Angels and Electrons: A Sub-Suburb Tale

by Paul Hawkins

  *

  I sat in the sheriff’s office and saw the action news crew footage. And then the image shifted and froze on the gap between my hand and my father’s.

  In the sheriff’s office I shouted at the image of my father.

  "What are you trying to say? That you hate God? That He sets traps there's no escape from, save for His own omnipotent grace that He withholds? Hold out this time, for me. I'll help you..."

  I cursed God for him. I challenged and defied Him to show Himself; I taunted that He dare not reveal Himself because it would show Him to be nothing but an imp, a tiny being who hangs us with our own desires and sets lovers back-to-back: "I love him, but I hear he loves Another more; I love her, but I hear she loves Another."

  Just then two figures jumped into the sheriff’s office. The first one brought a chair down on the agent’s head. The first figure was Jude, the second was Dale Charboneau, lean and dark and wiry, descendant of the guide of Lewis and Clark, trail blazer extraordinaire and night shift manager at the bait shop. He moved past the slumped body to free his friend.

  “Oh you stupid shits…” I began, but Jude had already rifled the agent’s pockets and found the key to unlock the cuffs.

  “Let’s get out of here!” he said.

  “You stupid shits,” I said. “We won’t get ten miles from here. Welcome to a felony charge.”

  “I had to come back,” Jude said.

  “Why?”

  “To make up for knocking up your sister!”

  “No one wanted to see you again.”

  “I was thinking maybe, in time, she and I …”

  “Oh good grief you stupid shit! Well where do we go now?”

  “I don’t know – that’s why I brought Dale,” Jude replied. “Descendent of fur trappers, back woods navigator extraordinaire.”

  Dale tipped his hat.

  “Good God,” I said. “But seeing as we have a chance, let’s go.”

  We hustled into the old car and Jude drove fast. Dale gave directions for him to switch up his route every so often. Jude drove like a bat out of hell and I didn't stop looking out the back window until the small town was far behind us and they were well out into the countryside.

  Dale directed us down a dirt path no one else would have seen and we continued on the lam. At some time in the night we stole gas. He led us across rural roads until he got them hidden in the rolling hills of southeast Oklahoma.

  We parked amongst some tall trees in the middle of nowhere, and Dale said he was heading off to get the lay of the land and to find them something to eat, but that we should sleep in shifts and light out should they hear a car approaching. But Jude and I fell asleep at the same time and we awoke to find ourselves being cuffed and shoved roughly into the back seat of a sedan. Dale was gone. Neither of us fingered him as an accomplice and in any case he left no tracks because he was descended from great trappers and trackers and other Frenchmen who had hidden from the Old World in the New World, and so no one could ever find him unless he wanted them to. NO one ever found him or knew who he was.

  Dale resurfaced in society (near the bait shop anyway) a few years later. As for Jude and I, we each did time in the pen after that. Jude was a model prisoner, but he went kind of nuts and began channeling his religious-crazy mother. He found a way to get himself a parole job with the state agriculture department helping manage bees. Sweet, golden, orderly bees. Still, one day when he visited me, I managed to get him in a headlock and grind my knuckles into his scalp and say “Get your damn degree!” He studied after that and exited the pen with a degree in Criminology. Me, I got in fights a lot and was not released a day sooner than the law allowed.

  From Rosalind’s Journal: The 1980's: Coda and PLOVANDO

  Blaise and Jude were both arrested and each was sentenced to ten years in jail. Once in jail, Blaise settled into a routine of occasional fights and manual labor; Jude, however, was the model prisoner, and was soon transferred to a state work farm to help raise bees. He found the calm still center of himself.

  In prison Blaise found out he could get along by fixing things for others. He made a device to pinpoint where every guard was at every moment of every day, using the signals from their own walkie-talkies. It looked like a portable radio. No one ever discovered it and it helped some cons made a spectacular jail break. But they were good cons – misunderstood – and framed by the local string-tied wearing DA. They all had that story, but Blaise believed them. They did not have time to finger Blaise before they were shot outside a small-town bank. It was like they had wanted to get shot to make the news.

