by Joe Hill
“I’m sure.”
“The table saw was unplugged and he wasn’t even two. He never plugged anything in before. We didn’t know he knew how. Dean was right there with him. It just happened so fast. Do you know how many things had to go wrong, all at the same time, for that to happen? Dean thinks the sound of the saw coming on scared him and he reached up to try and shut it off. He thought he’d be in trouble.” She was briefly silent, watching her son work the gumball machine, then said, “I always thought about my kid—this is the one part of my life I’m going to get right. No indiscriminate fuck-ups about this. I was planning how when he was fifteen he’d make love to the most beautiful girl in school. How he’d be able to play five instruments and he’d blow everyone away with all his talent. How he’d be the funny kid who seems to know everyone.” She paused again, and then added, “He’ll be the funny kid now. The funny kid always has something wrong with him. That’s why he’s funny—to shift people’s attention to something else.”
In the silence that followed this statement, Bobby had several thoughts in rapid succession. The first was that he had been the funny kid when he was in school; did Harriet think there had been something wrong with him he had been covering for? Then he remembered they were both the funny kids, and thought: What was wrong with us?
It had to be something, otherwise they’d be together now and the boy at the gumball machine would be theirs. The thought that crossed his mind next was that, if little Bobby was their little Bobby, he’d still have ten fingers. He felt a seething dislike of Dean the lumberman, an ignorant squarehead whose idea of spending together-time with his kid probably meant taking him to the fair to watch a truck-pull.
An assistant director started clapping her hands and hollering down for the undead to get into their positions. Little Bob trotted back to them.
“Mom,” he said, the gumball in his cheek. “You didn’t say how you died.” He was looking at her torn-off ear.
“I know,” Bobby said. “She ran into this old friend at the mall and they got talking. You know, and I mean they really got talking. Hours of blab. Finally, her old friend said, ‘Hey, I don’t want to chew your ear off here.’ And your mom said, ‘Aw, don’t worry about it…’”
“A great man once said, ‘lend me your ears,’” Harriet said. She smacked the palm of her hand hard against her forehead. “Why did I listen to him?”
EXCEPT FOR THE dark hair, Dean didn’t look anything like him. Dean was short. Bobby wasn’t prepared for how short. He was shorter than Harriet, who was herself not much over five-and-a-half feet tall. When they kissed, Dean had to stretch his neck. He was compact, and solidly built, broad at the shoulders, deep through the chest, narrow at the hips. He wore thick glasses with gray plastic frames, the eyes behind them the color of unpolished pewter. They were shy eyes—his gaze met Bobby’s when Harriet introduced them, darted away, returned, and darted away again—not to mention old; at the corners of them the skin was creased in a web of finely etched laugh lines. He was older than Harriet, maybe by as many as ten years.
They had only just been introduced when Dean cried suddenly, “Oh, you’re that Bobby! You’re funny Bobby. You know, we almost didn’t name our kid Bobby because of you. I’ve had it drilled into me, if I ever run into you, I’m supposed to reassure you that naming him Bobby was my idea. ’Cause of Bobby Murcer. Ever since I was old enough to imagine having kids of my own I always thought—”
“I’m funny!” Harriet’s son interrupted.
Dean caught him under the armpits and lofted him into the air. “You sure are!”
Bobby wasn’t positive he wanted to have lunch with them, but Harriet looped her arm through his and marched him toward the doors out to the parking lot, and her shoulder—warm and bare—was leaning against his, so there was really no choice.
Bobby didn’t notice the other people in the diner staring at them, and forgot they were in makeup until the waitress approached. She was hardly out of her teens, with a head of frizzy yellow hair that bounced as she walked.
“We’re dead,” little Bobby announced.
“Gotcha,” the girl said, nodding and pointing her ball-point pen at them. “I’m guessing you either all work on the horror movie, or you already tried the special, which is it?”
