Broken Rainbow

A story by Keith Croes

The Plymouth crunched to a stop in front of the small two-bedroom house on the edge of town. The driver turned and grinned at Walter through the wire mesh as his partner squirted a slick brown stream of tobacco juice out the open window on the passenger's side. "Home, sweet home," the driver said.

The officers were equally fat and the car rocked as they extricated themselves from the front seat and into the sunny afternoon. With a flush of guilt, Walter noticed the tricycle parked on the concrete walk. The door opened next to him.

"Come on."

As the driver fumbled to release the handcuffs, Walter saw movement through the screen door beyond the shadows of the porch. "He's back, Mrs. Peacock," the other officer announced. "Again." Spit. The figure at the screen door disappeared. "Don't know why he'd want to leave that in the first place." The officer shook his head.

The driver turned him roughly around. "Tomorrow at 9. Or we come and get you."

"Wait." He reached in and retrieved his toolbox. The car doors slammed loudly behind him as he made his way past the tricycle and sat on the single concrete step leading up to the gray boards of the porch. With a kind of growing nausea, he read the emblem on the side of the car as it pulled away: CLINTON COUNTY DOMESTIC RELATIONS DIVISION.

From inside he heard Little Walt's squealing, a tattoo of footsteps. His eyes swam.

"Daddy!"

The screen door opened with a springy sound. Footsteps across the porch. He turned and swept the boy into a bear hug. "It's not you, baby. It's not you." The tears were salty rivers and his nose wanted to run. He held the boy's face in his hands, kissed it, splashed it. "I love you." Marveling, the boy swiped at the wetness his father had transferred to his cheeks.

His wife's voice came through the screen door like a knife at his back. "Can't even afford to leave. You disgust me."

"Go to hell."

She laughed an ugly chortle and Little Walt headed for the tricycle. Walter listened to her moving around the living room. She whined to herself. "Don't put it on me. I didn't make the laws. I almost wish they'd just let you go."

"Yeah," Walter muttered, "who does make the laws?" As he had done for the last nine months, Walter slept on the couch that night. In the morning he called his boss.

"Not again, Walt. Jesus."

"I'm sorry, Rick."

"What, do you like handcuffs?"

"Sure."

"So where did you go?"

"I took a room."

"You can't leave, Walt."

"I've got to."

"And those fat fucks show up at my site, handcuff my best man? This is an important job. I can't follow you home every night."

"That's why I love you."

"I can't do it. And now you need another day off? I can't do it. You're out, Walt. I've got to let you go."

Walter stared at the phone.

At 9 o'clock he was sitting in the waiting area at the courthouse among a gaggle of angry, overwrought mothers and their babies and one or two other glum men. It was 11:30 before the skinny blonde receptionist addressed him. "Mr. Peacock?" She nodded toward the open door. "You know where he is."

Frank Huff, domestic relations director, was a slight, perversely cheerful man. He shook his head. "Walter, Walter, Walter."

Walter sat.

"You left your wife again against your income profile." He opened a thin document with a flat-black plastic cover. "Your account at First Federal? Thirty-five dollars. You have $35 in savings, Walter. And more bills than you can handle."

"I could handle it."

He shook his head some more. "No. No, I'm sorry. You couldn't. We've been through this before." He turned the file so that it faced Walter. "This projection shows that you'd be bankrupt within ten months. Your creditors would be unhappy. The state would be unhappy. No. No. You couldn't handle it. You couldn't handle it at all." His finger traced the plummeting line of a graph. "If you had a little more in savings, if you could last a year until your wife got a job as required by law--maybe. She never should have quit her job at Sears. You know, you're both in a very precarious position."

"I thought I had a couple hundred in there."

"Fines, Walter. Every time you leave your wife illegally, it's a hundred dollar fine."

"Last time it was eleven months."

"Now it's ten. You're down to $35 in savings, Walter." He leaned back in his chair. "We're only thinking of you. With child support on top of your bills...your wife has been out of the work force for awhile. You'd never make it. You can't afford to leave, Walter."

Walter answered slowly, trying to let the words sink in. "I can't stay."

The little man shrugged. "I'd try to patch it up, if I were you. You're right on the edge, you know. There's a jail term if you can't pay the fine. Here--" He pushed the form across the desk and held out a pen. Walter knew what it said: Under penalty of perjury, the undersigned swears and attests that he/she has had no change in previously reported income within the last 48 hours. He signed.

By the end of the day he had another job working for Ralph D'Ambrosio of D'Ambrosio Construction on the other side of town.

"You did the Allison house in Chestnut Heights?" Ralph asked.

"Yes."

