Killer Diller

by Edgerton, Clyde

  Wesley looks at her—her face is pale, and her hair is all spread out on the pillow behind her head, not combed. And he’s beginning to feel a little bit nauseated. But all of a sudden he feels he needs to ask Mrs. Rigsbee a lot of questions. He’s never really known a lot about what she thinks about besides Jesus and food. What she used to think about.

  Mattie opens her eyes, looks at Wesley. “I always wanted to play violin. And go to Carnegie Hall. That’s what I dreamed until I was too old—one of the things. There was a house, a big white house down the street when I was little, and a woman, a beautiful woman used to practice in a back room. We’d sneak down there, and—”

  The nurse comes in. “I think I’ll have to—” She sees Wesley’s head, takes a step back. “Oh, my goodness. I’ll have to ask you to leave now.”

  “Oh, okay.” Wesley stands, staggers, steps over to Mattie’s side. “When you think you’ll be getting out?”

  “The sooner the better. Unless they’re planning to send me to the nursing home.”

  “I’ll be up here a few more days myself. I’ll come back, unless you’re out jogging, then you can come by my room.”

  “Oh, yes. Okay.” She laughs.

  As Wesley starts out, he hears Mrs. Rigsbee say to the nurse, “He ain’t really mine, but I’ve thought about him that way for the last eight or ten years.”

  The next afternoon, Ben peeks into room 4217 and sees someone with a wrapped head sitting up in bed, wearing sunglasses. “Hey man. Is that you?” Ben is carrying Wesley’s National Steel in the yellow bag and also his own cassette recorder with a practice tape inside.

  The head turns. “Oh yeah, it’s me. I was asleep. Come on in.”

  “You look like a mummy.”

  “I feel like one, too. They’re going to wire me up this afternoon so they can see what my brain waves are like while I’m asleep.”

  “I tell you one thing, it sounded like, I don’t know, it sounded like, loud, when you hit the ground.”

  “It felt loud. Sit down.”

  “When I saw that hand come up and them fingers start snapping, I said, ‘Thank God, the boy is alive.’” Ben sits in a chair against the wall. “I was surprised you woke up as soon as you did. The stranded cat was Carla’s idea. What all did they find out was broke?”

  “Nose, cheeks, ribs. I’m sore all over. I tell you, man, these ribs. I thought about your ankle. You know, when you had the cast on?”

  “Oh, yeah, I know.”

  There’s a knock on the door. “Wesley?” Phoebe sticks her head in.

  “Phoebe?”

  “Wesley! Good gracious. Hi, Ben.”

  “Hey.”

  “Come on in,” says Wesley. “I messed up my face, but the doctor says I’ll be even more handsome than before. If that’s possible.”

  “I don’t know if you can stand to be any more handsome than you were. I’ll just sit on the side of the bed here.” The poor, poor darling, she thinks. After a cat. That sounds just like something he’d do. Phoebe sits near the foot of the bed, and puts her hand lightly on Wesley’s knee, under the edge of the sheet.

  Keep your hand on there forever, thinks Wesley. Oh, Phoebe, you’re here on my bed with your hand on my knee under the sheet. Don’t ever take it off. I’ll stay real still, just leave it there with that little bit of pressure.

  “You look terrible,” says Phoebe. “What I mean is you look like you’d look terrible.”

  Wesley removes his sunglasses. The wrapping is split so that both eyes are visible. One is purple but open, the other purple and swollen shut. “That’s what my eyes look like, and other than that there are some cuts. They gave me some shots in the face. They didn’t want to put me to sleep because they said I had a concussion, whatever that is. I heard of them all my life but I don’t know what it is.” The glasses go back on.

  “I think it means it’s just a very hard blow to your head, one that shakes up your brain.”

  “It must of been bouncing all over the place in there,” says Ben. “It’s so little. I told you not to go down that downspout.”

  “You lie.”

  There is another knock on the door. Holister and Vernon come in. Holister is holding a ball cap in his hand.

  “You did have a little accident,” says Holister.

  “It’s crowded in here,” says Vernon, walking over to stand by the window. “Why you wearing sunglasses?”

