The Pale-Faced Lie

by David Crow

  That was a good thing because my ears weren’t perfect, especially the left one. Dad didn’t believe in “con artist doctors,” and the previous summer, when I got an ear infection and a fever that lasted for days, he said my body would heal fine. But it didn’t, and now I had to press my better right ear to the bedroom door.

  Mom said something about a guy named George who wanted to kill Dad. She didn’t make any sense. Dad was a war hero who helped beat the Japs—why would anyone want to kill him? But after listening in over time, I managed to figure out what she was talking about.

  Mom was fifteen and Dad nineteen when they met in Los Angeles following the war. Mom’s brother Bill worked with Dad and introduced him to his sister in the Daltons’ home in Cleo Cole’s Trailer Court. Dad would say that Mom was the most gorgeous girl he’d ever seen, and he knew he’d have to marry her to get a piece of that.

  When he got mad, Dad claimed that Mom trapped him into marriage by pretending to be pregnant. But she insisted she was a virgin the day they ran off to Arizona to get married, five months after she turned sixteen. Within weeks, she was pregnant with Lonnie. Since Dad didn’t have enough money to support his bride, they moved into the Daltons’ new house, thirty miles from the trailer court.

  According to Dad, Cleo had been tapping Mary Etta’s fat ass in exchange for lower rent and help with car repairs and jobs around the house. Mom didn’t deny it. Her daddy, John Ben, might have thought something was going on when Cleo continued making regular stops at the Dalton house after they moved. But John Ben worked the night shift and slept during the day, so it’s possible he didn’t know what his wife was up to. More likely, he didn’t care, considering how long he and Mary Etta had hated each other.

  When Mom found out she was pregnant, she dropped out of ninth grade and rested on her parents’ couch every day. One October afternoon, Cleo came out of Mary Etta’s bedroom and stopped in front of Mom on his way out. He was a fat, dirty old man, Mom said, with brown teeth and a disgusting grin.

  “My, Thelma Lou,” Cleo said that day, “aren’t you a fine young thing. Maybe I should be spending time with you instead of your mom.”

  That night, Mom told Dad about Cleo’s comment in front of Mary Etta. Dad erupted in a volcanic rage, screaming that he was going to smash that son of a bitch into pieces.

  “Thurston,” Mary Etta said, “a real man wouldn’t put up with that kind of shit. You need to defend your wife’s honor—get yourself over there and give Cleo an ass whipping he’ll never forget.”

  She might as well have kicked a sleeping bull in the balls.

  Dad raced out of the house and grabbed his boss and best friend, George, to help him avenge this wrong. Dad plotted their strategy on the half-hour ride to the trailer court. The plan was simple. Since Cleo fixed cars and rented out trailers, George would knock on Cleo’s door saying that his car had broken down and that he’d like to rent one of the advertised trailers. Dad was certain the promise of cash for repairs and a rental would be enough to lure the old lecher outside so late at night.

  Dad parked the car a block away from Cleo’s trailer and sent George to knock on the door. When he walked back to the car with Cleo, the hood was open as if George had already tried to fix the engine. Dad crouched behind the rear fender, a monkey wrench in his hand and a handgun in his back pocket. Cleo placed his toolbox on the ground, hooked a flashlight inside the hood, and leaned over the engine to take a good look.

  While Cleo checked the distributor, George slipped on a pair of gloves so he wouldn’t get blood on his hands. When Cleo straightened up, George swung his fist into the old guy’s face as Dad shot out from the rear and slammed the wrench into the back of his head.

  Dad couldn’t take the chance that Cleo would recognize him. “Gouge his eyes out!”

  Still standing, Cleo turned toward Dad and tried to run. Dad smashed one of his eye sockets with the wrench and the other with his fist.

  Cleo fell to the pavement unconscious, bleeding profusely from his head. Dad and George left him, sure he would bleed out shortly, and hurried into the car.

  But it didn’t start.

  Unbeknownst to them, while Cleo was under the hood, he sensed something wasn’t right, so he removed the rotor from the distributor, slipped it into his jacket pocket, and put the distributor cap back in place.

