Eureka

by Jim Lehrer

  “You could have been as good—and as famous—an actress as Teresa Wright, if you had chosen that instead of me,” Otis said.

  “We’ll never know, will we?” Sally replied.

  At first Otis thought he detected a tone of anger and remorse, longing and disappointment, but then she said, “And that’s probably just as well, Otis. I never found out for sure, so I will always have my what-if dream instead of disappointment.”

  A few miles farther down the highway, Otis asked, “If you had known I was going to be bald, would you have given me even a second look, much less given up your acting dream for me?”

  Sally reached over with her left hand and caressed the top of his hairless head. But she said not a word.

  THE NEXT THING Otis bought was a football helmet.

  It was an official regulation NFL helmet of the Kansas City Chiefs, the favorite team of Otis and nearly everyone else in the Eureka area. Kansas City, only forty miles beyond Lawrence and 125 from Eureka, was the big city in the lives of most people in Eureka, even if the largest of the two separate Kansas Cities was on the Missouri rather than the Kansas side of the line.

  Otis saw the helmet in the window of a Sports World superstore at the North Side mall, where he had gone Saturday morning to buy a new book about the naval battles of World War II. The helmet’s plastic shell was glowing red, with the Chiefs’ arrowhead symbol on each side. Without a second’s thought, Otis bought it for $185 and went right home to put it on his bald head.

  He looked at himself in the mirror over the sink in the downstairs bathroom and very much loved the boy from Sedgwicktown who stared back at him. It was a sight he’d never seen when he was such a boy, and that was what had prompted his impulse decision to buy the helmet.

  Otis and all thirty-six of the other boys in Sedgwicktown High School had played on the football team because they’d had no choice. If they hadn’t, they would have been labeled “fruits,” and their lives would have been ruined for high school if not forever, at least in Sedgwicktown. Some played varsity in the games against Valley Center, Lehigh, Maize, Mount Hope, Haven, Hesston, and other neighboring Kansas towns. Then there were the scrubs who scrimmaged only in practice as fodder for the varsity. Otis was a scrub, too small for a lineman, too slow for a running back or split end, and too uncoordinated for a quarterback. So he spent every fall afternoon through four years of high school being tackled, blocked, hammered, slammed, kneed, elbowed, and thrown around as a live practice dummy.

  The worst part was that he didn’t even sit on the bench during the games. He was in the stands with the girls because the Sedgwicktown Cardinals could afford only twenty-five game helmets. They were shiny white plastic, much like those the college teams then used, with a bright red cardinal on either side.

  “Buy your own helmet, and you can suit up,” said the coach to Otis and the other scrubs who didn’t—and never would— make the game cut.

  His mother said she was just as happy that Otis wasn’t out there on the football field endangering his life, ignoring the obvious fact that the coach never would have sent Otis onto the field. His only endangerment would have been from tripping over a bucket or getting a splinter in his butt from the wooden bench.

  His dad said wasting money on a football helmet was out of the question.

  “Well, what do you think?” Otis now asked Sally as he walked into the den with his new Kansas City Chiefs helmet on his head.

  “I think you must get help, Otis,” she replied. “You really must.”

  “You can’t tell I’m bald, can you?” he asked.

  “Otis, you’re close to being in real trouble.”

  Otis smiled through the face protector and went outside with his Daisy rifle and shot off some BBs at a target. It was not easy, sighting the rifle with the helmet on, but he soon figured out an effective way to do it.

  He fired off ten BBs and then, without really thinking about it, let his aim and the gun rise up and to the right, to a floodlight in one of the trees.

  He pulled the trigger. Pow! went the gun. Pop! went the light. Crash! went glass onto the patio.

  Within a count often, Sally was at the sliding glass door, then outside and inspecting the damage. “You’re sick,” she said quietly but firmly.

  Otis couldn’t remember the last time he felt so good.

  He spotted a small brown bird on a tree limb off to his left. Again, he aimed and fired a BB. The bird fell from the tree.

  “That’s it,” said Sally.

