted that I should be invited to the feast each morning when he himself wasn’t allowed in the back door for a drink of water. He didn’t blame me exactly, but the whole thing didn’t sit well. Today, he seemed in a better mood than usual. “Your old man says hi,” he said.
    I stopped still and didn’t say anything. I’d been wanting to pin him down on the business of having seen my father, but I was a little afraid and a little ashamed to admit how little I knew about his whereabouts.
    “Said to tell you he’d be around to see you one of these days.”
    I didn’t tell my mother. It would just get her started on Skinny again. She wasn’t a great person to bring bad news to. Father Michaels may have guessed that something was wrong on the way home, but he didn’t try to make me talk and did not join us on the porch as usual. He got out of the station wagon and stood there in the street until my mother appeared at the screen door to let me in.
    That night our dinner was so silent I began to suspect she already knew. Probably someone had seen him and called her,she was so thoughtful and nervous. After dinner she did the dishes hurriedly, checking the clock every few minutes, and when I didn’t get to listen to my usual Friday night radio shows I was almost grateful. “Go to sleep,” my mother instructed me when I was tucked in, but it wasn’t completely dark yet and she seemed so agitated I didn’t think I’d be able to. Alone in bed, I tried to gear myself up for the future. Sam Hall was back in town, and that meant things would change. There was no telling how. Maybe I would be swiped again. Maybe they would just yell at each other. Maybe my mother would shoot him and go to jail. She didn’t have a gun anymore, as far as I knew, but then I hadn’t known about the first one. I lay awake for a long time thinking about the possibilities and how they would change things.
    I wasn’t aware of having fallen asleep, but when I awoke from the vivid dream, my room was dark and it felt late. In the dream the old Monsignor, my mother and I were all seated around the long table in the rectory waiting for Mrs. Ambrosino and her steaming tureen of wedding soup. My father was there too, where Father Michaels usually sat. He had a fishhook in his black thumb.
    “
Honestly
, Sam,” my mother said when she saw the monofilament line dangling there. The Monsignor was to marry them all over again, as soon as we finished lunch. But now she had spotted the line, and I could tell by the look on her face that she didn’t want to marry anybody with a fishhook stuck in his black thumb. For my father’s part, he didn’t seem to care. “Kiss my ass, Jenny,” he said, and yanked out the hook so that blood spurted out onto the white table cloth. “The finest veal meatballs,” Mrs. Ambrosino said, apropos of nothing. The Monsignor ladled broth as he spoke. “I would appreciate a word with both of you on the subject of this boy …”
    From my open bedroom window I could see out across the dark backyards where the cops had chased my father that winter so long ago. The night was quiet and sleepy, but