Stay At Home Dead

by Jeffrey Allen

  “What’d Julianne say?” my dad asked.

  “About what you’d expect. Told me to stop doing stupid things.”

  “Smart girl, that Julianne,” my father said. “Excepting, of course, her choice in husbands.”

  The other two men nodded.

  “Your dad was asking me about this thing old Benny was involved in,” Sheldon said, adjusting his bifocals.

  “Know anything?”

  “I know Odell Barnabas is about as dumb as a dead fish,” he said with a frown. “That boy is several crayons short of a full box.”

  We all laughed.

  “He was trying to buy a couple of acres out near the lake,” the mayor said, resting his elbows on the table. “Problem was, he didn’t have any money.” He grinned. “Wanted to know if he could finance without a down payment. He said he was working on finding investors.”

  “Did he have any clue what he was doing?” I asked. “Did he even have a plan drawn up? A design of the building? Anything?”

  “My guess would be that he had it all drawn up on a couple of cocktail napkins.”

  “Let me ask you guys something,” I said, looking at each of them. “Benny ever strike you guys as being dumb enough to get dragged into something like this?”

  “Not really,” Cedric said, speaking for his friends. “But Benny, he didn’t exactly have it easy since that night he hit you.” He shifted his weight in his chair. “He didn’t handle it as well as you did.”

  My food arrived, and I dug into the pancakes. I wasn’t aware that I’d handled the end of my football career all that well. I’d sat around and moped for six months, nearly flunked out of A&M at the end of my first year, and put on about twenty pounds, most of it from beer. It was only after I met Julianne that I got my act together and stopped feeling sorry for myself. And, to be totally honest, there were days when I saw kids going to practice or I caught a game on TV that I still had a twinge of self-pity.

  “But if he gave this fella Barnabas any of his money,” Cedric said, shaking his head, “well, that woulda been an all-time low for even Benny.”

  “Not your problem, son,” my father reminded me. “Now, those tough women at Rettler-Mott? They are definitely your problem.”

  The three of them laughed loudly, and I stifled a smile by shoving more pancakes in my mouth.

  They moved on to other topics. I loved hearing them talk. I always had. The ease of their friendship was evident in their words; the way they needled each other—and every other resident of Rose Petal—was born of sheer affection. There were much worse ways to age other than to sit around yakking with good friends.

  Sheldon sat up a little straighter as I was polishing off my bacon. He adjusted his glasses. “You wanna have a chat with Odell Barnabas?”

  I remembered Julianne’s advice. “No, I guess not. Don’t see the point, really.”

  Cedric started to laugh and looked down at the table.

  The mayor jutted out his bottom lip. “Well, Deuce, you may not have a choice. Because he just walked in and he’s heading our way.”

  20

  The first thing I noticed about Odell Barnabas was his hair.

  The thick black hair was greased and combed up into a massive, oily pompadour that protruded off his forehead, making him look a bit like a rooster. Thick sideburns crept down his cheeks, beneath his ears, and almost to his jawline.

  His eyes were wide set and bright blue, so blue I was certain that he was wearing contacts. His nose was flat and crooked. I tried to locate his neck but failed to find it, his oblong-shaped head sitting squarely on his rounded shoulders. Maybe six feet tall, minus the hair.

  He wore a black leather jacket, a stark white T-shirt that showcased a nice little paunch above his belt, and blue jeans rolled over the top of black boots. A cigarette was tucked behind his left ear, and he walked with his chest out and a bounce in his step.

  But there was something about the hair that just creeped me out.

  He nodded at my father and his two friends, then looked at me. “I’m Odell. Hear you been askin’ about me.”

  It was part Fonzie, part Vinnie Barbarino, part “I saw a guy in a movie talk like this once.”

  “Uh,” I said, unsure how to answer. “I guess.”

  He lifted his chin. “You want in?”

  “In?”

  “On the thing.”

  My father and his friends were all squirming in their chairs, doing their best to keep from laughing.

  “The thing?”

