Buggie and I lay on the floor, coloring a Bullwinkle coloring book, watching The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams. On the show, a mountain lion protected a French domestic rabbit because it was pregnant. I’m not sure what the mountain lion protected the rabbit from.
“Mine,” said Buggie, taking my crayon.
“Okay,” I said. Neither one of us colored inside the lines very well, but I did better than the Bug. Ann sat on the couch, sewing patches in my new jeans. Neil Young wore patches on his jeans, so I wanted some on mine.
“Why does the rabbit have such huge ears?” Ann asked.
“It’s French,” I said. “See, the guy in the balloon is French, so the rabbit must be French too.”
“What is a French guy in a balloon doing in the mountains?”
“They didn’t explain that.”
Buggie reached his hand toward a grizzly bear whose name was Ben, or, a least, the people on the show called him Ben. Buggie made clutching movements with his little fist and said, “My bet.”
“It’s a bear, Buggie. Bears don’t make good pets.”
“My bet.”
Ann spoke through a needle between her teeth. “Friday was pet day at the day care. All the big kids brought animals. You should have seen Heather’s pet lima bean plant. She had a ribbon tied through its leaves.”
Buggie looked at Ann. “Bet.”
“Maybe we should buy him a dog,” I said. “A beagle, beagles handle kid abuse well. They’ll put up with anything and not bite.”
“I’d rather have a cat.”
“Cats don’t like children.” This rapidly deteriorated into a stock cats versus dogs discussion with neither side offering an opinion less than five hundred years old. Most family debates could be recorded by actors and actresses, sold in stores, and played in the tape deck whenever a disagreement occurs. That way the debaters wouldn’t have to actually participate and could use their time watching television.
Buggie decided to ignore us and go back to coloring Bullwinkle. He grabbed my new crayon. “Mine.”
“Hey, I get this one. You’ve got enough.”
“Mine.”
Ann leaned down and took my crayon. “Let him color, Loren,” she said, handing the crayon to Buggie.
That left me with white. Who can color a white page with a white Crayola? “Look, Buggie. Don’t color the sky blue. Try green or red.”
“Why shouldn’t he color the sky blue? The sky is blue.”
I stole the blue crayon and Buggie started to cry. “Someone will see the drawing and think we made him color the sky blue.”
“So?”
“They’ll think we’re overstructuring Buggie’s education. Forcing him to deal with reality.”
“Give him the crayon, Loren.”
“But—”
“The pictures all end up in the trash anyway. Who’s to see we have a structured kid?”
Little did Ann know I stashed all Buggies’s drawings in my file box behind the unsold Western, four short stories, and my brand-new, probably never-to-be-used college diploma. I saved hundreds of Buggie’s childhood scrawlings for posterity.
The phone rang and Ann and I looked at each other, waiting to see if the other one would get up to answer it. I won. Ann set her sewing on the end of the couch, out of Buggie’s and my reach, and went into the kitchen. I gave Buggie back the blue crayon so he’d stop crying and I could listen in on the call.
Ann didn’t talk long, in fact, she talked hardly at all; mostly she listened. Twice I heard, “Don’t you want to talk to him?” and once, “When are you planning to do that?”
Buggie colored the sky blue and I colored Bullwinkle’s feet white. On the TV, a tame grizzly bear tracked down the rabbit while four humans stood in a semicircle and discussed the importance of individual expression. Something in Ann’s tone on “Don’t you want to talk to him?” gave me an intense goose pimply feeling, like the pattern of the last year was turning on its head and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I always feel the change right before it happens and I never try to stop it.
Ann came back in the living room, but she didn’t sit down. I knew the goose pimply feeling was right because she held both hands together above her elbows. Ann’s hands usually hung down, relaxed.
“That was your stepfather,” she said.
“Don?”
“Is that your stepfather’s name?”
“Yes.”
Ann hesitated, “Your sister was killed last night.”
I looked at Buggie. He sat, watching Ann and chewing on the crayon.
Ann continued: “In Houston, in some kind of a race riot. He wasn’t sure of the details, but I guess a policeman accidentally shot her.”
“Her name is Kathy.”
“That’s what your stepfather said.”
“Why didn’t he tell me himself?”
“He didn’t say.”
Ann came back to the couch and sat where she could touch my shoulders. I reached over and took the crayon out of Buggie’s mouth. “Your tongue’s blue,” I said.
“Mine,” Buggie answered.
We sat awhile, no one doing anything. Grizzly Adams came to a happy conclusion, the rabbit had her babies. A commercial about a mother and daughter with equally soft hands took its place.
“The funeral is Wednesday morning,” Ann said. “Your stepfather didn’t think you’d want to go.”
“I’d like to be there.”
She looked at me closely, “Do you want me to come?”
I met Ann’s eyes and made a decision. “We’ll get married in Texas.”
“Married?”
“I mean, do you want to? I’d kind of like to get married…”
Buggie got up and walked across the coloring book and stood between Ann’s legs, balancing himself by holding onto my hair.
“You want to go to your sister’s funeral and, afterwards, marry me?”
“We could get married before the funeral.”
“Why?” She picked up the Bug and sat him in her lap. He looked at me seriously.
“What?”
“Why now? You never mentioned marriage before. You never even mentioned having a sister before.”
“Her name is Kathy.”
