“Maybe you should grow a beard,” Atchley recommended.
“Yeah. Maybe,” I said.
“Keep it trim. Nothing hipster-y, but something neat and short and groomed. I think you’d look cute.”
“I don’t know.”
“Seriously. You’d kind of look like Charlie Day.”
“From Always Sunny? That’s not cute.”
“Sure he is. In a gross sort of funny way.”
“Gross, funny, cute?”
“Yeah, but in a good way.”
But I didn’t. I didn’t change anything. I still got donuts at Krispy Kreme first thing in the morning, going in and ordering until I became a regular. I still showed up to work in my suit and tie, cleanshaven, hair a mess, still smelling of stale beer from the night before. I still went out to middle-class families’ homes, people who watched the news and had the best chance of putting two and two together, but they never did. I suppose people never really look for that one-in-a-million right in front of them. People always think stuff like that will never happen to them. They’ll go through life unscathed, never running across Dave Chappelle in a shopping mall parking lot or seeing a tornado take out a downtown skyscraper. Stuff just doesn’t happen like that to normal people, so even if they perhaps noticed a bit of a resemblance between me and that kid on the news, they never said a word, convincing themselves I couldn’t be him—that stuff just doesn’t happen to them.
Eventually, though, someone else did recognize me.
We were at one of our weekly meetings at the office, and I was helping Pinkett prepare the night’s events to unveil the new leaderboard as the other salespeople filtered into the room. It had been weeks since we’d been at Pinkett’s and the news had broken of my mother’s impending execution, and that night was the first we’d all been back together. I should’ve known something was different when Pinkett was a little standoffish as we prepared for the meeting, going outside to smoke cigarettes by himself on the fire escape rather than chugging Mountain Dew and perusing his notes like he normally did, but I didn’t. I busied myself by helping Atchley organize the leaderboard materials and the prizes that would be given away that night. Once everyone had taken their seats, Pinkett returned and blared the music and began his routine, jumping up and down and pacing the room, trying to infect the rest with his energy and optimistic personality. He chanted and cheered and screamed utter nonsense until everyone was riled up, and then Pinkett stopped at the front of the room.
“First of all,” he said, “I want to thank each and every single one of you for being here. Thank you and thank you and thank you.” He skipped around the room like a schoolboy and pointed at all the new members of the sales team, which, of course, comprised the majority in attendance. “You have no idea how much it means to me you’ve decided to join something bigger than yourselves. To do what you’re doing is truly special. You’re not here for just a job, but you’re a part of a family. You’re with people who care about your success, and I will do everything in my power to make you realize all of your goals, all of them, be the very best you can be, and, of course,” he said as he pulled out a wad of cash from his back pocket, “make you all a shit-ton of money.”
The team hooted and hollered and clapped their hands.
“To do that, to see you guys happy, to achieve your goals, it makes me so monumentally, overjoyously, exasperatingly, un-fucking-believably fulfilled by your dedication and your devotion and your goddamnit-can’t-quit fucking attitude that I can’t help but just find me aroused.”
The crowd started to really get into it now, clapping and whistling and chanting SlashCo, SlashCo, SlashCo, as Pinkett finally stopped at the front of the room.
“I got great news tonight, and I got even greater news tonight. The greatest goddamn news I could possibly ever give. We’ve got surprises and plot twists, lies and deceit. But it’s all going to be revealed tonight. All of it, and it makes me so fucking happy I can hardly even stand it. In fact, I don’t even want to wait. In fact, I know I can’t.”
Pinkett paused a moment, peered at me, and it looked like he mouthed the words “fuck you” before he whistled and in popped a camera crew. At first, I was confused, and so was everyone else. Their clapping and whistling ebbed and became less resolute, their cheers ending with a higher-pitched inflection at the end, almost as if they were asking a question: SlashCo, SlashCo, SlashCoooOOOO? It started to make more sense, though, as soon as the camera crew’s spotlights and microphones were directed at me. They circled me, the camera’s light blinding so that I had to shield the glare with my hand. Slowly, my vision came into focus, and it was a young woman standing in front of me, blonde with mounds of makeup caked on her cheeks and eyes and lips.