  “I got it outside,” he said. “Come on out. I’ll show ya.” He turned back toward the front of the restaurant, like he was checking to see if something was out there, then looked back at me.

  And that was when I figured out the hair.

  When he turned, the hair sort of wobbled on his head, didn’t really move in sync with the rest of his body, like there was a brief delay.

  The great big pompadour was a great big toupee.

  And now I was having difficulty taking my eyes off it.

  He pulled a comb from the back pocket of his jeans and ran it front to back through the side of his hair. I found it to be a gutsy move, because unless the rug was rubber cemented to his head, there was a fifty-fifty chance it was coming off with a single pull of the comb.

  “I got it out in my truck,” he said, now pulling the comb through the other side.

  Why would you risk combing a toupee? Wasn’t that what all the grease or mousse or whatever it was in his hair was for? Don’t you style it before you leave the house and then put up a force field around it? Or, better yet, don’t you order it that way from wherever you get them? Toupees-Mart?

  My father’s elbow found my ribs, and I managed to look away from the hair. “Uh, sure. I guess. Remind me, though. What exactly are you showing me?”

  He shoved the comb back in his pocket and tugged on the lapels of the leather jacket. “You’ll see, Ace. Follow me.”

  He turned on his boot heel and strutted to the front door.

  I looked at the other three men at the table. “He doesn’t bite, does he?”

  My father shook his head and glanced over his shoulder. “Odell, no. But that hair very well might have teeth in there somewhere.”

  Teeth. Maybe that was how it stayed on.

  21

  Odell’s truck was a station wagon, a hideous-looking brown and tan thing, complete with faux wood paneling on the sides, circa The Brady Bunch era.

  He took me around to the back and busted out the comb again, running it carefully through the hair. “So. How’d ya hear about this?”

  “Odell, I have to be honest with you,” I said. “I’m still not sure what we’re talking about here.”

  He placed the comb in his back pocket and checked his reflection in the dirty back window of the station wagon. “Killer Kids, man.” He nodded approvingly at his reflection, then turned to me. “Gonna be huge, Ace.”

  Killer Kids. Of course.

  Odell pulled the latch on the back door of the station wagon and rooted around in the interior. Piles of clothes, empty boxes, paper bags, and soda cups flew around as he searched for whatever was beneath.

  Finally, he extracted a long yellow tube several inches in diameter and slammed the tailgate shut. He walked around to the front of the wagon, and I followed.

  He removed the leather jacket, tossed it high on the hood, exposing rounded shoulders and forearms that were nearly as white as the T-shirt.

  “It’s gonna be beautiful, man,” he said, chuckling as he popped the top on the tube and a roll of papers slid out. “I’m telling you.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “Me and Benny, we worked our tails off on this,” he said, unrolling the paper across the hood of the wagon. “Shame he’s gonna miss it all.”

  I expected blueprints but got what looked like something Carly might be capable of concocting. Crudely drawn buildings in colored pencil were strewn across a long piece of butcher paper. Little cartoonish
-looking people were drawn as if walking into the biggest square building on the drawing. A big flag above that building proclaimed KILLER KIDS!

  My first thought: would the exclamation point actually be part of the name?

  “This here’s the main building,” Odell said, pointing to the big building with the flag. “It’s gonna have a couple of gyms, a swimming pool, some party rooms, and some other stuff I’m not sure of yet. Maybe some martial arts type of room, where the little suckers can karate chop wood or bust cement with their heads. I don’t know yet.”

  His finger slid to a smaller square adjacent to the big one. “This is the weight room.” His finger slid again, this time to a rectangle colored in blue with a little boat drawn in it. “Outdoor pool here.” He grinned at me. “Kids can swim inside or outside.”

  “Sure.” I pointed to a big orange circle next to the outdoor pool. “What’s that?”

  “My office,” he said. “Thought it’d be cool to build it in a circle.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say to that.

  His finger moved back across the page to the opposite side of the main building, to a red and black bull’s-eye. “This here, though, is what’s gonna make Killer Kids different.”