  Alarmed, Dad jumped out of the car, rolled Cleo over, and stole his wallet and keys from his pants, missing the rotor. He and George hopped into Cleo’s car and drove it a few miles before pulling into a vacant lot to toss out the registration and other papers identifying Cleo. Panicking beyond reason, they didn’t stop to think that the car alone would be a dead giveaway.

  Meanwhile, Smiley, Cleo’s wife, thinking her husband had been gone too long, went looking for him and found him down the street in a pool of blood, his breathing shallow and irregular. The ambulance attendants told her he would have died had they picked him up fifteen minutes later.

  The LA police began their search in Cleo’s neighborhood, shining a spotlight as they drove through the streets. It didn’t take them long to come upon two men throwing papers out of a car. Dad and George confessed immediately. “Cleo was still breathing when we left,” Dad told them.

  That had to be the easiest arrest the cops had ever made.

  ON DAD’S TWENTY-FIRST BIRTHDAY, a guard at San Quentin State Prison, or “the Q,” informed him that his wife had given birth to a beautiful baby girl named Lonnie. Dad wasn’t sure he’d ever meet her. He had only a seven-year sentence, but that could change—depending on Cleo.

  The old guy was still in serious condition. Following the assault, he had fallen in and out of consciousness for days, close to death. He needed several blood transfusions and remained on a respirator for weeks.

  Miraculously, Cleo pulled through, but it would be a year before the doctors felt confident he would survive. He remained blind in one eye and severely impaired in the other and never recovered his ability to speak and walk. If he had died, the charge would have changed to premeditated murder, and the judge had vowed to give Dad the death penalty or at least life in prison without parole.

  If that had been the case, I never would have been born.

  At San Quentin, the chief psychiatrist claimed Dad’s IQ was the highest they had ever tested. During one of their many conversations, he told Dad his smarts would help him adjust to the outside world when he got out. But Dad didn’t wait—he used his smarts on the inside, finagling a job in the psychiatrist’s office helping with autopsies and medical records, a highly coveted position.

  In no time, Dad convinced the psychiatrist that Mom had been raped and he’d gotten a bad deal. The psychiatrist then convinced the warden that Dad deserved an early parole, so he was released after serving only three years. He laughed all the way home.

  The night of the crime, the police chief had interviewed Dad and George separately. George held to the story that he was simply helping a friend and that Cleo deserved what he got. But Dad gave a different account, claiming George used the monkey wrench without his knowledge and got out of control. Dad just meant to rough up Cleo.

  The only time George and Dad saw each other in the prison yard, his former friend told him, “I’ll kill you, you hear me? You double-crossing son of a bitch.”

  Whenever Mom talked to Dad about George, she would cry, yet she’d bring up his name all the time. She was like that—saying the same things over and over again. It was tiring and made Dad mad.

  On many nights when I listened at their door, Mom would say, “We’re stuck on this ugly reservation where everyone hates me because of what you did. No one checks—how many other violent criminals are here?”

  “People will hate you wherever we live. And for the millionth time, it’s a good thing they don’t check or I’d be out of a job, and we’d be living on the street.”

  “You think George won’t find us? Someday he’ll come and kill us all!”

  “Goddamn it, Thelma L
ou, shut up for once. No one will look for us here. This mess is all your mother’s fault. If that fat-assed whore had stuck around for my trial, she would have convinced the judge that Cleo deserved what he got. I’m sorry we didn’t kill the bastard.”

  The bed would creak then, signaling my dad had turned over on his side, the conversation now over. That was my cue to leave. I’d tiptoe back into the room I shared with Sam, no one the wiser.

  CHAPTER 4

  IN JUNE OF 1957, EPNG transferred Dad to a station ten miles outside the town of Belen, New Mexico, about two hundred miles southeast of Navajo Station and thirty miles south of Albuquerque. Dad said it was a little fart of a railroad town on the edge of the Rio Grande River, which on most days was no wider than the piss stream of a drunk. When we drove up to our new house, nothing looked different except for the kids playing in the street.

  A month later, Dad brought Mom home from the hospital with a new baby girl they named Sally. Dad yelled at Mom and said she couldn’t be his because he hadn’t had sex with her in years. Lonnie blushed and said Sally was the only one of us who had Dad’s darker coloring and broad cheeks. We loved her from the first moment we saw her big brown eyes.

