FOUR-WAY STOP
G. R. PRIDED HIMSELF ON BOTH HISTORICAL AND TRADITIONAL figures. He felt as if he knew quite a bit about pop culture, too, at least movies and music. This was Halloween at his and Tina’s front door, far from normal suburban neighborhoods. He’d already pointed at masks and said Batman, Iron Man, Superman, Spiderman, Incredible Hulk, and common zombie. Clown, ghost, Pocahontas, ninja, Iraqi War Special Forces SEAL. He’d correctly identified Reagan, Bush, Napoleon, and Rush Limbaugh. Ballerina, pro wrestlers (André the Giant, Lex Luger, Ric Flair, The Undertaker, Macho Man Randy Savage, Hulk Hogan, Dusty Rhodes, Rey Mysterio Jr.). Football players (Cam Newton and Peyton Manning). G. R. waved at parents waiting on the roadside in cars, gave a thumbs-up, said how he liked the way their little Lady Gagas looked, their Mileys, their MacBook Airs and cans of Red Bull. “Goddamn, how many miniature Snickers we got left? We got any of those Reese’s Cups?” G. R. said to his wife. “I don’t remember Halloween being like this the last few years. The churches must’ve quit having parties. I thought parents got scared off by razor blades and white powder.”
Tina sat in the den, with the door open to the living room where her husband stood at the front door. “I told you to wear a bloody bandage on your head like some kind of Civil War amputee. That might scare some children away,” she said. “We already spent almost fifty damn dollars. Please don’t tell me I got to go back out. They aren’t even from around here. Some of them aren’t even kids.” She picked up the channel changer and moved from one Food Network program to another. She went from a tips-on-vinegar-barbecue show to one on noodle making in Southeast Asia. Tina wore flannel pajama bottoms with giraffes printed on them, and a T-shirt advertising WSPA because she called first to the station one morning when she knew the trivia answer, which happened to be “avocado-green shag carpet.”
“We might,” G. R. said, and then looked out the door and said, “Jesus! Jesus! Two Jesuses! Are y’all with each other?” Two young men limped up the walkway, both burdened with crosses fashioned from four-by-four lengths of pressure-treated pine normally used for flowerbed edging.
G. R. yelled out, “Jesus and Jesus! Y’all are the first biblical characters we’ve had tonight. Good job, boys!” He focused on the teenagers, but handed over a couple small Butterfingers and Milky Ways to a young hobo and Snow White who elbowed in. They didn’t say “trick or treat” or “thank you,” but he didn’t mind. To the two Jesuses he said, “Man, this has to be tough,” for they had to hold their arms out to the side, with plastic orange pumpkins strapped to their wrists, which were strapped to the wood.
“We’re not Jesus,” the kid on the left said. “I’m Impenitent Thief.”
“Penitent Thief. Sorry,” said the other kid.
G. R. looked at them and thought, Did a Mormon family move nearby? Are these boys Jehovah’s Witnesses? He said, “Say all that again, what y’all just said?” He didn’t say, “Aren’t y’all a little old to be trick-or-treating?” but thought it. He also thought, It’s almost ten o’clock, and remembered seeing a news item one time about how the last visitors on Halloween often case a house.
The thieves’ father slid out of the shadow of the tea olive bush and said, “It’s what they wanted. They wanted to go out one last time. What can you do as a father?”
G. R. said, “Jesus. Jesus Christ.” He said, “I doubt I have anything y’all might want,” and he stared. “I mean, I got candy, that’s it.” The father had long brown hair and a beard, and when he stood between his boys it looked like a painting G. R. saw one time in a book in the emergency room’s waiting area. “We ain’t got no manna, or silver.”
“I’m allergic to peanuts,” said Impenitent Thief.
G. R. dumped what he had left in both boys’ candy receptacles and turned off his porch light once they trudged back to the road. He didn’t think, at first, about how he didn’t see a car out there for them, and the next house stood a quarter mile away. He tried not to think about how his own son kind of looked like Penitent Thief.
AT TEN O’CLOCK Tina went to bed without saying goodnight, leaving G. R. in the den. He turned to the early local news on the right-wing channel he watched to stay in tune with the enemy’s movements. The anchorwoman came on saying, “Some people are calling it a Halloween miracle,” then went on to say she’d get to that story right after the weather forecast.
