A Little Too Much

by John Shannon

  ‘Yeah, but he wasn’t one of the famous ones. When they came with their subpoena, he’d only had one script produced, a cowboy movie called The War on Powder Creek. The usual – the big evil ranchers against the little homesteaders. He was with the homesteaders, of course. Dad was a supremely defiant man. I love him to death for it. This all happened before I was born and before the more famous stuff in Washington in front of the cameras. The Un-American Committee came out here, I think it was in forty-seven, maybe forty-eight, for a first crack at scaring lefties, and they met at the Biltmore downtown. Most of the witnesses that first hearing were what they called “friendly”. But Dad sure wasn’t. He just stood there all by himself and said, “Screw every one of you, I don’t talk to fascists.” Even his Communist pals told him not to do it. Don’t be an idiot, Sam. Take the Fifth.

  ‘Eventually it got him a year and a half in the slammer for contempt of Congress. Weirdly, he ended up doing his time in the same Danbury Prison as the head of the committee, J. Parnell Thomas, who got caught stealing public money. By the time Dad got out of prison, working in Hollywood was out of the question any more. We moved away and he went back to selling shoes at Henry’s Shoe-Horn in Reno, where I grew up. Later some of the better-known writers got their fancy Hollywood jobs back, but he never did.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Don’t worry. The family found ways to live with it, or make jokes about it. We were Tolstoy’s happy family and I loved Dad to death. He had me pretty late with his third wife, but I did get to know him, even as an old man. He did a couple of children’s books later. But Reno wasn’t such a bad place to grow up. Probably healthier for me than Hollywood High.’

  ‘Who knows what’s a bad place to grow up – as long as it’s not in the middle of a war?’ Maeve said. ‘I feel privileged that I was near the beach. And I love my dad to death, too.’

  ‘I feel super right this minute, too. I guess I mean being with you. I’m really crazy about you, Maeve.’

  ‘I like you a lot, too, Chad, but let’s slow down. It’s good that we don’t really need to cure each other. Of whatever.’

  ‘Can I kiss you?’

  Maeve stared at her hands for a while. ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea, Chad. I’m coming off some pretty heavy stuff. I’ve had a serious gangbanging boyfriend and a girlfriend. And I’ve had an abortion.’

  ‘Can you make it clearer what you mean about girlfriend?’ Chad asked.

  ‘It’s not rocket science, Chad. I don’t have a girlfriend right this minute, but the feelings are all there.’

  ‘I guess it’s a bigger deal for a guy to like guys.’

  ‘You all say that. But I’m not so sure. Gore Vidal always insisted there was just love for a person, and there didn’t have to be a gender strait-jacket.’

  ‘It’s a bit scary,’ he said. ‘You’ll let me know if you decide to settle down on the female side.’

  She laughed. ‘You’ll be among the first to know.’

  They’d punched Li’l Joker a few times, randomly, in the face and chest to make him more compliant as they drove, and then they dragged him groggy out of the car toward the white clapboard church called St Stephen’s African Methodist Emanuel Church of God in Christ near Central Avenue. Somebody was obviously working on its exterior, repainting or repairing, because there was scaffolding half way up the blank east wall, which was probably the chancel wall.

  ‘I’m still not up to speed, guys,’ L’il Joker said woozily. ‘Maybe you got it all wrong. Did you think of that?’ He kept his eyes on the streetlight nearby and tried not to do anything they’d think was either a kowtow or a challenge. Somebody was trying to remove his wallet and having a hard time at it.

  One of the Panchos kept pointing somewhere and saying petulantly, ‘Donas. Quiero donas.’ I want donuts.

  ‘If you get to see your boss, tell him what I telling you now,’ the head guy insisted.

  L’il Joker did his best not to look at the man. He knew they were trying to scare him, and the best thing was not to admit that it was working and making his stomach sick as a dog’s.

  ‘You tell him, adjust the deal to the times, pendejo. Anybody doesn’t do that is stupid all the way down to the bones. But, really, I don’t think you get to see him no more.’

  They turned on a compressor sitting on the ground that throbbed away with power. Then they hauled L’il Joker up the scaffolding, and, forty-five feet in the air, they crucified him to the clapboard wall with the air-powered nail gun that had been waiting there. He vomited out into space and screamed before he passed out.