  As the days passed, Mom became sadder and more tired, which I didn’t think was possible. She crept around the house in her nightgown, moving from the bedroom to the couch, holding Sally and crying most of the time. Every morning, Lonnie fixed us breakfast. She was nine years old.

  I began running farther and farther from home into the desert. Mom didn’t notice. Neither did Dad. Although he worked the four-to-midnight shift, he wasn’t around much during the day, even on weekends. After sleeping in, he’d go to the plant to work extra hours or to study for the engineering correspondence classes he was taking from the University of New Mexico night school. Sometimes he would go to the plant when he wasn’t working or studying so he could have some alone time, he told us.

  One day after lunch, I took off without telling Mom and kept going until I couldn’t see the houses anymore. Lizards scooted out of my way as I ran faster and faster through the tall weeds, trying to kick pebbles. A husky that belonged to one of the neighbors caught up with me, barking like crazy. When I glanced over at him to see what was wrong, he stopped in his tracks—and I tumbled headfirst into a deep hole.

  I didn’t panic at first. After all, I was a tough Cherokee. Pretending I was in a Western, I let out a war cry and scrambled up the sides but made it only halfway before sliding back to the bottom. After several more tries, I gave up and yelled as loud as I could.

  The husky ran around the edge and barked, sometimes pawing at the dirt like he wanted to get down into the hole with me. I yelled until I was hoarse, and he continued barking. No one came. This was a whole lot scarier than being tied to the tree.

  It was getting dark when I heard a truck door slam and looked up to see a tall, skinny EPNG guy with a crew cut. The cigarette in his fingers glowed red. “Don’t worry, son, I’ll drop a rope and pull you out.”

  I hung on tight as he lifted me up and then grabbed my arm. The husky ran around me and licked my arms and legs, nearly knocking me down. He raced after the truck until we reached the main road, barking the whole time.

  At home, the man followed me inside, and we found Mom dozing on the couch, unaware that I’d been gone. The man said he would let Thurston know I was okay. The next day, Dad told me, “If you’d stayed in the hole overnight, maybe you would have finally learned your lesson.”

  MOM AND LONNIE SAID THEY were glad I had started kindergarten—but now three-year-old Sam was running around the house and yelling like a banshee while I was at school. Mom moaned that making meals, doing the ironing, and keeping the house clean with two wild sons and a baby in diapers was too much for her.

  “What’s your problem?” Dad asked her. “Do you expect to live the life of Riley? Or maybe you want to be a contestant on Queen for a Day?”

  She hurried into the bedroom, slammed the door, and cried some more.

  One Saturday morning not long after, Dad told Mom to stop bellyaching and took off in the car. At lunchtime, he pulled into the driveway with a huge box in the back. “I got this industrial iron for you,” he told Mom. “It’ll make life easier if you get off your dead ass and use it.”

  We gathered outside to watch him unload it. A neighbor lady came by and said the only time she’d ever seen such a large contraption was in a dry cleaner that pressed clothes for the whole town. She couldn’t imagine needing it for one family’s ironing.

  After hauling the box into the living room, Dad took out the instructions and packets of screws and bolts and began assembling it. Sam and I handed him screwdrivers and wrenches, but he pushed us away. “Hey, get the hell out of my hair.” When he finished, the ironing machine had two giant hinged plates and two pedals on the floor like the ones on Lonnie’s piano.

  Mom jerked around the room watching. “I can’t work that big thing,” she yelled, her arms waving wildly in every direction.

  Dad poured water into a large cylinder and flipped on a brass-colored switch. In no time, the water turned to steam and made a sizzling noise.

  “Thelma Lou,” he said. “Watch my feet.” One pedal made the plates clamp together, and the other one released them. “You have to press hard on the release pedal or the plates won’t open up until the two-minute cycle is finished.”

  He demonstrated with a pair of jeans. Sam squealed when they came out looking like they’d been run over by a steamroller. Reaching down to the overflowing laundry basket, Dad pulled out a shirt and handed it to Mom. “Okay, now you do it.”

  She placed it on the bottom plate, pushed down on the start pedal, and stood back as the top plate lowered into place. When the plates released, Mom peeled off the shirt, now as flat and thin as a piece of paper and smelling like the air after it rained.

