They happened to broadcast Halls of Innocence on the same night as the Clearview “prom,” one of those coincidences that seem significant but actually probably really aren’t. I had been looking forward to it for ages, and in my mind I had pictured a cozy scene of watching it at my house with my mom and Little Big Tom and Amanda, Sam Hellerman, Pammelah Shumway and the Robot, and maybe even Celeste Fletcher, if she could be persuaded to leave Todd Dante and the jacket behind. In reality, though, it was just Sam Hellerman, Amanda, my mom, and me, and it was more depressing than anything.
Sam Hellerman arrived with flyers and handbills for the show, saying that he had blanketed the area and he expected at least half the Mission Hills student body to attend. I confessed that I wasn’t the most popular guy at Clearview High School these days and that I doubted I’d need anywhere near that many flyers. Sam Hellerman shook his head.
“Too bad you couldn’t hang on to that chick with the boobies,” he said. “She was your ticket.” Despite his “man of the world” pretenses these days, he still couldn’t bring himself to use regular words for things. It sounded weird, like Hugh Hefner doing baby talk.
“Pammelah Shumway,” I said, just kind of drawing a line under her with my voice. She was the past now. And there had been good times somewhere in there, I supposed.
But Sam Hellerman just looked at me and said, “Shumway? Her name is Shumway? Why didn’t you tell me she was Mormon?” I guess the name Shumway is some kind of dead giveaway of Mormonism that I didn’t know about. Sam Hellerman said it explained everything. “Mormon girls never put out,” he said. “Never. Ever. I know. I’m Mormon. Well, Jack Mormon.” It was true that Sam Hellerman’s mom was Mormon and Sam Hellerman had been raised as one till his family went off the reservation, so to speak. “It was doomed from the start,” he said finally.
“Tell me about it,” I replied. “Aren’t we all?”
And to that he had no answer.
I’ve already told you about Halls of Innocence. There was lots to laugh about and lots to groan about. My mom just sat there saying “That’s terrible” every time anything at all happened, and, yeah, it sure was terrible, but not always in the way she meant it. The jacket-throwing scene got the biggest reaction. Man, I wish you could see Amanda’s reenactment of it. It’s top-notch.
I found myself kind of daydreaming that there would be a knock on the door, and that my mom would get up to answer it and return with Pammelah Shumway and the Robot, still dressed in their “prom” getups. The fantasy wasn’t clear on what would happen then, but it was vaguely along the lines of everyone telling each other that everything was going to be okay.
It didn’t happen.
Back in my room afterward, making some last-minute notes and preparations for the set the following day, I told Sam Hellerman about my latest line of thinking on the Catcher Code and my indictment against the Universe. The lawsuit plan was all over, I assured him, but it had occurred to me that the whole thing could make a pretty good book. I mean, think about it. It has everything: sex, drugs, rock and roll, suicide, dad-icide, attempted tuba-cide. I asked Sam Hellerman if he knew anything about publishing.
Sam Hellerman had gone a bit pale as I was speaking, and his eyes flashed with the usual annoyance.
“No,” he said. “You can’t write that book. No one would be interested at all in a book like that.”
Well, I certainly didn’t agree, so I tried again. It could start all the way back at Most Precious Blood, and it could show Tit writing the Catcher Code and hatching the whole sordid plot, and then zoom forward in time to Hillmont and my dad and then finally to us and our rock and roll. In fact, now that I was narrating it, it seemed more like a movie than a book. Yeah, a movie. Close-up of Tit’s chubby hand filling in the graph-paper squares, chuckling softly, then a cut to Timothy J. Anderson hanging in the gym by a rope.…
“No,” said Sam Hellerman. “It can’t be a movie, either.” Sam Hellerman paused and then seemed to make up his mind about something.
“Okay, Henderson,” he said. “I’m going to tell you something now, and I don’t want you to freak out.” He made me promise, dumb though that was, that I would not freak out before he would continue, and of course I promised.
“I hereby solemnly swear that I will not freak out, so help me Satan,” I said.
“I don’t know who killed your dad,” Sam Hellerman continued, “if it was Mr. Teone or someone else, or if he was even murdered at all. I don’t think anyone will ever know, and I don’t know if it’s even possible to figure it out, especially from the Catcher Code. And you should stop obsessing about this because … because it’s going to ruin your life if you keep it up.”
I was taken aback. That was the most earnest thing I’d ever heard Sam Hellerman say. It didn’t sound like him. Since when did he care whether anyone’s life got ruined? I guess our little guy is growing up, was my main thought about that, and I wasn’t at all sure that I liked it. Still, it was just a variation on what Little Big Tom had said, and I wouldn’t say I even disagreed with it. Maybe it already had ruined my life, in a way. But I didn’t see any reason to freak out to any extent over it. I reassured him on that, but I had to point out that I still felt the Catcher Code was important.
“After all, Tit wrote it. It’s the earliest evidence we have for his state of mind at that young age, and of his relationship with my dad.”
Sam Hellerman sighed and rolled his eyes.
“You’re not listening, Henderson,” he said. “Here’s the thing. I’ve been feeling bad about it ever since you started heading off into crazy town on this thing about Tit and your dad and I should have told you a long time ago. Tit didn’t write the Catcher Code.”
What was he talking about? Of course Tit wrote it. It was right there in the code itself, internal textual evidence, the best kind there could be.
“He didn’t write the Catcher Code,” said Sam Hellerman. “I know it for absolute certain.”
“Well, okay, then, if Tit didn’t write it, who did?”
Sam Hellerman laughed.
“I did,” he said.
I looked at Sam Hellerman. Then I kept looking at him. I knew it was the truth as soon as he said it. The whole thing had had Sam Hellerman written all over it from the beginning, really, if I had only thought to think of it. But I kept staring at him, not knowing what to say. He stared back at me, wondering what I was going to say. Then I knew, and so did he a moment later.
“Get out of here,” I said.