  “What is it?”

  He folded his arms across his chest, the paunch beneath the T-shirt pushing out a little farther. “The weapons area.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Weapons, Ace,” he said, craning his neck at me. “We’re gonna teach them little buggers how to shoot.”

  I glanced at the bull’s-eye. “To shoot? Guns?”

  “Lotta folks own guns around here,” he said confidently. “Huntin’, protectin’ themselves, shootin’ squirrels, whatever. The way I figure, kids better learn how to use those guns and we can teach ’em.”

  I scanned the street.

  I checked the cars parked next to Odell’s.

  I looked behind me.

  I was absolutely certain someone was playing a joke on me, but I could find no evidence of cameras in the vicinity, looking to capture my reaction.

  I looked at Odell. He smiled back at me, arms still folded across his chest, fake pompadour standing tall.

  Odell Barnabas was completely serious.

  “You’re going to have a shooting range at a kids’ play facility?” I asked.

  “Not a play facility, Ace. I’m callin’ it a recreation complex.”

  “You think parents are going to be okay with this?”

  He nodded. “Sure. We’re providin’ a necessary service for the little buggers.” He grinned. “Don’t want anyone shootin’ an eye out.” The grin faded into a solemn expression. “I figure we’ll offer a week’s worth of shootin’ lessons to generate membership.” He tapped his skull with his index finger. “Can’t forget the business side of things, Ace.”

  I was trying to picture elementary school kids walking around with goggles, earplugs, and sweeping up their spent brass.

  “Don’t you think there might some insurance issues?” I asked, trying to be diplomatic. Explaining that guns and kids and Odell weren’t going to mix obviously wasn’t going to fly.

  He looked at me like I was crazy. “Insurance? Ace, my truck here’s covered and I rent my house. Not sure what insurance has to do with anything.”

  Oh. My.

  “I can get you in for as little as ten thousand,” Odell said, leaning against the wagon. “I’ve got several silent investors, fellas who just want me to turn their money into more money. Of course, you could buy in with more. Bigger buy in, bigger return.”

  I needed to change the direction of the conversation before Santa Claus drove by with the Easter Bunny.

  “How much did Benny buy in with?” I asked.

  He rolled his shoulders a couple of times and fiddled with the cigarette behind his ear. “Thirty. He was workin’ on another twenty.”

  “Thirty thousand?”

  “Yep. He was all in, Ace.” He shook his head, and his expression soured for the first time. “Not like his wife.”

  “Shayna didn’t like the idea?”

  He pulled the cigarette off his ear and rolled it around between his fingers. “Shayna. Things got kinda messed up with her, Ace.”

  “How’s that?”

  He shoved the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and fished out a lighter from his jeans. “Shayna liked me.” He eyed me with a half smile. “If you know what I mean.” He held the lighter up to the edge of the cigarette. “But she never liked the idea of the recreation complex, Ace. And when things ... hit the skids with her, she told Benny she didn’t want him to do it.”

  I wasn’t sure if I’d ever met another human being so annoying. He talked in circles, he called me Ace, he wore the most ridiculous toupee I’d ever seen, and he dressed like a goofy Elvis.

  He lit the end of the cigarette and inhaled deeply. His cheeks bulged for a moment, and the color rose in his face. Then he spiraled into a coughing fit an asthmatic would’ve been appalled at.

  The cigarette fell out of his mouth, and if I’d been inside the restaurant and heard him, I would’ve thought someone was attacking him, his hacking was so loud.

  Fake hair and a fake smoker, too, apparently. He got the coughing fit under control and smashed the cigarette under his boot.

  “Are you telling me you had an affair with Shayna?” I asked when it appeared he was no longer dying from smoke inhalation.

  He grabbed his jacket from the hood of the wagon, extracted another cigarette from an interior pocket, and wisely stuck it behind his ear rather than lighting it. “I’m not telling you anything, Ace.” The half smile appeared again as he slipped the jacket on. “But that girl was a tornado in the sack.”