  “It’s kind of cool. I like the way they go with these bandages.” Wesley’s blond hair sticks straight up out of the top of the bandages.

  “And people don’t have to see those poor eyes,” says Phoebe.

  “I got to get on back,” says Ben, standing. “I’m supposed to pick up some vacuum cleaner bags. Carla did the vacuuming las’ week and she always throw away the bag whether it’s full or empty. See you later. Don’t be going out the window.”

  “I won’t.” Wesley looks at Phoebe and smiles, then realizes that nobody can see him smile. She can’t tell he’s looking at her either. There she is, sitting there on his own bed. With him in the bed. She hasn’t moved her hand. If we were in here alone, maybe. . . . Now if Vernon and Mr. Jackson would just leave we could be in here alone.

  A nurse comes in. “Looks like you’ve got some visitors. Let me just check those bandages and get your blood pressure and temperature.”

  Vernon edges over toward Wesley, gets himself where he can see the nurse checking the bandages on Wesley’s face.

  “Is there anything we can do for you, get for you?” asks Holister.

  “Oh, no. I just got to take a nap in a minute. This medicine makes me sleepy and I didn’t get any sleep last night.” Take a hint. Take a hint. Take a hint.

  The nurse sticks a thermometer into Wesley’s mouth.

  “I’ll be going on then,” says Phoebe. “I need to set up a science center this afternoon.”

  Wesley grabs for her hand under the sheet, finds it, and holds on. He’s looking through his sunglasses. None of them can see his eyes. Nobody saw him grab Phoebe’s hand. She is looking down, and OH HAPPY DAY squeezing back, sort of blushing. The world is good.

  Vernon is bending over the nurse’s back staring at Wesley’s bandages, and Holister is shifting his hat from one hand to the other.

  “We better get on back, boy,” Holister says. “I got a bunch of cars waiting.”

  “I want to see if he’s got a temperature,” says Vernon.

  “Let’s go. Now.”

  “See y’all later,” says Wesley, with the thermometer in his mouth. “Thanks for coming by. I’ll be all right.”

  Wesley holds Phoebe’s hand tightly under the sheet. It’s as if, behind the sunglasses, he can squeeze as long and as tight as he wants to, he can almost do anything, and everything. He’s hidden away.

  Wesley’s first visitor next morning is Ted Sears.

  “Wesley?”

  “Yessir.”

  Sears approaches the bed, reaches out his hand to Wesley. “Wesley, how are you?” He looks at the Bible in Wesley’s lap —the Gideon Bible that was in the drawer in his nightstand. “I’m glad to see your priorities are intact.” He looks around for a mirror.

  “I just thought I’d read a little bit.”

  “Looks like they’ve got you wired up there.”

  “Oh, yeah. They did that last night before I went to sleep. They’re checking my brain waves. Actually, I feel pretty good. I’m just sore all over, mainly my ribs. It’s hard to sit up by myself.”

  “How long before you’ll be up and about?”

  “Just a day or two, they said.”

  “That must have been quite a fall. I was shocked to hear about it. I think the fact you were trying to save a poor cat makes the event all the more meaningful. You might find Palmer Royal at the Star giving you a little call about it. And I must add, Wesley, that I can’t tell you how much your Christianity means to all of us at Ballard. It’s far more than a publicity thing, but on the other hand, these newspaper arti
cles and this tour have given us a little boost, and the Christmas dinner at LinkComm will afford us an opportunity to recognize your contributions and make some announcements about the future. I think you’ll approve.”

  “That’s good.”

  Ted checks his watch, reaches for his billfold in his back pocket. “Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of time, Wesley.” He is opening his billfold. He takes out a five-dollar bill and lays it on Wesley’s nightstand. “I’m going to leave this with you in hopes you might find a use for it, and then I’m on my way. We’ve got a faculty member out here I need to see, and I also thought I might drop in on Mrs. Rigsbee. She’s such a charming little lady.” Sears puts his billfold back in his pocket. “Does she have any heirs, by the way?”

  “Airs?”

  “Children.”

  “She’s got two.”

  “Oh. Well.”

  “Why?”