The weatherman said, “It’s forty-five degrees outside now, and I got your miracle right here, Amy—it’s going to be in the mid-seventies tomorrow, but rain will be moving in over the weekend, with lows near freezing. Near freezing! So much for global warming!”
“Thanks, Pete. That sounds wonderful. As you know, I was brought up in Portland, so a little rain doesn’t bother me at all.”
G. R. wished he hadn’t poured out all the candy. He got up, went to the refrigerator, and thought about eating whatever Tina cooked earlier in the day that involved diced kidneys. He took out two cans of beer and heard Amy say, “And now for the Halloween miracle.”
Back in the den, he looked at the TV screen and saw Jesus and the two thieves. He yelled to Tina, “Hey, those guys were here,” but she didn’t respond.
“They was here, and then they wasn’t,” a woman being interviewed said to a reporter. “I seen them, and then they vanished. Like, I don’t know, I thought maybe I blunk my eyes, but Vanessa here seen them, too, and she says she didn’t blunk none either.”
The camera swung to the woman’s daughter, still in her costume.
G. R. said out loud, “Vampire.”
“I come back from my boyfriend’s momma’s boyfriend’s party, and they was standing right dare,” said Vanessa, pointing to the stoop. “I said, ‘Y’all ain’t right,’ and took me a picture using my cell phone.” She held the phone up close to the camera.
Her mother said, “I normally don’t do Halloween, you know. Something tode me this year, though, to go out to Big Lots and get me bunch of them little Skittles packs. We had a bunch of kids show up, and then right at the end come Jesus and them two robbers, you know. I gave them one Skittles pack each—well, two for Jesus—and then they disappeared. We all lit up out here! Ain’t no way to just take off without no one noticing.”
The camera turned to the reporter. He looked, to G. R., like the kid on The Addams Family. G. R. couldn’t tell if the guy wore a costume or not. “Amy, I’m on Old Roebuck Road—and three other people say they had the same experience, but they didn’t want to be on camera. If anyone out there witnessed Jesus and the two thieves, we’d like to hear about it. Back to you.”
G. R. said, “I witnessed it,” to himself, then louder to Tina in the bedroom. “I witnessed it. Hey, I might’ve witnessed a Halloween miracle, honey.”
He drank his beer and accidentally hit Last on the channel changer. A man wearing a toque looked straight at G. R. and said, “Never, ever, underestimate the remarkable flavors of sweetbreads.”
G. R. called the station to say he’d seen them, too, but the line was busy for five minutes straight. He finished his second beer, went back to the refrigerator, extracted the rest of the six-pack, and went out to his truck. He looked at his watch and tried to remember when his last trick-or-treaters came by—9:45, he figured. Now it was 10:20. He knew that people walked about three miles an hour because Tina’s doctor had put her on a regimen. G. R. thought that anyone sporting a cross couldn’t make more than a mile-and-a-half an hour at most, and if they stopped at houses working a late-shift Halloween, it wouldn’t even be that far.
He thought, If I can find these guys and deliver them to the station, maybe I’ll get on the news. What would Tina think about that? What would she think about turning on the television in the morning to see G. R. standing there next to Jesus and the two thieves?
He thought, Maybe I can tell our story.
NEAR THE END of Old Roebuck Road, a quarter mile before it teed into 215, stood a useless four-way stop. On three corners stood pastures, and then there was a cement-
block convenience store where sheriff‘s deputies hung out waiting for people to ease through without holding their brakes properly. G. R. had his window down. He’d called out “Jesus! Jesus!” about every fifty yards, driving twenty miles per hour, his high beams on.
At first he thought he heard the pop-pop-pop of a pistol from behind the store, but then realized the sound to be planks of lumber dropped upon one another. He sat at the four-way a good half minute longer than needed, an open can of beer between his legs, before releasing his clutch and rolling into the store’s shallow parking lot and then around back, where, sure enough, Jesus and the two thieves stood around a fifty-five-gallon drum, the crosses standing upright in it, Jesus holding a lit Zippo in one hand and some wadded newspaper in the other.
