Running Loose

by Chris Crutcher

  He opened the door and invited me in. “Sit down,” he said. “How’re you doing?”

  “Okay, I guess. How about you?”

  He shrugged and nodded.

  I glanced around the room. Becky was everywhere, her piano in the corner, a reproduction of “Starry Night” on the wall above the couch, an open box of medals she’d won for music and debate and all kinds of awards for scholastic stuff lying on the couch.

  I sat on a three-legged stool next to the fireplace. Mr. Sanders sat back down on the couch and laid the box of awards in his lap. He absentmindedly picked up one of the medals, fingered it for a minute, and looked up at me. “It’s a bitch, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “A bitch.”

  “Louie,” he said, “you’re the first person I thought of. I’ve been around long enough to see death—stupid, senseless death—but I don’t think I could have handled it at your age. Not with someone I loved.”

  “I got no choice.”

  “Yeah. Listen, how about a beer? I know it’s probably not the best thing for a lawyer to get hauled up for ‘contributing,’ but under the circumstances I think it might be overlooked.” He didn’t wait for an answer, just went into the kitchen. I heard the caps pop, and in a second he was handing me one.

  He sat back down. “She told me about your trip to the cabin.”

  My head snapped up. “She said—”

  “Yeah, I know. She didn’t want you to be uneasy around me. She wanted us to be friends, you and me.”

  I said I thought I’d like that.

  “Is it okay?” I said.

  “What?”

  “Becky and me. At the cabin.”

  He smiled and closed his eyes, and a tear started down his cheek. “Yeah,” he said, “it’s okay.” He took a swallow of beer and said, “Becky and I, we were friends. You don’t see many kids and parents getting along the way we did. I trusted her; she could do pretty much what she wanted. We gave each other a lot of room, especially since the divorce, but we hung onto each other to beat hell.”

  All of a sudden he stood up and flung his bottle, exploding it against the fireplace. “Why?” he yelled. “Why? What the hell is she doing dead?”

  I walked up behind him and put my hands on his shoulders.

  “I’m sorry, Louie,” he said. “I’ll get it under control.”

  “It’s okay.” I kind of laughed. “Christ, I chopped down a hundred-and-fifty-foot tree tonight, and it still wasn’t enough.”

  He looked past me. “Her mom’s flying in tomorrow,” he said. “I can’t tell you how I’m not ready for that.”

  “Bad news, huh?”

  He smiled. “Bad news would be good news compared to this. She’ll come sweeping in here and take over, and the funeral will turn into a circus, and I’m just not strong enough to stop her right now.” He looked at me. “Listen, go home and try to get some sleep. You’re going to need it.”

  I nodded and headed for the door. As I turned the knob, Mr. Sanders said, “Louie.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Mr. Rodrick from Forest Lawn called this afternoon. He wanted to know where she parted her hair.” His head dropped. “I couldn’t remember.”

  I saw her long brown hair flowing over her shoulders and down around her breasts. She was laughing. “In the middle,” I said.

  CHAPTER 14

  Monday, the day of the funeral, was clear and even warm for that time of year. I wanted the weather to be crappy; but the Farmer’s Almanac said there would be high pressure with a warming trend, and by God, there was high pressure with a warming trend.

  Becky’s mom had called on Sunday afternoon to ask if I’d consider being a pallbearer. I said no way. I was polite and everything, but I couldn’t see any way in the world I’d be able to be there when they put her in the ground. In fact, I hadn’t made up my mind whether to go to the service at all.

  They had it at the Red Brick Church because it’s the biggest one in town, and even though Becky had been baptized in the Episcopal Church, her mom wanted to accommodate the largest number of people possible. And she brought her own preacher along, all the way from the East Coast. Mr. Sanders told me later that was because she didn’t want some hick town Bible thumper presiding over the most important event of their lives. She was every bit the rip Becky said she was.

  School got out at eleven-thirty, so everyone could go home and eat and get dressed in time for the one o’clock service. All the stores in town advertised they would be closed from noon until four “In Memoriam.” Becky was getting as much consideration as a football game.

