Boy in the Wind

by Ren Sakurai

Chapter 1

Fanciful Takes a Dump

This is the moment I live for. This moment. Right now, when the world is wide open, when you don’t know if you’ve won or lost, whether you’re a king or pauper, rich or penniless—or, in my case, whether you owe Rudy the loan shark more money than you earn in three months. This is where I stand, Schrödinger’s cat, caught between two worlds, neither dead nor alive, but somehow both.

I take that back. I feel alive—alive, by God! The horses are rounding the far turn, three furlongs to go. They approach the grandstand, their coats glistening in the early autumn sun, the hoofbeats thundering in my ears. The rumbling shakes the earth beneath my feet and grows louder and stronger until I feel it in my bones, in my chest—if I wanted to be philosophical, I’d say it resonated in my soul.

And in front of the pack, Number 4, Fanciful herself, my rose, my angel, my savior. She holds her head proudly, as if she knows she is destined for greatness. She belongs somewhere better. I say this about Fanciful, but I suppose it also applies to myself. I belong somewhere else.

“Monte Carlo,” I say. Apparently, I say this out loud, loudly enough for Rudy to hear. He stands next to me, his elbows leaning on the railing that circles the track.

He pushes himself to his full height. At five-feet-six, he is short but easily makes up for it in stature. When he walks into a room, people pay attention. He brushes the flecks of rust clinging to the elbows of his blue sport coat with disdain—everything Rudy does seems to be with that same air of condescension, as if everything annoys the hell out of him.

“What are you talking about, Corbin? Monte Carlo?”

He wouldn’t get it. He’s just a small-time loan shark who seems to have no aspirations other than to stay in this boring Midwestern city, suffering through its long winters, enduring its perpetual sameness. Milwaukee—my God, why am I still here?

“Monte Carlo,” I tell him. “That’s where I’m going to live. Someday.”

This isn’t a metaphor. Monte Carlo is my dream, and someday I’ll get there.

The horses are in the homestretch now, with Fanciful still a full length in the lead. Life can be amazing sometimes. My buddy at the Library wasn’t kidding: Fanciful is turning out to be a sure thing. With the odds at eighteen to one, the payout will be massive, especially with the size of the bet I made—sixteen grand, to be exact.

“Maybe your luck is changing,” Rudy grumbles. His voice is unusually deep and strident for someone of his size. You could grate cheese with that voice.

“It’s about time,” I say. “I could use—”

“Or maybe not,” Rudy says, angling his head of wavy black hair toward the track.

My stomach bottoms out when I look just in time to see Fanciful falter. It isn’t much, but it is enough to drop her into second place behind Number 7, a sleek black gelding—Mercy Me, I read on the tote board.

“No!” I can’t tell if I shout this, whisper it, or say it under my breath. Or maybe I just thought it. It doesn’t matter, because, with less than a furlong until the finish line, Fanciful has fallen into third place. Please God, no! She can’t show, or even place—she has to win.

The rumbling subsides as the horses cross the line and slow to a trot, the riders standing in their stirrups. The horses pant and sweat and shake their manes.

The smell of manure washes over me. One of the horses has taken a massive dump right in front of the grandstand, not twenty feet from where Rudy and I stand. I have to think this is Fanciful’s handiwork, a fitting parting shot.

“Tough break,” Rudy says.

He doesn’t say it smugly, though he has every right to. This race has cleaned me out, and he knows it. But for him it’s just business.

I can’t think of a single thing to say. I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do. I still owe Rudy three thousand from two previous bets. That’s nineteen grand. Where am I going to come up with nineteen grand? I don’t think I even have nineteen dollars.

Rudy turns to look at me full in the face. He has the uncanny ability to keep his eyes open without blinking for minutes at a time.

“I gotta ask, Corbin, what the hell are you doing?”

I’m not sure what he means. “What, here? At the track?”

“Here, there, Monte Carlo, anywhere?”

“That’s the question,” I say, truthfully. And it isn’t just a question of where. What was I doing … period.

“Well, wherever you are, you know how much you owe me, and you know I expect to be paid back in full.”

“I know. Of course.”

“With the interest we discussed.”

Oh right, the interest. I don’t have energy to do the math, but I’m guessing I’m close to twenty thousand in debt. “You know I’m good for it, Rudy.”

“Do I?”

He looks at me with his dark, unblinking eyes. He’s a hard man to read. Sometimes I think he grew up a beggar on the street, sometimes it seems he could have been born into a wealthy family, gone to expensive prep schools, studied at an ivy league college. The sport coat and white shirt he wears tucked into a pair of pressed jeans make him appear at once elegant and casual. He’d be at ease at a five-star restaurant or a backwater supper club.