“You said that.” Ann waited, her mouth a line, her eyes looking directly in my face. I wanted badly to read the expression, but it was ridiculous to try. Better to keep talking.
“I suppose it’s a matter of balance. Losing one next of kin means I should add another.”
“That’s an odd reason for getting married.”
I touched her. “I love you and the Bug.”
“Which do you love most?”
Buggie seemed to be following the conversation closely, his mouth set in the same line. I realized where he came by the famous Buggie look.
“Between you and Buggie?” Ann nodded. “That’s not a fair question. You’re one and the same to me.”
“If Fred wasn’t here, would you still love me?”
The question was so unthinkable that I hesitated too long. “Of course.”
Ann nodded again. She stared at me a couple of minutes, then said, “I’ll marry you anyway.”
• • •
That night Buggie went climbing again. I was in the rocker, reading aloud to Buggie from a Flannery O’Connor short story book—the story about the guy who steals the ape suit so he can be somebody. Ann was washing the dishes, which may sound odd since it was my night, but I got out of the job on account of Kathy being dead. Aren’t the consequences of an action amazing? The temperature rises to 110 in Houston, so some black kids break into a True Value Hardware to steal an air conditioner, the break-in escalates into a riot, and a Texas Ranger kills my sister, and because of all this, two days later, I get out of doing the dishes.
“You okay?” Ann asked from the kitchen.
“Did you know that when she was five years old, Flannery O’Connor taught a chicken to walk backwards?”
“I thought all chickens walk backwards.”
“The Pathé News Agency filmed the trick and showed it as a short subject before movies all across America. Flannery was more famous then than when she died thirty-four years later as the greatest woman writer of all time.”
Ann’s voice came through the sound of running water. “Was Flannery O’Connor the greatest woman writer of all time?”
“Of course.” I was all set to launch into the standard O’Connor-versus-everyone-else rap when Buggie chose that moment to scream, “Medago,” and scamper up the living room drapes. He made about a foot and a half up the wall before the whole shebang fell on his head. Ann ran in from the kitchen, Buggie cried like his world was canceled, I stood around, hoping Ann wouldn’t blame me and say Buggie climbed the drapes to get attention because she was washing dishes. Be just like her to swear off housework so as not to threaten the kid.
Ann’s only comment was “Jeez Louise, Loren, keep an eye on him.”
“I was reading, he went up in a flash.”
Buggie quit howling and picked up the curtain rod. He swung it back over his head like a baseball bat, then forward until it pointed at my desk. “Biggin,” he said. He patiently watched the end of the rod awhile, then swung it again, making a boosh gurgly sound in the back of his mouth.
“Where’d he learn how to fish?” Ann asked.
“Is he fishing?”
“Didn’t you hear him?”
Buggie looked at me seriously and said, “Biggin.”
To quote Buggie phonetically, most of his sentences would read like Igawdoepahrum. No one except Ann and I understood a word he said, and I faked it much of the time. When Buggie cooed, “Burwazzahassie,” I nodded and smiled and said things like “Is that so, then what happened?” I always figured Ann did the same, but now I don’t know. Maybe she understood all those grunts and slurs.
I tied a four-foot length of curtain cord onto the end of the rod and Buggie went “biggin” all evening. The kid had a tremendous attention span. It’s like he was born to obsession.
All the way to Texas, Buggie sat in his safety chair in back and fished over the front seat between Ann and me. About every five minutes, he hollered, “Biggin,” and hit me in the right ear with the rod or cord. He never hit Ann, only me.
Buggie’s technique caused our first real argument. He didn’t reel in the line—just sat watching the rod for several minutes before pepping me in the ear on the backswing. North of Raton, New Mexico, I decided this was all wrong. Pulling onto the shoulder, I turned to face Buggie in the backseat.
“You’re casting like a bait fisherman.”
Ann was working a crossword puzzle and didn’t understand why we stopped. “What?”
I took the rod from Buggie’s hand. “Here, wave it back and forth. Pretend it’s a floating, double-tapered line with a barbless size twelve Royal Humpy on a 4X leader. Two false casts, then let it down easy.”
Considering we were in a ’63 Chevelle, I showed pretty good form. “See,” I said.
The Bug’s lower lip shot out and his eyes watered.
“Give him the fishing pole,” Ann said.
“We must establish proper habits,” I said. “He’s casting like a bait fisherman.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Only germs use worms. Now, Buggie, you try it.” I handed the rod back to the kid. He howled and threw it on the floor.
Ann blamed me, of course. “Jesus.” She twisted around and reached over the backseat floor. “Look what you’ve done, Loren. He was perfectly fine. Do you know how hard it is to keep a two-year-old perfectly fine on a long trip?”
Buggie howled louder.
“My brother will be at the funeral. Do you want him to think I’m raising a worm watcher?”
“I don’t give a shit what he thinks.” Ann pulled up the rod and stuck it in Buggie’s hands. He stuck out his lower lip, then threw the rod back on the floor.
“You don’t care?” Ann hardly ever said shit, so when she did, the word carried a lot of power.
Ann turned from Buggie to look at me. “Oh, Loren, of course I want your brother to like us, but if he bases his like or dislike on how Buggie swings a curtain rod, there’s not much I can do.”
