Lovesick

by James Driggers

  You see, I killed my own son.

  Now before you run off and call Nancy Grace and start hollering, “He’s got another one,” Byung Hun Lee was not really my child. You should know by now that I could never, would never do such a thing. I adopted him from the back of a magazine.

  It was Mother’s Better Homes and Gardens, to be specific. You know the type of thing—one of those ads sponsored by a relief agency to foster a child. The picture of the smudged toddler with a shy, raggedy smile and innocent, imploring eyes. For less than twenty dollars a month you could make a difference in this child’s life. The child in the ad was not my child, of course. But I did clip out the coupon, write a check, and mail it in. In a few short weeks I received a very official-looking packet decorated with the authorized seal of the charity containing all the information on the child who was depending on me to make a difference: Byung Hun Lee, an eight-year-old South Korean with much the same expression as the child in the magazine. I wondered if someone had pinched them just prior to the photo being snapped. I had heard of such things happening. A letter explained to me that Byung lived with his mother on the outskirts of Daegu in the central part of the country. They had exceptionally limited resources. My money would allow him to go to school instead of working with her full-time in a tailor’s shop. While he would still help out on Saturdays and after school, my support would provide books, a school uniform, and a hot meal every day. They also informed me that Byung himself would write to me once a month. I was ecstatic.

  Because the letters had to be translated from Korean, it took several months to receive the first one. It read:

  Dear kind sir,

  Because of you my life is very different now. I am able to learn new things like mathematicals and reading. You do not know me, but I will work hard to make you proud of me. My mother is very grateful for your generousness.

  With respect and admirance,

  Byung Hun Lee

  I figured they must have had an older student in the school learning English translate the letters as an exercise. It would appear even charity isn’t beyond exploitation. Included with the translation was the actual letter from Byung—a nearly transparent piece of light blue paper, the tiny foreign symbols scratched in his tentative child’s script. A treasure. I commandeered one of Mother’s old stationary boxes and stored his letter—a record of what I imagined would be a long and rewarding relationship. And for a time, it was. Each month I received a letter: Dear kind sir, most generous benefactor . . . Byung was doing well in school. He hoped one day that he might open a shop like his uncle who lived far away in Pusan. He enjoyed playing tops with his friends. He could also run very fast. But was sure not to play tag when he was wearing his uniform.

  And then one day—almost a year from when I first clipped the coupon in Better Homes and Gardens—I received another official letter from the agency: Byung was dead, they told me. Drowned while on a trip to visit relatives. So sad, so sorry, would I like to replace him with another deserving child? I wrote back that a child was not a light bulb or a defective radio part and they could go and fuck themselves. I did not want a replacement.

  But someone forgot to inform the translator. After all, he probably still needed the practice, and who had time to sort out a letter from a dead boy? And because of the time delay, Byung’s letters continued to reach me for three months after the news of his death—strange, sad songs from my ghost child.

  Dear kind sir, most generous friend,

  I am reading better now. And on my last examination I received superior markings in equations.

  In the last letter, Byung wrote of his plans when school would be out for the term.

  My uncle has invited me to visit him in Pusan. I will take the train there by myself. It will take all day to make the trip, and it is the first time I will ever see the ocean. My uncle has promised to teach me to swim. You have made my life full beyond measure, benevolent mister. I am in your debt always.

  Guilt overwhelmed me. If it had not been for me, he would have been working in the tailor’s shop, unable to afford the luxury of a vacation. What had I done? What was my part in the death of this small boy who only depended on me for a hot meal and tuition?

  After that, I began to dream of Byung. The dream was always the same. I would run through the rail station looking for his train, but inevitably I was unable to find it—my feet would become heavy, my legs turned to jelly, the rail platform would move away from me in a mist. But always, always in the instant just before I awoke I was able to see Byung sitting in the railroad car, his shining face framed in the window. And when I would awake from the dream, I could still see him—so absolutely alive—so impossibly dead. What would have happened if I had ever caught the train? Would I pull Byung from the moving train? Would I tell Sammy not to come back to the motel? Would I beg him to take the money that Lonnie had offered him and run far, far away? Or would I only inform him how sorry I was that things had turned out so badly?