  OTIS KNEW THE “quiet dinner with the Gidneys, just the four of us,” was a setup. Sally said it was to have a belated celebration of Mary Gidney’s birthday, but that was clearly not so. Otis knew for a fact that Mary had quit celebrating or even acknowledging her birthdays ten years ago. But Otis went along with the line because he really didn’t mind talking with Dr. Bob Gidney. Through the years, Otis had known many of the psychiatric types from Ashland Clinic and found them to be about the same ratio of jerks and fools as corporate CEOs or most other lines of work, insurance included. Bob Gidney was a good man, neither a jerk nor a fool. Sally enjoyed being with him as well.

  “Hey, that’s some fire engine you have there, Otis,” said Bob as they came back into the den after dinner. The fire engine was on the mantel over the fireplace. “Something left over from childhood?”

  “You might say that,” Otis said. He knew what was going on. Sally and Mary, clearly by prearrangement, had lingered in the kitchen. “I just bought it the other day, though.”

  “That’s what I heard,” said Bob.

  Otis guessed Bob was only a year or two younger, but he always dressed as if he thought he was twenty years younger. Tonight he was in heavy-starched white duck pants, a purple-and-white-checked button-down shirt, and highly polished brown penny loafers with no socks. Otis, who bought most of his clothes from Brooks Brothers and J. Crew catalogs, was wearing khaki chinos, a solid dark blue short-sleeved sport shirt, and white sneakers. Sally often suggested to Otis that he might consider “branching out” and dressing the way Bob Gidney did.

  Bob had grown up in the dressy world of Wilmington, Delaware, son of a DuPont executive, and come to Ashland Clinic from Philadelphia, where he taught at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and maintained a private practice.

  Otis went over to the fire engine and moved it back and forth across the mantel. “Want to push it around yourself, Bob?”

  Bob declined the invitation to play with the fire engine, and in a few moments the two men walked back to the outside entertainment area.

  “I hear you bought a BB gun, too?” Bob asked Otis.

  “That’s right,” Otis said, pointing to a cottonwood. “There’s my target on that tree. I hit eight straight bull’s-eyes this morning—fourteen out of twenty in all.”

  “Good for you,” said Bob.

  “You want to fire off a few BBs?” Otis asked. “It’s really fun. We can play a game of tic-tac-toe with our shots. It’s done the regular way—you can go first. Start in any corner, then—”

  Bob shook his head. “I heard about your tic-tac-toe thing.”

  “Sally clearly gave you a thorough briefing through Mary.”

  “Sally did it directly,” said Bob. “She came to the clinic herself. I had a BB gun when I was fourteen. Got it out of my system. But thanks. And you bought a football helmet? Sally said you wear it around the house a lot. Is that right?”

  “It covers my bald head. Want to see it? It’s a Chiefs’.”

  Again, Bob shook his head. “I’ve seen them on television during the games. Bob Junior has one, too. So do most of his friends.” Bob Junior was the Gidneys’ thirteen-year-old son.

  Otis, ignoring Bob’s lack of interest, stepped back inside the house and returned with the Chiefs helmet. He put it on and said, “See? Changes everything about me, doesn’t it?”

  Bob Gidney said nothing. Otis took off the helmet, turned it over, and showed Bob the inside foam padding and th
e adjustable headband that held the helmet in place on his head. “I read somewhere that the pros stick things up here in the webbing for good luck during games—money, letters, religious medals, pages from the Bible, condoms, women’s panties. Stuff like that.”

  “I didn’t know that, Otis,” Bob said.

  Otis set the helmet down on a table, and they took seats on the white plastic lawn chairs on the slate patio.

  “What’s going on, Otis?” Bob asked.

  “You’re the shrink, you tell me.”

  “I hate being called a shrink. How would you like being called a bloodsucker—as some people call insurance people?”

  What people call us that? thought Otis. But he said, “When you were a kid, you wanted a BB gun, and you got one. Was there anything you really wanted but couldn’t have?”

  Bob grinned. “My own set of golf clubs. I played on the high school golf team at Wilmington, but always with borrowed clubs. I wanted my own, but there wasn’t money to buy them.”

