by Owen Thomas
Darius Knotty came back to him through the gloom of time, swinging in and out of memory at the end of his rope. It dawned on him that in recounting those events on David’s driveway, he had misremembered the story. He had remembered Darius leaving his son Dillon to the state police, packing the rest of them into his car, driving all the way back to Columbus and dropping all of them – him, Stinky Daniels and Alice Monroe – at the curb in front of Hollis’ house.
But that’s not what had happened. He had told it wrong, or at least incompletely.
Darius Knotty had not driven directly to Columbus. He had detoured east, skirting around Columbus, toward London and Springfield. He had delivered Stinky and Alice to Alice’s house. To Alice’s house. Stinky and Alice had climbed out of the back seat onto the curb. Darius had mumbled that he would take Hollis home next, but Hollis had insisted that he could get a ride home from Alice and had been moving to climb out of the car behind them. But Darius had insisted, shooting his tree branch of an arm into the airspace over the back seat. Stay there, he had said. I said I’ll take you home. And Hollis had obeyed. When Darius Knotty told you to do something you god damned did it, and if he told you to not do something, you god damned didn’t do it. So Hollis had stayed.
He remembered Stinky closing the door of that white Plymouth Fury with an expression of dread, not knowing how to help, and then Darius had sped away, taking a full drink from his battered silver flask, pulling the back of his hand over his lips and throwing his right arm over the back of the passenger seat.
Clear as day now. Why hadn’t he remembered? Darius driving and pulling relentlessly on that flask and Hollis a hostage in the back seat trying not to catch the man’s iron eyes in the rearview mirror. It was on the ride back towards Columbus, just the two of them, that Darius had said Don’t you worry none about Dillon. He’s just forgotten who he is. Just needs reminding of who his people are. But then…
Hollis took drink of wine and wrinkled his forehead, forcing the memory… then there had been more. Something else. A question. You still got both your folks? And Hollis had nodded his head. That’s good. That’s good. You’re lucky, boy. Mine died ‘fore I was sixteen. Darius had taken a drink and scrutinized him in the mirror, maybe waiting for a reaction, then continued. Daddy went first. Big ol’ six-foot, two-hundred pound stable hand – I mean a big black son of a cuss – caught him in a barn havin’ his way with Mrs. Coon. Another long look. Hollis had given no reaction. Wadn’t rape, Darius had said at last. Wadn’t that. They had a regular thing, see. Every Sunday on his way back to town, he’d stop by and get some of what she wanted to give him. Daddy was irresistible to women, see. All women. Blessin’ and a curse for the men in my family. Darius had shaken his head sharply and made a clicking sound; an audible check mark. But that was sure the end of Daddy-O. Pitchfork to the neck and that was all she wrote, boy, yes sir. The big boy swung for it, that’s for sure. But that didn’t bring Daddy back. Can’t change history.
Another look into the mirror for a reaction. He could see he had Hollis’ attention. Mama went a year later. She had the cancer, see. Ate her insides up. Ate her up in a hurry. The cancer don’t mess around, I tell you that. It’ll eat a hole in you the size of your body. It’ll eat ‘til there’s nothin’ left.
Darius had taken another swig and raised one eyebrow in the mirror, seeking agreement. Hollis had swallowed and nodded.
Nothin’ left of Mama, that’s for sure. Not at the end. Talkin’ crazy. Messin’ herself like a damn baby. She was like an old hollowed-out pea pod; layin’ out in the dirt. She said my father done it to her. Said Daddy-O had forgot who he was. Forgot her too. Said that him stepping out with a Jigaboo just hollowed her out, just scooped out her insides like they didn’t belong to her any more. Said that’s how the cancer got in; just curled up in the place he used to be. She was nothin’ much without him; least she didn’t know anything but him. When he took it in the neck with a pitchfork, that left us pretty much alone. Just Mama and me and the cancer curled up in the place Daddy used to be. At the end it started to hurt so bad she stayed drunk mostly. Asked me one night to put her under the pillow and not let up until she was still and gone because it hurt so bad. Course, I wouldn’t do it. She begged and beat me but I wouldn’t do it and the cancer ate her from the inside out like some savage cat she had swallowed alive.
