Twisted Ones

by Packer, Vin

  Pulling up to the curb in front of his house, Brock was pleased that he had decided to come here, instead of chasing off to Murray’s. His father deserved the car. His poor, unhappy father. Working in a garage the way he did; having his wife die on him; and then winding up with Clara, and her lovey-dovey act. It was sad. Really sad. Brock put out his cigarette in the ashtray on the dashboard, and sighed with a melancholy air.

  But in the home to which Brock was returning, there was no consciousness of anything sad or melancholy. Mr. Robert Brown, at the age of forty-two had never felt happier or more successful in his life. In another year, he would own the Blue Star Garage. He was making enough to keep his new wife happy and eventually to send his son through college. His marriage to Edith Brock had been a dismal failure, and sometimes it seemed as though God himself had intervened in favor of Robert Brown and taken Edith to the grave, where at last she would rest in peace. Edith had been everything Clara wasn’t—cold, puritanical, superior, never able to forget her family had money once; a hateful, sharp-tongued termagant who treated her own son as the intruder she felt he was. Robert Brown was glad Brock couldn’t remember his mother well. She had died when he was seven, and Robert Brown decided it was one of life’s ironies that Edith’s life had been lost in childbirth, a birth she did not want to give and didn’t give, but took the unwanted boy to the grave with her this time.

  Brock Brown’s father was the best mechanic in Kantogee County, never mind Sykes, and Clara was a woman who made a man glad just to be alive. He—unhappy? Coming from anyone, the idea would have floored him.

  Coming from Brock, it would have shocked him. When Edith was alive, Robert Brown’s main concern had been Brock’s welfare. Edith did not have it in her to love the boy, nor even to feign some semblance of affection or approval where Brock was concerned. She could barely stand to lift him up and hold him in her arms when he was a baby, nor to change him—particularly to change him. She hated him to “soil”—her word—and after he learned to walk, whenever he dirtied himself, Edith could not control her temper.

  “You like dirt,” she would shout at Robert Brown, “you wallow in it! But I detest it!”

  Robert Brown was no match for Edith Brock. He had none of her polish, nor any education beyond high school. After her father drank away the Brock fortune, Edith at thirty-two was a left-over spinster, working at the bank, and periodically driving in to the Blue Star Garage for repairs on her Studebaker. Robert Brown, age twenty-six, was a shy, impressionable young man who never dreamed how desperate Edith Brock was, nor how susceptible to pity he was. He married her feeling sorry for her, and she married him feeling exactly as he did.

  Fate, God, Chance—whatever it was that had abruptly terminated their marriage, Robert Brown owed his happiness to it. He waited one year, a proper amount of time, and then he began to drop into Crowell’s Department Store, where Clara Lewis worked. She was fifteen years younger than he was, and she was a war widow. The competition was manifest, but Robert Brown persisted. Five years from the time he first took her to a drive-in movie, Clara married him.

  Brock’s father never thought he was doing anything but the right thing. He knew it was the right thing. Clara was young enough to understand a growing boy, and old enough to enter a second marriage with a mature woman’s desire to work at making it a success. To work at it? Robert Brown laughed when he thought of that word. He might have had to work at any marriage with Edith, but Clara and he were naturals. It was more like play. It was the best thing that had ever happened to him, next to having Brock.

  His wife’s feelings paralleled his own. Clara loved Robert Brown so much she wanted to cry sometimes at how perfect it was between them. She loved Brock too, and he made her want to cry as well, but not out of happiness—more out of frustration. That kid was such a swell kid—so darn good-looking and nice, and he didn’t seem to realize it. You could tell him until you were blue in the face, but it simply didn’t register. What do you do for a kid like that? Clara had bought him clothes, got Bob to buy him a used car, and even tried to talk him into dating girls, but nothing seemed to help. Brock was Brock—that was the only way to look at it. Oh, he was sarcastic sometimes; sometimes he was a little cocky, but Clara never minded that. In a way it reminded her of Alan—what she could remember of Alan. They’d only been married a short time before he’d been shipped over, and then killed, but there was a lot of Alan in Brock. Remember how Alan used to love nice clothes too? Clara would pick out ties and socks for him, the way she did for Brock. Yes, Alan was a real clothes horse. Sharp, he used to say. That’s a sharp tie. That’s a sharp suit. That was the word. Times changed. Brock always said “crazy” or “smooth”. He was the cool one, all right. Aw, poor Brock. If she could only help him. Not be his mother, or anything dumb like that. She was only twelve years older than he was. But help him. That was what she wanted to do—help Brock.