  And even more troubling perhaps, I wondered if, as the train began to heave from the station that day, did the slow, soft pull of the engine’s wheels call to Byung like the dark depths of the ocean? Did he know? Did he blame me?

  Or was he clueless as a cow—like the murdered boy Sammy Hutchens, he was doomed—Sammy, who thanked Lonnie for buying extra-crispy chicken because it was his favorite, who was reaching for the chicken, his back to Lonnie, so that I could see Lonnie standing behind him. And then the moment. Lonnie’s massive hands gripping Sammy’s head in that relentless grasp. Lonnie commanding me not to look away. “You need to appreciate this,” he growled. I could see the confusion that turned to fear and then to hatred and finally to understanding as Lonnie held Sammy’s head in his hands, lifting it up and away from Sammy’s shoulders, twisting it around back and forth, front to back so the bones in Sammy’s neck began to creak, and the gurgle in Sammy’s throat became a sad, high-pitched whine. Until the bones, unable to stand the strain, began to splinter and the only sound was a low, guttural sigh that was Sammy’s final breath. “Now you know,” Lonnie said. “Now you know, and you’ll believe what I tell you.”

  Dear Byung, my dead son, did you recognize death when it came for you? Were you afraid? Did you understand what it meant to die? And did you blame me for it? Or, as the wheels slipped from the platform toward the inescapability of the ocean, did you simply close your eyes, and whisper, “Thank you, kind sir. Generous friend. Benevolent benefactor. Father.”

  3

  But enough of this. It is killing you came for and killing you shall have. So, how about this: It wasn’t until Roger Simmons’s head splattered across the marble fireplace—bone and brain embedded in Laverne Simmons’s antique fire screen—that I believed Lonnie actually intended to kill him. Even though Lonnie told Roger he was going to die and Roger seemed to believe what he told him. But you see, your honor, I just thought we were going there to scare him. To frighten him so that he wouldn’t speak to anyone about Lonnie or me.

  I realize now how ridiculous that sounds. Of course Lonnie intended to kill him. There was only one way for Lonnie to be sure that Roger would never expose him. Roger’s death was as inevitable as the evening tide.

  Roger Simmons worked in Morris as an insurance representative for as long as I can remember. He was a few years older than I, but we both went to the Thomas Drayton High School where Roger played fullback for the Generals and was All-State during his senior year. He received a scholarship to play football for Wofford, though he was sidelined permanently in his sophomore year with a knee injury, and when he received his Bachelor of Science in Business, he returned to Morris, unlike most who had the opportunity to leave. He said it was his home, that there was nothing he needed anywhere else that he couldn’t have in Morris. He promptly married his high-school sweetheart, Laverne Taylor, and they opened Simmons Independent Insurance agency. He was the salesman and operating executive; she worked in the office as the accountant and secretary. That is how I fi
rst got to know Roger and Laverne. He was Mother’s insurance agent. Roger and I had also become intimate friends—occasional lovers—over the course of twenty years.

  In a town like Morris, it doesn’t take a great deal to distinguish yourself, but Roger and Laverne were definitely stars—the upper crust of society. They built an elaborate, but tasteful four-bedroom, white brick ranch house at the entrance to Bramble Estates, just down from the landmark and named for it. Bramble Estates was also home to the country club and golf course, where Roger and Laverne hosted ice-cream socials for the Methodist youth group from church, pig pickin’s for high-school fund-raisers, elegant cocktail parties during golf tournament weekends. Laverne was known for her parties—from down-home, laid-back, serve-yourself buffets to lavish, sophisticated affairs with delicate hors d’oeuvres that she had found in Southern Living or Better Homes and Gardens or in one of her collection of Miss Virginia cookbooks. Laverne was a natural hostess, had been awarded third place in the Miss Virginia Homemaking Competition, a statewide contest for high-school girls to promote “excellence in the domestic arts.” She had flair. She had organization. She knew what she wanted. All earmarks of a great compère. Why, even when she was in high school and won the third place prize for a coconut cake recipe, she had not squandered her winnings, but had used her prize money to attend a secretarial school where she learned typing, shorthand, and double-entry bookkeeping. From the get-go, she made sure her plans were interwoven with Roger’s.