  Blaise ended up doing something stupid a few years later and doing time again, but to tell that now would be too soon.

  From Janet’s Journal

  I am staying at the Budget Businessman Motor Inn of recently re-prospering suburban Oklahoma City and Tess and I will be meeting Blaise tomorrow. He is out of prison again and this time we both intend to intervene and set him straight. We think he might be able to live out a constructive life in the Philippines, in the company of an old friend of ours who can keep an eye on him and let him do good works.

  Dale Charboneau has been kind enough to lend me a copy of Rosalind’s journal, or Blaise’s journal that she has marked and he is re-correcting.

  I am meeting them tomorrow at the bait shop managed by Dale’s cousin Ray Jr, whose father inherited the car graveyard from my uncle.

  I am writing a few notes only because Tess has also gotten ahold of Rosalind’s version of Blaise’s journal - Tess bribed her younger step-brother with a case of beer and probably more than a little flirting than is appropriate between an early-twentyish young man and a Maye West-ish woman of her age. The way my sister dresses. She is a big bosomy gal fond of scoop-neck blouses and elbow-length gloves. I do not recall her having that beauty mark when we were girls growing up. I am fairly sure it is a tattoo.

  But on to Blaise. Rosalind has left so many things out. I think she had a crush on him. I think she still does. I think she thinks that if she cannot have him, she will have him as he was - as her memory, her story. Well, and somehow have him in the end. Yes she has been thorough, but she has still left too much out. Tess, on the other hand, might put things in an exaggerated way. So I must walk the middle line and tell the truth.

  Yes, our father slowly decayed inside, crawled into a cave and spiderweb inside himself, especially after the departure of Mother and Tess. And yes, with them gone and just Blaise and myself left behind I felt trapped. I fought to finish school and reach the escape velocity my mother had insisted I achieve, in spite of my surrounds or because of them - that I launch myself out of the toxicity. And in doing so I settled into my own sort of isolation, first in a spirit of defiance then of loneliness I was too proud to admit. I went to an affluent Catholic high school but my family was not affluent and I had no friends; I probably shielded myself from friendship so as to not have to talk about the secrets of my family. I went to school, I went to my jobs after school, I worked hard. No time for boys, no time for novelties. Mom had made me want to be hard - not ice-bitch hard but like a person who is certain they are worth something, perhaps worth the whole world, and they have only been given one life and they bear a high burden of responsibility to make the most of it.

  I was three years younger than Blaise and five years younger than Tess. I never knew much about Ben. Ben was my father’s son from his first marriage, and he was much older than any of us, but Blaise looked up to him. He lived downtown with his largish Catholic family and worked hard and was closer to his wife’s family. Blaise adored him because Ben was a man who knew who he was, and had made it through to the other side of something like what Blaise was going through, and he was a big happy man who held his responsibility and his life and family on his shoulders like an Atlas and laughed. He straddled eras. He was not quite Blaise’s uncle and not quite his brother and not quite his peer, but he filled a need Blaise had for all of these. He was big, physically
, not fat but a large-framed man, humble as he was big, and carefree as he was humble. He did not contain the deadly German introspection of his father; he did not brood over the world’s complexities. He had a very smart and hard-working wife who kept track of all the world’s complexities and her children’s recreational schedules in the ledger of her mind and did so very well. She protected Ben in ways he did not ask for or probably understand. It was because of her, and his luck in finding and winning her, that he could walk with God and live the walk he talked, and do all humbly. And when a drunk driver took his life, it was just as if he walked with God and God took him. If you were tasked to hand-sculpt Ben from a block of granite, you could do so with a very few strokes.