Dean laughed, dry, bawling laughter. Dean was as easy a laugh as Bobby had ever met. Dean laughed at almost everything Harriet said, and most of what Bobby himself said. Sometimes he laughed so hard the people at the other tables started in alarm. Once he had control of himself, he would apologize with unmistakable earnestness, his face flushed a delicate shade of rose, eyes gleaming and wet. That was when Bobby began to see at least one possible answer to the question that had been on his mind ever since learning she was married to Dean-who-owned-his-own-lumberyard: Why him? Well—he was a willing audience, there was that.
“So I thought you were acting in New York City,” Dean said at last. “What brings you back?”
“Failure,” Bobby said.
“Oh—I’m sorry to hear that. What are you up to now? Are you doing some comedy locally?”
“You could say that. Only around here they call it substitute teaching.”
“Oh! You’re teaching! How do you like it?”
“It’s great. I always planned to work either in film or television or junior high. That I should finally make it so big subbing eighth-grade gym—it’s a dream come true.”
Dean laughed, and chunks of pulverized chicken-fried steak flew out of his mouth.
“I’m sorry. This is awful,” he said. “Food everywhere. You must think I’m a total pig.”
“No, it’s okay. Can I have the waitress bring you something? A glass of water? A trough?”
Dean bent so his forehead was almost touching his plate, his laughter wheezy, asthmatic. “Stop. Really.”
Bobby stopped, but not because Dean said. For the first time he had noticed that Harriet’s knee was knocking his under the table. He wondered if this was intentional, and the first chance he got he leaned back and looked. No, not intentional. She had kicked her sandals off and was digging the toes of one foot into the other, so fiercely that sometimes her right knee swung out and banged his.
“Wow, I would’ve loved to have a teacher like you. Someone who can make kids laugh,” Dean said.
Bobby chewed and chewed, but couldn’t tell what he was eating. It didn’t have any taste.
Dean let out a shaky sigh, wiped the corners of his eyes again. “Of course, I’m not funny. I can’t even remember knock-knock jokes. I’m not good for much else except working. And Harriet is so funny. Sometimes she puts on shows for Bobby and me, with these dirty socks on her hands. We get laughing so hard we can’t breathe. She calls it the trailer-park Muppet show. Sponsored by Pabst Blue Ribbon.” He started laughing and thumping the table again. Harriet stared intently into her lap. Dean said, “I’d love to see her do that on Carson. This is—what do you call them, routines?—this could be a classic routine.”
“Sure sounds it,” Bobby said. “I’m surprised Ed McMahon hasn’t already called to see if she’s available.”
WHEN DEAN DROPPED them back at the mall and left for the lumberyard, the mood was different. Harriet seemed distant; it was hard to draw her into any kind of conversation—not that Bobby felt like trying very hard. He was suddenly irritable. All the fun seemed to have gone out of playing a dead person for the day. It was mostly waiting—waiting for the gaffers to get the lights just so, for Tom Savini to touch up a wound that was starting to look a little too much like latex, not enough like ragged flesh—and Bobby was sick of it. The sight of other people having a good time annoyed him. Several zombies stood in a group, playing Hacky Sack with a quivering red spleen, and laughing. It made a juicy splat every time it hit the floor. Bobby wanted to snarl at them for being so merry. Hadn’t any of them heard of method acting, Stanislavsky? They should all be sitting apart from one another, moaning unhappily and fondling giblets. He heard him
self moan aloud, an angry, frustrated sound, and little Bobby asked what was wrong. He said he was just practicing. Little Bob went to watch the Hacky Sack game.
Harriet said, without looking at him, “That was a good lunch, wasn’t it?”
“Sen-sational,” Bobby said, thinking, Better be careful. He was restless, charged with an energy he didn’t know how to displace. “I feel like I really hit it off with Dean. He reminds me of my grandfather. I had this great grandfather who could wiggle his ears and who thought my name was Evan. He’d give me a quarter to stack wood for him, fifty cents if I’d do it with my shirt off. Say, how old is Dean?”
They had been walking together. Now Harriet stiffened, stopped. Her head swiveled in his direction, but her hair was in front of her eyes, making it hard to read the expression in them. “He’s nine years older than me. So what?”