  “Thelma Lou, I expect all the clothes to be ironed when I get back from my shift.”

  Her lower lip trembled. “I’ll try.”

  Once he left, Lonnie took Sally into our parents’ bedroom, and Mom sat down to iron. “I can’t use this,” she kept muttering. “I don’t understand it.” And then she complained that the vapor from the steam burned her eyes.

  Everything would have been okay if she had sent us outside to play that day. Stuck in the house, Sam and I raced around, and every time I hit him with my rubber-tipped arrows, he fell down and kicked his feet in the air, pretending to die. When he got tired of that game, he bolted into the living room and knocked Mom’s knickknacks off the lazy Susan.

  Yelling, she moved to catch him just as the ball I kicked against the wall ricocheted into the back of her head. She turned to chase after me, and Sam darted toward the iron.

  It took us a moment to realize what had happened. The air filled with smoke, howling, and a terrible smell. Lonnie ran into the living room with Sally to see what was wrong. Sam stood by the iron, screaming, trying to pull himself free—the two metal plates had somehow clamped down on his left hand. Mom raced to the iron and pulled on his hand, but it wouldn’t budge. Lonnie stomped on the release pedal with all her might, but the plates wouldn’t open.

  Mom let out a loud scream and fell in a heap on the floor. Lonnie pulled on Sam’s hand, but she couldn’t get it out either. I wrapped my arms around Lonnie’s waist and pulled her to help free Sam’s hand. But it didn’t work. Sam jumped and shook, wailing so loud I thought he was dying.

  It seemed like hours before the plates released. When they did, Sam’s hand was a mass of blood and flesh, as if it had melted. Grabbing Sam, Lonnie ran into the bathroom and came out with a towel wrapped around his hand, a trail of blood following them. Tears flowed down her cheeks, but she acted calm. She gave Sam to me and rushed to the phone to call Dad.

  Sam fell limp in my arms. I couldn’t stop crying. My baby brother was hurt worse than anything I could have imagined, and it was all my fault.

  “He’s on his way,” Lonnie said.

&nb
sp; Mom stopped crying but kept whimpering and slowly got up off the floor.

  A few minutes later, Dad screeched the Green Bomber into the driveway so fast I thought it would smash into the house. Bounding inside, he yelled for us to get some clothes and hustle to the car because we’d be gone for a long time. He told Mom to wrap Sam’s hand in gauze filled with petroleum jelly and to get clean bandages.

  Hoot, Dad’s boss, had called a hospital in Phoenix after Dad relayed what Lonnie had told him, and they promised to have a surgeon waiting for us when we got there. Albuquerque didn’t have a doctor who could fix Sam’s hand, Hoot said.

  The family piled into the car and tore out of the compound. Lonnie cradled Sally in the back seat next to me, and Mom sat in front holding Sam and crying in sniffling spurts. Dad stared straight ahead. His fingers gripped the wheel with such force the bones almost popped through his skin.

  Sam’s face turned a scary red color, but he didn’t move or cry. His eyes were closed like he was sleeping. Dad said he was in shock. I was afraid he’d never wake up.

  Lonnie leaned forward. “Dad, what about Midnight?” she asked softly.

  “He’ll be okay.”

  We would never see him again.

  The dust kicked up around the Green Bomber as if we were trying to outrun a tornado. For the first time in my noisy life, I didn’t utter a sound. Sally squirmed and cried in Lonnie’s arms. When it got dark, I stared at the star-studded desert sky, listening to the hum of the tires, and pretended that nothing was wrong with Sam’s hand.

  WE ARRIVED AT THE HOSPITAL in the middle of the night. Dad parked at the entrance and ran inside with Sam in his arms. Nurses in white uniforms put him on a gurney and hurried him down the hall, and Dad and Mom followed behind. Lonnie, Sally, and I weren’t allowed to go with them, so we sat in the waiting room.

  Lonnie changed Sally’s diaper and gave her a bottle and then sent me to the vending machine for crackers and soda pop. She squeezed my hand and said the accident wasn’t my fault, but I shook my head and cried. Most of the night, I walked around the waiting room counting the square tiles and imagining that Sam would come out running and giggling.