“What’s my damage?” he asked in a sad I-desperately-wish-I-could-pull-off-this-southern-charm-thing kind of way.
“Eighty-seven cents,” I said without energy.
“Aren’t you my neighbor?” he asked.
“I don’t think so.” I did not want to talk to John Barling anymore.
“Yeah, you are. Hey, did they ever find your brother?”
“No. Haven’t seen him around by any chance, have you?” I asked almost as seriously as I was sarcastic.
“Can’t say that I have. What a shame. Maybe he’ll turn up soon. I hope so anyway.”
“I hope that bird turns up soon too,” I said, not able to help myself.
John Barling didn’t say anything else as he walked out the door (ding-ding) with a puzzled look on his face.
Book Title #78: It Is Not a Sin to Kill a Woodpecker.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Tower Above the Earth
That August, as Benton stepped into his dormitory at the University of Atlanta, he breathed deeply, closed his eyes, and fell backward onto his new bed. He then heard the flushing of a toilet from the bathroom and, as the door swung open, sat up to see who was there. Before him stood a tall, lean, and muscular boy around his age with neatly combed brown hair, piercing eyes, and a serious look about him.
“You Benton Sage?” the boy said.
“Yeah,” Benton said, standing up and extending his hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“Cabot Searcy. Nice to meet you, too, Benton,” he said, his serious look melting away.
“You been here long?” Benton asked.
“Just long enough to get lost a few times,” he joked, dropping down onto his bed.
The two laughed and talked for a while before deciding to walk around the hall to meet some of their new neighbors. Within ten minutes they had met a French major named Lucy, a journalism student named Thomas, and two sorority girls with undeclared majors. Back in their room, the two began unpacking and, before long, found themselves settled in and ready for bed.
“Busy day tomorrow,” Cabot said from his bed, the room completely dark.
“Yeah. I hear this orientation thing lasts forever,” Benton added.
“Hey, you never told me what you’re gonna do with your English degree,” Cabot said.
“Oh. I’m gonna be a writer,” Benton said for the first time ever.
“Cool. I’m studying philosophy ’cause, well, I’m gonna change the world.”
Benton Sage found college to be less interesting than high school only because the girls there seemed even ditzier and more drunken and the guys all seemed a bit too preoccupied with their own bodies, always lifting weights or talking about lifting weights or secretly staring down at their own biceps in the middle of a history lecture.
“I’ve got no need for muscles,” Benton told Cabot Searcy one day at lunch.
“Why’s that?”
“Because writers never have to beat anyone up or lift anything heavy. At least I don’t think they do,” he joked.
“I guess you’re right. Just don’t piss anyone off with any of your books,” Cabot said, laughing.
Cabot Searcy had the kind of confidence that made it difficult for whoever was around him to pay anyone else any attention at all. When Cabot Searcy began to speak, the entire room centered on him. When he laughed, the entire room began to laugh. When he seemed angry, the entire room scowled and frowned. And girls, well, they practically lined up outside of Cabot and Benton’s room, waiting their turns to be touched by greatness. Benton, on the other hand, had yet to ask even one girl out and spent much of his time in the school library or coffee shop, always reading. One particular night, as Cabot Searcy was coming in late from a date, he looked over at Benton, who was reading some thick novel, and began to talk. Benton, of course, immediately listened.
“You don’t like girls,” Cabot said in a serious manner.
“What?” Benton asked.
“If you’re gay, it’s fine. My cousin’s gay. Doesn’t bother me.”
“I’m not gay,” Benton said, sitting up in bed.
“No, really. It’s fine. Just fess up already.”
“Cabot, shut up.”
“Fine. All right. So why do you sit in this room every night reading instead of coming out and having fun?”
“I just never feel like going anywhere. I just wanna sit here and study.”
“It’s got to get old,” Cabot said, shaking his head, almost sounding truly concerned.
“It doesn’t. Maybe you should study more yourself,” Benton said, turning out his bedside lamp and lying back down.
It was not Benton Sage who was bothered by the conversation that night. Cabot Searcy, staring at the ceiling and struggling to fall asleep, could not help but think about how many times he had fallen asleep in class that semester or how many people he had hired to write research papers for him. He couldn’t help but remember the two classes he had already dropped out of or the midterm in geology that he’d flunked. And so, in an English class the next day, Cabot Searcy sat straight up in his seat, his eyes glued to the chalkboard, his ears tuned to the lecture, his finger scanning the book for details. He highlighted every important line. He bookmarked every referenced page. He scribbled notes in the margins. Cabot Searcy began to care about learning not for the sake of making good grades, but because he still wanted to change the world.
“I passed. Can you believe that?” Cabot asked Benton on the last day of the semester.
“Really?” Benton asked.
“Yeah. My parents are gonna flip. All that studying pay off?”
“No. I have to retake two classes,” Benton answered.
“Oh,” Cabot said, for lack of anything else to say.