Buggie suddenly stopped crying. He didn’t sniffle twice or suck air or any of the regular signs of stopping crying. He went from full-blast screamer to quiet all in one instant.
“Okay,” I said, “I won’t make a big thing.”
“You already did.”
“Do you mind if we camp by a river tonight so I can show him a few casts? Is that all right?”
In mid-nod, Ann remembered something, “Brother? We’re together over a year without you mentioning a sister, now there’s a brother? How big is this family anyway?”
“Two brothers and a sister—well, she’s dead, so I guess I shouldn’t count her anymore. Also a mom and a stepdad.” That made four left if I counted Don. “Garrett won’t be at the funeral. He’s in jail in Reidsville, Georgia.”
Ann reached down on the backseat floor and retrieved the fishing pole again. “Why’s that?” Buggie looked at the pole a moment, torn between his principles and his toys. The toy won; he took the curtain rod.
“He was in Vietnam and came back dependent. One week it’s heroin, the next week Jesus, sometimes both at once. He got caught in a heroin phase and sent to prison for twelve years.”
“Which side is he on now?”
“Jesus, last I heard, but that was awhile back.”
As I turned to start the Chevelle, Buggie swung the rod side-armed and caught me full in the temple. “Digaloot—fishin,” he said.
• • •
I didn’t tell Ann the story of my other brother, Patrick. He’s the oldest. Patrick enrolled in a special school to learn how to win friends and influence people. He used to stand on a chair and shout, “I’m enthusiastic.” Whenever he met someone he would repeat their name three times in conversation so he knew the names of everyone he knew.
Patrick met a girl from El Paso named Libby. The weekend Patrick and Libby announced their engagement, they went water-skiing on Lake Texhoma and Libby skied into a big ball of water moccasins. While Patrick watched, the snakes wrapped around her arms and legs and life preserver and killed her.
When I left Victoria, Patrick was selling real estate for a company that was draining a swamp where the last whooping cranes on earth used to lay their eggs. He drank often and watched professional sports on TV. He never stood on a chair, shouting, “I’m enthusiastic,” anymore.
• • •
Ann and I were married by a justice of the peace in Borger, Texas, on August 5, 1976. The JP’s face looked like an aerial photograph of a Panhandle dirt farm. His wife, the witness, had hair the color and texture of a brand new S.O.S. pad. She pronounced Ann with two syllables and Loren with one. Before the ceremony, she licked a Tennessee Ernie Ford spiritual album clean, set it on pearl-colored monaural record player, and played “The Old Rugged Cross.” I liked the sound.
Ann wore a white blouse and new jeans and carried Buggie on her right hip. Buggie wore Pampers. He carried his fishing pole in both hands, casting it occasionally at the JP. I forget what I wore, probably whatever I had on when we pulled into town. My lip was all swollen from a giant canker sore that Ann said broke out because I wasn’t releasing the pain of Kathy’s death.
“Stop internalizing,” she said. “Let the emotion flow. Holding back only causes ulcers and strokes.”
“I can’t decide what emotion I feel.”
“Pick one and let it out.”
I picked anger and let it out by shaking my fist at the back of the first Texas Ranger who drove past, but the canker sore only spread.
The judge acted as if I was peculiar because I didn’t have a ring to give Ann. Ann didn’t seem to mind. She smiled and cheek-kissed the judge and his wife after the ceremony. Ann’s lips came away from the woman’s cheek light blue and dusted with something chalky.
We honeymooned outside Borger on brown Lake Meredith so Buggie could throw his cord in the water and I could visit the Texas Panhandle Pueblo Culture National Monument. I wanted to see what kind of waves emitted from people who had been dead several thousand years. None of those Pueblos must have been creative writers because I didn’t feel a thing but hot.
They couldn’t have been too awfully smart. Imagine being the first people around with the whole of North and South America to choose for a home and picking the Texas Panhandle. Just proves Aggies come from an ancient heritage.
• • •
I’ve only been married twice, but I think wedding night sex is about the best there is. Worth having a wedding for. I mean, on the wedding night, even though the couple has lived together for years, the partners should feel especially pleasant toward one another.
It may not surprise the rest of the world, but it did me. Sex is a good deal better when the partners feel pleasant toward one another.
I’m almost certain Ann loved me that day. She wasn’t blind in love or anything, Ann knew my faults, but she did marry me and I did marry her. Considering the aftereffects, the fact that Ann and I married on purpose should be stressed.
• • •
I swung the Chevelle into the driveway where I’d played basketball and Red Rover, Red Rover all those years ago. The yard looked the same—unwatered yellow. Someone had painted the garage, but the house was still the peeling off-white I remembered.
Ann turned the rearview mirror to herself. She’d spent the last hundred miles trying to make herself and Buggie look like they hadn’t been stuck in a baking car for three days. “I failed,” she said. “What do you think of a headband? Maybe a headband would hide the dirt.”
“You look fine. When we get in there, keep Buggie from climbing anything. Mom’s not too good with kids.”
“You should of phoned from Borger. She might want to change sheets or plan menus or something. My mom about worked me to death when company was coming. I had to clean house and dig out the guest towels. Cook extra food. Jeez, I hated company.”
“My family is different.”