  I skipped school Monday morning—I don’t think anybody really expected me to be there—and drove out to the bridge. For some reason I felt the need to torture myself. Norm says people do that. I kicked around the sand beside the river where she’d gone in and thought of a million ways she could still be alive. The kids on the motorcycle—it was a Honda 90—had been using the broken white line as a slalom course and apparently didn’t even see what happened until Becky was already past them and in the river. They got scared and took off; but there were witnesses, and they were caught even before they could get home. The driver, Craig Martens, is only thirteen. He didn’t even have a license. Don’t think I didn’t consider finding him and beating him beyond recognition, because I did consider it, but I figured nothing I could do would make him hurt any worse than he already did. If she’d met that stupid motorcycle anywhere but where she did, she could’ve just gone in the ditch.

  Anyway, I decided I could hold my own memorial services there at the river and bypass Mrs. Sanders’s show at the church, so I stayed and skipped flat rocks across the water and talked to myself and to Becky and cried a little bit. I even tried to make a deal with God there for a second, but that cheapened everything, so I got off it.

  By one or so I thought I had everything pretty much taken care of, so I drove back to town. The place looked deserted—the street empty, all the doors locked—and suddenly I felt the urge to say good-bye formally, like everyone else. I was dressed a little shabby—T-shirt, Levi’s, and sneakers—but I remembered Reverend Watts told me once the Lord didn’t care how I looked when I came to His house, so I figured they’d probably let me in.

  It was about one-thirty when I got there, and the service had already started. A large crowd was gathered on the lawn by the entrance, and at first I thought I’d missed it; but there were just so many people the church wouldn’t hold them. There was a loudspeaker rigged up above the door so the people outside could hear. I couldn’t find a place to park, so I left the pickup in the middle of the road on the next block and walked back.

  The big-city preacher’s voice boomed the Lord’s Prayer through the speakers as I walked toward the church. I’ll bet Lednecky would give something very close to his manhood to have that guy’s set of pipes. As I approached, the crowd sort of parted to let me through. I guess they knew I was one of the A number one grievers. I worked my way through the crowd in the outer foyer and finally into the main congregation room. Up front Becky’s casket lay wide open. Off to the left, in a special section that was shrouded behind a misty white veil, were Mr. and Mrs. Sanders and some aunts and uncles. Mr. Sanders had saved me a seat beside him, and when he saw me, he motioned me over; but I shook my head and stood leaning against the back wall as the congregation sang five verses of “The Old Rugged Cross.” Then the big-city preacher stepped up again and let us have it. He talked about the light that had been taken from our midst, the song that died before it could be sung, the play that closed after such a brief but glorious run, and a couple more like that that I don’t remember. Then he recounted her accomplishments one by one. The place was breaking up. He had the whole town in the palm of his hand, and he didn’t even know her!

  I started to work my way back out and had made it to the door leading back to the outer foyer when I heard him say, “Why, oh Lord? Why, in the prime of her young life was she stricken down?”

 
; He paused. I was glued to the spot and could feel bad times moving in quick.

  “We cannot answer these questions alone. But we know that you sometimes move in strange and mysterious ways that we, lost in our earthly ignorance, cannot understand.”

  He shouldn’t have used the “strange and mysterious ways” defense. I could have held it together if he hadn’t said that. All of a sudden I heard myself yelling, “Why are you saying that? He doesn’t move in strange and mysterious ways. He doesn’t move at all! He sits up there on His fat butt and lets guys like you earn a living making excuses for all the rotten things that happen. Or maybe He does something low-down every once in a while so He can get a bunch of us together, scared and on our knees. Hell with Him!”

  I started to move out but figured as long as I’d gone this far…“And why are you trying to make us cry? We’ll cry; we’re gonna cry anyway. But Becky didn’t care about all that crap. She liked to laugh and cry and eat burgers and make love and be with people she liked. Talk about that! Why don’t you talk about that?”

  I was just getting warmed up, but I felt hands clamp down on both my arms. Carter and Boomer rushed me through the crowd.