  Blaise walked as a kind of stranger in the world once Ben was taken from it, and the absence of Ben opened the chink in his mind that let our father’s thoughts creep in. And so Blaise ended up falling a long way and doing many bad things. But I am surprised that in all his ramblings he has forgotten to mention PLOVANDO. He might save himself if he can remember what a fool we all made of ourselves because of - I cannot even write the world without being overcome of the sense of the utter comedy and utter stupidity - PLOVANDO.

  From Tess’s Journal: PLOVANDO

  PLOVANDO. Yep, Janet got it right, but I will be damned if I let her tell the rest of it. I will see her and Blaise at the bait shop next to the near old farm tomorrow. I like Ray Jr. I like Dale Charboneau. They are two sides of the coin of valor - Dale the compass, Ray the thing in a Swiss Army knife you can use to scale fish. I am not sure I got that expressed correctly. But you understand, I hope.

  Right now I am in a honky-tonk letting a dime store cowboy buy me drinks. He won’t get anywhere with me, but he is happy and can dance well and I can’t dance well but the parts that he likes jiggle when I try to dance, and so we are both contented. And a friend of mine owns the bar and I feel comfortable here so let the free drinks flow and get me a notepad and a pen because for God’s sake I can’t stand to leave it to Janet or Blaise or Rosalind to write about PLOVANDO.

  PLOVANDO:

  Pride

  Leadership

  Oklahoma

  Values

  Articulateness

  Neatness

  Dependability

  Oklahoma!

  It was a contest they had every year. It was sponsored by the paper and by some chamber of commerce businesses and it was the dumbest thing since running for class president. Hell, PLOVANDO even had a mascot. Some old Indian like you’d see on a nickel. They pretended “PLOVANDO” had been the name of some wise and sacred old Indian who had imparted his skills and blessings to the Sooner State at its inauguration. He was everything a young man (or later, also a young lady) should ever aim to be - fit, smart, trustworthy, loyal, resourceful - plus whatever the hell character traits went into making up the acronym of his name, which I have listed above.

  I have an ad from the newspaper back then. See for yourself:

  “PLOVANDO!

  “Do YOU embody the mystic wholesome spirit of PLOVANDO? Sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce, the Junior League, and the mythic inspiration of PLOVANDO himself.”

  “Only one person per year is deemed worthy of exemplifying PLOVANDO. The recipient of this year’s award gets a year's lease of a Datsun B-210, a complete wardrobe from Buffington's and Getner's Hat and Tack, and a partial scholarship to a local community college of his/her choosing, plus meals for a year at Rusty’s Bucket Barbeque and More!”

  “The successful candidate will display the utmost temperance and moral rectitude; he or she will lay out their vision for a bright future for Oklahoma and display a strong sense of leadership while hewing to pioneer values.”

  “The exceptional candidate will also be able to readily identify true north while blindfolded.” [requirement redacted 1953]

  “PLOVANDO!”

  “This is a prestigious honor! Enquire at the finer local business establishments listed below or clip and send in the coupon for details and an entry form. Include return postage.”

  That was PLOVANDO. The only official duty was to give "Don't Do Drugs" speeches at local high schools, though unofficially, the recipient was also expected to exhibit high moral character for six months following the award or they would be stripped of their duties and the prizes and title bestowed on the first runner up.

  The candidates made appearances and speeches (or really the same speech over and over) before various organizations including the Junior League, the various suburban chambers of Congress, the Elks, the Odd Fellows, and so on.

  Blaise was a clear standout. He had rugged unassuming good looks, was not a prim or pampered pretty boy, he had no tattoos, and he seemed to actually believe in what he said once he got himself worked up into saying it, and in that he seemed kind of like the state itself, unimpressive at first but tough and earnest under fire and ready to move on to something bigger and better if given the opportunity.

