The Critical List

by Wenke, John;

  I was sort of frozen in motion, moving and not really getting there, watching my father, worrying that he would finally kick in the television. I headed toward the front door, slow-fast, around the furniture, on tiptoe, careful not to wheel off on the marbles, glad that Mom and my two sisters hadn’t gotten back from the mall. This way, they wouldn’t be upset with the noise and breakage and Mom wouldn’t threaten to have Dad committed. It wasn’t sane, she always said, to get so worked up over sports, not to mention his health and the medical fact that men in their forties regularly dropped dead from stress.

  I was especially glad that Mom and Jan and Alice (she’s my twin) were still getting Jan’s dress for the Junior Prom, because I figured I’d be able to get the marbles up and the place straight and Dad simmered down and settled in for our ten p.m. fill of interesting disasters as brought to us by BBC World News: the earthquake in Japan with ten thousand dead; the latest wilding in New York City; the follow-up report on the airliner that blew a door at thirty thousand feet and sucked a carpet magnate into the engine. These things didn’t tee Dad off. They relaxed him, made him grateful for the basics, like we were all healthy and had one another and made enough money (my father being an accident attorney and people needing to sue one another, in good times and bad).

  But there’d be no BBC World News tonight. The evening news was about to make a house call.

  The banging on the door sounded like hammers. As I slipped down three waxy steps to the foyer, I saw the door flip back and two cops come barging in, guns drawn, one yelling “Everybody hold ’em up!” I froze for real and threw up my hands, figuring this was it, I’m finished, but the cops—who can figure?—they hustled past me, like I was invisible. I unfroze, hands still high, and turned.

  Dad was hunched over, picking up marbles, his head snapping back and forth between the floor and screen. He was still yelling, taking in the nightmare no-escape of slow-mo replay. “Look, Ted! All he has to do is throw the ball the length of the court. It hits somebody’s hands and we win. No, he’s gotta try a finesse pass under their basket.”

  The skinny cop yelled, “Down on the floor!”

  My father, as excitable as he got over sports—his “outlet,” as he liked to tell Mom—was usually pretty calm. The sight of the two cops startled but didn’t frighten him. Vietnam had made him hard to scare. He’d been an infantry lieutenant and led a platoon of tunnel rats. Fear, he once told me, got squeezed right the hell out of him.

  My father didn’t drop to the floor, though he did put up his hands. “What are you guys doing here?”

  “Where’s the woman?” this big cop wanted to know. The skinny cop, I could see, was scared. His hand was shaking.

  “If you mean my wife, she’s out shopping.”

  My father smiled really wide, lifting his hands high, talking to the big cop, but watching the skinny guy’s gun. The big cop had already lowered his gun.

  “We’re answering a 911,” the big cop said. “A woman—a Mrs. White—called in to say Doug was trying to kill Jerry.”

  Last weekend Doug had told me he wanted to do that. Jerry was Mr. White, Doug’s dad.

  “Damn it!” Dad snapped and pointed. “You got the wrong house. They live next door. That way!”

  The cops turned and ran out. My father was right behind. I didn’t wait to be asked along. As I skittered across the patio, I saw my mother’s car coming up the drive. She probably got all shook up seeing the cop car on the lawn, me and Dad hustling for the hedges as the cops tore toward the street and ducked under the trees. I felt strange about the front door being left wide open, and the broken decanter, and marbles everywhere.

  As me and Dad squeezed through a hole in the thick hedges—the cops were taking the long way around—I wondered whether Doug really was going to kill his father. “He said he’d do it.”

  “Do what?” Dad asked.

  “Kill him!”

  “Don’t let Barney and Andy hear you say that.”

  He meant Barney Fife and Andy Taylor of Mayberry—two joke cops from an old TV show we still got on cable. My father once said there was nothing wrong with the show except the jokes weren’t funny and the actors all resembled dogs.

  “He said he was going to get a gun.”

  As we came out of the hedge hole, I tripped over a root and stumbled. My nose smacked my father’s spine. I steadied myself by pushing off his hips.