"You have your own tools?"

"Yes."

"I'll see ya tomorrow."

He was almost in a good mood when he got home that evening, but it darkened as he stood in the archway to the dining room and watched his wife and son eating. She didn't cook for him anymore. Not that he blamed her. Too many late nights. Too many harsh words. He ate a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich over the sink and avoided his wife as she cleared the table, escaping to the living room where he switched on the TV.

Clinging to a dish towel and a large metal pot, she stuck her head through the archway. "Think you could manage giving your son a bath?"

"Sure. Come on, Walt." The boy ran at him full tilt, then let himself be herded up the stairs, taking one step at a time, making each a separate challenge. Walter drew the bath water and stripped the boy naked, throwing the dirty clothes in a hamper.

"You're a goober," he said.

"You are!"

"Come on, let me get you washed up and then you can play awhile."

The boy fidgeted under the soapy sponge, working on the retractable passenger ramp of a plastic boat.

"I found a rainbow today."

"You did? Where?"

"On the ground. It was all broken up in pieces."

"What colors were they?"

"Blue, red, yellow and green. That's what color a rainbow is."

"Uh-huh."

With Little Walt tucked in bed and the last of the day retreating from the sky, Walter sat on the couch and stared. His wife ironed clothes in a corner of the dining room. "You could show up at mother's Sunday and at least act like a husband."

He didn't answer.

"What did Rick say?"

"Rick fired me."

She snorted. "Not only are you a carpenter, now you're an out-of-work carpenter. You're pathetic."

"I got another job."

She hesitated. "Where?" Her tone managed to combine sarcasm and disbelief.

"D'Ambrosio. I'm good, Penny. I'm a good carpenter."

"Then make enough money to get out of here."

"I'm working on it."

Walter heard the cars stop in front of the house at the same time he saw a flashing red light spatter the living room curtains. "Holy shit." He peeked through the blinds.

"What? What is it?" She stood in the archway holding a Mickey Mouse T-shirt.

"I don't know."

A voice crackled through a bullhorn. "This is Thomas Jazurski of the Internal Revenue Service. We have a warrant for the arrest of Walter J. Peacock."

Walter slammed his hip against the table as he flew through the dining room and the table hopped up to the ironing board, toppling it softly across a basket of laundry. He reached into the broom closet off the kitchen, grabbed a mop, and ran back into the living room, intending to jam the mop handle through the window and cause a dramatic spray of glass. But the window was open and the handle popped out through the screen. He brandished it in the spotlight.

"I haven't done anything!"

"We have a warrant for your arrest, Mr. Peacock. And we can see that that's a broom handle you're holding. Why are you doing that?"

Walt didn't know. "What are the charges?" he yelled.

"Tax evasion based on potential earnings. You have an IQ of--" The bullhorn shut down with a sound like an electrical short, then sparked back on. "--of 136. You should have received your doctorate three years ago, and then started in industry at--" The bullhorn snapped off again, then on. "--$125,000 a year. Or in academia at--" Off again, on again. "--$75,000 a year. That's at least--" Off, on. "--$90,000 in back taxes you owe, Mr. Peacock, given a standard five percent annual performance increase and not including bonuses. Now, we can do this easy, or we can do it rough."

Walter and his wife both turned in panic toward the noise at the foot of the stairs. It was Walter Junior in his Superman pajamas. She raced for him, clutching the boy in her arms and screaming over her shoulder. "How can you endanger us like this? Give yourself up!"

Walter clawed at the blinds and shouted through the screen. "I'm a carpenter, damn it! I like being a carpenter!"

"It's not in your profile. You're cheating the government, Mr. Peacock. Last year you only earned--" Off, on. "--$32,000. That's way below your income projections. You owe, Mr. Peacock."

"Give yourself up!" his wife screamed.

The charged-up snap came, followed by an amplified throat-clearing. "We also have a warrant for Penny R. Peacock at this address." The bullhorn stayed on and the Peacocks could hear the IRS agent mumble something and a rustling of paper. "Mrs. Peacock, you have an IQ of 145--"

The woman dragged Little Walt over to his father near the window. "He likes being a carpenter," she yelled through the bent blinds, "and he's a damn good one!" She pushed the boy at Walter. "Here, keep him down," she hissed. Walter listened to her footsteps up the stairs, and when she returned she had his shotgun, which rammed with a rainbow spray of splintered glass through the window on the other side of the front door. "You try working and raising a child, fat ass!" she hollered.

Walter caught her eye and smiled. "Now that's the girl I fell in love with," he said, giving the boy a squeeze.

THE END

MORE STORIES BY KEITH CROES

keith@croes.com