Christine, Page 45

  Which was what Leigh and I were wondering ourselves, I guess. Finally they did what parents usually do when they're puzzled in such situations--they dismissed it as kid business and went about their own business. Dad excused himself first, saying that his workshop in the basement was in its usual post-Christmas shambles and he ought to start doing something about it. Mom said she wanted to do some writing.

  Ellie looked at me solemnly and said, "Dennis, did Jesus have a dog?"

  I cracked up and so did Ellie. Leigh sat watching us laugh, smiling politely the way outsiders do when it's a family joke.

  "Split, Ellie," I said.

  "What'll you do if I won't?" she asked, but it was only routine brattiness; she was already getting up.

  "Make you wash my underwear," I said.

  "The hell you will!" Ellie declared grandly, and left the room.

  "My little sister," I said.

  Leigh was smiling. "She's great."

  "If you had to live with her full-time you might change your mind. Let's see what you've got."

  Leigh put one of the Xerox copies on the glass coffee table where the pieces of my casts had been yesterday.

  It was the re-registration of a used car, 1958 Plymouth sedan (4-door), red and white. It was dated November 1, 1978, and signed Arnold Cunningham. His father had co-signed for him:

  "What does that look like to you?" I asked.

  "One of the signatures on one of the squares you showed me," she said. "Which one?"

  "It's the way he signed just after I got crunched in Ridge Rock," I said. "It's the way his signature always looked. Now let's see the other one."

  She put it down beside the first. This was a registration slip for a new car, 1958 Plymouth sedan (4-door), red and white. It was dated November 1, 1957--1 felt a nasty jolt at that exact similarity, and one look at Leigh's face told me she had seen it too.

  "Look at the signature," she said quietly.

  I did.

  This was the handwriting Arnie had used on Thanksgiving evening; you didn't have to be a genius or a handwriting expert to see that. The names were different, but the writing was exactly the same.

  Leigh reached for my hands, and I took hers.

  What my father did in his basement workshop was make toys. I suppose that might sound a little weird to you, but it's his hobby. Or maybe something more than a hobby--I think there might have been a time in his life when he had to make a difficult choice between going to college and going out on his own to become a toymaker. If that's true, then I guess he chose the safe way. Sometimes I think I see it in his eyes, like an old ghost not quite laid to rest, but that is probably only my imagination, which used to be a lot less active than it is now.

  Ellie and I were the chief beneficiaries, but Arnie had also found some of my father's toys under various Christmas trees and beside various birthday cakes, as had Ellie's closest childhood friend Aimee Carruthers (long since moved to Nevada and now referred to in the doleful tones reserved for those who have died young and senselessly) and many other chums.

  Now my dad gave most of what he made to the Salvation Army 400 Fund, and before Christmas the basement always reminded me of Santa's workshop--until just before Christmas it would be filled with neat cardboard cartons containing wooden trains, little tool-chests,

  Erector-set clocks that really kept time, stuffed animals, a small puppet theater or two. His main interest was in wooden toys (up until the Viet Nam war he had made battalions of toy soldiers, but in the last five years or so they had been quietly phased out--even now I'm not sure he was aware he was doing it), but like a good spray hitter, my dad went to all fields. During the week after Christmas there was a hiatus. The workshop would seem terribly empty, with only the sweet smell of sawdust to remind us that the toys had ever been there.

  In that week he would sweep, clean, oil his machinery, and get ready for next year. Then, as the winter wore on through January and February, the toys and the seeming junk that would become parts of toys would begin appearing again--trains and jointed wooden ballerinas with red spots of color on their cheeks, a box of stuffing raked out of someone's old couch that would later end up in a bear's belly (my father called every one of his bears Owen or Olive--I had worn out six Owen Bears between infancy and second grade, and Ellie had worn out a like number of Olive Bears), little snips of wire, buttons, and flat, disembodied eyes scattered across the worktable like something out of a pulp horror story. Last, the liquor-store boxes would appear, and the toys would again be packed into them.

  In the last three years he had gotten three awards from the Salvation Army, but he kept them hidden away in a drawer, as if he was ashamed of them. I didn't understand it then and don't now--not completely--but at least I know it wasn't shame. My father had nothing to be ashamed of.