  But to jump into the details of PLOVANDO is to jump the gun a bit. Blaise had to get out of his rut first. Maria had left him and Buffington’s had fired him and Dad was being his creepy wanting-to-die self, and Jude had knocked up Janet. Didn’t Janet mention that? Everyone knows it. Hell, why do you think Jude made such a show of saying he would kill whoever did it? To throw people off his trail. Dale Charboneau called it in the first few seconds, but only to a few of us (he being honorable).

  After Blaise slept with that Buffington woman and got fired from his gig, the next few years (or was it months?) went by in a mixed-up blur. I was in and out of town at the whim of local garage bands that always left to make it big and never succeeded. The economy tanked and the city was weird and messed up. Time passed strangely. Maria left sometime after the Buffington affair - like she was too good for my brother? Please - I heard stories. Both she and Blaise had been too young for anything serious anyhow but God, he let her break his heart. I know for a fact she cheated on him before he cheated on her. I don’t forgive her. She left Blaise in a deep funk.

  Jude was not there to be much of a help to him because some friends of his father finally sat on him and gave him the “this is your last chance” speech and so he was forced to hunker down in practical classes in college and as a result he got himself an anemic vicious suburban WASP of a girlfriend who was determined to march him through pre-law then set him on top of her wedding cake. She had aspirations but no talent herself except for begging her father for things, so she snagged and tagged him. Her name was Meredith and one look from her could frost trees in August. He deserved her.

  Rosalind on the other hand had a guardian angel complex toward Blaise since their Buffington days and she tried to pull him out of his depression. I estimate a whole year went by during which Blaise did almost nothing, but Rosalind did what she could. She got him on at Tippins (local reseller of whatever contents spilled from the trucks that jack-knifed at the hairpin turn on the highway) and then got him on board with her in that venture they launched in the ghost-town mall called “Fashion Shots.”

  Fashion Shots got its start when the state’s budget got tight post-bust and the commuter college had to choose having a drama department or getting computers. Guess which side won? The kid of the guy who bought out the car graveyard from my uncle (who had fled to Panama) found a bunch of old props and costumes in the college dumpster and told Blaise who told Rosalind who fished them all out and started that temporarily prosperous business. Hell, even though it eventually went belly up it was fun while it lasted and it kind of helped get Blaise’s head on straight, at least now and then, and I snagged me some nice feather boas after it went under, and I think Blaise kept a Ulysses S. Grant outfit. When he was dressed up in it he looked like some cheap commemorative whiskey bottle, which is fitting because that first year after Maria left he was in his cups more often than not.

  So Blaise malaised his way through a blur that none of us can completely accurately recall – the whole world seemed just that m
essed up, like someone had stolen all the clocks and compasses, and even now when any of us get together to remember it it’s like trying to make sense of the old tires and shoes you pull up from the bottom of a mud lake.

  Jude and Janet and I made him enroll in the commuter college, just to keep him mind off his own thoughts, and he succeeded for a while. See, Janet was also going there now. Coming out of high school she had applied to colleges way out of her league and got admitted to some but none with full scholarships, and in the end she had no middle safety net so she felt more than a little bitter and told herself she’d rack up straight A’s for general ed courses until some Ivy League of the prairie saw the error of its ways and begged for her. She worked two jobs and lived at home to save every cent and turned down dates with frivolous boys and bent herself into a kind of crazy bunker mentality every bit as dangerous as Blaise’s. If she sees this she’ll protest - to this day she thinks of herself as having been the practical one, and I’ll admit she landed well, but Gawd, which one of us ending up that year by getting knocked up? And by Jude? She wound herself too tight and has never unwound since. I’ll take her to a biker bar tomorrow - hah. Well, I’ll take her to the Chili’s near the businessman’s motel and make her have a fru-fru margarita. Relax girl - we’re sisters!

  But back to PLOVANDO. PLOVANDO! It’s what almost lifted Blaise from his misfortune, almost hoisted him back to the living. That damned old Indian nearly pulled it off, and for that reason I still halfway believe in him, even though I know they made him up. God bless you, PLOVANDO, here’s some fire water to you. You nearly saved my brother.