  • • •

  Neither Clara Brown nor Robert saw Brock pull up in front of the house that afternoon. He usually went to Murray’s after school, or drove around for awhile before he came home. It was unusual for Brock to arrive as early as ten minutes to four. Robert Brown was due at the garage at four. His night man was sick this week, and Brock’s father was taking his shift.

  He had pulled Clara down beside him on the sofa in the living room. She was kissing him while he smoked a last cigarette before he started for the bus, and he was pretending he wasn’t in the least affected by what she was doing.

  “What are you going to do tonight while I’m gone?” said he.

  “Watch television.”

  “That all?”

  “Miss you.”

  “Somebody’s licking my ear,” he said. “Did you let a cat into the place?”

  “I don’t know who could be licking your ear. Who’d want to lick your ear?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Who’d want to do this to you?”

  “Rob-bert Brown!”

  “Do you know anyone who would?”

  “Now, you just stop that?”

  “What?”

  “That! Feels too good.”

  “Don’t go getting hot on me now.”

  “You’re asking for it.”

  “You getting hot on me?”

  “Am I ever!”

  “Maybe I’ll catch the four-thirty.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “I love the smell of your clothes, Bob! Oh God, I love the smell of your clothes.”

  “Baby, I can get the four-thirty just as easy.”

  Brock had been standing in the hallway for the last two minutes. He had looked around the corner and seen Clara lying on top of his father. Seen her wiggling that way, and seen his father’s hand up under her clothes. He had jumped back, and he stood there rigidly, rubbing his knuckles with the palm of his hand, biting his lip and thinking how nasty they were. His father in his grease-daubed coveralls; his father’s hands so ingrained with filth that even Borax applied with a scrub brush could not make them clean, so that the lines there were black, and there was black under his nails. His father with a slut like Clara, letting her come on that way. Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ! How could a guy grow up clean in his own house, keep himself clean around people like this?

  Brock tiptoed back out the door, letting the screen close noiselessly, the way he’d come in. He walked toward his car and got in. He sat there. Soon he’d have a headache. He leaned forward and let both elbows rest on the circular chrome that made the horn blast. He let it blast a few seconds. Then he straightened up and got out again. He went down the walk slowly this time, whistling. It was beginning in his head. Always in the same place. The pain was like a bandeau that fit in a line across the top, from one ear to the other. It wasn’t too bad; it wouldn’t be for a while.

  He opened the screen door and shouted out, “Hey, cats!”

  “Brock?” His father’s voice. From the living room.

&nbs
p; He sauntered in, grinning. They were sitting side by side on the couch.

  “I brought you the car,” said Brock. “Thought you’d like to take it to work.”

  “Thanks, son. That was nice of you.”

  Clara said, “Hello, Brock.”

  “Hi.”

  “Well,” said his father, “there’s no time like the present.” He got up. There was some change, and keys, and a package of cigarettes on the coffee table. Robert Brown stuffed them into the pockets of his coveralls. “Did you have a good day, Brock?”

  “Crazy!” said Brock. “Don’t forget the tarpaulin for the front seat, dad.”

  “I can take the bus, Brock. I don’t mind it.”

  “I want you to have the car,” said Brock. “That’s why I came home.”

  His father said, “I appreciate that, son.”

  After his father had left, Brock followed Clara out to the kitchen.

  “Clara,” he said, “I’m in sort of a jam.”

  He could feel the headache getting worse.

  “What kind of a jam, dear?”

