The Risk Pool

sitting on, but there had to be one. All along the bar were lighted candles in red goblets that reminded me of the stained glass in Our Lady of Sorrows, and my father used one to rap on the bar. The huge woman was already looking at us and shaking her head.
    “You got a little exercise, you wouldn’t be so fat,” my father observed good-naturedly.
    “Or I could have more customers like you, in which case I could just sit still and starve,” the woman said, making no move to get up. “What’s this? Your first visit in three years?”
    “It wasn’t me that told you to put this place way the hell and gone out in the woods.”
    That was apparently an adequate explanation, because the woman got off her stool with surprising lightness and came over. “And look what you drag in with you when you finally show up.”
    My father nudged me. “You don’t have to take that, you know.”
    That confused me, because I could have sworn she was referring to Tree, whom she was glaring at maliciously. For his part, Tree looked like he would have liked to run away.
    “Hello, Tree,” the woman said, so loud he jumped. I jumped too, just to keep him company.
    “H-h-hi, Alice,” Tree managed.
    “Well, what do you know,” Alice said. She’d lowered her voice, but was still glowering at him. “He
can
talk. Every day for a month, he sits over there in his little shit-house, but he’s too busy to stop and say hello. I thought somebody ripped his voicebox out.”
    “I never knew you’d treat me so n-nice or I’d of c-c-come in before.”
    “You want to talk about the way to treat people, is that it?”
    “Hell, Alice,” Tree said. He was clearly suffering, and that, at least, seemed to cheer Alice up a little.
    “Hell, Tree,” she said.
    “When you two are all done, could I get a beer?” my father said.
    Alice looked over at me for the first time. She had nice eyes, but she sure was a big woman. “And he’s eighteen, right?”
    “Eleven,” my father admitted.
    “Twelve,” I said, because I was.
    “What?” my father said.
    I told him I was twelve.
    He thought about it, counted on his fingers, then shrugged. “Say hello to Alice. She’s not as bad as she looks.”
    “Or sounds,” Tree added, though it got him another murderous glance.
    Alice drew beers for my father and Tree and put a 7-Up in front of me. “Too good-looking to be yours,” she remarked.
    “He is though, just the same,” my father said.
    “Somebody said you were having problems,” she said, her voice confidential.
    “Who, me?”
    “Who, you.”
    “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”
    “You should have come by.”
    “I thought about it.”
    “And?”
    “And it wasn’t your problem.”
    They both looked at me then as if it were my turn to say something and I’d missed my cue.
    “Anyhow, it’s all straightened out now,” my father said.
    Tree had slid off his stool. “So where are
you
going?” Alice said.
    “To pee,” Tree said, with an injured expression.
    “You gotta watch him,” Alice said. “He’s a great one for sneaking off.”
    “Hell, Alice.”
    “Hell, Tree.”
    Alice and my father talked softly for a few minutes and when Tree came back, he sat in the middle of the bar instead of with us. After a while Alice went over and they talked, quietly, not yelling. Then Tree surprised me by putting a hand on hers and she surprised me by letting him.
    “So,” my father said, turning to me for the first time. “What’s this I hear about your mother?”
    * * *
    I tried not to tell him, at first, because I knew she wouldn’t want me talking about her, especially with my father. So I tried to play dumb, like I didn’t know what he meant.
    He put out the cigarette he was smoking between his thumb and forefinger and sat the stub on its filter. I watched the procedure with more interest than I felt, not wanting to meet his eye. After all those bogus confessions at Our Lady of Sorrows I counted myself about as good a liar as Catholics ever got, which was good. But I hadn’t much confidence a lie would work on my father. He’d always known what was going on at our house better than if he’d lived there. But I heard myself say, “She’s fine,” in a voice that wouldn’t even have convinced somebody like Father Michaels, who believed whatever you told him.
    Surprisingly, my father did not contradict me. At least not exactly. “Glad to hear it,” he said. “Somebody said she was sick.”
    When I didn’t say