  As a client, Laverne was a dream. Not like some of the women in town who think chrysanthemums are the height of elegance. She would bring pictures from magazines of arrangements she had seen, consult with me on which colors would help to lighten or soften the ambience, and I would deliver crystal bowls filled full of floating camellias, or grand Oriental vases crowded with calla or Asian lilies, or small woven baskets of mixed spring flowers—peonies, hyacinth, sweet peas—depending on her theme. A day or two after the event, Roger would regularly bring me a sampling from the menu that had not been eaten by the guests, sometimes accompanied with a note of thanks from Laverne.

  Now that Roger is dead, nostalgia for the years we were friends overwhelms me. Perhaps this is what hell is like. To feel the pain and regret for what was, for what never was, for what might have been. Certainly, I was very fond of Roger. He had been our insurance agent—Mother’s insurance agent, to be more specific—and after her stroke, he was a wizard sorting out the hospital bills. He even pursued the disability claim in the rider. It was sometime later that I ran into Roger at the state park one afternoon. It was surprising, but when I think back on it, I don’t know that it was all that unexpected. He had all the earmarks for “gay”: He dressed well (even after he gained the weight), he knew the flowers in the shop by name (“M.R., that is a beautiful shade of pink on those anthurium—almost a fuchsia.”), and he was devoted to opera. He would bring a cassette just to play a new recording of a favorite aria. So when I met him in the state park that afternoon, I followed him into the bushes and helped him to accomplish what he had come for; then afterward, he asked if I wanted to walk along a trail and talk.

  “Aren’t you afraid you will be seen by someone you know?” I asked.

  “I know you,” he replied.

  “Someone besides me.”

  “If they are here, then we are probably here for the same reason. Wouldn’t you suppose? Besides, it goes on more than you think.”

  I couldn’t argue with him there.

  Roger was the only other homosexual I knew who lived in Morris—that is, unless you counted Drexel Smith. But Drexel was a trailer-trash gay, good only for scoring some weed. I never trusted Drexel, always thought he short-changed me when I bought grass from him. Not because he didn’t like me. No, that didn’t matter. Drexel aroused my suspicions, seemed just the type of person who wanted to get something over on you so he could feel superior. But on a deeper level, I was a little scared of Drexel. It wasn’t that he was that physically intimidating, though he was tall and taut, with lean, sleek muscles covered in swirling ribbons of green and yellow, red and blue tattoo art. He had arrived in Morris as if dropped from the sky, living in a trailer off Highway 905. The trailer had been the home of my previous drug dealer, Miss Annabeth Owensby, who served drinks to truckers and local shit-kickers at the Spooky Angel Lounge. I had met Miss Annabeth when she came to buy flowers.

  “I just can’t abide those tacky little supermarket arrangements,” she said. I think you can tell a great deal about a person from the types of flowers they like. Mother’s favorite flower was the calla, which means “magnificent beauty.” Annabeth was fond of anemones—the flower of the forsaken. I would make sure I always had some on hand when I could get them, and every other week, she would stop in for a loose bouquet. One afternoon, she said she was short on cash and wondered if I would take something in trade, so she offered me up a joint. After that, I would stop in to visit and pick up a bag or she would drop off some weed for me when she picked up her flowers. It was all so very convenient. We would swap stories about the men in our lives (she had many more than I), and she would bemoan her frailty for troublemakers.

  “But the dangerous ones are so sexy,” I reminded her.

  “And therein lies the heartache,” she said, passing me the remainder of a joint.

  Then, when I went to visit her one afternoon, all of a sudden she was gone, disappeared, and in her place was Drexel. He studied me contemptuously as I stood at the bottom of the cement steps leading up to the trailer. When I inquired after Annabeth, he said simply that she had “moved on.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Do you know where she might have moved or if she might be coming back?” It troubled me that Annabeth’s car was sitting in front of the trailer, but I didn’t question Drexel. I didn’t know what her relationship with him had been, what arrangements they had made.