  “You should’ve told me that.”

  It would’ve been squealing, and Doug had been my friend since freshman year, after they moved next door from Michigan. We’d been teammates. He had been a backup point guard, who had a tough time going left. He got sick of getting stripped of the ball during practice and riding the bench during the games, and he quit after junior year. I didn’t blame him. If I’d have been a bench ornament, I’d have quit, too.

  I almost never sat out. I was a six-four shooting guard averaging twenty-eight a game with letters coming at me from everywhere, including Michigan—places like Ann Arbor, East Lansing, and Kalamazoo. He made me show him all the Michigan letters. Doug said if he was me, he’d go there, even to Kalamazoo. It wasn’t so far from Grand Rapids, which is where they used to live when things had been okay. Back then, his father had seemed like other men.

  For the last month Doug had been real upset because his father had come out of the closet. He had this young boyfriend he was planning to move in with. He’d been hoping to make it a smooth transition and wanted his wife and son to work through the transition in counseling. Mr. White, Dad had said, had made the mistake of thinking he could blow up the world and have it, too. It was a big mistake, Dad had said, to expect everybody to be reasonable.

  “I didn’t think he’d do it,” I shouted. We were crunching across the driveway pebbles. Barney and Andy were way behind, hauling up the hill, guns drawn. “I figured Doug was just mad. People get mad and say, ‘I’d like to get a gun.’ I figured it was just talk. Maybe he didn’t get one.”

  “Maybe.”

  We jumped Mrs. White’s flowerbed and skidded up the flagstone walk. My father barged right through the door, no knocking. A gun went off.

  “Get down!” he yelled and dropped below the three steps that led up to the living room. I panicked and belly-flopped, catching my chin on the bottom step. Fortunately, the Whites had carpet.

  My father inched his eyes over the top step, looked around, and popped up. I crawled up the steps on all fours. The living room was trashed like one of those poltergeist scenes with the whirling, shiny spooks tossing newspapers and chairs and pictures and lamps. The sofa was on its back. A potted palm was turned over. Mrs. White was huddled next to the fireplace. Her hands held the sides of her face and her mouth was an oval. Like she’d been flash frozen in place by one of the poltergeists.

  “Where are they?” Dad asked.

  Mrs. White didn’t answer. She seemed to look right through Dad. There was another shot from upstairs.

  My father glared at me. “You wait here!”

  He bolted up the steps.

  Barney and Andy banged on in. Barney—the skinny one—yelled through static. “This is a Code 8. We’ve got a 10-57 in progress. Repeat. Code 8. 10-57 in progress.”

  I found Dad and followed him down the long hallway, toward the shouting voices coming from the master bedroom.

  Dad tried the knob, but it was locked.

  “Doug! Jerry!” he called. “This has gone too far. Time to call it quits.”

  My father turned. His eyes were ice.

  “I thought I told you to wait downstairs.”

  The gun went off again, real loud. The wall to my left shook, and Dad and I hit the deck. A noise came from behind, and I squirreled around to see Barney and Andy, face down, motioning us to get away.

  “Ted! Go downstairs.” Dad’s voice was calm but mean. Ice and fire.

  “Doug
shot the wall,” I said. “He doesn’t want to shoot us. If he did, he could’ve gotten us through the door. We were sitting ducks.”

  “Please go back down!”

  “Doug’s my best friend. I know him. He’ll listen to me.”

  God knows what got into me, probably too many movies, but I pushed up from the floor and put my size thirteen Air Jordan’s right through the lock. The door flew back, and I stepped in. My father grabbed me and pulled me to the ground, just as the gun went off and a shot whistled past. Dad came down on top of me, as Doug fired again. Maybe I didn’t know Doug after all.

  “Don’t move or you guys’ll get it, too!” Doug said.

  He was on the far side of the bed with a pistol in each hand.

  “Calm down, Doug!” my father said. He stood real slow, hands raised in front of him.