  I worked my way down that evening after supper, clutching the bannister madly with one arm and using my other crutch like a ski-pole.

  "Dennis," he said, pleased but slightly apprehensive. "You need any help?"

  "No, I got it."

  He put his broom aside by a small yellow drift of shavings and watched to see if I was really going to make it. "How about a push, then?"

  "Ha-ha, very funny."

  I got down, semi-hopped over to the big easy chair my father keeps in the corner beside our old Motorola black-and-white, and sat down. Plonk.

  "How you doing?" he asked.

  "Pretty good."

  He brushed up a dustpanful of shavings, dumped them into his waste-barrel, sneezed, and brushed up some more. "No pain?"

  "No. Well . . . some."

  "You want to be careful of stairs. If your mother had seen what you just did--"

  I grinned. "She'd scream, yeah."

  "Where is your mother?"

  "She and Ellie went over to the Rennekes'. Dinah Renneke got a complete library of Shaun Cassidy albums for Christmas. Ellie is green."

  "I thought Shaun was out," my father said.

  "I think she's afraid fashion might be doubling back on her."

  Dad laughed. Then there was a companionable silence for a while, me sitting, him sweeping. I knew he'd get around to it, and presently he did.

  "Leigh," he said, "used to go with Arnie, didn't she?"

  "Yes," I said.

  He glanced at me, then down at his work again. I thought he would ask me if I thought that was wise, or maybe mention that one fellow stealing another fellow's girl was not the best way to promote continued friendship and accord. But he said neither of those things.

  "We don't see much of Arnie anymore. Do you suppose he's ashamed of the mess he's in?"

  I had the feeling that my father didn't believe that at all; that he was simply testing the wind.

  "I don't know," I said.

  "I don't think he has much to worry about. With Darnell dead"--he tipped his dustpan into the barrel and the shavings slid in with a soft flump-- "I doubt if they'll even bother to prosecute."

  "No?"

  "Not Arnie. Not on anything serious. He may be fined, and the judge will probably lecture him, but nobody wants to put an indelible black mark on the record of a nice young suburban white boy who is bound for college and a fruitful place in society."

  He shot me a sharp questioning look, and I shifted in the chair, suddenly uncomfortable.

  "Yeah, I suppose."

  "Except he's not really like that anymore, is he, Dennis?"

  "No. He's changed."

  "When was the last time you actually saw him?"

  "Thanksgiving."

  "Was he okay then?"

  I shook my head slowly, suddenly feeling like crying and blurting it all out. I had felt that way once before and hadn't; I didn't this time, either, but for a different reason. I remembered what Leigh had said, about being nervous for her parents on Christmas Eve. And it seemed to me now that the fewer the people who knew about our suspicions, the safer . . . for them.

  "What's wrong with him?"

  "I don'
t know."

  "Does Leigh?"

  "No. Not for sure. We have . . . some suspicions."

  "Do you want to talk about them?"

  "Yes. In a way I do. But I think it would be better if I didn't."

  "All right," he said. "For now."

  He swept the floor. The sound of the hard bristles on the concrete was almost hypnotic.

  "And maybe you had better talk to Arnie before too much longer."

  "Yeah. I was thinking about that." But it wasn't an interview I looked forward to.

  There was another period of silence. Dad finished sweeping and then glanced around. "Looks pretty good, huh?"

  "Great, Dad."

  He smiled a little sadly and lit a Winston. Since his heart attack he had given the butts up almost completely, but he kept a pack around, and every now and then he'd have one--usually when he felt under stress. "Bullshit. It looks empty as hell."

  "Well. . . yeah."

  "You want a hand upstairs, Dennis?"

  I got my crutches under me. "I wouldn't turn it down."

  He looked at me and snickered. "Long John Silver. All you need is the parrot."

  "Are you going to stand there giggling or give me a hand?"

  "Give you a hand, I guess."

  I slung an arm over his shoulder, feeling somehow like a little kid again--it brought back almost forgotten memories of him carrying me upstairs to bed on Sunday nights, after I started to doze off halfway through the Ed Sullivan Show. The smell of his aftershave was just the same.