I wondered how different my family would prove to be. The last contact had ended on a misunderstanding. I forgot what brought on the misunderstanding, but I remembered we parted with sour feelings on both sides, so the upcoming reunion was causing some nervousness, which I hadn’t mentioned to Ann. Reunions always contain the possibility of accusations, berations, and painful regrets, and this particular reunion contained more possibilities than most.
Barging in didn’t seem right—I no longer lived there—so I rang the doorbell and stood in the heat, waiting. The thing I was most torn about was my hands. Should they be in my pockets or out ready to hug? What if I set myself up for a hug and no one offered? Footsteps sounded inside, moving toward the door.
“Let me have Buggie.”
“What?”
I took him from Ann. “It’ll look better if I’m holding him.”
“Loren.”
The door swung open on a short-haired woman with sturdy calves and a rayon print dress. I noticed her calves right away. “They moved and didn’t tell me,” I said.
“You’re Loren, aren’t you? I’ve seen pictures of you from way back. Of course, you’re older now, but I recognize the glasses. Isn’t it awful about Kathy?”
“Could we come in?”
Other than the strange woman, stepping into the living room was like breaking the wax on a time capsule. Maybe they kept everything exactly as it was the day I left as a memorial. Or so I wouldn’t be disoriented if I returned in the night. Nothing had moved or aged—same ratty hooked rug, same nearly matching sofa and chairs, same pocked Motorola. There was the painting of Jesus done all in shades of brown. I spotted the hole I accidentally shot in Jesus’ neck with a new .22 Don bought me on my sixteenth birthday.
“Look everyone,” the short-haired woman announced. “It’s Loren.”
“Figures.” Mom stood in her slip and electric curlers, ironing something black. A cigarette hung from lips that sagged more than I recalled, and her hair around the rollers was more silver-blond where it had been a deeper yellow-blond. “You always was more interested in dead family than live,” she said.
“I’m glad to see you, Mama.”
“Hey, Spunky.” Don gave me a mock salute from the overstuffed recliner in front of the Motorola. “Ain’t it a shame.”
His calling me Spunky was one of several reasons I couldn’t stand my stepfather.
“Sure is.” I took for granted, “Ain’t it a shame,” referred to Kathy, but he could have meant the game he was watching or the heat or something unrelated to anything I’d ever heard about. It is to Ann’s everlasting credit that, after hearing Don, she never once called me Spunky. Not even in teasing.
“Look, Patrick, it’s your brother.” The woman must have figured Patrick needed more introduction than Mom or Don.
Patrick sat at the kitchen table, staring at me over a Macintosh Scotch bottle and a tinted Coca-Cola glass. He raised the glass as if to toast. “Kathy’s dead,” he said.
“That’s why we came down.” In my absence, Patrick’s hair had fallen out except around the sides and his face had changed to gray.
Mom flipped an ash into a plastic ashtray on the ironing board. “He was nuts over dead animals. It got so the backyard stunk from all the armadillos and possums he buried out there. And birds, hundreds of stinking birds in his drawers and closet.” I think she was talking to the strange woman, but Mom kept glancing at the ceiling as if she was talking to someone up there. “The police brought him home after they caught him in Grumbach’s Funeral Parlor, touching the bodies. Millie Grumbach thought he was disgusting.”
“Aw, Mom, I was just a kid.”
“You better not touch Kathy today. I got friends coming from the bar. I won’t have you pawing your dead sister.”
The hostility confused me. I don’t know how I expected Mom to behave, but this wasn’t it. I touched Ann’s shoulder. “Folks, I’d like you to meet my wife, Ann, and this is our son, Buggie…Fred.”
Caught them off guard with that one. They’d been all worked into an attitude and now they had to adjust. Mom stubbed out her cigarette, eyeing Buggie. Patrick more like leered at Ann. Don kept his eyes on the game, but he must have been paying attention. The Cubs led the Mets nine to two, and that couldn’t have been as interesting as the long-lost son appearing with wife and child.
“What a beautiful baby,” Mom said. “Is he legitimate?”
“Was I?”
All right. Get those hostilities out where everyone can see. To hell with polite conversation in suburbia. Buggie squirmed in my arms. A cat sauntered in from the direction of my old room. He sat in the doorway and yawned, watching. Somewhere in the back of the house, a washing machine went into an off-balance spin cycle.
“I’m real pleased to meet you, Mrs. Paul,” Ann said. “Loren’s told me all about you.”
Patrick spoke. “How long have you and my brother been married?”
“Since yesterday.” Ann reached over like she wanted Buggie, but I pretended not to see.
Patrick drained his glass and clicked it down with some finality. “You’re in it now.”
“What do you mean by that?” I asked.
The cat turned and walked back toward my old room.
“Guess he didn’t mention my name,” Mom said, lighting another cigarette. Ann forcibly removed Buggie from my arms. I didn’t mind. The moment for a spontaneous hug was past.
“Name’s Mrs. Buttercott. Deela Buttercott. I’ve been Mrs. Buttercott fifteen years, but he ain’t heard yet.”
Driving down from Colorado, I’d daydreamed a number of possible receptions and how I would graciously handle each. I would comfort the grief-stricken, bolster the bewildered and lost, show humility if praised for my collegiate degree or the taste displayed by my marriage. But I hadn’t made any plans based on festered resentments. In spite of Kathy’s funeral, I’d hoped for a cheerful welcome.