  “Go easy, Louie, go easy,” Carter was saying over and over.

  Boomer kept saying, “It’s okay, man. It’s okay, man.” To tell you the truth, the reason I went so willingly was hearing the kindness in Boomer’s voice. I don’t know where it came from, and I don’t imagine it stayed long; but it was the real thing.

  When we got outside, I relaxed for a second, then broke free and sprinted for the pickup. I think Boomer tried to stop me; but Carter must have caught him, and they let me go. I was across the spillway, onto the old road, and parked out at the meadow before I even thought about what I’d done. Then I thought about Norm and Brenda and how they must have been shocked and embarrassed, and for their sakes I was sorry; but I didn’t feel sorry for doing it. I was still way too angry and hurt.

  Boy, it’s a tribute to the people of Trout that they didn’t organize a vigilante committee and string me up.

  I stayed out there until after nine and decided to go on home. As I drove down Main Street, I noticed the “Closed” sign was still up in the window at the Buckhorn, so I went around back to let myself in, hoping maybe I’d run into Dakota. Donkey Caulder was propped up against the outer back wall with his bottle in a paper sack, but he wasn’t drinking it. He looked asleep. I shook his arm and said, “Hey, man, if you’re cold, I’m going to be in here awhile. Come on in.”

  He mumbled something that ended with “bullshit” and dropped his head to his knees.

  “Well,” I said, “it’s open,” and went on in.

  The place hadn’t been open all day, so it was clean. The lights were out, but Dakota had forgotten to turn off the beer signs, so there was an eerie dim light across the room. I sat down in a corner over by the pool table and stared at the illusion of water tumbling over the falls on the Oly sign. There was a horseshoe with a little sign over it that said “Good Luck.”

  Good luck.

  Dakota came in the side door. “Figured that must be you,” he said. “Want some company?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I guess I do.”

  He stood there in the doorway and just looked at me. Finally he said, “Louie, it ain’t safe.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Trout. School. Football. This here bullshit life. It ain’t safe. None of it.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “It’s a lot of things, but safe ain’t one of them. I gotta tell you, Dakota, I don’t get it. Man, what did Becky ever do to get killed? What did any of us ever do? It just isn’t right.”

  “Nope,” he said. “It ain’t right, that’s for sure.”

  I just shook my head, and for only the second time the tears came. And man, they came. I must have lost five pounds. Dakota stood there and watched me. “It’s just not fair,” I said. “What kind of worthless God would let this happen?”

  “Louie,” he said, “I ain’t an educated guy; but I listen pretty good and I see pretty good, and one thing I’m pretty sure of is that if there’s a God, that ain’t His job. He ain’t up there to load the dice one way or the other.”

  I didn’t say anything; I didn’t get it.

  Dakota said, “Boy, if you come through this, you’ll be a man. There’s one thing that separates a man from a boy, the way I see it, and it ain’t age. It’s seein’ how life works, so you don’t get surprised all the time and kicked in the butt. It’s knowin’ the rules.”

  “The rules,” I said. “How can you know the damn rules? They keep changing.”

  “Naw, they don’t,” he said. “It’s just that you have to learn the new ones as you go. That’s the hard part. Learnin’ the new rules when they show theirselves. You go on blamin’ God, you get no place. You got to pay attention to how things work. Ya got to understand that the reason some things happen is just because they happen. That ain’t a good reason, but that’s it. You put enough cars and trucks and motorcycles on the road, and some of ’em gonna run into each other. Not certain ones neither. Just whichever ones do. This life ain’t partial, boy.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, after thinking about it a minute. “I need the rules to be a lot simpler. Easier. I can’t take it like this.”

  Dakota walked over around behind the bar and opened a cabinet and took out an old checkerboard and some chips. “Come ’ere a minute,” he said. “I wanna show you somethin’.”

  I went over and sat on a stool. “I’m not sure I’m up for checkers,” I said.