  “Just wondering. Son, listen. Don’t ever abandon that book,” he says, nodding toward the Bible. “It’s true cover to cover. Cover to cover or nothing, I say. And it’s being attacked from all quarters. We’ve even got Baptists now denying its literal truth. So, son, you’re important to us. You’re helping the Ballard family fight the secularization of Christian higher education—through your example. And, by the way, I hope someone has mentioned that we’d like for you to give a little testimony at the LinkComm Christmas luncheon—about what Jesus means to you, what Ballard, the Ballard family means to you. Something short and simple—no need to worry about it. We can even jot down a few notes for you. We understand the radio and TV station might cover it. And now before I go.” Sears kneels. “Dear God, bless this Thy faithful servant. Heal his incisions, his broken bones, ease his pain. Guide and direct his thoughts and deeds. Bless all the sick and afflicted here in this facility, and help this young man to find Truth through your Word. In our Savior’s precious name, Amen.”

  Sears stands. His knees pop. He pats Wesley on the shoulder. “Fight the good fight.”

  “Okay. I will.” Airs? He’s after her money.

  Wesley picks up his Bible, turns to Leviticus, and starts reading in the Old Testament where he left off last time. Not very interesting. He decides to go back and pick up where he finished his sermon. In pain, he slowly props an extra pillow behind his back, inserts his tape, and listens to the sermon. Not bad. Not bad at all. Maybe he can do another one, and then keep doing them all the way through the Bible until he’s read the whole thing, and then stick that ear thing in his ear and go around and preach on anything anybody wants to hear about. Sort of a weekend job.

  He reads again about Adam and Eve’s sons: Cain and Abel.

  God asks Cain, who has just murdered Abel, “Where is your brother Abel?”

  Now here is God, thinks Wesley, who on the one hand has just knocked out a whole universe in six days, but on the other hand doesn’t know where Abel is. He ought to know that much. This doesn’t exactly make sense, he thinks. How can I preach about something that doesn’t fit together? Or maybe God is just asking Cain so he can put Cain on the spot, see if he’d tell the truth. That’s probably what it is.

  For sure God knew where Abel was.

  Someone brings Wesley’s breakfast, then a nurse comes in and takes his blood pressure. He stays with the story, reading while he eats.

  Here’s a bunch of killing and revenge going on and this great grandson is killing people for hitting him, and then all of a sudden Adam lays with Eve again, and they have another boy while they already had these great-grandchildren.

  And here it says Adam was nine hundred and thirty years old when he died. He must have been right dried up, thinks Wesley, out there in the desert and all.

  Then we have a whole bunch of people having babies and them growing up to have all these babies who live to be hundreds of years old and finally we got Methuselah, who lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years, and was for sure ready to die. They had to be counting different back then. How old would Mrs. Rigsbee be compared to Methuselah?

  Methuselah’s grandson was Noah. Well, that’s news.

  But they don’t name many women through here. Times are different or something. Maybe the custom or something didn’t allow them to talk about women, because they all wore veils. I wonder if they had dreams like Mrs. Rigsbee’s. There were those women who hung around Jesus. Maybe it was men doing all the talking, and they naturally talked about their-selves. Here’s all this eye-for-an-eye stuff. Jesus came along and changed the whole eye-for-an-eye part of the way they used to live. I know that.

  Then Wesley reads about Noah.

  He sees himself in a huge auditorium, before a large audience, behind a microphone. He is wearing his navy blue dress suit, white shirt, and tie. People are looking up at him with a kind of yearning in their eyes.

  He presses the record button on the recorder.

  And the whole bunch of people on Earth were rotten, except for Noah. God was so mad, he was going to get rid of the birds and bees and beasts. I don’t know what they had done, but anyway God was fixing to flood everything and everybody. But, listen. Noah’s wife and sons and all them got to go along with Noah on this ark. And—and they were bad people, because the Bible says Noah was the only good man on Earth. So you see, friends, it pays to have connections. I’ve had connections in my time, but I’ve not had connections too, and I’ll tell you what: if I was the next door neighbor of one of Noah’s sons and I hadn’t done no more wrong than that son had, I’d be a little upset to see him floating away in a dry boat while my lungs were filling up with muddy water just because God was mad. I’d say to myself, Now, why does my neighbor get off scott free and I have to drown?

