The Big Bounce

Ryan left his canvas bag at the bar and they went to a restaurant over on the main street for di

Mr. Majestyk stared at him, hunched over with his arms on the table edge. “You like boiled potatoes?”

“Boiled potatoes, just plain or with some parsley,” Ryan said. “It’s like a real potato. I mean it’s got the most potato taste.”

“Right!” Mr. Majestyk said, with a tone that said it was the correct answer.

“When I was at home,” Ryan said, “on Sunday my mother would have veal roast or pork roast and boiled potatoes. Not mashed or fried or anything. Boiled. You’d take two or three potatoes and cut them up so they covered about half the plate? Then pour gravy all over it. But try and get a boiled potato in a restaurant.”

“Where did you live in Detroit?”

“Highland Park. Just north of where Ford Tractor was. Up by Sears.”

“I know where it is. Your father work at Ford’s?”

“He worked for the DSR, but he’s dead now. He died when I was thirteen.”

“I had some friends worked for the DSR. Hell, they started when they still had streetcars. All retired now or doing something else.”

“I don’t think my dad ever ran a streetcar. What I remember, he drove a Woodward bus. It’d say RIVER going downtown, you know? And FAIRGROUNDS coming back.”

“Sure, I’ve ridden it.”

They didn’t talk much eating the steaks and fries. Ryan pictured the Sunday di

“You want some A-one?”

“No, just ketchup.”

His dad never looked like a bus driver. He was nice looking. Dark hair. Sort of a slick guy. Good dresser. But he was a bus driver in his forties, making about a hundred and a quarter a week with a wife and three children and living in an apartment building with kitchen smells and peeling plaster out in the hall. He could crush in his hat and wear it hotshot on the side of his head and pretend he was piloting a 707 or a truckload of explosives up the Alcan, but it was still a DSR bus and there was no way to make it something else.

“How about dessert?”

“I don’t think so.” Ryan sipped his water. “You know, my dad died when he was forty-six.”

“Well”-Mr. Majestyk was looking at his hand on his water glass and now Ryan’s eyes dropped to the hand, a thick, toughened hand with swollen knuckles and cracked, yellowed nails, a hand that made the heavy restaurant tumbler seem thin and fragile-“I don’t know. I guess a person just dies.”

“Yeah, I guess we all have to die.”

“I don’t mean that,” Mr. Majestyk said. “I don’t mean it that way. I mean we’re supposed to die. You can’t kill yourself, but that’s what we’re here for, to die. Are you a Catholic? With your name, I mean-”

“Yeah. I was.”

“Well, don’t you know what I mean?”

“I never was an altar boy or anything.”

“You don’t have to be an altar boy, for Christ sake. You were taught, weren’t you? You went to church.”

“Let’s not get into all that.”

Mr. Majestyk’s serious gaze held, then began to relax, and he smiled with his perfect-looking false teeth. “What’re we talking about dying for. Come on, let’s go over the Pier.”

He didn’t see the waitress in the red pants. She was gone and a dumpy Indian-looking waitress was serving the tables. There were girls scattered around the place, but none of them seemed to be alone. There was more noise, the lights were on and there were a lot more people now. There was a long table of beer-drinking college-looking Hermans who had probably been out sailing or cruising around in their cruisers and were loud and never shut up. It wasn’t as good as before.

When they were at a table again with a pitcher of beer, he saw Bob Jr. come in with the girl. He didn’t recognize the girl right away because he was watching Bob Jr. as they moved through the people down to the end of the bar. Bob Jr. was all slicked up in a real slick checkered sport shirt with the collar tips pointing out to his shoulders, short sleeves turned up once, silver expando watchband and everything, big can hanging over the bar stool now and his hair combed back like Roy Rogers. The girl with him went on to the ladies’ room.

“You get these guys from Dodge Main off the shift,” Mr. Majestyk was saying. “But get them in at night, that’s the trick.”

Bob Jr. looked this way, toward the front end of the bar, and, sure enough, his forehead was pure white.

“Well, it was August, so we figure how about fresh corn? All you can eat for fifty cents with this sign out in front. Now we only have one pot,” Mr. Majestyk was saying. “On purpose. One that would hold maybe a dozen and a half ears. So the guys come in and order the corn; they’re going to see how much they can eat, see? Fifty cents, you can’t beat it. But they got to wait because only with the one pot we can’t cook more’n a dozen and a half ears. So while they wait they’re drinking, I mean throwing it down. We make money on the booze and, listen, we make money on the corn. Because, see, we get it for twenty-five cents a dozen out by Pontiac and these guys, they pay fifty cents, right?” Mr. Majestyk sat back, the wi

Ryan smiled and laughed a little bit, but he wasn’t picturing any Polacks eating corn; he was watching the dark-haired girl coming back from the ladies’ room, recognizing her and suddenly having a fu

Ryan let the smile fade and said, “You know Bob Rogers, works for Ritchie?”

With a heavy knuckle Mr. Majestyk was wiping the moisture from his eye. “Bob Junior? Sure, his old man and I play pinochle.”

“He’s down at the end of the bar.”

Mr. Majestyk glanced around. “Yeah, I see him.”

“Who’s the girl with him?”

Now Mr. Majestyk straightened and looked over his shoulder again. He came back slowly, gazing around, so no one would think he was staring. He took a sip of beer. “That little lady’s in some trouble.”

“Who is she?”

“I forget her name. Nancy something. She’s supposed to be like a secretary to Ritchie, but that’s a bunch of crap.”

“He keeps her here?”

“That’s the word, buddy. He keeps her.”

“Whereabouts?”

“In this place he’s got on the beach. His wife comes up, he moves the broad over to his hunting place up by the farm.”

“She looks young.”

“How old do you have to be?”

“I mean for him. Ritchie.”