  “Indulge an old fart,” he said. “This ain’t regular checkers. You might learn somethin’. Now here’s how it works. You can jump as many places as you want, backwards or forwards. Don’t need a king. You go first.”

  I didn’t quite get it, but I moved a man across several squares and took one of his chips.

  “That it?” he said.

  I nodded.

  Then he jumped all my men in one move and took them off the board. “I win. Wanna play again?”

  “Sure,” I said, “if I can go first again.”

  “You can go first again.” He set them up, and I took all his chips in a move.

  “Damn,” he said. “That puts us even. Wanna go another one?”

  “I go first?”

  “You go first.” He set them up again, and I took them all in one move again.

  “That’s only two out of three,” he said. “One more?”

  I looked at him setting them up like it meant something, and said, “Hey, Dakota, you know this isn’t a lot of fun.”

  “Ain’t, is it?” he said. “Not hardly worth playin’. Funny, too, ’cause the rules are simple and easy.”

  My Felix the Cat lightbulb popped on. I nodded. “Yeah.”

  We sat and played some real checkers for a while, and I got beat a lot. I’d win once in a while, but not often. Then we played some pool. I never won at that, but I had a few moments. Finally, when the sun was starting to come up, Dakota told me I better be getting home before my momma woke up and crapped her drawers with worry. I tried to thank him for getting me through the night, but he just waved me off.

  As I started out the door, he stopped me. “Louie.”

  “Yeah?”

  “If you was walkin’ in the middle of the road an’ you saw a big ol’ truck comin’ right at ya, you wouldn’t stop an’ ask the Lord to get you out of the way, would ya?”

  “No,” I said. “I’d probably just get off the road.”

  “Well then, don’t be goin’ askin’ Him to get ya out of the way of all the other crap that’s comin’ at ya.” He held up his hook and looked at it. “You go on an’ take care of it yourself.”

  CHAPTER 15

  The first thing I did in the way of making amends for my outburst at the funeral was stop by the parsonage on my way home to apologize to Reverend Miller for opening my big mouth in his church, even though he wasn’t the one preaching. I told him I
was particularly sorry for saying “guys like you” and hoped he didn’t think I included him in on that. I hate it when someone calls me “guys like you.” It usually casts you with a lot that can be identified by one ugly, distasteful characteristic. I didn’t apologize for my point of view, though, just didn’t mention it. Reverend Miller assured me that he understood I was emotionally upset and that they were able to get the whole affair under control with little difficulty after I left. He said a few people were still upset and that I could probably expect them to act that way, but time would probably work it all out. Then he said maybe I could redeem myself by mowing the church lawn all summer. It would be a nice gesture to the church, and people could see that I was genuinely sorry.

  I said I’d see.

  Then I drove over to Mr. Sanders’s house, hoping I hadn’t lost it all with him. That scared me a lot. He met me at the door with a half smile, shaking his head. “Boy, you did it this time,” he said. “I’ve had a dozen phone calls from people telling me how disgusted they are with you. Better come in before someone sees you and stirs up a lynch mob.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and went on in. “Listen, I’m really sorry. I wasn’t thinking of anyone but myself. No excuses, but I’m sorry.”

  He flipped his hand. “Don’t apologize to me,” he said. “I was probably as disgusted as you were.” He laughed. “It’s a good thing you didn’t come here last night, though. Becky’s mother would have clawed your eyes out and spit in the sockets.”

  I flinched.

  “How about some breakfast?”

  “I should be getting home. I haven’t been home all night, and Norm and Brenda are probably worried. I’ve got to start getting things back together somehow.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Me, too. Listen, I’ll give them a call and tell them I’ll feed you and you’ll be home in a little while.”

  I couldn’t resist him, so I said go ahead. He called and then started some eggs and bacon. It occurred to me I hadn’t eaten since Sunday night and was starved. Fred—he told me to call him that—ended up cooking me another full breakfast before I left. We talked a little about what should happen next but didn’t really come up with much, other than to just wait and see how things went. He assured me that he would continue to defend my maniacal actions to anyone who brought them up. I told him to plead temporary insanity.