  “Do you see a fortune-teller’s sign hanging out here? No? Then I reckon I don’t know where she’s gone. I only knew her a little spell and she said she had bidness to attend to out of state. So, what you want with her?” Then, pointing to my truck, she said, “You bringing her flowers?”

  “No.” I tried to think of something to say, but like most rednecks, Drexel had worked it out as soon as he had laid eyes on me.

  “Then I reckon you must be one of her customers. How much you need?”

  “A half. An ounce if you have it.”

  And that was that.

  Drexel walked back into the trailer, and I scurried up the steps behind him, forgetting about Annabeth and her abandoned Chrysler. I won’t say I was shocked to see the copies of Honcho and Mandate, which lay strewn over the coffee table and piled carelessly on the floor, with some of his favorite centerfolds taped or thumbtacked to the wall. What surprised me was that he was so blatant in his disregard. I knew I wouldn’t have been the only of Annabeth’s former customers to come calling, and it was as if he was daring whoever set foot in the trailer to challenge him about his sexual desires. Drexel would not want to trade flowers for weed.

  Roger, on the other hand, was a man of means; but even more than that, he was a good man. Over the years that I knew Roger, I grew to appreciate his robust laugh, his kind eyes, his thoughtful gestures. There was, however, a sense of sadness to him that I wonder if he would have been able to explain if I asked him about it. He and Laverne never had children. When he would talk to me about their life together, he would explain that Laverne never really liked, as he put it, “the bedroom stuff.” I never knew if he sought me out for sexual release or just for companionship. Many times, especially after Laverne became ill and when he had gained all his weight, he would forget to even unzip his britches. We would just talk about something that struck him as funny, or a bit of gossip that he had overheard and knew I would enjoy, or a cruise that he and Laverne were preparing to take when she recovered.

  Yes, Roger Simmons was a fat man. The knee injury from college gave him an excuse not to exercise, and the years
of double old-fashioneds every evening followed by one of Laverne’s generous meals took their toll. He was always big, but when he was young, he could carry the weight. But as muscle turned to fat, his waistline grew round as Tweedledee’s, his barrel chest became bloated and droopy, and the flesh under his chin puffed out so much that his neck sagged down enough to cover the top of his tie and shirt collar.

  It was during one of those visits that he told me about Laverne’s cancer. Of course I had already heard about it from a customer in the shop. The whole town was abuzz with Laverne’s illness, but I didn’t let Roger know that I had heard. He needed to tell me himself. He cried when he spoke of how they had discovered the lump, and how the doctor had removed both breasts as a precaution, but that he said the cancer was already in the lymph system, so it was only a matter of time before it spread to liver, bone, lungs, brain. In fact, it took Laverne nearly two years to die, two years to shrink from a tall, vivacious, full-figured woman to a withered sack of rotting flesh and bone. I will admit I didn’t go over too much toward the end, but I did take her flowers two or three times over the course of her decline, and once made a pimento cheese-ham casserole when she had gotten out of the hospital after chemotherapy. I was shocked by her appearance, and not just the fluffy, peach-colored Eva Gabor wig that sat perched on her head like a dead Pomeranian, or the fact that she had plied makeup heavily on her cheeks and around her eyes to disguise her gauntness. Laverne had always been broad-shouldered and big bosomed with a broad, round bottom. Some large women resemble eggs with legs, but Laverne was statuesque, uninhibited by and unafraid of her size and shape. She was fond of bold colors—sapphire blues and magentas, emerald greens, canary yellows. Even when she was sick, she had on an animal-print bed jacket that hung on her like a pillowcase. She reminded me of the craft projects that women around town were so fond of making in autumn. They would take a bale of straw, top it with a pumpkin and a pot of mums from Wal-Mart, and lean a homemade scarecrow wearing one of Grandma’s old dresses or Grandpa’s trousers, bowtie, and braces. Laverne looked like one of those scarecrow women. A sad, worn-out craft project. When I came into the room, she propped up on one of her elbows and made me show her the casserole. When she saw what I had brought for her and Roger, she said, “I see you’ve been reading your Miss Virginia’s cookbook.”