  “I bet a guy ten dollars, and I lost.”

  “Not again, Brock!”

  “I thought sure I’d win this time.”

  “Aw, Brock, you mustn’t gamble. You mustn’t.”

  “I know that. I know that now. You won’t tell dad.”

  “I never have, have I?”

  “The guy’s waiting for me at Murray’s, Clara.”

  “I’m not made of money, Brock,” she said, but she laughed, and Brock knew she would give it to him.

  • • •

  At four-thirty, Brock got off the bus at Houston Street. Houston was a quiet, residential street, but it was near the downtown business section in Sykes, and there were cars lining the sides. His headache was so bad now that every step he took seemed to jar him, making the pain more intense. He knew how to walk along past the cars and look inside without seeming to. He would never do this at night; he wasn’t that sort, not a sneak. Besides, he only had a Junior Operator’s license, and he was not suppose to drive after dark. That was the law.

  At the end of Houston, near Stewart Street, he found one. It was a green Mercury. The windows were down, and he saw the key. With a practiced nonchalance, he opened the door. He lit a cigarette before he got in. Way down at the end of the street, two women were headed in his direction. He made no effort to hurry. He settled himself behind the wheel, moving the seat forward, adjusting it to his height. Then he started the motor. His headache was at its peak.

  He pulled out of the space carefully. He knew lots of guys who didn’t care how they pulled out; didn’t care whether or not they scraped someone’s fenders or hit some poor jaywalker. Brock wasn’t that thoughtless. He went down Houston slowly and shifted at the stop sign by Stewart.

  He drove for a long time. Not fast. About forty. He had the radio on softly, but he didn’t listen to it. He felt his headache and he talked to it.

  “You don’t want to hurt me,” he said, “I know that. I understand. Can’t you go yet? Can’t you?”

  He was somewhere outside the city limits, up near the lake. There were a lot of back dirt roads in this area, and he picked one out and went on that. “It’s all right,” he said to his headache. “It’s going to be all right.”

  He went for miles over the hard dirt, thinking that it hadn’t rained in too long, thinking that he wished it would rain and he could let it rain on his head, how cool it would feel, good.

  His headache was beginning to stop. Brock slowed up. He drove the car up into the ditch and cut the motor. He sighed and sat back with his eyes shut. Not for very long—a minute, two. When he opened his eyes, the headache was gone.

  From his pocket, Brock took out the ten-dollar bill that Clara had given him. With a rubber band, he attached it to the gear shift. There was no one anywhere in sight out here in the country, but he whispered anyway. He always whispered when he said a prayer.

  “Dear God, thank you,” he said, “for my health, for my home, for keeping me strong and clean, for everything you’ve done for me. Thank you and amen.”

  Brock got out of the Mercury. He gave the door a gentle pat, as if to say: “You’ll be all right.”

  Then he walked down the dirt road in the direction of the highway. He never minded hitching a ride back to town. After all, it was only fair.

  Chapter Two

  CHARLES BERREY

  Some 208 miles away, in another small city, that same afternoon, the Berrey family was preparing for a big evening. Charles Berrey, the unexpected fruit of Howard and Evelyn Berrey’s middle age, was to make his third appearance on Cash-Answer, the most popular quiz show on television.

  Charles was eight, and he had already won $33,000. He was small for his age, and incredibly nearsighted, but he was a darling-looking youngster with tea-colored hair and a good sturdy build; bright blue wide-laughing eyes that were usually hid behind whirls of prescription-ground glass, and an endearing smile made more so by the fact that his upper left bicuspid was missing.

  His ears were being cleaned that afternoon by his mother, in the kitchen of the small Berrey bungalow, and it was a happy moment for both mother and son.

  “I reiterate,” Charles was saying, “you’re hurting me.”

  “You what? You iterate?” his mother giggled.

  “I reiterate,” said Charles, “I repeat.”

  “My little Chuckles,” said Evelyn Berrey proudly. “My little genius.”

  “Don’t call me by that infantile name,” said Charles Berrey, “I simply abhor it!”