  ELEVEN

  Stupidity For Dummies

  Now and again car headlights washed over them as they talked. It all made her a bit nervous and uncomfortable, being with handsome Chad. She’d been so into girls recently, and she still fancied Bunny quite a bit. Was it possible to be more confused about life? Maeve thought. I’m going for the record.

  ‘Tell me some more about your dad.’

  ‘Beer?’ he offered.

  ‘No thanks.’

  He snapped a fresh can for himself. ‘He got kind of private as he got older. I mostly remember him pretty old. Maeve. He was sixty when I was born. He worked on a novel for a while but nobody ever saw it.’

  Cars became infrequent, and she relaxed into what seemed the creepy absoluteness of the dark outside. Vampire dark. She noticed the tiny lit homes on the slope opposite and the faint glare of the city reaching up into the southeastern sky. But no moon, no streetlights, no houses at all nearby.

  ‘When I got older, maybe fifteen,’ Chad said, ‘I tried to talk to him one night. By then he only had a year or so left to live. Diabetes was killing him, but that was not to be mentioned; never. It was a strange situation that night. He got up really late while I was watching some old movie on TV. I heard every sound from the bathroom. All at once I had this weird certainty that he was looking in the medicine chest for something to commit suicide. I have no idea why that idea hit me, but it yanked me right out of my teenage funk – I mean, how would I feel later if it was true and I didn’t try to stop it?’

  ‘I don’t get it.’ Maeve’s dad had absolutely never been suicidal.

  ‘I don’t either. God, Maeve. I want you so bad.’

  ‘Please tell me about your dad.’

  ‘OK. We weren’t relating so great then, maybe our ages, maybe it was my problem teens. I must have come at him out of left field. He looked in the TV room and I said how much I’d always admired him and his courage, which was damn true. And how his … I don’t know, his furious perfectionism sometimes made me feel inadequate, which was also true. I thought it’d be one of those meaningful moments, you know? Life-changing or something. But he didn’t get it. He just didn’t. Generations, I guess. He said I was a perfectly fine kid and I should go back to my TV and stop fussing. I felt like I’d taken a really difficult step toward him, and he wouldn’t make even a half step toward me. But, hell, he was seventy-five then, and we all knew he was dying.’

  ‘That’s so sad.’

  The intimacy that he’d offered and the velvety darkness all around made her feel at the vital center of something new. Yes, I’m selfish, Maeve thought. I don’t need Chad. And I’m OK. She could have fun with Chad, if she wanted – but she could discard him, too, if she felt she needed to. She didn’t even need her dad any more, not really – and that was a new thought, almost terrifying, but empowering, too. She was alone now. She could do life her way, on her own.

  ‘Dat dere Mr Jack Liffey?’ the voice on the phone said.

  ‘Oh, knock it off, Winston. How many Anglos do you know in L.A.? And how many Jamaicans do you think I know?’

  ‘You know de mos’ importan’ one, ma’an: me.’

  He laughed softly. ‘OK, what’s up?’

  ‘You warn me of dis. Tyrone Bird – he in big trouble. A bunch a’ de drugsters want him in bigger trouble. He still insist to see de Big Man for dat father t’ing. But some a’
dese guys, I sayit, they reasoning ain’t so innocen’.’

  ‘Can you bring him to me first?’

  Jack Liffey stared at his yellow shorthair half-coyote, who was still recovering from the chemo and trying to get in a good chew on Jack Liffey’s last good sweater hanging off the back of a kitchen chair. He was too softhearted to interfere with any pleasure the poor beast had left to him.

  ‘I don’ know,’ Winston said.

  ‘Try, man. You can’t do this babysit alone, not in this town. I’ll come to you.’

  There was a pause, and Jack Liffey could sense there was another issue at work.

  ‘Mr Sir, I know you help my brotha, but I need to know for sure you OK. I feelit, you got somet’ing bother you, somet’ing da matter. I no wan’ you run out de door while us hold a big bag a’ shit.’

  He had pretty sensitive radar, this Jamaican, Jack Liffey thought. Somehow he must have sensed what had been preying on him: Gloria. We all live with fears, even me, and we all still die tomorrow, he thought. Everybody goes on living in some relation to his nightmares.