  Doug pointed his gun at us. “Back against the wall.”

  My father eased back to the wall, dragging me by the collar. This time, I didn’t fight him. I had known enough to kick open the door, but now that I was in the room, I was pretty much out of ideas.

  “Okay,” Doug said. Leave.”

  “Ted’ll leave,” my father said. “I’m staying.”

  “Me, too. Doug, you’ll have to shoot us.”

  “I’m thinking about it. For now, just close the damn door.”

  I got on all fours, crawled to the door, and banged it shut. The cops were on their bellies, inching our way.

  “Tom! Ted! You fellas all right?”

  It was Mr. White. He was in the bathroom. The door had two bullet holes and two dents near the lock. Two things Doug couldn’t do—go left and kick open doors. He was a little guy. Me, I’d have kicked in the door like nothing.

  “We’re okay,” my father told him. “Jerry, I think it’s time we all relaxed. This is not the way to settle things.”

  “I agree!” Mr. White hollered.

  Doug fired another shot at the door.

  “You go to hell!” Doug screamed.

  “Let’s talk about this,” Dad said. “Tell me what the problem is.”

  “You wouldn’t understand. Your father isn’t a fag. Faggot!”” he yelled and fired again.

  “Jerry! You hanging in there?”

  There was no answer.

  “Jerry, say something!”

  “Hey!” Doug said. “Maybe I got him.” He seemed surprised and scared, his voice fluttery. “But I might’ve only winged him.”

  He fired again and again. When the bullets were gone, he flung it against the bathroom door. Then he switched the other gun to his right hand. Keeping it pointed at us, he went over to the bathroom door and kicked it, once, twice. Nothing happened. Doug wasn’t Tom Cruise or Bruce Willis. He wasn’t even Ted Starling.

  “Are you alive or dead, you queer?” Doug looked at us. “He hates being called queer. Downstairs I knocked out three of his teeth. Queer! Fag!” Doug kicked the door some more. He wasn’t getting anywhere. The dope was kicking with his toe, not his heel. Doug backed off and sat in a padded chair next to the walk-in closet. Pointing the gun at us, he smiled. “He must be dead. I killed my father.”

  I didn’t think Doug would shoot us, but I also hadn’t thought he’d kill his father. “Kill” had been just one of those words—the way people talked. I could’ve killed him. In basketball, I talked all the time about killing the other team. A little while ago, my father had talked about killing Allen Iverson because he took too many shots. I could just kill that guy. It was only talk, like how’s the weather? Looking at the gun, I realized we were dealing with another kind of talk. In this room, I killed my father meant something. Maybe it meant Doug had gone temporarily insane. But I wondered, could he be temporarily insane and still have gone to the trouble of getting two guns?

  “Why don’t you let me go in there and take a look at him?” Dad said. “He may be basted not wasted. He may still need to be properly greased.”

  I almost laughed. This sounded like movie talk. Vietnam movie talk, though my father never went to see them. He made fun of the titles. He’d go on about how Platoon Balloon or Heavy Metal Jacket or Apocalypse Last Friday couldn’t be anything like the real thing. They’d be doing their filming on the beach or inside a car wash, while he and his guys would be out on recon, slopping around in the rain.

  “What do you mean?” Doug asked.

  “I mean, he might not be dead.”

  “Oh, he’s dead, all right. Otherwise, we’d hear him.”

  “I got big feet,” I said. “Let me look. I’ll kick the door open.”

  There was a light tap on the bedroom door.

  “Doug White! You’re under arrest.” It was Barney Fife. His voice was all shaky. “Any minute now, the SWAT team’ll be coming through the windows. This is your last chance to come out of this alive.”

  Doug shot the door. Dad and I ducked. Splinters flew. I heard scurry-scuffling in the hall and “Ouch! Son of a bitch!”

  I started to get up.

  “Ted, stay put!” Dad ordered. To Doug he said, “I can get the door open in no time. What do you say? Why not let me have a look? We’ve always been pals.”