  “When did you get your own?”

  “After medical school. The first time I had more than a few bucks, I bought a set from a friend. I didn’t have that much time to play golf, but I wanted the clubs, just in case.”

  “What else? Maybe something you never did get.”

  Bob really was no fool. Otis could tell that he knew what all of this was leading to, but he didn’t seem to mind.

  “A Cushman motor scooter,” said Bob.

  “Me, too!”

  “A red one.”

  “They only came in red. At least I never saw one in any other color.”

  “Me, neither. Five or six guys in our school had them. And they always had a gorgeous girl sitting behind them, holding on for dear life. My parents thought motor scooters were too dangerous, too expensive, and too exhibitionist.”

  “Same, same, same with me. God, what a coincidence. I wonder if they even still make Cushmans.”

  “Don’t even think about it, Otis,” Bob said. “Drive up to this house someday with a Cushman, and I promise you, Sally will make me commit you.”

  “Then why don’t you buy one, and I can borrow it occasionally?”

  “I don’t want a motor scooter anymore. I wanted one when I was twelve years old, but I’m not twelve years old anymore.”

  “Speak for yourself, Bob.”

  “I just did.”

  It was time to rejoin the ladies for dessert. Bob got up from his chair, and then Otis did.

  “We’ve got a man at the clinic who is right up your alley, Otis,” Bob said. “His name is Russ Tonganoxie. He’s new, and he’s a bit on the different side. But he’s the best in this field.”

  And what exactly is this field? Otis thought to ask but decided not to, because he really didn’t want to hear the answer.

  Bob said, “Let me know—or you can have Sally call me— when you want to talk to him.”

  He made it sound inevitable.

  is NAME WAS Roger Atchison, but he said most everyone called him “The Cushman King” because he owned more and knew more about Cushman motor scooters than any other human being on the face of the earth.

  “Take a deep breath, Mr. Halstead, because you’re about to have your breath taken away,” Atchison said as he opened the door to a large white warehouse-type metal building in the small Nebraska town of Marion.

  Over the door was a three-foot red sign in script that said CUSHMAN HEAVEN. Under it, in smaller letters, were the words “Thou shalt not love thy Cushman more than thy wife and children: as much, but not more.”

  Otis stepped inside and, yes, immediately had his breath taken away.

  “Have you ever seen anything like it?” Atchison asked Otis.

  “No, sir,” replied Otis.

  No, Otis had never seen this many Cushman motor scooters in one place in his life.

  “One hundred and thirty-four and still counting,” said Atchison. “One hundred and thirty-four and still counting.”

  Otis had heard him the first time. One hundred and thirty-four Cushman motor scooters. There were 134 Cushman motor scooters out there on a shiny painted light blue concrete floor, assembled in a precise formation of at least ten lines, like soldiers awaiting inspection by a general, a president—or a king.

  Roger Atchison didn’t look like a king of anything. He was a tall, thin, crew-cut, tanned, smiling, fidgety, chattering man in his mid-sixties who could have passed for a retired Coca-Cola bottler or mayor of Marion, Nebraska, both of which he was. Today he was dressed in blue jeans and a red Windbreaker with CUSHMAN emblazoned in yellow on the back. It was written in the same script style—obviously from the old company logo— that had been used on the sign outside.

  Otis had gotten Atchison’s name and phone number from a Harley-Davidson dealer in Eureka whom he called in search of information about buying a Cushman motor scooter. He also had sent his secretary down the street to the reference department of the Eureka public library for some basic information on Cushman. So by the time he called Atchison and made an appointment, Otis already knew that Cushman was a Nebraska gasoline motor manufacturing company that had quit making motor scooters in the late 1960s. But there were several thousand of their scooters still out there, most of them restored and cared for as prized treasures from or reminders of their owners’ past.

  In other words, if Otis needed some Ashland Clinic help, so did a lot of other people.

  Most particularly, this man Roger Atchison. He had been talking about Cushmans almost nonstop from the moment Otis pulled his Ford Explorer up to the front door of Atchison’s home, two blocks down the street from Cushman Heaven.