  ‘Winston, yeah, I have some personal problems, but I won’t run out on you. I was there for Trevor to the end. The guys you got to watch out for are the ones who tell you they’re Mr Brass-balls, and they got no problems at all. Bring Ty to me if you can. This can be your safe house.’ He gave his address.

  ‘Oh, ma’an, I just spy a shooting star. Dat a good sign.’

  Jack Liffey could see to the west out the open back door of the service porch, and he didn’t see how anybody could make out a heavenly body in that radioactive yellow dome of city-light.

  ‘You’ll both be safe here,’ Jack Liffey said. ‘That I can promise.’

  ‘Everyt’ing dainty,’ Winston said before hanging up.

  They’d had a pretty good time in bed, both doing their best to stay in the present through the lovemaking and not worry about her having to leave in the morning. Gloria had been careful as hell about the word ‘love’, but he’d tossed it around a lot, and they’d both tried a few sexual wrinkles that they rarely had before. ‘No taboos,’ Sonny had insisted. ‘This is the real laissez-le-bon-temps-rouler thing.’ The famous New Orleans Cajun motto: let the good times roll.

  After one last surge of energy, Sonny became so exhausted that he uttered an incomprehensible Cajun exclamation and passed out on his back, soon snoring like a bandsaw. It hadn’t exactly been her plan to take him to exhaustion, but it fit in fine.

  As near as she could tell it was about three a.m. Gloria got up gingerly and dressed in cautious silence. And then she realized that for all practical purposes, she was sneaking out like a one-night stand and might never see him again. She shoved her belongings into the holdall bag and found a notepad on the dresser.

  My Dearist Sonny,

  This will always remain one of the gratest weekends of my hole life. I am not leaving your house early to escape you. Please beleive that. I have a job to do before I leave this crummy town.

  I know you respect Jack and will not plagge us with letters and calls. But I will find some way to stay in touch. Do not be angry at me but I must stay with Jack for so many reasons that I cant even explain to myself. Just keep hoping for another time next year. I do not promise but I do not dare deny I have these desires too. You are very presious to me. And, funny as it is, Jack likes you too.

  Your too passiunate friend

  Discreetly, she decided on leaving no signature, not even an initial. Who else could it be, the maid?

  Maeve and Chad stood on the edge of the cliff beside his car. She was letting him hold her hand, as they looked out over the night hills, with house lights going off now, a village gradually turning in. She figured he was probably given to grand declarations of his feelings, like most men, and she hoped he would just hold off for now.

  ‘What a lovely night,’ he said.

  ‘Muchacho,’ she said. She smiled to herself. Odd word to choose. ‘Let’s be cool and let things settle inside us now.’

  He turned to look at her.

  ‘Don’t ask me anything now. You know I love women, too, and I don’t know how you’ll deal with that.’

  ‘I tell you, this guy a Johnny Whiteguy, for true, but he can help all of us,’ Winston says to me, standing right there like a colorful genie out of some lamp I rubbed.

  I want to go talk to my pops, hopefully my pops – for the first time in my life, like a normal human being, and I want this Jamaican shadow gone out of my life for now, and I don’t want all these Skinnies doing trampoline jumps around us. It’s sad to see them teasing him. He’s an honorable guy, and I know they’re part of me, so they must be acting out some of my inner resentments toward him. Hear me, Skinnies – I despise your mocking.

  ‘I can’t do it, Winston, sorry. Some white guy who says he’s a detective, my protector? Got an office with a big eyeball on the door, I bet. Breaks up marriages by peeking through windows. Think how primitive his soul must be. He’s barely above a polecat. He’s pond scum.’

  ‘Nah, ma’an. I done met him up close. He no wicked like dat. He can help us, and dese other guys you like so much dey down deep in de world of debbils and drugs. I knaoit.’ He made a pained face, his emotions all oversize, like the young man himself. ‘I suppose to be work for dem, but day all craven baldheads.’

  Three Skinnies cartwheeled between us just then, and I had to smile. I love this Jamaican’s speech patterns and his amazing earnestness, but right now I want him gone. I suppose that’s what the cartwheels are about.

  ‘Give me a night to think on it, Winston.’

  ‘I dunno, man. Everybody try to kill everybody in dis big action movie. Dey all see your fancy Porsche dis morning. Don’ count on dem be stupid.’