  I wanted to believe he was lying. If you offered any woman the chance to sleep with this guy and, say, Bob the cat, I thought most would’ve taken their time making their decision before settling on Bob. What in the world could Shayna possibly have found attractive about him? For that matter, why would Benny have even been friends with the guy, much less handed over thirty thousand to him?

  “So you in?” Odell Barnabas asked. “’Cause I’m really ready to get goin’ on this baby, Ace. And you don’t wanna miss the ride.”

  “Gonna have to think on it, Odell,” I said, heading for my minivan. “Gonna have to think on it.”

  “Don’t give it too much thought,” Odell called after me. “Too much thinkin’ will get you in trouble, Ace.”

  If that were true, Odell Barnabas would probably go his entire life without getting in trouble.

  22

  It was Carly’s late day at school, when she stayed an extra hour and had lunch at Rettler-Mott. Julianne and I had made plans to have an early lunch. I thought it was a ploy to keep me out of trouble. If that was truly her intent, we should’ve had breakfast.

  One of the reasons we’ve stayed in Rose Petal is its proximity to Dallas. A twenty-minute drive to the south and we’re in the middle of a big city. Rose Petal had changed because of its location north of the city. When I was growing up, it felt like a small town. But as Dallas expanded, so did the suburbs and the amount of time people were willing to spend on the road commuting. As a result, Rose Petal was having an identity crisis. It was attempting to hang on to its small town feel while coming to the realization that small towns don’t have populations that are growing by the day.

  After Julianne graduated from A&M, she’d gone to UT for law school, something that many folks found sacrilege, myself included. You’re an Aggie or you’re a Longhorn. No one is an AgHorn. Nonetheless, she graduated from law school at UT and immediately went to work for a small firm in Dallas. The small firm had gone from small to medium to large in the decade she’d been there, and she’d been smart to stick around. At thirty-f ive, she was already a managing partner at Gaylin, Olson, and Armstrong.

  Her office was over in the Park Cities, a stretch of real estate comprised of both Highland Park and University Park, near SMU. It was prime dig
s, the land of old Dallas wealth. As a kid, it seemed worlds away. It still felt odd that Julianne worked there every day.

  I was stopped at a red light a block away from the office and I could see her out front, talking on her cell phone.

  A decade and a half ago, during my first year at A&M, I’d seen her standing outside a bar, talking on a pay phone. Dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. Denim skirt and a long-sleeve blouse. Great eyes, even better legs.

  I was with some buddies and waved them on into the bar ahead of me. Too tough to pick up girls when your friends were behind them, making obscene gestures.

  She hung up the phone as I approached and looked me up and down, her expression telling me she wasn’t terribly impressed.

  I pointed up to the sign above the bar. “This a fun place?”

  “If you like beer and being groped,” she replied.

  “I like beer, but I love being groped.”

  She didn’t want to laugh, but she couldn’t fight it off. She gave me the once-over again. “You’re a football player, right? You look like one, all big and ... dopey looking. Should I be swooning?”

  “I am not a football player,” I said, the words stinging even as they came out. “I am dopey looking, though. The swooning choice is all yours.”

  She smiled. Teeth that matched the eyes and legs. “I think you’re lying. Besides, I know who you are.”

  That caught me by surprise. “I wouldn’t lie about being dopey looking. And how do you know me?”

  “You couldn’t lie about being dopey looking. We went to high school together.” She locked her eyes on me. “You are Deuce Winters, football star to the masses.”

  I bent down and rolled up the pant leg of my jeans, exposing the foot-long scar that ran diagonally across my right knee, and tried desperately to remember this girl. I was having a hard time believing I didn’t remember her.

  “Ouch,” she said.

  “Yeah. You really went to Rose Petal?”

  She nodded and brushed the hair away from her face. “I was two years behind you.”

  That made some sense. In high school you paid attention to your peers, not the ones nipping at your heels. But girls were a different story. It didn’t matter what year they were. It only mattered how hot they were, and this girl would’ve been hotter than hot as a toddler.