The Risk Pool

surprised local boys claimed she was sending them into battle with at least one thing to be grateful for. When she disappeared from Mohawk, rumor had it that she’d followed one of these boys to an army camp in Savannah. But she was gone a long time, and when she reappeared she had a baby on her hip. Some maintained that she had married down south, others that her timing had been bad, and that she would have to await the end of the war to marry the child’s father. And there were those who said that her timing was pretty good, that she’d had the war years to decide who she wanted the father to be, to see who made it back and in what condition. When the news of the surrender reached Mohawk, people remarked that Eileen Littler was as full of anticipation as any of the town’s young wives-in-good-standing, but for her these exciting months passed uneventfully, and no young soldier came to claim Eileen or her son. When she enrolled the boy in grade school, he had his mother’s name, Littler, now thoroughly and finally besmirched. In place of the lazy gene, Eileen had inherited a stubborn, circumspect one, and if thematter of the boy’s paternity remained an open question for the curious, they knew better than to raise that question to her face.
    This new degenerate breed of Littlers all died penniless, and were buried in the county section of the cemetery, far from the huge black marble obelisk that marked the grave of their distant ancestor. My father told her not to worry. As soon as she died he’d have her cremated, have the ashes put in a mason jar, which he’d bury in a little hole under the black obelisk. “Right on top of old Nathan,” he promised, “so you’ll have someone to talk to.”
    “As long as I don’t end up next to you,” said Eileen, who claimed that hell would be having to talk to Sam Hall throughout eternity.
    “Don’t get me riled,” he threatened, “or I’ll put Zero in there with you, too.”
    “You plan to outlive
everybody
?” she said.
    “Yes, I do,” he said, nudging me.
    About the time the three of us sat down, the motorcycle would roar up the driveway and Drew—that was the boy’s name—would saunter in, plant his helmet on the table next to the bowl of creamed corn, and spoon about half the mashed potatoes onto his plate by way of hello. If he made conversation at all, it was with me. He’d taken, at least once, most of the classes I was now in, and he considered himself an authority on every teacher in Nathan Littler Junior High. “
That
asshole,” he’d say, not without affection. Having finally made it to Mohawk High, he was nostalgic about my school, where he’d enjoyed himself immensely. Most afternoons, when the junior high let out, Drew would be out front astraddle his motorcycle, in the shadow of the big statue of Nathan Littler, his own distant relative.
    A meal at the Littlers’ was a feast of tension which always seemed to me on the verge of erupting into open hostility. When the motorcycle roared up the drive, Eileen always warned my father to be good for once, but his promise seldom amounted to much. Having watched Drew fill his plate with potatoes, my father would nudge me and nod across the table. “Not a bad life,” he’d say. “Ride around on your motorcycle all the while. Take money for gas from your mother. Show up for a free dinner when you’re hungry. Eat without bothering to wash your hands. Then say, ‘So long, Ma,’ and off you go. Ma can do the dishes, wash the clothes, work all night while you ride around and pretend you’re a big shot. Not a bad life, if you can swing it.”
    “You my father?” Drew would say.
    “I wouldn’t admit it if I were.”
    “Don’t blame you. Be embarrassing to have a kid that could kick your ass.”
    “Any time you want to try,” my father would say, carefully cutting a chop. It was part of the way they talked to each other at such times that neither would look up from his plate. I often thought that if either had made eye contact with the other, blood would have been shed. The expressions on their faces were terrifying, and I was glad they concentrated on their food.
    “Let’s all mind our own business, shall we?” Eileen would suggest. “I like Ned better than either of you. At least he doesn’t go around flexing his muscles all the time.”
    “Hasn’t got any,” Drew pointed out, not untruthfully.
    I would flush twice over, once because Eileen had remembered I was there and