“Tell us, Caleb Gunter, where have you been all these years? What have you been doing? Have you spoken with your mother? Do you have any regrets? Do you feel guilty, responsible, remorse for what you’ve done?”
Everything spun. Saliva flooded my mouth. I was nauseated. I couldn’t catch my breath. I was having a panic attack, and despite the realization of what was happening, I couldn’t stop it, which made it even more frightening. I was going to die, and no one would be able to help.
“Our assistant manager here, one Billie Booker—in our midst for months—has been keeping a secret from us,” Pinkett continued. “Turns out, our beloved Billie’s not who he says he is.”
The camera crew was from a local news station, Channel 4, the NBC affiliate. The woman kept rattling off questions, not even waiting for me to respond. It felt aggressive. It felt like she was attacking me, and my fight-or-flight instinct kicked in. I had to hit her, hit Pinkett, beat the cameraman with his own equipment, or I had to flee. I had to do something. Standing there was not an option.
“Would you like to tell us who you are?” Pinkett asked.
I didn’t say a word.
“No?” he asked. “Well, all right then. It turns out, our Billie here is the one and only, the dog and pony, Caleb Gunter!”
Time, after that, sped up. Something built up inside of me, something visceral, some central and intrinsic force. My heart rate quickened. My tongue swelled. Saliva dried up. There was a throb in the back of my neck, pulsating up my spinal cord and into my brain. Everything brightened. I could make out the smallest of imperfections on the cameraman’s hands, a jagged hangnail, nicotine-stained fingers, and I started swinging. I swung at Pinkett. I swung at the camera, knocking it out of the man’s hand. There was a producer behind him, telling him to pick the camera back up, to get it, get it, get it, and I ran. I burst through the door and ran down the hall and barreled down the stairs until I was out of the office building and heading nowhere at all.
CHAPTER 5
“YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO FACE IT SOONER OR later,” Atchley said. We were in my apartment, had been for three days. Outside were dozens of news vans, camped out, trying to get me to give a statement of some kind, to apologize for my misdeeds, to condemn my mother, to show remorse or defiance or something, and I was sorry, I truly was. I’d agonized over what had happened for years, and every time I thought about what my mother and I’d done, a pain lurched in my chest and I dry-heaved until all I could do was choke, but I wasn’t ready or able, much less both, to give the media what they wanted. Instead, I just stayed on the couch with Atchley and ate crackers and peanut butter and drank Fresca until all we had left was tap water. We binge-watched television and fucked like teenagers, all elbows and grunts and toothy kisses, and she told me the reason Pinkett had outed me.
“I’ve been fucking him, too,” she said.
“I know.”
“You did?”
“Sort of. I thought you might be.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
I hadn’t because I’d hoped I was wrong. I knew they’d hooked up, had feared they were seeing each other for a while, but since Atchley and I had gotten together I’d hoped they hadn’t been. I hoped it was all in my head, and that Kar
i had been right—it had been just a one-night stand. Turned out, Pinkett and Atchley had been an item, fuck-buddies or booty calls or whatever. It made sense. They’d known each other before I came along, spending eight, nine, ten, even eleven hours a day with each other, working and eating and getting drunk and stoned together. Eventually, something was bound to happen. They were both young and carefree and untethered by adult responsibility. But that didn’t make it hurt any less. It made it hurt more, in fact.
“I’m done with him, though,” she said. “I pick you. Only you.” But it only made it a little bit better. I didn’t feel betrayed, but the fact she continued to see us both for a time made me feel as though I was easily discarded, that if things had turned out just a little bit differently she’d have been on Pinkett’s couch instead of mine, saying the exact same things, “I pick you, you, only you,” but to him instead of me. It made what we had seem ephemeral and transient, like at any moment, if I even let her out of my sight for a second, she’d be gone and I would be all alone once again.
“I won’t leave you. I promise. I’ll be right here with you, but you have to face this.”
