I can’t articulate the repulsion I feel. I can see this kid, feel him. He’s me trying to take care of Mom, trying to please her just to be the person who gives her that feeling she never gets. It’s me wishing I could make my father feel better, give him something to live for that is for him and not for my broken mother or us. I see Donny Blankenship like he’s in the room.
“And it went on and on and I hated myself and told myself I would stop and that I would find a way to make it up to him, but he just got quieter and more compliant. I went to his family’s home for holidays, continued to play golf with his father. I sat in his living room, separating myself further and further from the truth. All the signs were there. His parents came to me, said his grades were dropping, he was losing interest in sports.
“My God, I counseled him for more than a year as if nothing was going on. And he accepted my counseling. And then I was walking past the pews very early one morning and found him, slumped to the side, a bullet through his head, all evidence of his life drained out in the blood soaking into the wood. I missed him by maybe a half hour.” Rudy’s eyes well with tears. “I murdered a fourteen-year-old boy.”
I said I’d stay through this, but I want to run. I just want to run. I can barely breathe.
He takes a deep breath. “I covered my ass. At his parents’ request I presided over the funeral. His father, who was a pretty tough nut, told me again and again in the back room after the service how grateful he was that his son had me to talk to; he realized how emotionally unavailable he had been. He blamed himself, and I kept quiet.
“As soon as the church was empty, I got a bottle and started drinking. About midnight, I burned all my vestments in the woodstove in the small dwelling the church provided, got into my car, and started driving. Over the next few months I discovered that, through heavy doses of painkillers I’d been prescribed for a back injury and alcohol, I could blunt my desires. I’ve stayed drunk and fucked up ever since.
“I happened to be here in Trout when my car broke down and the Halls took me in to keep me from freezing. I’ve hid here since. Every day I wake up and hate myself and until I fell in with your great experiment of health and supplements, I medicated myself.” He nods and lets out a deep breath, looks away. “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”
I’m numb. “Why are you telling me now?”
He hangs his head. I wait. “Because I told myself that if I ever got even close to that position again, I’m outta here.” He looks at me.
“Me?”
“I think it’s because you’re small,” Rudy says. He snorts, a snort brimming over with self-contempt. “You’re actually too old for me. I—”
I stand. “Look, I gotta go.”
He smiles. He looks tired. Not sleepy. Life tired.
“Listen,” he says.
I put up my hands. “I gotta go, Rudy. I just…I gotta go.” And I’m gone.
I am in my pickup with the key in the ignition and the transmission in reverse and my foot on the gas in less time than it takes a NASCAR guy to make a pit stop, and I am driving down Main Street. What the hell is going on in my short life? I’ve been on a comet since Doc Wagner delivered my news. The universe has handed me things I’d have never dared to want. Dallas Suzuki. The mantle of a football hero. Monstrous esteem. Yet it’s taking the one thing I took for granted: my life. And now it’s showing me subtleties, paradoxes, almost no one gets to see. And those subtleties are fucking with my fundamental understanding of right and wrong, which I’ve got to get down in a hurry because I don’t have time not to.
The two days before my appointment with my new therapist can’t pass fast enough. But then:
“So you’re Ben Wolf.”
“Yes sir.”
“Ben, I’m Dr. Wells.”
“It says on your door that you’re Mr. Wells, M.A. That’s not a doctor.” I don’t know why I’m being a smart-ass. I think I’m still mad I lost Marla and this guy doesn’t look like he’s going to be a Marla.
He smiles. He’s young, probably late twenties, handsome in a dorky kind of way. He wears a tweed jacket and there is a pipe on his desk. He looks like Lambeer would look if he’d joined this profession. “Just have to defend my thesis,” he says. “I’m asking my patients to call me Doctor so I can get used to it.”
“Done,” I say. “Do you have a first name?”
“I do,” he says, but he doesn’t tell me what it is.
I sit while he looks over Marla’s notes. His master’s diploma from Stanford University is framed on the wall behind him next to what I assume is his family coat of arms. Other framed pictures dot his walls, all depicting different facets of his undergraduate and graduate days at Stanford. I wonder what a guy with all this educational ammo is doing in Trout, Idaho.
“I’m perplexed by what I read here, Ben.”
“If it says what I think it says, I’m perplexed, too.”
“What is it you think it says?”
“That I’m toast.”
“That’s not the part that perplexes me,” he says. “What perplexes me is that you’ve chosen to forgo traditional treatment for your disease and that you’ve chosen to keep it from your loved ones.”
I start to say I’m perplexed that he’s perplexed, but decide I don’t want to go down in the book of Guinness World Records for the most uses of that word in a dialogue between a midget and a dickwad.
“I’m not sure I can work with you under these conditions,” he says.
I look around the room and say, “We could turn down the lights and turn up the heat.”
“Excuse me?”
“Different conditions,” I say.
I detect that little marble muscle on the side of his jaw. When I used to see it on my dad I called it the “uhoh muscle.”