  “Mr. Benfield, I need to take your temperature,” says a nurse.

  “Okay.” Wesley clicks off the recorder, takes the thermometer in his mouth.

  “Are you in the ministry?”

  Wesley nods his head yes.

  She removes the thermometer when the box beeps. “Normal. Is everything feeling okay?”

  “Yep. Except for my body.”

  “Well, you give us a buzz if you need anything.” She leaves.

  Wesley presses the record button on the tape recorder.

  Wouldn’t it have been nice to be Noah’s son back in them days? God says, “You go along on the ark too, son. You’re one of old Noah’s boys.” It would have been good to be a daughter-in-law. “You come right along, honey.” Noah was good and if you was in his family, you had the right connections, and friend, you could have been robbing and beating up little people all your life, but you’d still float away safe and free.

  Family connections have always been important, Wesley thinks.

  So, here’s old Noah floating around up on top of that water, in his boat—homebuilt—and can you imagine the folks on logs and in trees and on roof tops screaming and that water getting higher and higher?

  Can you imagine being left off the boat and seeing your very own grandma in the top branch of a tree, and water up around her shoulders, and you can’t even see the tree no more, except that one branch above her which she grabs and gets herself up a little higher, and you’re across a field in a taller tree? Or maybe it’s your own buddy, or your own little boy, or little girl —your own little girl, and you raised her up and fed her and rocked her to sleep, and even though you’re mean, you can’t help but love her.

  “Mr. Benfield?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hi. I’m from sleep analysis. Is this a convenient time for me to remove your wires and ask you a few questions?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. It’s not. Well, I guess I can come back later.”

  “Okay. See you.”

  And she’s holding on, with the water moving up her shoulders, around her neck, chin, and mouth, one inch every five or six seconds, and now she’s breathing through her nose because the water is over her mouth, and she’s starting to suck a little of that red, muddy, smelly water in through her nose, knowing full w
ell that when she turns loose of the limb it’s all she wrote. She can’t swim. She knows it. She’ll be dead and gone to hell. And I wonder if, on account of her mean parents, she ever had a chance to know what God wanted, if her mean parents ever had a chance because of their mean parents, all the way back down the line to the first mean parents that started it all. They had to be real mean.

  You swim over from your tree and she grabs on to your neck and you’re kicking your legs under water and the water keeps rising higher up over that tree branch and you finally hold her up over your head with one hand the best you can and she’s screaming because of what she’s just seen in your eyes when you looked up at her.

  So anyway, after everything settled down and all these dead corpses were floating all around, you can tell God was pretty rattled himself because he said, “Never again will I do this.” He had some regrets, and I do too when I look back on it. I agree with God about those regrets.

  Wesley stops for a breather and reads for a while longer.

  Then God made a deal with man. He would never again flood the earth, and the rainbow was a sign of the covenant and it would remind God of the deal he’d just made, which goes to show you that God could whammo, whammo, create the earth and moon and stars and it shows you He could learn something: to be a little more patient with man. Not to get mad so quick. It’s like when you learn not to kick your dog. Give him a little more time. The rainbow was a reminder, and God fixed it so it occurs all over the place because I see one on the white enamel in the bathtub sometimes.

  “Are you through with your breakfast, Mr. Benfield?” says a young woman.

  “Yeah. Take it on out. Thanks.”

  Then Noah went out and got drunk and naked. Now ain’t that something?

  “Excuse me?”

  “Nothing. I’m preaching a sermon.”

  “Oh.”

  —and Noah, instead of feeling bad about it, got mad at his son, Ham, for seeing him. For seeing him drunk and naked. Noah was the one that got drunk. Ham was the one that saw him. Something Ham didn’t have no control over. God said, “That son’s descendants are going to be slaves.” All Noah’s sons had children but only Ham’s were the slaves. This is one I ain’t figured out because all of this was because Ham saw his old man, Noah, drunk, and got his brothers to go in the tent and cover him up. Noah is the one ought to have been in trouble, it seems to me, for laying around drunk with all his clothes off.