  “Oh, you do, do you? You abhor it, do you, little Mr. Iterate.”

  She tweaked his right ear, and he squealed delightedly.

  Evelyn Berrey watched with pride-swollen eyes, marveling again at the fact this boy was hers. Him, with an I.Q. of 165, standing up before all America like he’d done last week, rattling off the kings of Israel and Judah as easily as if he were saying his ABC’s.

  “Saul was the first king, son of Kish. Ish-Bosheth, son of Saul. David, son of Jesse. Solomon, son of David. Rehoboam, son of Solomon. Uzziah, son of….”

  On and on, naming them off that way, until Jackie Paul, the quizmaster, shouted out, “You get cash for your answers, because your answers are cor-rect!” Then the drums beat, and the bells rung, and the light above Chuckles in the Contemplation Chamber blinked on and off, and the audience went wild. Mrs. Berrey had been moved to tears.

  What made a boy like Chuckles know all that, Evelyn Berrey wondered? It was his memory. It was photograph or something. Evelyn Berrey herself had a perfectly rotten memory. God, when she thought about it, it was a wonder she remembered her own name, and the same for Howard. All Howard remembered was ball scores. Howie, Jr., too. He was just like his father—all baseball games and fix-things-down-in-the-basement, and Marines this and that. He was handsome in his uniform, all right, Howie was, and he used to be terrible thoughtful, sending home those pillows with MOTHER in gold on them, from Parris Island, but he’d grown away since he married that I-talian girl. It had beat Evelyn why Howie ever picked an I-talian for a wife. The years certainly changed things. Howie living down there in West Virginia with an I-talian, not even coming East for Christmas last year; and Chuckles all grown up and winning a fortune on the television.

  Mrs. Berrey tweaked his left ear and said, “If you don’t hold still, Mr. Cash-Answer, I’m going to tell Jackie Paul your name is Chuckles. Ha, how’d you like that!”

  “If you do … if you do,” said Charles Berrey, “I’ll—I’ll—“

  “Ah? What? What’ll you do if I tell Jackie that, ah?”

  “I’ll pulverize you,” said her son.

  Mrs. Berrey bent double laughing. This kid could come up with the darnedest thing! “You’ll what? Ah?”

  “I reiterate,” said Charles Berrey, “I’ll pulverize you, mater!”

  • • •

  In the living room of the Berrey household, Howard Berrey g
round out his cigarette and tossed his copy of Baseball Annual on the table. He got up and paced around the room, back and forth in front of the imitation fireplace, a huge bull of a man with a build like a boxer. He was proud of his figure; proud of the fact he kept in shape. You wouldn’t catch old Duke Berrey getting soft, or growing an extra feed-basket. He was in the same shape he’d been when he’d played tackle out at old

  M.U., and he could still run the mile without fighting for breath. He worked out at Harvey’s gym here in Reddton, New Jersey, every other night, and when he was on the road, he worked out at a “Y.” It wasn’t simply a matter of vanity either; it was good business. A man who sold sports equipment around the country couldn’t expect to gain any respect from a customer if he wasn’t in tiptop condition himself. Hell, Duke Berrey was in a lot better condition than nine out of ten of the college coaches he ran into. He could demonstrate anything he sold from a leap tick to a punching bag, without looking silly, and that was a damn important part of sales—to show the customer you used the product yourself.

  Duke Berrey wasn’t going back on the road until this television ordeal was over. He had mixed emotions about Chuck’s success. He was glad the kid was winning all that money—that part was great. Not that any kid of Duke Berrey’s had to go on a quiz show to earn money for college, but it was a real boon just the same. By the time Chuck was ready for college, Duke might feel like taking it easier, slowing up a little. A man deserved to slow up when he reached his fifties. But the part Duke didn’t like was people’s reaction to his kid. People thought his kid was some kind of freak or something. After the last show, one of the men in Howard Berrey’s company had walked up to him and said, “Tell me something, Berrey. How the hell do you talk to your boy? I mean, what the hell do you talk about?”