G. R. pulled up beside them and turned off his headlights. The three men stood motionless. “Y’all was on the news just now,” G. R. said. “They said anyone could find y’all, call up the station and let them know.”
“We haven’t done anything wrong,” the father said. “We were hungry. Candy isn’t the best for a body, but it’s better than nothing.” The boy who introduced himself as Penitent Thief apologized again, but his brother said, “And then we’ll eat this crap, get cavities, get diabetes, and die.”
G. R. got out of his truck. He said, “Is the store closed? What time does this store close? I don’t come down this way very often anymore.” He thought, Certainly they’ll have cans of sardines or something inside better than candy. He thought, I don’t have enough beer to share.
“Name’s Darmon. You can have your candy back if you feel like we duped you,” the father said. He lit the newspaper and dropped it into the drum. His two sons stepped closer and held out their palms.
G. R. put his beer can on the roof of his truck. “Okay, listen. You men were at my house. I don’t know if I looked away, or what, but you disappeared. And then this woman came on TV and said y’all disappeared from her. People out there think you’re really Jesus and the two thieves.”
“People see what they wish to see,” Darmon said.
G. R. said, “Yeah, I know what you mean.” Without the crosses on their backs, and without the porch light providing a shadow, these three looked like normal unemployed construction workers. They looked like hobos, grifters, Irish Travelers. If they had shown up without the accouterments, G. R. thought, he would’ve pointed at all three and yelled out, “Welder,” or, “Landscaper,” or, “Shriner.”
“It’s a long story,” said the father. “Last year we had a roof over our heads. Now we don’t.”
“Mom does,” Penitent Thief said. “She’s at the shelter, but there wasn’t enough room for all of us.”
Impenitent Thief reached into one of the plastic jack-o’-lanterns and culled out the packs of M&M’S. “We got to remember she likes these best, tomorrow.”
G. R. reached into his truck bed and wrestled out two logs he’d picked up where Duke Power workers had trimmed trees that neared electric lines. He had prided himself on not buying half-cords of delivered wood for three years. He said, “Wait a minute. I could give y’all this, and you’d have heat for the night. Or I guess I could drive you around and show you how to find wood, so you can have heat for a lifetime. Ha-ha-ha. You know what I mean?” Then he dropped the tailgate and held out his right hand to help both Penitent and Impenitent into the back. Darmon got in the passenger side, after sliding the beer over.
For a couple seconds G. R. thought about taking them straight to the TV station. He thought about saying, “Don’t worry. I was never a soldier.”
At the four-way stop he lingered, again, too long. Darmon said, “You got it both ways.”
G. R. said, “This is right where our son got killed three years ago.”
AFTER HE PULLED out the push mower, riding mower, edger, leaf blower, and then the stacked rakes/shovels/post-hole diggers/limb cutters/rolled-up extension cords/rolled-up extra garden hose/boxes of Christmas decorations, there was enough room inside his storage shed to house three stray men temporarily. G. R. manhandled a roll of hurricane fence he didn’t need, and a roll of barbed wire he thought he might need some day, then humped out a number of clay flowerpots Tina said she’d one day use to plant lemon trees and ficuses. He moved bags of potting soil, pine-bark mulch, playground sand, and lime. “I’m embarrassed that we have all this shit,” he said.
“You have a nice house,” said Darmon. “What you got here, two acres?”
G. R. said, “One and three-quarters acres. Y’all can sleep here tonight. But you’ll need to leave before my wife gets up. She just won’t understand, you know. It’s one of those things. Hey, who wants to eat some kidney pie?”
G. R. went tiptoeing back inside the house, picked the casserole dish out of the refrigerator, opened a drawer for three forks. He placed the dish on the dining-room table, got a roll of paper towels out of the closet, and listened for Tina’s snoring. He said, “Tina,” in a normal speaking voice. She didn’t answer. The bedroom television aired nothing, which meant the remote’s timer had shut it off. As he stepped out on the back porch he heard one of the boys say, “That wouldn’t be right,” which made G. R. wonder if his father or brother had just said, “We can break in later.”