I didn’t have much of a choice either way. About a week after the news had leaked, Jonah showed up at my door. At first, I didn’t recognize him—it had been close to five years since I’d seen him last. He and Dad had found me after the raid. They showed up to my trial and hired me an attorney, and they visited right after I’d been sentenced to juvenile detention, but I was just so angry with them at the time. I blamed them for what had happened. I blamed them for not stopping my mother, for not finding me after we’d taken off, and for not bringing me back home. None of it would’ve happened if my father had just fought for me a little bit harder, but he didn’t, and a lot of people died because of that. For months I agonized over this while locked up in detention, staring up at the ceiling with nothing to do, and the last time they came and visited I told them to stop.
The visiting room was this large cinderblock place with fluorescent lights and long plastic tables, not unlike a school cafeteria.
“Why didn’t you come looking for us?” I asked my father.
We’d skirted the issue during the trial. Too much to deal with in planning my defense, or at least that’s what we’d told ourselves.
“I wish I had,” he said. He chewed the inside of his cheek and rubbed his fingertips together. It was an old tic of his—he wanted a cigarette, but he couldn’t smoke in there.
“That’s not an answer. Why didn’t you?”
“What can I say? I mean, whatever I say will come out wrong.”
“Just tell me why. You have to tell me.”
“You were just too much. Your mother had warped you. You weren’t yourself anymore. And I couldn’t deal with it. I thought everybody would be happier if you were with her and Jonah was with me.”
“You thought it was too hard?”
“Yes.”
“You thought I’d be too hard?”
“I’m sorry. But yes.”
That was the last time I saw either one of them. I’d thought about them a lot since I’d been outed. I’d wondered if Jonah had changed, if he was still a skeptic, still tough and ornery and rebellious, and I’d wondered if Dad still chain-smoked and worked fourteen hours a day, and I’d wondered why, after they must have learned where I was at, after the news broke I was living in Oklahoma City, they didn’t try to do anything to help. I was still their blood, after all. I was still their kin, despite what Mom and I had done. Were we not still family? Perhaps we’d just severed ties. Perhaps out of shame. Perhaps out of self-preservation. I wasn’t sure. But I didn’t blame them. I probably would’ve done the same if our roles had somehow been reversed.
But then Jonah showed up at my door. He wasn’t the same as he’d been back then. For one, he was a full-grown man now, a wispy goatee covering his chin and upper lip, his cheeks covered in graphite-colored stubble. He wore a ballcap, and unkempt hair poked out from underneath. A gut protruded over his belt, but his arms had turned skinny, pale, and hairless. He looked sickly, like he desperately needed—but couldn’t afford—dialysis.
“Caleb?” he said.
I didn’t say anything.
“Caleb Gunter?”
“Jonah.”
He smiled and came in. He sat next to Atchley, and he couldn’t stop fidgeting. He bounced his knee and scratched his neck and pulled at his facial hair like he’d drunk a lot of coffee. He talked nonstop, his words slurring like his tongue couldn’t keep up with his thoughts.
“It’s just so great to see you, man. Just so, so, so great. You just have no idea. Like no idea what it’s been like out here.”
With every word he spoke, his hands and arms and head gesticulated. His energy surprised and scared me. He’d always been somewhat of a stoic kid. Rebellious, sure, but he was also quiet, reserved, and seemed to hold over his friends this mysterious power. He didn’t have to say a word, and it was like they all thought he, and no one else, was their best friend. Now, though, it was like he vibrated, and the result was repulsive.
“You wouldn’t believe what people are like. They ask you questions about Mom, questions that, like, you have no answers for. Why did she do what she did? Why did people believe her? What was it like living with her? Did she make me do stuff? Like weird cult stuff? Sexual stuff? Evil stuff? Like, it just never stops, man. You just can’t ever hide from it. You know what I mean?”
I was beginning to learn. Yes, I knew what he meant.