  At the top he said, "Step on me if I'm getting too personal, Denny, but Leigh's not going with Arnie anymore, is she?"

  "No, Dad."

  "Is she going with you?"

  "I. . . well, I don't really know. I guess not."

  "Not yet, you mean."

  "Well--yeah, I guess so." I was starting to feel uncomfortable, and it must have showed, but he pushed on anyway.

  "Would it be fair to say that maybe she broke it off with Arnie because he wasn't the same person anymore?"

  "Yes. I think that would be fair to say."

  "Does he know about you and Leigh?"

  "Dad, there's nothing to know . . . at least, not yet."

  He cleared his throat, seemed to consider, and then said nothing. I let go of him and worked at getting my crutches under me. I worked a little harder at it than I had to, maybe.

  "I'll give you a little gratuitous advice," my father said finally. "Don't let him know what's between you and her--and never mind the protestations that there isn't anything. You're trying to help him some way, aren't you?"

  "I don't know if there's anything either Leigh or I can do for Arnie, Dad."

  "I've seen him two or three times," my father said.

  "You have?" I said, startled. "Where?"

  My father shrugged. "On the street. Downtown. You know. Libertyville's not that big, Dennis. He . . ."

  "He what?"

  "Hardly seemed to recognize me. And he looks older. Now that his face has cleared, he looks much older. I used to think he took after his father, but now--" He broke off suddenly. "Dennis, has it occurred to you that Arnie may be having some sort of nervous breakdown?"

  "Yes," I said, and only wished I could have told him that there were other possibilities. Worse ones. Possibilities that would have made my old man wonder if I was the one having a nervous breakdown.

  "You be careful," he said, and although he didn't mention what had happened to Will Darnell, I suddenly felt strongly that he was thinking of it. "You be careful, Dennis."

  Leigh called me on the telephone the next day and said her father was being called away to Los Angeles on year-end business and had proposed, on the spur of the moment, that they all go along with him and get away from the cold and the snow.

  "My mother was crazy about the idea, and I just couldn't think of any plausible reason to say no," she said. "It's only ten days, and school doesn't start again until January eighth."

  "It sounds great," I said. "Have fun out there."

  "You think I should go?"

  "If you don't, you ought to have your head examined."

  "Dennis?"

  "What?"

  Her voice dropped a little. "You'll be careful, won't you? I. . . well, I've been thinking about you a lot lately."

  She hung up then, leaving me feeling surprised and warm--but the guilt remained, fading a little now, maybe, but still there. My father had asked me if I was trying to help Arnie. Was I? Or was I maybe only snooping into a part of his life which he had expressly marked off-limits . . . and stealing his girl in the process? And what exactly would Arnie do or say if he found out?

  My head ached with questions, and I thought that maybe it was just as well that Leigh was going away for a while.

  As she herself had said about our folks, it seemed safer.

  On Friday the twenty-ninth, the last business day of the old year, I called the Libertyville American Legion Post and asked for the secretary. I got his name, Richard McCandless, from the building's janitor, who also found a telephone number to go with it. The number turned out to be that of David Emerson's, Libertyville's "good" furniture store. I was told to wait a moment and then McCandless came on, a deep, gravelly voice that sounded a tough sixty--as if maybe Patton and the owner of this voice had fought their way across Germany to Berlin shoulder to shoulder, possibly biting enemy bullets out of the air with their teeth as they went.

  "McCandless," he said.

  "Mr. McCandless, my name is Dennis Guilder. Last August you put on a military-style funeral for a fellow named Roland LeBay--"

  "Was he a friend of yours?"

  "No, only a bare acquaintance, but--"

  "Then I don't have to spare your feelings none," McCandless said, gravel rattling in his throat. He sounded like Andy Devine crossed with Broderick Crawford. "LeBay was nothing but a pure-d sandy-craw sonofabitch, and if I'd had my way, the Legion wouldn't have had a thing to do with planting him. He quit the organization back in 1970. If he hadn't quit, we would have fired him. That man was the most contentious bastard that ever lived."