There’s a short story in the Bible, I think Jesus wrote it, about a prodigal son who comes home after more or less going off to college and blowing his daddy’s trust fund on women and whiskey and never writing or calling collect on Mother’s Day, never so much as a Christmas card. If he was anything like me, he used his mom’s self-addressed, stamped envelopes to store marijuana. The money runs out, the kid comes home, and his dad goes apeshit with joy. Buys him all new clothes, throws a king-hell of a party, kills the fatted calf. The kid’s brother resents all this, understandably, because he stayed home and didn’t get any whiskey or women and the dad never gave a hoot one way or another.
I had hoped for something along the lines of the Bible story. Not the new clothes or the king-hell party—after all, we were gathering for a funeral—but “Gee, it’s good to see you,” or “You’ve stayed away too long, son,” would have been nice. My sister was dead. In any normal family, that alone would have been cause for forgiveness and drawing together. My old mama, though, she didn’t draw together for anybody.
The short-haired woman came over and shook Ann’s hand. “I’m Jennifer, I’m married to him.” She pointed at Patrick. “We’ve only been married a year, but we separated last month because he’s an alcoholic. Don’t you just hate alcoholics? The only thing in the world worse than being an alcoholic is being married to one. He talked me into coming back for a few days because Kathy got killed. Did you know Kathy?”
“No.” Ann kept glancing around, looking for a place to sit or run, I’m not sure which. Her pupils were so dilated that her eyes showed only black and white. She didn’t seem to notice Buggie squirming. I guided her to the plastic divan and motioned her to sit.
“You okay?”
Ann nodded. I sat next to her. The plastic on the couch was light brown with dark brown splotches. I think it was supposed to look like cowhide.
“My own mother has ankylosis spondylitis,” Jennifer continued. “She can’t raise her head above her waist anymore, but you should talk to her. Mind sharp as a tack. She gets up and dresses herself every day. Isn’t that remarkable?”
I couldn’t understand why this woman was telling me about her mother. I held down one side of the room, Mom and Patrick the other, daring each other to draw first so we could open fire with old crimes neither forgotten nor forgiven—She gave away my puppy; he tore up my second-grade art project; she married a man who calls me Spunky; he’s ashamed of his family; my real love died and his didn’t; ignorant, unsophisticated hick; ingrate—unspoken bullets flew around the room, while, oblivious to the crossfire, this woman with fat legs talked about her mother who was shaped like a horseshoe.
“Is the boy hungry? Mrs. Howell from next door brought over a bucket of chicken and some coleslaw and chocolate cake. The cake’s Winn-Dixie, but the coleslaw tastes homemade. Your baby must be hungry after the ride. Long drives are so hard on children.”
“No thanks,” I answered.
“Thank you for offering,” Ann said.
“Just trying to be polite.”
“We appreciate it.”
Jennifer sat on the couch next to Ann, and for some reason, took her hand. “Kathy was such a pretty girl. So nice. She was a twirler in junior high, you know.”
“I didn’t know.”
“The last few years she got a little wild sometimes, and she was always woozy on drugs, but I know for a fact Kathy never used a needle. She used to say to me, ‘Jenny,’ she called me Jenny even though no one else does. ‘Jenny, I love being hammered, but I’ll never use a needle. Needles are going too far.’ I think she would have grown out of drugs eventually. She was a good girl, deep inside. It was those boys got her to do it. Kathy just wanted to be popular. She’d have grown out of it, wouldn’t she, Patrick?”
Patrick’s look was nasty. “How the hell should I know. She’s dead.”
Something shifted and Mom, Patrick, and I turned our attention to Jennifer. My theory on what happened is that all the disarrayed anger and bitterness flying around the room united into one blazing, pure column of hatred aimed at this brainless outsider who had the gall to explain Kathy to us. Her own family.
“When the riots started, Kathy and her little friends drove over to Houston. They said they wanted to watch the cops and niggers shoot each other, but what they really wanted was to loot drugstores.”
“Shut up.” Patrick spit.
I threw in my opinion. “Oh, yeah?”
But Mama was the one to let the emotions flow. No internalizing-caused canker sore for Mama. At least, not on her lips. “To hell with you, Jennifer. Kathy didn’t take drugs and she wasn’t no tramp. They killed her coming out of Woolworth’s with five Barbie dolls and two Kens. Kathy loved Barbie and Ken.”
“Why, Deela, I never said Kathy was a tramp. You know how much Kathy and I cared for each other. We were like sisters.”
“Same as Loren and I are like brothers,” Patrick said, which I thought was a cheap shot.
Mom pointed the iron at Jennifer like an outstretched pistol.
“You always thought Kathy was a whore and a heroin addict and you hate your husband. What are you doing here?”
Jennifer paled. “I came to help you. In times of grief we must forget past differences and support each other.”
“Bullshit.” The iron sailed past Patrick and out the kitchen window. Glass sprayed the sink and windowsill. Mom shouted over Buggie’s surprised wail, “You think we’re getting what we deserve and you came for a front-row seat, you bitch.” Mom appeared ready to spring around the ironing board. “Maybe Kathy was a tramp, and I’ve got one boy in prison, Pat always drunk, and that son of a bitch who don’t even write in four years, but my baby’s dead and I’ll be damned if I’ll be a sideshow for you.”