Darius had driven in silence for a few minutes, greedily taking in the flask almost like he was nursing, until Hollis had concluded, wrongly as it turned out, that he was through talking.
Dillon don’t care enough about history, he had said. Not no school book history either. I mean his history. His… story. That’s what tells a man who he is. Can’t change history, see. Dillon’s problem is he don’t care enough about family. ‘Cause when all is said and done, Hollis-ol-boy, family is all we got in this world, and for Dillon, that’s me. And only me. Little jail time will do him a world of good. The mistakes you make are with you forever.
“So have you called this guy?”
Out of nowhere, Eric was suddenly before him leaning on his forearms.
“What? Who?”
Eric glanced at the glass of wine.
“I helped myself while you were…”
“Hey, that’s cool. I said it was on the house. Have you called him?”
“Called who?”
“This Aka… Akahuto?”
“Akahito. I’m paying for the next one you know.”
“Sure. Maybe one bottle is enough, yeah?”
“No. One’s never enough. Let’s do another. I’ll pay.”
“You’re the boss, Hollis. You’re not planning on hittin’ the road are you?”
“Got nowhere to go.”
“Thought you were going to see your daughter.”
“Don’t know where she lives. Los Angeles. I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Hmm. Not listed?”
“No. I called my son. He’ll call me. He will. He’s a good kid. He must be out. You know. Doing things.”
He patted his pocket for his cellphone, wanting to make sure it was on, then remembering that it was back in the room, lying lifeless on the bed. If David was calling at all, he was calling a dead phone.
“So did you call this guy or not?”
“Who?”
“Aka…”
“Akahito. No. Why…”
“Why? Does he have any idea about his crazy daughter? Don’t you want to, I don’t know, tell him that she tried to rip you off? I mean, hey, this guy should reimburse you the sixteen large, Dude.”
“Nah. Why?”
“Well is she his daughter or isn’t she? I mean, he was the one who said so, right?”
“Right.”
“But it looks like daddy was a New York ballplayer, right?”
“Right. I guess.”
“So then what’s the deal?”
“I don’t really know what to believe.”
“I mean is Akahito part of the scam? Is he getting a cut?”
“Oh…”
“What?
“Please. No way.”
“Hey, it seems to me…”
“No. Okay? Akahito’s a good man. An honorable man. He epitomizes the honorable man. He doesn’t owe me anything. I caused my own problems with Beth. Lynnette. Whoever she is.”
“Thinkin’ with the wrong head, you mean?” Eric grinned.
“Yeah. I guess I was.”
“You know you were, man.”
“Okay. Yes. Yes. There.”
“There it is.” Eric laughed and swatted him on the shoulder. “Hey, it’s cool, Dude. It’s only natural. She sounds hot to me and I don’t even swing that way so don’t beat yourself up too bad.”
“…”
“Not my business, but I’d call the man and let him know what this kid is up to.”
“Yeah, well …” Hollis slid his glass out across the bar.
“Find out what’s going on.” Eric poured. “I smell a big fraud.”
Hollis looked up as if hearing his own name.
“But, hey, that’s just me talkin’.”
CHAPTER 64 – David
My childhood home is a paradox.
There is certainly no going back. I can no more go back home than I can fit into the ocher Osh Kosh B’gosh overalls I am wearing in the picture that my mother has framed and placed on the nightstand next to my old bed. I am wearing my father’s old baseball glove and staring off into the over-exposed distance with a serenely content expression beneath my tousled hair and my red Buckeye’s cap.
I like to think that this is my parents’ way of preserving the vibrational energy of the room; keeping it young; keeping them young. They have remade the room since I lived here after college, scrubbing it clean of my adult residency and restoring it to something approximating its former self, albeit without recreating any specific decorative obeisance to the Beatles, or Farrah Fawcett, or Han Solo, or Batman.
The Rubik’s cube and the sea glass paperweight are back on the desk beneath the palm tree lamp. Tilly’s old vinyl beanbag chair sits in the corner beneath the window like a psychedelic mushroom. My Boy Scout badges are back on the wall in the same chipped frame. My old aluminum baseball bat leans into the corner behind the door. My father has apparently rewrapped the leather grip, which, for decades, had been falling off like an old sock with failing elastic. They are aiming for a young room, my parents. Not an old room that used to be young.