“So nothing. I’m just glad you’re happy.”
“I am happy,” Harriet said, her voice a half octave too high.
“Did he get down on one knee when he proposed?”
Harriet nodded, her mouth crimped, suspicious.
“Did you have to help him up afterward?” Bobby asked. His own voice was sounding a little off-key, too, and he thought, Stop now. It was like a cartoon; he saw Wile E. Coyote strapped to the front of a steam engine, jamming his feet down on the rails to try to brake the train, smoke boiling up from his heels, feet swelling, glowing red.
“Oh, you prick,” she said.
“I’m sorry!” He grinned, holding his hands palms up in front of him. “Kidding, kidding. Funny Bobby, you know. I can’t help myself.” She hesitated—had been about to turn away—not sure whether she should believe him or not. Bobby wiped his mouth with his hand. “So we know what you do to make Dean laugh. What’s he do to make you laugh? Oh, that’s right, he isn’t funny. Well, what’s he do to make your heart race? Besides kiss you with his dentures out?”
“Leave me alone, Bobby,” she said. She turned away, but he came around to get back in front of her, keep her from walking off.
“No.”
“Stop.”
“Can’t,” he said, and suddenly he understood he was angry with her. “If he isn’t funny, he must be something. I need to know what.”
“Patient,” she said.
“Patient,” Bobby repeated. It stunned him—that this could be her answer.
“With me.”
“With you,” he said.
“With Robert.”
“Patient,” Bobby said. Then he couldn’t say anything more for a moment because he was out of breath. He felt suddenly that his makeup was itching his face. He wished that when he started to press she had just walked away from him, or told him to fuck off, or hit him even, wished she had responded with anything but patient. He swallowed. “That’s not good enough.” Knowing he couldn’t stop now, the train was going into the canyon, Wile E. Coyote’s eyes bugging three feet out of his head in terror. “I wanted to meet whoever you were with and feel sick with jealousy, but instead I just feel sick. I wanted you to fall in love with someone good-looking and creative and brilliant, a novelist, a playwright, someone with a sense of humor and a fourteen-inch dong. Not a guy with a buzz cut and a lumberyard, who thinks erotic massage involves a tube of Ben-Gay.”
She smeared at the tears dribbling down her face with the backs of her hands. “I knew you’d hate him, but I didn’t think you’d be mean.”
“It’s not that I hate him. What’s to hate? He’s not doing anything any other guy in his position wouldn’t do. If I was two feet tall and geriatric, I’d leap at the chance to have a piece of ass like you. You bet he’s patient. He better be. He ought to be down on his fucking knees every night, bathing your feet in sacramental oils, that you’d give him the time of day.”
“You had your chance,” she said. She was struggling not to let her crying slip out of control. The muscles in her face quivered with the effort, pulling her expression into a grimace.
“It’s not about what chances I had. It’s about what chances you had.”
This time when she pivoted away from him, he let her go. She put her hands over her face. Her shoulders were jerking and she was making choked little sounds as she went. He watched her walk to the wall around the fountain where they had met earlier in the day. Then he remembered the boy and turned to look, his heart drumming hard, wondering what little Bobby might’ve seen or heard. But the kid was running down the broad concourse, kicking the spleen in front of him, which had now collected a mass of dust bunnies around it. Two other dead children were trying to kick it away from him.
Bobby watched them play for a while. A pass went wide, and the spleen skidded past him. He put a foot on it to stop it. It flexed unpleasantly beneath the sole of his shoe. The boys stopped three yards off, stood there breathing hard, awaiting him. He scooped it up.
“Go out,” he said, and lobbed it to little Bobby, who made a basket catch and hauled away with his head down and the other kids in pursuit.
When he turned to peek at Harriet he saw her watching him, her palms pressed hard against her knees. He waited for her to look away, but she didn’t, and finally he took her steady gaze as an invitation to approach.
He crossed to the fountain, sat down beside her. He was still working out how to begin his apology when she spoke.
“I wrote you. You stopped writing back,” she said. Her bare feet were wrestling with each other again.