“You know what my grandmother used to say, God rest her soul?” He crosses himself quickly.

He stares at me, unblinking. I reply by shrugging.

“She used to say, ‘You cross me, I cross your face.’”

His mouth curls ever-so slightly at his attempt at humor, Rudy’s version of a smile. Normally I come back with a smart-ass comment whenever Rudy drops a lame quote about his grandmother, but my blood has run cold. I know what he is capable of.

“You know what happens to my customers who don’t pay up,” he says.

I can’t speak through the clog in my throat, can only nod. Yeah, Rudy, I know. I’ve heard the rumors. They come home with busted kneecaps, with unexpected dental work, with things broken and bruised. I’ve heard the stories of him and his sidekick, Frank, “going to work” on those customers who have fallen behind on their payments. That’s what Rudy calls it: “going to work” on a guy. “Work” is the last thing I want him to go on me.

Still, I tell myself those are just rumors. Me, I’m an evidence man. Show me the proof, and I’ll believe it. My brother, Tom, tells me this is a bad thing, that I never take advice until I learn it the hard way. But I dispute this. Believing what people tell you is what I call being gullible.

“So—” Rudy begins, but he is cut short by the sound of music—a single violin, if I’m not mistaken. It’s playing some kind of sad music, disproportionately melancholic for the time and place, out here at a race track, under a blazing sun.

“Hold on,” Rudy says. He holds up a finger and, improbably, closes his eyes. It takes me a second to realize he is listening to the music. He listens a moment longer, then scrunches his eyes, as if the music causes him actual pain.

“God, that’s beautiful,” he says, shaking his head and finally opening his eyes. “Should’ve been a musician.” He extracts a phone from the pocket of his jeans—the source of the music, I now realize—and answers it. “Yeah. OK. No, just tell him he’s got ‘til tomorrow. Yeah. Ciao.”

Rudy hangs up and returns the phone to his pocket.

“Excuse the interruption. So, we good with it?” he asks.

“Yeah, we’re good with it.”

But good is the last thing I am with it. In fact, I’m so not good with it that what I need right now is a stiff drink, and I know just the place.

As I take my leave, I look back at Fanciful as she is led off the track, her brown mane rippling in the breeze. Damn you, Fanciful, you were supposed to be a sure thing. But on the track, as in life, the only sure thing is that there is no such thing as a sure thing.

Chapter 2

My “Something”

“What in the world possessed you to bet on a mare?”

At thirty-four, Yusuf is exactly ten years my junior, originally from Somalia, shaved head, bristly black beard, and, at times, totally full of crap. But I find myself going along with what he says most of the time.

“Statistically speaking,” he says, “geldings and stallions are almost a second faster than mares.” He taps the sticky high-top table for emphasis. “What were you thinking?”

“But you said she was a sure thing! You said it.”

“No, no, and no. You weren’t paying attention. I said she was a sure thing to win, place, or show. And what did she do?”

“I thought you meant—“

“What did she do, Corbin?”

“She showed.”

“There you have it.”

“But I thought … I guess I don’t know what I thought.”

“I know what you thought. You heard ‘sure thing,’ and you ran with it. Your problem is that you’re careless. You don’t pay attention. Here, at the track, on the job.”

Not only is Yusuf my occasional drinking buddy, I also work with the guy.

“What was that, Yusuf? I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Very funny.”

I sip my whiskey and look out the grimy window at the traffic on Lincoln Avenue. The sun glinting off the cars suddenly brings back a memory—of what, I can’t quite place. It’s more the memory of a feeling, one of feeling safe. I must have been a child, because my father’s arm is around my shoulders, his calm, soothing voice explaining something to me.

Inside the Library, the lighting sucks. It’s dark, but that’s fine with me because it hides some of the shabbiness. Everything is forty years out of fashion, from the black-and-white tile floor to the burnt-umber fixtures in the bathroom. The bar itself has seen so much action over the years that it is less a solid surface than pits and dents. To complement this image, a song by the Ink Spots drools from the jukebox. But the balance is way off, the bass too loud, the treble almost non-existent.

“And another thing,” Yusuf says. “Her number should have told you something. Number 4; you know that’s synonymous with death in some cultures?”

“Yeah. I was just going off what you said.”

“Again, you only listened to what you wanted to hear.”

“I know.”

Yusuf finishes the last of his Budweiser and slaps the bottle on the table next to the others—his dead soldiers, as he likes to say.