“I heard all that,” G. R. said when he approached the shed, a hundred steps away, in hopes of calling a bluff. “Don’t get any ideas about breaking in later. I have no money hidden.”
Penitent Thief said, “What? We were talking about what to do if we needed to use the bathroom. Peeing won’t be a problem, but in case one of us has to go number two. I was saying it wouldn’t be right to use the wheelbarrow.”
“We can use one of the jack-o’-lanterns,” Darmon said.
“And these paper towels,” said G. R., handing over the kidney pie. “Here, my wife said for y’all to eat this,” he lied. “Well, anyway, stay warm. Put some charcoal in that hibachi and light it up, but keep the thing outside the shed. I wouldn’t want y’all to asphyxiate.”
Darmon said, “We appreciate everything. Listen, I’m sorry about your son. I appreciate what you’re doing for mine. For me and mine.”
G. R. said, “There’s a pull cord for a light in here. Let me go back inside and see if I can find some blankets.” He started, then turned and said, “There’s a smashed-up car over on that side of the property. Don’t sleep in it.”
“This kidney stuff ain’t bad,” said the Impenitent son. He said, “Is there a hose out here? Would you mind if we drank some water?”
“Right over there. Help yourself.”
G. R. HAD NOT stood in his son’s bedroom more than a half-dozen times since the accident. Tina sat at the desk daily. G. R. couldn’t. He sat outside—no matter the season—from dawn until dusk most days. Although he didn’t have to return to work after the settlement, G. R. wouldn’t have gone back anyway. He ran through images of his boy turning a double play in high school, throwing a stick to the dog, sitting down at the desk to work out algebra problems. G. R. knew that he would’ve ended up just like Jesus and the two thieves had the insurance company not agreed to pay seven million dollars for their client’s negligence. Seven million didn’t seem like all that much money, G. R. and Tina thought, but they agreed with their lawyer that they didn’t want to fight longer. If Sam had lived to be eighty, that would mean a hundred grand per year and some change. Good money for something like a minister or teacher. Not much for what Sam could’ve done in life had he indeed made the pros.
G. R. went into his son’s bedroom and stripped the mattress. Then he opened the closet and pulled out an extra folded-up blanket.
“THE WATER’S RUNNING,” Tina said at five o’clock. She nudged G. R. “Did you turn on the washing machine or dishwasher?” G. R. didn’t answer. She said, “Someone’s outside running our hose.” She sat up and elbowed him hard in his upper ribs.
G. R. opened his eyes and stared at the pebbled ceiling he had wanted to scrape smooth since buying the house. He felt Tina l
ooking at him. G. R. thought, Work, and then remembered he didn’t have to show up at Kohler. He didn’t need to check the kiln’s temperature. He didn’t need to tell anyone not to mess up.
And then he remembered. I got Jesus and his two thieves out back! G. R. thought. From Halloween. I should’ve called the TV station about this. I could’ve gotten on there and said some things about Sam.
The running water turned off. G. R. said, “It was the refrigerator. It was the freezer, making ice.”
“No it wasn’t,” Tina said, throwing off the covers and getting up. “I know that noise. I know every noise this house can make. I remember the ones it used to make, too.” She grabbed her bathrobe.
G. R. turned on the bedroom television to drown out what sounds a thirsty thief or son of God might likely emit from the business end of a tangled hose. That same chef came on talking about the organs and glands of farm animals. By the time G. R. got out of bed, his wife had turned on the porch lights already and grabbed a flashlight she kept in the china cabinet. “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” G. R. said. “Let me go out first,” but she’d opened the back door and stepped out, shining a beam.
“It’s just a homeless man and his boys,” G. R. yelled out too loud. “They’re just staying for the night, honey. I felt sorry for them.”
Tina held the light on the three men. She said nothing, and they stood motionless, twenty feet away, all three with their hands above their heads—though the two boys held theirs out to the side. Darmon said, “We couldn’t sleep, and we thought we’d water your plants. If you water things at dusk they tend to get mold. What time is it, anyway?”
Tina turned and looked at her husband. She kept the flashlight pointed toward Darmon and his sons. “What the hell are you doing to us? Why can’t you do anything right? First Sam, and now this. And everything that’s happened in between.”
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