“They won’t let you forget, man. They just won’t. Not ever, or ever, forever. They just won’t let you ever forget. And you tell them, man, I don’t know. I don’t know. She was crazy. What do you want me to say? She said and did some crazy, weird shit, and for most of it I was along for the ride, but in the end, Pops and I got out, and I just don’t know. I don’t. I just don’t know.”
“You ever see Mom?” I asked.
“Like now?”
“Yeah. Do you ever go visit her?”
“God, man, no. Hells no. In the beginning, sure, a few times, yeah. I’d go there. I would say hi, but she wouldn’t talk, man. She wouldn’t. Just sat there and stared like beyond you. Know what I’m saying? Like she was looking right at you, but not seeing you. You get me?”
“And so you never went back?”
“Been five years. Five years. Wow. It’s been five years.”
“And Dad?”
“Dad. Wow. Yeah. You didn’t hear?”
“Hear what?”
“Gone. Poof. Kablooey.” Jonah held his fists by his ears and then opened them like they were exploding. “Everything just gone. Lights out. Doesn’t remember a thing. Just sits there and drools and a nurse wipes his ass.”
“What do you mean?”
“Had a stroke. It’s like his brain imploded. Turned to mashed potatoes or whatever. Lights are on, but nobody’s home. Feel me?”
“But he’s still alive?”
He snorted. “If you call that living, man.”
“And where is he?”
“Man, back home. Bartlesville. Where you think? I can’t afford to move him out anywhere. At the old-folks’ home there. Just wasting away.”
“And you,” I said. “What about you?”
He purged his story like a man in confessional. After the raid, he had to go into hiding. He dropped out of school, and he didn’t leave the house. Vandals came. They threw bricks through his windows and shot roman candles at the house. Toilet paper adorned the trees and egg yolk the gutters. Every day it was something new. He took to drinking more. Ten beers a night. Twelve. Fifteen. A case by himself. Until he could shut his mind down long enough to sleep. He started gaming online, made up pseudonyms and pretended to be a teenage girl in chat rooms. He’d catfish people. He’d lead on lonely, middle-aged men, and then forward his conversations with these pedophiles to the FBI. After a few weeks, the vandalism subsided, and after a few more months, he summoned enough courage to leave the ho
use. He tried to go back to school. He enrolled in classes at Oklahoma State and moved to Stillwater and had thoughts about majoring in journalism or perhaps history, something where he could chronicle life, make sense out of an otherwise senseless world, but soon he dropped out. He continued to drink, and he smoked pot, and then he was offered harder and harder stuff. Cocaine at first. Pills: Xanax and Zoloft and Oxy.
“Just enough to make my skin go numb,” he said.
But that’s when things got out of control. As soon as he woke up, he needed something to dull the edge, a drink, a snort, a smoke, and he went out looking for enough money for his next score. He stole copper wire from construction sites and collected cans from dumpsters to recycle and sold his bodily fluids, semen and plasma and whatever else he could just to make it by. He lost bigger and bigger blocks of time. He’d wake up naked and outside, mere yards from his house, but it seemed as though he didn’t have the strength to make it up to his doorstep. He tried PCP and heroin and, finally, the love of his life, meth.
“It’s like being God, man. Like being reborn, if you know what I’m saying.”
I did. I knew exactly what he was saying.
Started off once a week, then every couple, then every day, until all his time and money and effort were spent procuring, smoking, and eventually cooking methamphetamine. It was lucrative, he said. More money than he could ever spend in a million lifetimes. Just fists full of cash. He hid it in his mattress, and when he couldn’t fit any more in there, he hid it in the crawl space underneath his house, and when that was filled up, he filled an entire room full of pallets of cash. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. All his. But he couldn’t spend it. He knew if he did, he’d be caught. What college student could afford a new Corvette or a 3,000-square foot home or a sailboat? Not anyone he knew, so he started asking around. He met local businessmen, Pizza Hut franchise owners and car wash proprietors and operators of tanning salons. He finally found what he was looking for in an owner of convenience stores and head shops. Carl Huntington. Jonah dropped out of school, became Carl’s little protégé, cash went into Carl’s businesses, and out came laundered money.
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