But the photo on the nightstand is counterproductive, more funereal than totemic, and suddenly everything is a museum to lost youth. Little Davey is gone, says the photo. This is how we choose to remember him. Before he was sent up the river and shivved in the showers for killing that poor girl.
There is no going back.
But at the same time, it is like I never left. It is the same walls that listen to me unburden the bedsprings in the dark and bumble down the hall to the bathroom to pee and not flush the toilet and bumble back down the hall to bed. It is the same two floor boards that groan like the deck of an old ship beneath my bare feet on the way to the bathroom but, inexplicably, never on the way back to bed. It is the same mosaic of light that bends over the furniture like some strange plasticine ice flow, in the same squarish shapes, along the same path across the floor of the living room as the sun transits the back yard. It is the same sticky kitchen drawer. It is the same laundry room. The same junk room. It is the same smell. And silence. In all of its essence, this place is the same as it ever was.
In my adult life, my visits have generally occurred in the evenings. So it is mostly during the day that I now feel out of place inhabiting these familiar rooms, particularly when the house is empty – both parents gone and Ben off at school – which is a vibe that takes some getting used to. Since moving into my own place, I have been in this house alone, but never without the expectation that my mother would, imminently, be pushing her way through the door to the garage overloaded with bags of groceries, or that my father would be coming in from the back yard or pulling into the driveway. It is odd knowing that until I go out and retrieve Ben from his school and bring him home, no one will be coming in from anywhere.
In the evening, Ben and I eat like Visigoths and watch bad movies and play poker and battleship and leave the bathroom door open when we pee. My childhood sleeps during those hours, at least until I retire up to my old room and lay down in my old bed. So I go to bed as late as possible.
Not that I had a bad childhood. I had a great childhood. It’s really the comparison I cannot stand. I’ve never been big on folding my life in on itself so that one era can look another era directly in the expectations. Same reason I hate high school reunions.
After I return from dropping Ben off at school I read the paper at the kitchen counter eating cereal with too much fiber and not nearly enough sugar. After another volley of Katrina headlines, the Columbus Dispatch is nothing but a giant police blotter. Nothing but indictments and arrests and convictions. I tell myself that it is ridiculous to waste any effort or stomach acid searching for my own name in the ignominious ink, but I cannot help myself and I do it anyway. I count no fewer than six articles featuring names that begin with the letters “Da.” Each sighting is good for a little bioelectric jolt of terror. My exact first name appears twice, producing proportionately larger jolts. I try the comics, but they are no help. Dagwood Bumstead has been fired. Beetle Bailey has been beaten beyond recognition. Lucy thinks Charlie Brown is a blockhead and the class is laughing. Ha. Ha. Ha.
I suddenly miss that stupid school. I miss teaching. I miss those little imbeciles. Those little sponges. The ridiculous questions. The gum. The cell phones. The contagion of angst in the air and the hypersexual posturing and the toxic body scents. I think about that classroom; my classroom. I see it in my mind as clearly as if I had just walked in the door and taken my place behind that big, battered piece of furniture that was both my throne and my bulwark. I look out across the kitchen, chewing fiber. I can see all of those empty desks, scarred and tattooed, arranged into perfectly decorous rows by a lonely night custodian with no sense of irony. The maps on the walls. The Magna Carta. The Bill of Rights. The Poster of Presidents, that periodic table of executives. I miss the poster of Richard Nixon in his horns-of-scalp receding hairline, shaking hands with Elvis in his decidedly vampiric ensemble and his WWF-sized belt buckle.
I remember suddenly, and with surprising fondness, the giant timeline of world history running the circumference of the classroom like an overzealous frieze. Above the door is 3,000 A.D. and the invention of Sumerian cuneiform pictograms. At the end of that wall, just above the red fire alarm bell, Christopher Columbus – pale rider of the high seas – sails into view. Along the adjacent wall, over in the far corner, above the wall-mounted pencil sharpener that has never worked, Napoleon takes Switzerland as a trinket at the same time that Ohio becomes a state.