The violence drained from Mom’s face and tears came. She bent over so I could see the scalp furrows between her electric curlers. A tear clung to the bottom of her cigarette. Others dripped onto her black dress. She lifted one hand to her face and emitted a choked sort of sob.
I put my finger in Buggie’s fist and rocked it up and down, watching him cry. Ann, too, concentrated on soothing Buggie. Jennifer sat straight, looking at the broken window and squeezing her left hand with her right. Patrick stared into his empty glass.
Twenty seconds passed. Maybe thirty. The volume of Mom’s crying sank from anger to grief to despair to a sniffly lost kind of resignation. Don leaned over and turned up the sound on the ball game. Not looking at Mom, he said, “Quitcher bitchin’, Deela. Bad things happen to ever’body. You’re not special.”
• • •
High-school funerals always play to a full house. This is because so few teenagers believe in death, and when one of their kind jams the fact home, they stream toward the body, drawn by the irresistibility of all repulsive objects.
The Victoria Bible Baptist Church was packing them in. All young, all stunned. Except for those strange men who make a profession of funerals, I didn’t see a single grown-up outside the family pew. Twisting in my seat, I watched the young faces. A few wept, some showed anger and resentment, as if Kathy’s death was a colossal gyp, but most wore the lost, lethargic looks of small children—say, a month-old baby. Their egos had not yet deflected the truth, and in that short gap of vulnerability, they seemed almost human.
Buggie pushed a truck along the pew between Ann and me. Patrick and Jennifer sat between us and Mom, with Don on the inside aisle. Mom was through crying. Her eyes stayed away from Kathy, seeming to focus on a chart plotting the figures for last week’s Sunday school attendance—DOWN FOUR. Her crossed hands never moved.
Kathy’s death affected me a good deal more than her life had. I hardly remembered her life. She was thirteen when I last knew her. She wore a pink cashmere sweater with Kinney Casual tennis shoes and she talked on the phone. She hated cheese in any form. I can’t recall her voice.
The people who coordinate these functions had placed a rose across Kathy’s breast. I hadn’t seen her breasts before. They looked cosmetic. Her neck was longer and her cheekbones higher than I recalled. She’d grown her hair out to where it swept across the side of her face and over her shoulders. This dead Kathy wasn’t old enough to legally vote, drink, or make love. She’d never been out of South Texas. I wondered if the Ranger who killed her felt any regret.
The preacher was younger than me. Tanned, self-assured, he stood up there like a golf pro—a fourth-generation country club sophisticate. He prayed awhile, then he compared Kathy’s life to the flight of an arrow. “It’s not how far you fly, it’s how straight.” I felt like saying “crap,” but everyone else seemed to buy the Kathy-as-straight-arrow metaphor, who was I to push for realism?
I should face something here. Ever since I boxed up a squashed mole for Show ‘n’ Tell in the first grade, I’ve been a pseudodeath obsessive. I think about death, talk about death, write about death, play little games with it. I figure flow charts on the possibilities of heaven, reincarnation, transmigration, the void; does the spirit inhabit rocks? Are snow crystals unborn babies? However, in spite of a daily diet of the stuff, I have no idea what really happens when people disappear. I’m an expert without an opinion. Religious and antireligious beliefs all strike me as bizarre.
The one image of death I hold to came from a Twilight Zone I saw years ago. I must have been very young; I remember watching the show in my rocking horse jammies and my brother Garret spilling a purple Fizzies drink on the rug. The Twilight Zone was about an old woman who was frightened of death and would never open her door for fear it would get her. Robert Redford played a charming young man who tricks his way into her apartment, convinces her that death is neat, and leads the old lady away into a fog bank. Ever since, I’ve pictured dying as being led into a fog bank by Robert Redford. According to my odds chart, this has the same degree of possibility as heaven.
The element I hadn’t expected from Kathy was the wash of creative energy. Rose-colored, smoky waves flowed from the casket, pressing me into the wood of the pew. Trapped in her dead body was all the creativity of another Emily Dickinson or Tennessee Williams. Or Agatha Christie. Exploding potential…I couldn’t understand how that much potential could go unrealized. I mean, I understood how—a hollow-point bullet through the spine—but why? Nature, God, blind chance, Whoever is so thriftless. Sitting next to Buggie, I thought, If someone is in charge of this world, He, She, or It doesn’t know His, Her, or Its ass from a hole in the dirt.
Ann touched my hand. “Don’t think that.”
Had I spoken? Or was Ann’s intuition getting out of control?
“It’s time to go,” she said.
“What?”
“We have to leave first. Get Buggie’s truck.”
• • •
“Didn’t Mom say people from her bar would be there? I didn’t see anyone old enough to work in a bar.”
“There was an old guy sitting back by himself. That one.” Ann pointed out a small brown man coming through the church door. He walked slowly, like something was the matter with his legs, and a number of teenagers shuffled behind him, trying to get around and out into the sun.
“He looks like a teacher or school janitor,” I said. “He doesn’t move like someone who works in a bar.” Ann, Buggie, and I waited in the unstarted Chevelle, watching Kathy’s friends and classmates. I balanced my hands on the steering wheel while Ann twisted around to strap Buggie into his safety seat.
“There, all cozy and secure like a good little Bug,” she cooed. Ann settled back into the front seat. “That was kind of sad. Your sister was very pretty.”