While most everyone else was home visiting family for Christmas break, Benton Sage opted to stay behind and begin work on what would be his first novel. Cabot Searcy, gathering his things, told Benton that he was welcome to come to Vidalia with him for the week, but Benton said he could use the quiet time to work on some things and get his head straight. Benton Sage, having written only one page in four days, celebrated Christmas morning by watching a rerun of The Wonder Years and eating a candy bar. When he called home to talk to his mother, no one answered. When he thought of how his sisters always sang “O Holy Night” on Christmas Eve, he teared up. Benton Sage no longer believed in Christmas, because he felt that God had misled him. He had tried to help the world, but the world wouldn’t let him. That night, just as the church bells began to ring midnight at the First Baptist on Washington Street, Benton was walking up the stairwell of the bell tower. When the twelfth bell had rung, Benton felt air rush against his face, his arms outstretched on both sides. He heard the quiet singing of Christmas carols. His lungs breathed in one final cold breath as his body became part of the earth.
CHAPTER NINE
In Defense of Irrationality
“I just don’t like that guy,” I said to Lucas about John Barling, one afternoon five weeks after Gabriel played Casper.
“Then we’ll just have to kill him,” Lucas replied confidently, with one eyebrow raised.
It took me a few seconds of staring into Lucas’s eyes to verify that he was joking. Around that time he had begun to say and do things that, as Dr. Webb says, were signs of some sort of nervous breakdown or stress-induced mania. He refused to sleep anywhere other than my bedroom floor, he started driving me to work and staying with me during my entire shift, and he began researching suspected kidnappings across the state via his laptop computer.
“This kid was missing for three years and his uncle had him the whole time!” Lucas yelled to me one morning while I was brushing my teeth.
“So?” I said back, dripping toothpaste onto the counter.
“So, do you have any crazy uncles?”
“No!” I laughed, although I knew Lucas Cader was dead serious.
When one enters his kitchen to find his mother, father, and best friend all sea
ted in front of a stack of uneaten pancakes, he knows that something strange has happened. He instantly remembers the last time his entire family sat there together and can just faintly hear the sound of his brother impersonating their father’s laugh, which was known to be surprisingly high-pitched and awkward. He sees his father turn red, trying his best to hold in his laughter as Gabriel stands up and begins to dance as he had witnessed their mother doing while dusting a few days before. Samuel Witter then loses it, tears stream down his face. Sarah Witter follows, holding her stomach tightly as she bends over in embarrassment and hilarity. Cullen Witter sits at the end of the table, eyes watering, smile hurting, and watches his brother in awe.
As I sat down in between Lucas Cader and my father, I caught a glimpse of the headline on the front of the newspaper that hid his face from view. It read LILY EMBRACES NATIONAL CELEBRITY. I knew instantly that what followed was another article about everyone in town being so damn obsessed with that bird. I knew that someone had been interviewed about all the visitors in town from all over the country and that they’d said things like “I can’t believe it!” and “Have you ever seen such a thing in your whole life?” Feeling vomit rise up in my throat, I turned to Lucas to see that he had his eyes closed and his hands clasped together. I looked across the table at my mother, who had a tear falling down her cheek, and asked her, in a whisper, what was wrong.
“That boy Russell Quitman had a car wreck in Florida and broke his neck,” she said softly. “Isn’t that terrible?”
It took a minute to get the image of the Quit Man lying bloody on the pavement out of my head.
“Is he okay?” I asked.
“He’s paralyzed,” Lucas said, his eyes still closed, “from the waist down.”
“Good God. That’s awful,” I said, surprised that I actually meant it.
“My mom called a few minutes ago and said his mother had called and told her,” Lucas added. “She said he’d be in the hospital down there for another few weeks.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know what to say.
“Poor Janette,” my mother added, referring to Russell’s mom.
“Poor Don. He’s got to pay the doctor bills,” my dad said from behind the paper.
“Poor Ada,” I said finally. “This makes three for three.”
“No,” Lucas interrupted, “they broke up two weeks ago. I didn’t tell you?”
“Uh, no.”
“They did. She told him she wanted to be single when she went to college.” Lucas laughed, but then stopped himself quickly.
“Just think,” I said, “if they’d still been together, he’d probably be dead.”
“Probably,” Lucas agreed.
Alma Ember was beginning to become less of a welcome distraction and more of an inconvenience to me. A seventeen-year-old boy cannot be expected to adequately replace a nineteen-year-old woman’s college-educated husband. And so, with the utmost maturity and respect, I told Alma Ember, in her parents’ shag-carpeted living room, that we probably shouldn’t see each other anymore. When she started to cry, I felt very nervous and was racking my brain for some sort of reaction, some wise word, some supportive, comforting gesture. I came up with nothing. Gabriel Witter would have been able to have her laughing by the time he left the room. I saw her still crying through the window as I backed out of the driveway.
Only once before then had I made a girl cry. This was, of course, Laura Fish. After just three dates, the two of us, sixteen years old at the time, decided to get more acquainted one sunny afternoon at the previously mentioned spot on the bank of the White River. Once our clothes were back on and we were back in Laura’s car, I began to laugh. She asked why. I refused to tell her. She stopped the car and pulled over onto the side of the road. She asked why again. I refused, shaking my head, my hand clasped over my mouth. She began to cry.