  Doug was looking back and forth, scared or crazy or both. He was probably worried, like I was worried, that the SWAT team would be flying through the windows. In a movie I saw, they came right through the walls. Things were happening outside. Sirens were wailing and now all these red lights were showing up. The world outside the window was nothing but swirls and flashes.

  Dad was getting up.

  “Mr. Starling, you stay put. Ted wanted to do it, so he gets to do it.”

  “I’ll make a deal with you.” This is the only time my father sounded even a little scared. He didn’t want me to kick open the door and look. “Let Ted kick open the door and then you and me—we’ll go inside and have a look.”

  “No, Ted and I will look. We’re teammates aren’t we, Ted?”

  Doug was crazy.

  “Sure we are.” You should be starting, too. Me and you in the back court. Coach Shuster doesn’t know squat.”

  Doug laughed. “That’s right. I’m starting next game. Let’s go. Get over here and kick!”

  I got up, went to the door, got the knob flush with my heel, and let fly with my big right foot, one of those straight-out jobs where you extend the muscles and yell like those karate guys. “Kiai!” The door snapped back.

  Before I knew it, my father was there, jerking me away by my neck.

  Doug yelled, “Back! Get back!”

  The front bedroom window was splashed with a searchlight, and we heard this real calm voice come over a loudspeaker.

  “Doug, buddy, time to come out now. It’s late and everybody wants to go home to sleep.”

  “Mr. Starling get back to the other wall! I’m going in there and see if he needs finishing off.”

  “Tom! Ted! You guys all right? Say something!”

  I was shocked. Mr. White was out there on the loudspeaker. Doug looked weird. His head was flapping back and forth.

  My father went into the bathroom. When he came out he looked at me.

  “There’s a little window in the back. He must’ve shimmied through somehow. I suppose he jumped.”

  I started in to have a look, but Doug pointed the gun at me. I went back to the wall.

  “Are you guys all right?” Mr. White called. His voice crackled over the loudspeaker

  Doug fired a shot out the window. “Fag!”

  People outside yelled and screamed. Above them all, in a high pitch, I heard Alice wail.

  “Doug just killed Teddy!”

  “No, he didn’t,” I shouted. “I’m here and Dad’s here. Just don’t nobody shoot!”

  “Shut up!” Doug ordered. “You sound like a pussy.”

  My father was standing at the foot
of the bed.

  “Looks like you missed him. Better luck next time. Now, why don’t you hand over that thing, so we can all go downstairs and work on that living room?” He grinned. “It’ll take till midnight to find the couch.” My father reached out his hand. “Why don’t you give me the gun?”

  Right then Doug did something that took my breath away. He put the nose of the gun to his right temple.

  “I missed part one, but you’ll get to see part two. Up close and personal.”

  The F.M. radio voice was back on the loudspeaker.

  “Dougie, boy, this is just a misunderstanding. You’re making everything more confusing for everybody. So far, no harm’s been done. What we all need to do is sit around the kitchen table and hash this thing out. Like adults. Just in case you’re concerned, we’re not viewing this as a hostage situation. We’re calling this a little misunderstanding.”

  My father knew all about guns and “nervous nellies.” He walked to the window and called out, “This is Tom Starling. I want everybody out there to relax.”

  I heard my mother’s and sisters’ screams.

  Dad called out the window, and the screaming gagged off into faraway whimpers.

  “I think all these police cars and lights and things need to clear the hell out of here. We’re not hostages. In fact, Doug’s presently got other ideas. He seems to be thinking about making off with himself. It would be best if you’d all let us be.”

  Now, it was Mrs. White’s turn to scream. She flipped the switch and let go with some choking babble. She must’ve gotten dragged, away because the volume got low and muffled.

  “You’ve upset your mother,” my father said, turning away. “I think we need to calm her down. You’ve got responsibilities. How about letting me have the gun?”

  Doug took the gun from his head and pointed it at my father. I could see his finger begin to press. My father’s hands went up, and his forehead wrinkled, like he was getting a new idea.