“I hate how overbearing your right foot is,” he said. “Why can’t it give the left foot a little space?” But she wasn’t listening to him.
“It didn’t matter,” she said. Her voice was congested and hoarse. The makeup was oil-based, and in spite of her tears, hadn’t streaked. “I wasn’t mad. I knew we couldn’t have a relationship, just seeing each other when you came home for Christmas.” She swallowed thickly. “I really thought someone would put you in their sitcom. Every time I thought about that—about seeing you on TV, and hearing people laugh when you said things—I’d get this big, stupid smile on my face. I could float through a whole afternoon thinking about it. I don’t understand what in the world could’ve made you come back to Monroeville.”
But he had already said what in the world drew him back to his parents and his bedroom over the garage. Dean had asked in the diner, and Bobby had answered him truthfully.
One Thursday night, only last spring, he had gone on early in a club in the Village. He did his twenty minutes, earned a steady if-not-precisely-overwhelming murmur of laughter, and a spatter of applause when he came off. He found a place at the bar to hear some of the other acts. He was just about to slide off his stool and go home when Robin Williams leaped on stage. He was in town, cruising the clubs, testing material. Bobby quickly shifted his weight back onto his stool and sat listening, his pulse thudding heavily in his throat.
He couldn’t explain to Harriet the import of what he had seen then. Bobby saw a man clutching the edge of a table with one hand, his date’s thigh with the other, grabbing both so hard his knuckles were drained of all color. He was bent over with tears dripping off his face, and his laughter was high and shrill and convulsive, more animal than human, the sound of a dingo or something. He was shaking his head from side to side and waving a hand in the air, Stop, please, don’t do this to me. It was hilarity to the point of distress.
Robin Williams saw the desperate man, broke away from a discourse on jerking off, pointed at him and shouted, “You! Yes, you, frantic hyena-man! You get a free pass to every show I do for the rest of my motherfucking life!” And then there was a sound rising in the crowd, more than laughter or applause, although it included both. It was a low, thunderous rumble of uncontained delight, a sound so immense it was felt as much as heard, a thing that caused the bones in Bobby’s chest to hum.
Bobby himself didn’t laugh once, and when he left, his stomach was churning. His feet fell strangely, heavily against the sidewalk, and for some time he did not know his way home. When at last
he was in his apartment, he sat on the edge of his bed, his suspenders pulled off and his shirt unbuttoned, and for the first time felt things were hopeless.
He saw something flash in Harriet’s hand. She was jiggling some quarters.
“Going to call someone?” he asked.
“Dean,” she said. “For a ride.”
“Don’t.”
“I’m not staying. I can’t stay.”
He watched her tormented feet, toes struggling together, and finally nodded. They stood at the same time. They were, once again, standing uncomfortably close.
“See you, then,” she said.
“See you,” he said. He wanted to reach for her hand, but didn’t, wanted to say something, but couldn’t think what.
“Are there a couple people around here who want to volunteer to get shot?” George Romero asked from less than three feet away. “It’s a guaranteed close-up in the finished film.”
Bobby and Harriet put their hands up at the same time.
“Me,” Bobby said.
“Me,” said Harriet, stepping on Bobby’s foot as she moved to get George Romero’s attention. “Me!”
“IT’S GOING TO be a great picture, Mr. Romero,” Bobby said. They were standing shoulder to shoulder, making small talk, waiting for Savini to finish wiring Harriet with her squib—a condom partially filled with cane syrup and food coloring that would explode to look like a bullet hit. Bobby was already wired…in more than one sense of the word. “Someday everyone in Pittsburgh is going to claim they walked dead in this movie.”
“You kiss ass like a pro,” Romero said. “Do you have a show-biz background?”
“Six years off-Broadway,” Bobby said. “Plus I played most of the comedy clubs.”
“Ah, but now you’re back in greater Pittsburgh. Good career move, kid. Stick around here, you’ll be a star in no time.”
Harriet skipped over to Bobby, her hair flouncing. “I’m going to get my tit blown off!”