  Now, inside heaven itself, Atchison’s voice, nasal and excited, was the only sound.

  “I’ve got ’em lined up in chronological order. The first is a 1938 Auto-Glide, the last’s a 1965 Eagle, one of the last scooters Cushman ever made. The factory was just forty miles up the road from here in Lincoln. Lincoln’s our capital and where our university is, too. Go, you Huskers. The Auto-Glide’s a traditional step-through, the Eagle’s a straddle.”

  Oh, yes, thought Otis. The straddle style meant a rider sat down with his legs on either side of the scooter, as if it were a horse or a regular motorcycle. On the step-through, the rider sat with his legs in front, on a cushioned seat over the small motor, as on a chair. The scooters Otis had longed for in Sedgwicktown, Kansas, forty years ago were all step-throughs. Those late ’40s— early ’50s models were the only kind he knew or cared about.

  But he followed Atchison over to the red 1938 Auto-Glide to begin the troop through the entire formation.

  “This was the Deluxe Auto-Glide, a little jewel with a storage battery, large headlamps, a taillight, an electric horn, and a lock for the ignition and lights—the whole nine yards. It’s got a one-and-a-half-horsepower engine, hard to start. Mostly had to hope you had a hill to coast down to get it to fire up. A Cushman dealer paid about a hundred dollars apiece for this baby and then sold them retail for one-fifty or so. Red and blue were the main colors of Cushmans. Then they came in with a green. The paint was the same kind used on tractors and other farm vehicles …”

  Chatter, chatter up and down the lines, stopping for an occasional detailed description of the machine and its various parts and characteristics.

  Otis soon spotted his—the one he wanted. It was a red 1952 Pacemaker, exactly like the one that drove him crazy with envy during his high school years. Jackson Hays got one and, with it, stole the woman Otis loved. She was a blond knockout named Julie Ann—he could no longer remember her last name: Wakeeney? Wakefield? Wallace? After going steady with Otis for two years, she dropped him for Jackson and his motor scooter. Otis could still see the bitch sitting up there behind Jackson, her breasts and other warm frontal body parts hard up against Jackson’s excited back and her arms tight around his waist.

  Roger Atchison, the Cushman King, described this Pacemaker. “Traditional step-through ‘chair’ style, as you can see. Single speed,
automatic clutch drive, Cushman 100 tires, good lights. Great seat there on the back for a lovely lady. Storage compartment down there behind it that’ll hold the groceries and a lot more. Sold retail for about two-ninety-five—two hundred to the dealers. Among the best of the best.”

  Otis began the courtship. “How much would one of these cost now? If you could find one like this one, say, that was for sale.”

  “Oh, well,” said The Cushman King, “they are really hard to come by, and that is what makes them expensive—supply and demand, you know.”

  Otis knew. “So, ballpark price?”

  “Depending on the condition, anywhere from thirty-five hundred to five thousand.”

  “How about one like yours here, one that’s in perfect condition?”

  “Oh, it would bring five, no problem. But it’s not for sale. I seldom sell any of mine.”

  Otis knew what was going on, and Roger Atchison clearly knew Otis knew he knew. But that was part of the fun, the game—the courting.

  Otis said, “When you do sell one, what does it take?”

  “Oh, that’s hard to say. This is the only red 1952 Pacemaker I have, and I haven’t even thought about what it would be like to live without it in particular, or with only one hundred and thirty-three scooters and still counting instead of one hundred and thirty-four. I only part with a scooter that I feel I can live without or is a duplicate or the offer is just so high no reasonable person could turn it down.”

  Otis asked if $7,500 fell into the last category.

  “It does indeed, sir,” said Atchison, extending his right hand. “Congratulations on taking your first step toward creating your own little piece of Cushman Heaven.”

  They rolled the Pacemaker out of line and outside into a large parking lot, where Atchison gave Otis a few minutes’ instruction on how to start and operate the scooter.

  Otis was startled by the joy and by the tingles and tremors of excitement that rushed through his body as he tooled that scooter around.