“I can’t believe this heat. How can people live here?”
“Was Texas always this hot when you were growing up?”
“In August. Did you hear that minister, ‘how straight the arrow flies’? I almost got up and said something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know, something.”
Two girls Kathy’s age walked past the Chevelle and got into a Datsun 240Z. One of the girls was very tall and skinny and when she smiled her mouth glittered from braces. As the door shut, I heard laughter. The effects of death were already wearing off.
“We’re supposed to pull in line after Patrick,” Ann said. “I hope he can drive.”
“Jennifer’s behind the wheel.” I looked at my hands. “God, it’s hot.” Carloads of Texans swept by on the avenue to our left. Across the street, people moved in and out of a Burger King next to a bowling alley. There wasn’t a dog or bird or cat in sight. In front of the church, one scrawny juniper hung on in a circle of dirt surrounded by concrete sidewalk.
Ann looked out her side window. “We had a storm at Mama’s funeral. A creek rose and flooded the cemetery, filled up her hole so they had to bring out a sump pump before they buried her. Dad fried a salmon for supper. I rolled up some hush puppies. Larry kept asking when Mama’d be home.”
“Who’s Larry?”
“My littlest brother. He was only eight and someone told him Mama went to heaven but he’d see her again real soon. I thought Dad would sock him if he didn’t shut up, but he kept asking and asking, wouldn’t let it go.”
The hearse pulled out slowly, followed by Mom and Don, then Jennifer and Patrick. “We’re next,” Ann said.
I looked across the street, thinking about William Faulkner. A little boy coming from the Burger King dropped a white sack and his mother swatted him on the rear. A man in a Buick LeSabre pulled up to the drive-away window. What would William Faulkner make of this, I wondered. That death and Burger King coexist?
Buggie gurgled, “Foonral.”
“They’re going without us,” Ann said.
“Would you mind if we skipped the cemetery?”
“Go straight back to your mom’s?”
“Let’s just sit here a minute.”
Ann reached across and took my hand. That felt nice. I really loved Ann and Buggie. I tried to picture us in South Texas, driving down this busy street, pulling into the Burger King, wearing shorts and T-shirts ten months a year. I could see Texas and I could see us, but the two pictures wouldn’t come together. Those kids at the funeral hadn’t looked like anyone I’d ever seen in Denver. Texas suddenly felt like the wrong place to be.
I pushed in the clutch. “Let’s leave town,” I said. “I don’t really care to see the family again today.”
“Where do you want to go?”
The engine kicked on with a rumble, then idled down to quiet. “This is no way to spend a honeymoon. Let’s drive along the coast and up across Mississippi.”
“Won’t your mom be hurt?”
She had said one in prison, one drunk, and that son of a bitch. Why was I the son of a bitch? I had a college education and a wife and child. What more could she want?
“I don’t see how I could hurt her any more than I already have. We’re just starting life. I think we ought to stay away from my relatives awhile.”
I made a U-turn, heading the opposite direction from Kathy, Mom, and Patrick. Cracking the side vent, I leaned forward so my shirt wouldn’t stick to the car seat. There comes a time, even when it’s closest and most real, when you must say Fuck death. This heavy crap is a bore, and get on with your life. Even if life ends, it’s still out there and has to be somehow handled.
“Why Mississippi?” Ann asked.
“I’ve never been there.”
She smiled. “Which dead writer are we going to happen to be near?”
“No dead writers. I’d just like to see a swamp for a change. Don’t you ever get tired of the Rockies?”
• • •
I told her at supper that night.
“William Faulkner.”
“I knew we’d find a dead writer before the honeymoon ended.”
“We’re not going just to see Faulkner. He’s along the way.”
Ann laughed like I’d delighted her again. “That’s why I love you, Loren. Only you would think Mississippi is along the way between Texas and Colorado.”
“That’s a typical thing to say.”
Ann rolled clam linguini around her fork. “Have you ever read his books?”
“I started Sound and the Fury once. Faulkner was so creative most people don’t know what he’s talking about.” We ate in a dark place with booths, just across the Louisiana line from Beaumont. I think it was called Neptune’s Cavern. We stopped there because of an old RECOMMENDED BY DUNCAN HINES sign above the door.
“Do you know what he’s talking about? Buggie, sit up. Loren, pull Buggie up before he falls.” Buggie had managed to slide down between his booster seat and the table. Another six inches and he would drop, conking his head and causing a scene.
I pulled Buggie upright by his armpits. “I’ll know after I see the grave.” He held a cracker out over the carpet and mashed a fistful of cracker crumbs.
“How will you know?”
“He’ll tell me.” I tried to distract Buggie with a french fry, but he turned his head with a “Yish,” and kept crumbling crackers onto the floor.
“The french fry has ketchup on it,” Ann said. I knew that.
“Yish,” Buggie said.
“He won’t eat ketchup anymore.” Buggie’s picky food habits changed by the day. For six months once he lived on macaroni and cheese. Then he switched to a peanut butter and jelly period. Ann came around the table and knelt to brush Buggie’s crumbs from the floor onto her paper napkin.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“It’ll only take a second. He’s making a mess.” Buggie squeezed another cracker. Some of the crumbs floated into Ann’s long hair.
I grabbed his hand, “Cool it, Bug. C’mon, Ann, the waitress has a special cracker tool—a crumb vacuum or something.”