“I’m glad you’re so self-aware,” he says, wiping his mouth with the blaze-orange sleeve of his jersey. When he’s not at work, blaze-orange shirts are the only kind I’ve ever seen him wear, no matter the season. And he doesn’t even hunt. ("I'm a Black man living in Milwaukee," Yusuf once told me. "Blaze orange is the next best thing to a bullet-proof vest.")

The sarcasm isn’t lost on me, but I don’t have the heart to respond. I’m still wondering how I’m going to come up with twenty grand in two weeks, the standard period on a Rudy Montello loan.

“Look, Yusuf. I’m really up a creek, and I was wondering—”

“Don’t even finish that thought.” He turns to face me, resting both elbows on the table. The eight or so other “dead soldiers” teeter precariously but then right themselves and come back to attention. “How many years have we been coming here, shooting the shit?”

“I don’t know—three, four, maybe five.”

“And how many times have you asked me for a loan?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Guess.”

“A few.”

“It’s twice that.”

I question the math on this calculation but don’t have the will to challenge him.

Yusuf puts a muscled hand on my shoulder. I think he tries to do it affectionately, but after the memory of my father doing the same thing, it feels anything but affectionate. The moment feels wrong—spoiled.

“Have I ever given you a loan before?” he asks.

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t remember?”

“To be honest, no.”

“In that case, I loaned you a million bucks. Time to pay up.”

I offer him a weak laugh for his effort.

“Who’d you use?” he asks.

“For what?”

“At the track. Who loaned you the money? Fred? Jerry?”

“Rudy.”

Yusuf is about to take a pull when his eyes get wide, the bottle halfway to his mouth. “Rudy? Montello?”

“Yeah.”

“Corbin!” Yusuf stares at me incredulously.

“What?”

“That guy is an animal! You know what he did to Mike Jalinsky?”

“Mike who?”

“Jalinsky. Bald, heavy Chicago accent, always with that dirty Cubs hat on.”

“Oh, yeah. What about him?”

“Rudy burned down his house.”

“Holy shit. I heard about his house. I didn’t know that was Rudy.”

“That’s the rumor.”

“Jesus.” I can only hope that’s all it was—a rumor.

Yusuf finishes another beer but leaves it near his lips, pensive. “Remember Angel? What was his last name? Bastidas.”

“Not really.”

“This was a while back. Maybe four, five years ago. He had a run-in with Rudy after a few unpaid debts. Nobody knows where he is now. Disappeared off the face of the earth.”

“Oh, come on. This is Milwaukee, Yusuf. It’s not like Sicily or anything.”

“You don’t think that kind of shit goes down in this town? Ever turn on the TV and watch this thing called “the news”? Two murders a week, Corbin. Two a week.”

“Well, ‘disappeared’ is different than ‘dead.’”

Yusuf snorts. “Personally, I wouldn’t want to be either of those things. Look, do you want my advice?” he asks.

“About?”

“About your predicament.”

“What exactly is my predicament?”

“What do you mean? You just lost a ton of money that you don’t even have. You’ve got Rudy Montello on your ass, who will do who knows what to you. If it was any more of a predicament, they’d take your picture, write it up, and put it in the dictionary under the word ‘predicament.’”

“Oh, come on. This isn’t any different from any other loan. It’s just the amount that’s more.”

Yusuf raises his eyebrows and looks at me for a moment. His dark eyes seem to read my thoughts—what few of them there are.

“When a habit starts negatively affecting your life,” he says, suddenly more serious than ever, “that’s when the habit has become an addiction.”

“For chrissakes, Yusuf. I’m not addicted.” I lean back in my chair and take another sip of whiskey, if only to avoid Yusuf’s stare. “To anything.”

My shoulder now out of reach, Yusuf withdraws his hand, crosses his arms. “Okay, Corbin. You’re not addicted. In that case, stop.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop going to the track. And the casino. And wherever else you go to lose money.”

I shrug at this. But if I’m being honest, something drops in my gut. Gambling is one of my only joys in life. How monotonous would things be without it? What would get me by?

“For one thing, Sadie and Larry,” Yusuf says.

“What?”

“What do you mean, ‘what’? You asked what would get you by.”

“I did?” I guess I do that sometimes: not realize I was thinking out loud.