  ‘I hope I don’t. But you know I’m a bit crazy, don’t you, Winston? I mean, true men-in-white-coats-drag-you-away crazy. Cuckoo’s Nest crazy. Jack-Nicholson-with-a-knit-cap crazy.’

  ‘What you say?’

  ‘Oh, yes, mon. I am afflicted with a schizoaffective disorder, with hallucinations – the diagnosis code is two-nine-seven. I’m officially Daffy Duck – woo-woo-woo – and my medications are all back at my house. You’ve got a nutcase on your hands, Winston. What you want to do is go away tonight and come back tomorrow morning, after I’ve had a good night’s sleep. I’m worst when I’m tired. In the morning I’ll be fine for a while,’ I lie to him. I look in the mirror and there they are – my God, I’m using my secret heartfelt eyes on him, solemn enough to convince even me a little.

  Winston seems to undergo a transformation of his own. ‘I ain’ no buffoon to dismiss like Tweety Bird, Mr Tyrone. I got three good A-levels. I don’ know if you know what that means, but at home it means I can go to a university in England if I wish. You needing help, just ask me.’

  ‘You’re going to have to let me do things my way, A-Level. What’s your full real name?’

  ‘Winston Churchill Pennycooke. I only use Ratchet for the street. Pennycooke is a proud Kingston name. My brother Trevor died here in your city helping a young girl run away from the whoremakers. This man Jack Liffey helped them. That how I know he’s not worthless.’

  I notice that the Jamaican dialect is gone, though the lovely rich intonations are still there. For a moment all the cavorting Skinnies hold their poses, as if hit with some new and alarming news that just might send them skittering into hiding.

  ‘Tomorrow morning I want you to tell me all about that. Right now I have to sleep, Winston.’

  ‘You lie to me now?’ Winston asks.

  ‘No, my friend. I swear on my sacred honor, I have to sleep now or I’ll keel right over. It’s the curse of this disease I carry.’ I can feel my secret eyes hard at work to reassure, convince.

  ‘Cha, I t’ink of all da t’ings I shouldn’t hab done in dis life,’ Winston says, a lot of the street flooding back into his voice. ‘Too much trus’ was in all a’ dem. But Ima trust you, my fren’. I-an-I step out nao. I hope you ain’t try fi p
ut me in some big joke book call Stupidity for Dummies.’

  The stucco wall was intimidatingly tall. She’d had to go over something similar in full batbelt, with ammo and pistol, baton and flashlight at the Academy in Elysian Park, to prove she was as physically proficient as any male recruit, but she was carrying quite a few more pounds now, and quite a few more years, too. OK, use the noggin now, Glor.

  She got back into her car and backed the little SUV around. Gingerly she drove it over a row of stones and then over a cactus until the rear bumper thumped the stucco wall lightly. She hadn’t seen a night watchman anywhere, and how many people ever broke into zoos, anyway?

  Gloria retrieved her bolt cutter and the Pelican LED flashlight from under the passenger seat. It was the official issue plastic flashlight of the LAPD now, designed to be too light to deliver a real Rodney King beating, unlike the Maglite that had hammered him down in 1991. She dialed her cellphone down to vibrate, for good measure.

  Gloria climbed up the front bumper on to the hood and then boosted herself over the windshield on to the flat roof of the Toyota RAV-4. That put the top of the wall at waist level so going over would be fairly easy. But then she looked over and saw the drop and knew there’d be no easy way back out. She’d find a way, she thought, if she had to kick down a door. Toha tsopege ggwe’na’a, I’m on my way.

  She tossed the cutter inside first, but carried the flashlight. It was a painful jolt to her ankles coming down hard on the clay path, but she didn’t think she’d done any damage. She was a little disoriented about the layout of the place but started toward where she thought the big bird’s cage was located. There was no moon, and as she walked, she poked the tail-switch of her flashlight for the merest instant now and then to orient herself. Something made her think of Sonny Theroux, and then of course, of Jack Liffey. Her head was in an uproar. They were both such good men. Jack had given her worries and heartaches over the years, but almost always getting into trouble in service of somebody needy, and often enough his daughter.

  Love’s a hardship, always, she thought. Her old partner had said love had a whiff of mortality built in. I guess it’s all the complications we know about in the man we’re with that makes us grasp for a simpler, unfussy love, but that’s just an illusion. Every person on earth comes fully equipped with troubles.