“She might get mad if she sees what we let him do.”
“What do you care if the waitress gets mad? She’s paid to put up with kids and we’ll never see her again.”
Ann looked up from her napkin of bread crumbs. “I just don’t want to make anyone mad.”
I shut up and ate my fried shrimp. Usually I prefer shrimp sautéed or boiled, but death in the family makes people do things a little differently. I couldn’t get over Mom calling me a son of a bitch. What kind of an attitude is that? Son of a bitch. You’d think I grew up to be a hit man or something.
Back in her side of the booth, Ann folded the crumby napkin in a square and pressed it into the table next to a box of white and pink sugar packets. “Your mother was angry with you.”
“No kidding.”
“I wasn’t comfortable around her. I mean, she broke a window and scared Buggie. My mother never broke a window.”
“She was angry with everyone. It must be tough, losing a kid like that—even for my mother.”
Ann knocked on the bottom of the table. “She seemed especially angry with you.”
“I don’t blame her. Look at the breading on this shrimp, must be a half inch thick. You wade through all this breading to find a tiny little shrimp under there.”
Ann looked sympathetically at my shrimp. “I don’t see how they get away with that.” It was a small shrimp. “Here, have some linguini.” She shoved her plate across the table. I shook my head, so she offered Buggie a bite. He held both hands over his mouth.
“Why didn’t you write her all those years?” Ann asked.
“Are you saying I’m a bad person? ’Cause if you are, I can’t disagree.” Ann hardly ever criticized me. She didn’t have the self-confidence.
“Of course not, Loren. You’re a good person. Nobody is saying you’re bad. I just wonder why you didn’t stay in touch when you left home. I’d be hurt if Buggie treated me like you treated your mother.”
I spit out a shrimp tail. For some reason I’ve always put the whole last bite of shrimp in my mouth and sucked on the tail, then spit it out. Like a cherry and a cherry pit. “I wanted to forget all that.”
Buggie reached into Ann’s linguini and pulled out a clam.
“Bet,” he said.
Ann took the clam. “That’s not a pet, Buggie, it’s a clam.”
Buggie let out a howl that made the other customers turn. I could see the looks—child abusers. Baby beaters. A kid turns into a pitiless blackmailer the second you take him out in public.
Ann gave in. “So keep the clam already.” Buggie grasped it with both hands and smiled, which in Buggie was rare enough to make us both stop eating.
“Forget all what?” Ann asked.
How to explain? “She’s a cocktail waitress in an oil-field bar,” I started.
“Buggie, it’s a shell. You can’t keep it.”
“She buys records and kitchen utensils from ads on TV. She eats frozen chicken potpies—the kind with no bottom crust. And white bread. She cuts coupons from the Sunday paper. All that Chiclet chewing.” I shuddered. “None of Steinbeck’s women chewed gum. No one in Siddhartha even went to the bathroom.”
Ann was paying more attention to Buggie than to me. “It’s dead, Buggie. Put it down.” Buggie clutched the greasy clam to his heart.
“My bet.”
Ann turned back to me. “You hate your mom for chewing gum and going to the bathroom?”
I wanted to explain something complex and Neptune’s Cavern wasn’t the time or place. “It’s a matter of class. I was real short in high school. Didn’t start growing until I was almost twenty.”
“What’s that got to do with Chiclets?”
“People treated me like a spook and I was miserable.”
“Make Buggie put down the clam.”
“I kind of like his pet.” Buggie studied the clam closely, muttering sounds that I couldn’t understand. “Nobody thought I was neat. Women ran from me for fear I’d get attached. Don only liked Patrick. Mom kept telling me I would always fail at everything. What’s its name, Buggie?”
“Don’t encourage him. Your mom didn’t really tell you you would fail at everything.”
“All pets have a name.”
Buggie looked at me seriously. “Mary.”
“Mary the clam. She’s a good pet. Here, you eat her insides.” I reached into Mary, fingered out her meat, and popped it in my mouth. She was a tad gritty. “Now she won’t stink. You can keep a glass of salt water by the bed for her to sleep in at night.”
“He can’t keep a clam.” Ann tried to look severe, but she could never really be too severe with either of us. Together we had her swamped.
Buggie didn’t seem to mind or notice the loss of Mary’s insides. He ran his finger around the fan contour of her shell and said, “Mary.”
I ate another doughy shrimp and drank some red wine, thinking of my youth. I hardly ever think of my youth. “I started reading books,” I said. “The writers treated me with respect I didn’t get at home and the characters had a class I thought everyone except the people around me had. Book characters never curl their hair or use Kleenex. Books became real and real became something to ignore.”
Ann’s index finger rolled around her wineglass rim. “When Mom was sick, I used to pretend I was Nancy Drew. Nancy never had to change her mom’s colostomy bag.”
Buggie held the clam like a puppet and made the two halves move up and down like lips. “Hewo, will you play with me?” Play came out pway, which could have two meanings.
“Oh God,” Ann sighed. “All we need now is an imaginary friend.”
“I think it’s great. Shows imagination and adaptability that he can find friendship in a shell.”
“You still should write your mother.”
Buggie held the clam over his glass of Sprite. “I’m firsty.”
“Tell Mary what you did today,” I said.
“Foonral.”