“What the hell?” I asked.
“Why are you laughing at me?”
“I’m not. I mean, I just got tickled, I guess. It’s nothing,” I said the way I do when I think the person I’m talking to is being irrational.
“You’re a jerk,” she said back.
“Laura, I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at the fact that we just went through all of that to lay beside each other naked in the mud for an hour and then go home,” I said.
“Get out,” she said calmly, unlocking the doors.
“Laura, I didn’t do anything!”
“I’m sorry I’m not the whore you’re looking for, Cullen. Now get out.”
“Laura,” I said, standing outside her car with the door open, “I was laughing at us, not at you. I’m not looking for a whore. I don’t even like whores. I’ve never even met a whore!”
“Well, good luck. Jerk!”
She sped off, the door slamming shut soon after as I was left coughing in the cloud of dust thrown up by her tires. Walking down the dirt road that day, I imagined myself being brave and hitchhiking the three miles to my house. I then imagined a one-toothed truck driver picking me up and asking me about my friends and hobbies. This made me queasy. And just as I began to smile thinking about Laura Fish running naked into the river, a truck came speeding up beside me and stopped. Again, I coughed in the dust. Just as I could see in front of me again, Joe Eddie Fish, Laura’s fifteen-year-old brother, who’d been driving illegally since he was thirteen, was walking toward me.
“My sister says you’re a creep,” he said loudly.
“Your sister is crazy,” I said back, not being able to stop myself.
“You wanna say that again?” he asked.
“Can we just talk for a minute?” I said, trying not to laugh at the absurdity of my situation.
“Talk is cheap,” he said back.
“Really, Joe Eddie? Are you comfortable with what you just said?”
“Shut up, Cullen. Damn. I’m trying to be intimidatin’!” he whined.
“Joe Eddie, you used to run through the sprinkler in my front yard. It’s hard to be scared of you,” I said, laughing.
“Shit, Cullen. I’m sposed to be kickin’ your ass.” He laughed too.
“Were you really gonna do it, Joe Eddie?” I asked.
“I thought I was.”
“Will you just drive me home instead?”
“Come on.”
I told Joe Eddie the entire story as he drove me home, and he laughed right along with me. He talked about how his sister overreacted to just about everything anyone said to her and about how his mother did the same thing. I told Joe Eddie that it was a shame that he and Gabriel didn’t hang out anymore, and he said that Gabriel was too smart for him. “He makes me feel stupid. But it isn’t his fault. We aren’t on the same level, ya know?” I felt like that was one of the first adult conversations Joe Eddie had ever had. I also felt like he wasn’t as dumb as everyone made him feel.
“Thanks for the ride,” I said, unbuckling my seat belt.
“Cullen,” he said, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
Just as soon as the words had left my lips, Joe Eddie’s fist met my right eye. Black. For a few seconds I saw black. Then, as the stinging intensified and I rolled myself out of the truck, my head began to throb and I hobbled toward the house. Joe Eddie Fish had, in his eyes, defended his sister’s honor. He had done this even though he believed her to be crazy. For that, I was not angry at Joe Eddie. He had principles. That’s more than I could say for most. The next day Laura Fish passed me in the hallway with a smirk. My eye was purple. Lucas laughed and nudged my arm. Gabriel whistled the theme to Rocky.
Now that Russell Quitman’s fate had been sealed, I was feeling very guilty for all the zombie fantasies in which I had chopped off his head. That being said, I was feeling less and less guilty for all the nonzombie fantasies I had about Ada Taylor and her wrinkly skirt. I was having one such fantasy while shelving cigarettes one Saturday morning in July. My fantasy was soon interrupted when someone entered the store. Ding-ding.
“Hello,??
? I said, never taking my eyes from the wall of cigarettes.
“You should get a haircut,” a voice said from behind me. It was a girl’s voice; that’s all I knew in that moment.
“Why do I need …,” I began as I turned around to see Ada Taylor standing before me, a green wooden counter and a thick awkwardness between us.
“Because it’s gettin’ too long. You tryin’ to look like a surfer or somethin’?” she joked.
“No.” I had no idea what to say to her as she nonchalantly carried on a conversation with me.
“You’re acting weird, Cullen Witter,” she said with a grin.
“Oh, I just didn’t expect to see you, that’s all,” I said shakily.
“Well, I came in here to see you. If that’s okay.” She suddenly seemed anxious.
“It’s fine, Ada. How’ve you been?” I mustered up the courage to try and ignore the fact that a beautiful girl whom I’d never said more than hi to had come to visit me at work.
“I’m here because I heard about your brother a long time ago and I haven’t gotten the chance to see you since.” Her tone had gone from playful to serious.
“Oh. It’s fine. You didn’t have to—”
“I did,” she interrupted. “I’ve been thinking about it for weeks, since I heard, and I’ve felt so guilty for not helping y’all look for him. I’m ashamed that I didn’t do anything but think about you, instead of calling to check on you or coming to see you.”