My kids. My poor kids! When Yusuf brings up Sadie and Larry, my “situation” seems infinitely worse. I have no money and won’t get a paycheck until next week. I don’t know what I’ll do with them on Wednesday—one of two days of the week when they come to my house. Not to mention, I could have invested all that money in their college fund instead of blowing it at the track. Correction: their non-existent college fund. I haven’t had the funds for that yet. But Sadie is fifteen, so that gives me three more years. I swear that the next time I hit it big, every penny will go into a college savings account for her.

But for the time being, I need to come up with twenty grand to pay back Rudy. From now on, I’m never going to ever, ever, ever bet on a “sure thing.” I tell myself this, but I know that for every rule, there are exceptions. I mentally reserve the right to separate the sure things that really are sure things from the ones that only seem like the real deal. After my “Fanciful” learning experience, I’ll definitely be able to recognize the difference next time.

And, next time, I’ll be sure to pay attention to the details. All the details, not just some of them, as Yusuf pointed out.

“Fat chance,” Yusuf says.

I guess I said some of that out loud.

“People don’t change unless something happens to force them to,” he says. Yusuf pushes his chair away from the table and stands, causing one of the empty bottles to spin, teeter, then topple over. He catches it just before it rolls off the table. “Maybe, for you, this is that something.”

As he strides across the sticky floor toward the restroom, I dismiss the notion that I need to change. But, if I did, I wonder if this is my “something.” I wonder if Yusuf is right.

Yusuf pushes open the bathroom door and says over his shoulder, “I’m right.”

Chapter 3

The Secret of Life

I decide that, despite my predicament, it would no longer be appropriate to ask my father for a loan.

Especially now that I’ve cut off his little finger.

In the ER, he is gracious enough to tell the physician’s assistant that it was his own fault, but we both know better.

“Owned that table saw forty years,” Dad says. “Never had an accident before now.”

He doesn’t look at me when he says this.

“Actually—” I say, but Dad interrupts.

“Dang thing kicked when it hit that knot. Should’ve been more careful.”

The PA, a red-headed guy no more than thirty, red stubble erupting from his face, is good-natured and has done a decent job of putting Dad at ease throughout the entire process of administering the anesthetic, cauterizing the wound, the staunching, the stitching. “Well,” he says, as he wraps a final layer of gauze around the stub of Dad’s finger, “you have nine more chances to get it right.”

“What?” Dad says, not getting the joke at first. “Oh, right.”

He laughs, but from the wince that follows it is obvious he is in some serious pain. This is a man who has seen action in two wars and had twenty-some chunks of shrapnel surgically extracted from his back, but he still has the decency to laugh at the PA’s joke and to deflect the blame for his “accident” from his son. I’m pretty sure that, were our situations reversed, I would be crying like a baby.

“I’ll be back with a ‘scrip for some meds,” the PA says. “Something to take the edge off.” He winks at my father. To me, he says, “Smells like you’ve already done that. Starting a little early, aren’t we?”

He leaves before I have a chance to explain that it was only my inattention that caused Dad’s accident, and not the little bit of whiskey I tipped back with Yusuf. If I’d had the chance, I’d also have explained that he’d have wanted a drink, too, if he’d lost as much money as I had at the track.

“I’m really sorry, Dad,” I say for at least the tenth time. I watch his face to see if he caught the PA’s dig about my whiskey breath.

But he is busy cringing while gingerly flexing the stump of his finger. “Not your fault, son,” he says.

“That’s nice of you, but we both know—”

“We both know I shouldn’t’ve asked for your help.”

This stuns me.

Dad winces. “Sorry, Corbin. I just mean that it wasn’t really a job for two people.”

I nod, but I can’t help feeling like I’m ten years old again, caught doing a job poorly, failing a test, skipping out on my chores.

“Sorry,” I mumble again.

“It’s all right,” he says. He reaches over from where he sits on the examination table and claps my shoulder with his hand—his good hand. This action completes the picture, and I become ten again. I’m walking in the woods, catching snowflakes on my tongue while my father points at deer tracks in the snow, a beaver’s dam across a flowing creek, an eagle soaring above the treetops.

“We can’t help who we are,” Dad says. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t change, if you wanted to.”

At first I can’t tell if it’s my father of old in the woods or the one sitting here in the ER. I suppose, in a way it could be both.

“How can both be true?” I ask. The boy in the woods asks it, as does the man the boy has become.

“That’s for you to figure out,” comes the reply. “Maybe that’s the only thing to figure out.”

The door opens, the PA returns with a prescription, and we leave. I can’t help but feel his stare as we’re walking out the door, one I’m too ashamed to return.

At the car, my Dad is about to open the door, when he stops. He looks at me quizzically. “By the way, was there a reason you stopped by today?” He laughs. “Other than to cut off my finger?”

