TOLL

Michael Riess

My son Rob just won’t shut it and we’re in the booth, so there’s nowhere to go, his face like two inches from mine. I see that a film of white covers his tongue as he says over the roar of the rain and the wind and the surf and the occasional car, Al, you look good, Dad you look well. What I mean is, you lost weight big time.

I just nod, trying to cut the convo. I appreciate the compliment, I do, but now is not the time. For one thing, my weight loss wasn't some heroic feat, wasn't one of those let-me-start-counting-carbs-and-jogging-five-miles-at-5-a.m. sort of thing. It really comes down to getting sick of the pastrami at King Tut’s Casino, my presence there having increased because of the need to win money to get Rob treated, and despite my repeated prayers to catch three big fish, as of last weekend, I’m now clocking ten hours per visit to recover my losses from Reel ‘Em In! slots.  

It’s clear my son is building up to solicit for money, what he likes to call casheroo, as he's now rambling about how he's glad he came to visit me in the booth, how it's nice to see Pop in his element and how it's just him and me suspended over water, floating in the dark with passing car lights bobbing blue and the sting of the salty air and the wind puppeteering the palm trees and the rain uselessly pummeling the windows like Foreman’s cuts against Ali in the jungle, etc. etc.. He then says, It’s like we’re gatekeepers at the end of the world, and then goes silent, letting his comments hang in the air, his right eye spasming at an alarming rate, waiting for me to contribute, to admire the depth of his remarks. Maybe due to my recent losses from Reel ‘Em In!, and possibly my desire to show that I too can be deep, I say, It’s not easy work, son. All those nickels and dimes and quarters jangling in the toll basket, watching all that untouchable money accumulate, seeing FDR and Jefferson and Washington lit up by the fluorescent light, over and over, night after night, well, son, that can drive a man batshit.

For several minutes we don't speak, but I can tell he’s working up the courage for his ask. Just look at his sagging face, look at his sunken eyes and the way he scratches his arms, his unkempt nails digging into his pockmarked skin, the way he stands over me as I sit in my stack chair, him looking so small, twitchy, like a trapped animal, such a shame to be twenty-three and in denial. The last time we met he insisted he had a rare bacterial infection; the kid must think his old man is flea-brained.

He opens his mouth and I notice a molar is missing and here comes the request, here comes the plea, but instead of his voice I hear steel hiss, glass shatter, a car crumple. We run into the night, thrust ourselves into the wind and the rain, stumble upon a car twisted around the railing, its windshield blown out, its hood an accordion, its headlights shining on a man facedown on the wet ground. I bend over the man but don't yet have the guts to look, so I look at my son, who’s looking down at the man and bracing for what’s to come—his thin lips drawn tightly, eyebrows furrowed, his dark eyes alert—which triggers in me a flash of that same expression from many years before, before the cards and the dice and the slots, before I got disbarred, before the debt, before I left: Rob, no older than five, running through our lawn, the grass lush, the red oak in full bloom, his face reflecting his iron will to pass through the sprinklers’ cold water.