  "Was he?"

  "You bet he was. He'd pick an argument with you, then up it to a fight if he could. You couldn't play poker with the sonofabitch, and you sure couldn't drink with him. You couldn't keep up with him, for one thing, and he'd get mean for another. Not that he had to go far to get to mean. What a crazy bastard he was, you should pardon my fran-cayse. Who are you, boy?"

  For an insane instant I thought of quoting Emily Dickinson at him: I'm nobody! Who are you?

  "A friend of mine bought a car from LeBay just before he died--"

  "Shit! Not that '57?"

  "Well, actually it was a '58--"

  "Yeah, yeah, '57 or '58, red and white. That was the only goddam thing he cared about. Treated it like it was a woman. It was over that car that he quit the Legion, did you know that?"

  "No," I said. "What happened?"

  "Ah, shit. Ancient history, kid. I'm bending your ear as it is. But every time I think of that sonofabitch LeBay, I see red. I've still got the scars on my hands. Uncle Sam had three years of my life during World War II and I never got so much as a Purple Heart out of it, although I was in combat almost all that time. I fought my way across half the little shitpot islands in the South Pacific. Me and about fifty other guys stood up to a banzai charge on Guadalcanal--two fucking million Japs coming at us hopped to the eyeballs and waving those swords they made out of Maxwell House coffee cans--and I never got a scar. I felt a couple of bullets go right by me, and just before we broke that charge the guy next to me got his guts rearranged courtesy of the Emperor of Japan, but the only times I saw the color of my own blood over there in the Pacific was when I cut myself shaving. Then . . ."

  McCandless laughed.

  "Shit on toast, there I go again. My wife says I'll open my mouth too wide someday and just fall right in. What'd you say your name was?"

  "Dennis Guilder."

 
; "Okay, Dennis, I bent your ear, now you bend mine. What did you want?"

  "Well, my friend bought that car and fixed it up . . . for sort of a street-rod, I guess you'd say. A showpiece."

  "Yeah, just like LeBay," McCandless said, and my mouth went dry. "He loved that fucking car, I'll say that for him. He didn't give a shit for his wife--you know what happened to her?"

  "Yes," I said.

  "He drove her to it," McCandless said grimly. "After their kid died, she didn't get any comfort from him at all. None. I don't think he gave much of a shit about the kid, either. Sorry, Dennis. I never could shut up. Talk all the time. Always have. My mother used to say, 'Dickie, your tongue's hung in the middle and runs on both ends.' What did you say you wanted?"

  "My friend and I went to LeBay's funeral," I said, "and after it was over, I introduced myself to his brother--"

  "He seemed like a right enough type," McCandless broke in. "Schoolteacher. Ohio."

  "That's right. I had a talk with him, and he did seem like a nice enough guy. I told him I was going to do my senior English paper on Ezra Pound--"

  "Ezra who?"

  "Pound."

  "Who the fuck's that? Was he at LeBay's funeral?"

  "No, sir. Pound was a poet."

  "A what?"

  "Poet. He's dead too."

  "Oh." McCandless sounded doubtful.

  "Anyway, LeBay--this is George LeBay--he said he'd send me a bunch of magazines about Ezra Pound for my report, if I wanted them. Well, it turns out that I could use them, but I forgot to get his address. I thought you might have it."

  "Sure, it'll be in the records; all that stuff is. I hate being fucking secretary, but my year's up this July, and never again. Know what I mean? Never-fucking-again."

  "I hope I'm not being a real pain in the ass."

  "No. Hell, no. I mean, that's what the American Legion's for, right? To help people. Gimme your address, Dennis, and I'll send you a card with the info on it."

  I gave him my name and address and apologized again for bothering him at his job.

  "Think nothing of it," he said. "I'm on my fucking coffee break, anyhow." I had a moment to wonder just what it was he did at David Emerson's, which really was where Libertyville's elite bought. Was he a salesman? I could see him showing some smart young lady around, saying, Here's one fuck of a nice couch, ma'am, and look at this goddam settee, we sure didn't have nothing like that on Guadalcanal when those fucking stoned-out Japs came at us with their Maxwell House swords.