I wince at this, try to laugh. I briefly consider asking for the loan—my original intention. But even I know this would push the boundaries of decency.

“Nothing, really,” I reply. “Just stopping by to say hi.”

Dad looks at me. It’s a quick but penetrating look, just long enough for me to understand he knows why I had come. It wouldn’t be the first—perhaps not even the hundred and first—loan I’ve asked for.

He opens the car door and gingerly lowers himself inside, careful not to bump his bandaged hand.

I follow suit. The doors slam home. I start the car. As we pull out of the parking lot, Dad says, “You know, I’ve got this CD that just came due. It’s not much—five hundred bucks, but I want you to have it. Maybe start up that college savings account you’ve been talking about.”

“Dad, that’s nice of you, but don’t you need it?”

“Nah. What am I going to do with it? I got all I need.”

We pull into traffic. At the next stoplight I turn to look at him. Dad is looking out the window. It is clear that he is in pain. What isn’t clear to me is the kind of pain he is in until I ask if he’s all right.

“Yeah,” he says. “I just miss your mother, that’s all. She was good at this kind of thing.” He raises his bandaged hand.

I nod. “I miss her, too.”

It’s been over a year since Mom died, but it seems like, to Dad, it was just yesterday. He hasn’t dated or even so much as looked at another woman since then.

“We could stop at the cemetery, if you want,” I venture.

The light turns, and I put the car into gear. Dad is looking out the window. He doesn’t answer, only shakes his head. I glance again and see that his face is wet. I can’t tell if it’s the pain of losing his finger, or his wife. I have to think it’s both. And maybe he is also thinking of his eldest son who has been a perpetual disappointment, whose bad luck and inattention has cost him thousands—and, now, a finger.

Dad sniffs and wipes his eyes with his good hand. “Damn allergies,” he says. “You’re lucky you got your mother’s genes in that respect.”

“I don’t know, Dad. I don’t feel that lucky.”

Dad cocks his head at me. “Nah, you’re lucky. You just don’t know it yet. You got a job, two great kids, a brother and sister who love you. You got a lot more than most.”

I laugh to myself at this. I believe what he said about Willow, my sister, but love is the last emotion I would associate with Tom, my militant brother whose mission in life, it seems, is to make me feel bad about myself.

“I suppose,” Dad says, “when you’ve seen guys get their legs blown off, you think everyone else is damn lucky.”

“I guess that would do it,” I say.

Dad looks at me. He opens his mouth as if to speak, but it seems he doesn’t know what to say. But I know what’s going through his head. He’s trying to think of something to say that will make me change my ways. He wants to somehow convey how lucky I am.

But I know better. He doesn’t understand what I’m up against.

“Yes I do,” he says.

I guess I said that last part out loud.

“Yourself,” he finishes.

Maybe he’s right. But that doesn’t help me with my current situation. Even the five hundred bucks he’s giving me is, while generous, just a drop in the bucket compared to what I need.

“Look, Corbin, I’m going to let you in on a secret: the secret of life, as it were.”

I snort. “Okay, lay it on me.”

“All you have to do—” he pauses for effect “—is the right thing. Every single time. Just do the right thing.”

“That’s the secret of life?”

He looks over at me. His mouth turns up into a smile, despite the pain. He nods and shrugs.

“Thanks for the advice, Dad.”

“One more thing. And maybe this is even more important. If your son ever offers to help you cut boards with a table saw, you tell him ‘no.’”

He holds up his hand, the tip of which has developed a small spot of dark red blood. The look on Dad’s face is one of mock exasperation.

“You cut off my finger, Corbin. Jesus Christ. Had this finger seventy-four years.” He chuckles. “Cut my finger clean off.” He laughs outright.

I’m about to tell him that I’m sorry again, but he’s laughing too hard.

“Survived two wars with all my extremities, and now this,” he says.

As much as I feel guilty about it, when my dad laughs it’s hard not to laugh along with him.

He claps me on the shoulder. “It’s all right, son. Deep down, you’re all right.”

I try not to take offense at this. If I’m only all right “deep down,” that means I’m not all right on the surface, or at any other level. But I’ll take a compliment when I can get it.

We drive on, I drop him off at home, now one finger less than he had at the start of the day.

I try not to think of this as I head down to the casino. With the five hundred he gave me, I know with a little luck I can add a zero to that. Then I’ll be on my way to paying back Rudy, on my way to saving for my kids’ college, maybe even on my way to Monte Carlo.

The problem is, I don’t have a little luck.

Ever.