I rotate my mind’s eye, scrolling through time. Above the window, directly across from the door, there is a congestion of vertical lines on the timeline skewering through the blue rectangles of the American Civil War and the Taiping Rebellion, fanning out into four little boxes: Abe Lincoln is elected, Inspector Javert chases Jean Valjean through Les Miserables, Abe Lincoln is assassinated, and Fyodor Dostoevsky punishes Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov for his crimes.
I keep turning, testing my own recall, checking off the icons of history like they are long lost cousins. Pancho. Ferdinand. Woodrow. Leon. Joseph. Adolf. Mao. Benito. Winston. Teddy. Mahatma. Ike. Eugene. Harry. Ho Chi. Douglas. John. Bobby. Martin. Malcomb. Nikita. Lyndon. Neil. Tricky Dick.
History runs out prematurely directly above and behind the teacher’s desk – my desk – just past what was once my left shoulder, above the only chalkboard in the building that has not yet been replaced with a white board. That is where the end of the multi-colored banner is adhered to the white brick wall with a photo of the twin towers that I had cut out of a magazine. Bringing the timeline up to date – continuing its path around the room – had been on my list of things to do. Buy paper. Buy markers. Buy tape. Finish timeline. But I too, it seems, have fallen into the post-9/11 abyss. Time is no longer so neatly linear; no longer moving forward, but collapsing back on itself in a kind of corkscrew swirl down into future blackness. Once a teacher, I am a student again, in the same room that I will carry around in my head forever. This is the place where the future gives birth to history. What in God’s name will happen next?
That is the question that terrifies me and that I spend almost all of my conscious energy avoiding. Alternate nightmare scenarios slip past the guards. Brushing my teeth, I realize that I have been standing at the sink for five minutes using so much force that the brush is bowing, as I scour my enamel. Coming to consciousness, I realize I have been imagining my disciplinary hearing, now only days away, at which I am to be stoned to death by Principal Robertson as a room full of people watch in varying degrees of satisfaction. Should I prepare a statement?
Do I get to ask questions? Call witnesses? Who would I call as a witness? Shepp? Suddenly I am Al Pacino in Dogday Afternoon shouting that everyone is out of order. You and you and you! I jab my finger at people ferociously. That is when my gums start to hurt.
Taking a shower, I realize my eyes are stinging from the shampoo I have let run down my face only because I am leaning away from the water so that I can hear the rest of the house around me. I imagine that Richie has found me. He has been watching me; following me. Biding his time. He wants his drugs and whatever else he can beat out of me and now he is inside. What would I do? What will I do? Is there anything in my parents’ bathroom I could use as a weapon? What was that sound?
Waiting at the intersection on the way home from Ben’s school the lady in the pickup behind me lays on the horn, gesturing emphatically at the green light, and I realize that I have been imagining my highly public prosecution for crimes involving narcotics, statutory rape and kidnapping. The courtroom is packed. Chuck North is the star witness and the jury loves him. A big photograph of Brittany Kline reclines on an easel behind him. She is playing the violin. Why a photograph? Is she dead? What happened to her? Where is she? Did I do that too? As Chuck testifies and points at me, Lonnie Lumkin has his sleeves rolled up and is building a pyramid of radishes on the counsel table.
Preparing my cereal, I realize my feet are cold. I come to consciousness draped over the refrigerator door, staring at the milk carton on the shelf. At the top of my field of vision, pinned to the freezer beneath a Buckeye magnet, is the note, David: here is my cell number and your mother’s cell number in case you need anything. Thanks for helping out. Dad. As I stare at the milk and my feet slowly freeze I am imagining the shape of the thought in my father’s mind when he realizes the full magnitude of what I have done to my life. My brain, fondling the shape of that disappointment, resists any recognition of the milk. What will he think of all this? What will he think of me? But these questions are but pathetic feints; unconvincing self-defensive ploys to convince me that maybe there is something uncertain about my father’s reaction and that somewhere buried in all of that make-believe uncertainty there is hope. But there is no hope. Only dread. For I know exactly what my father will think of all of this, and of me.