“The way you’re handling this situation is foolish,” he says. “It leaves you with no support and it also leaves you without a strategy to fight this disease. I’m afraid I might be compelled to bring in reinforcements.”
“What kind of reinforcements?”
“Your parents. Possibly your school.” He reads a little farther. “I’m also considering reporting this Marla person to state licensing. She should never have allowed you to follow this course of treatment.”
“She didn’t have a choice,” I say. “I made the decision before I met her. And if you ‘bring in reinforcements,’ you’ll be the one with the state licensing problems.”
“Actually I’m not sure that’s true, Ben. You see, if I deem that you are a danger to self or others, I’m required to report that. Not getting treatment for a terminal illness is a danger to self.”
I go from zero to really pissed off in about a second. “Not getting treatment for a terminal illness is a decision,” I say. “Tell you what, in about a minute I’m going to excuse myself to go to the bathroom and instead of going to the bathroom I will leave the building. When you figure out I’m not coming back you get that little Not Amenable to Treatment stamp out of your top drawer and bring it down on my file folder. If one person I don’t tell finds out about me being sick, you’re gonna be an almost doctor for a long time because I will call Stanford University and whoever gives you guys licenses to practice and then I’ll tell Sooner Cowans you’ve been messing with his girlfriend. I’m the person who decides how I live my life.”
“Unfortunately, Ben, we’re not talking about living your life. Who’s Sooner Cowans?”
I’m up with my hand on the doorknob. “This might not be the best match.”
To his credit, Not Quite Dr. Wells has taken at least one class in Hostile Adolescent Small People. “Tell you what,” he says. “I’ll back off on any decision about who I do or don’t talk to. Let’s you and I meet one more time, at least, and I’ll give you a little assignment. I want you to write down as many things as you can think of that you’d like to do or learn while you’re still…here.”
I nod in agreement, mostly because I just want the hell out o
f here, but also because, even through the fog, it sounds like kind of a neat idea.
“Man, why didn’t you warn me?”
“About what?”
“All the stuff that’s going on. Like Rudy McCoy’s a drunk and then he’s an expriest, then he’s my social conscious guru, then he’s a child molester. Jesus, which is it?”
“I told you to call me Hey-Soos, and it’s all of them.”
“Man, what am I supposed to do now? You know what I’m supposed to do, don’t you? I’m supposed to turn him in. The stats on those guys say they don’t do just one kid. Dallas’s uncle is a child molester. What do you think she’d say if she knew I was friends with one?”
“What do you think she’d say?”
“I think she’d say, ‘Choose.’ That’s what I’d say if I was her. I’d say, ‘That bastard wrecked my life and I’m not hanging with anyone who hangs with those bastards.’”
Hey-Soos says, “‘If I were she.’”
“What?”
“You said, ‘If I was her.’ That’s incorrect English. It’s ‘If I were she.’”
If I had any remaining suspicion that Hey-Soos isn’t really the deeper me, it disappears. The deeper I. Me. Like I’d know that.
“If I were she. Sheesh. I’d get laughed out of school for saying that.”
“So what are you going to do?” he says.
“I’m going to ask for your advice and do what you say.”
“That’s brave.”
I say, “I’d rather be smart than brave on this one.”
“What if I say you’ll have to figure this one out for yourself?”
“Then I’ll know you’re really just me and you don’t know.”
“Trying to flush me out, huh?”
“Whatever. I just need to know what to do. I don’t have the luxury of making a mistake.”
“Okay, let’s go over it. Do you think Rudy McCoy is an immediate danger to anyone?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I think he was telling the truth,” I say. “I think he’s been keeping himself under control by staying fucked up on drugs and alcohol. No reason to tell me that if it wasn’t true. Anyway, I don’t think he’s a danger.”
“Do you think he’s in danger?”
I consider that. Shit. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“He hates himself. He doesn’t have any control over what caused the worst thing he ever did.”
Hey-Soos says, “Okay, how about Dallas?”
“What about her?”
“Is she in danger?”
“No, but like I said, if I hang out with a child molester, I might be.”
“So how are you going to solve this?”
“I thought that’s what you were here for. I don’t know who to consider.”
“Why don’t you consider yourself?
“Because,” I say, “I’m not a child molester and I haven’t been molested. There’s nothing to consider.”
“How about considering who you are? Your impact? How about doing the least harm?”
There is a vast calm in my dream. I feel myself breathe. “Got it.”
Sixteen
THINGS I WANT TO KNOW BEFORE I DIE
Is it true that the day after Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army in the seventies, McDonald’s came out with a new hamburger called the Hearstburger? And that when you opened the bun you found no patty?
Is it also true that in 1960 a young author named Lee Harper wrote a national best seller about a man who imitates and taunts birds of prey, called To Mock a Killing Bird?
Is there really such a thing as Restless Leg Syndrome?
Who killed President Kennedy?
Now that Pluto has been relegated to the status of “dwarf planet” should it be my favorite?
Will you be able to fill my time slot with someone who can be fixed?
Actually I’m not this much of a smart-ass, but I think you and I don’t make a good match. Your question was a good one, though, and I’ve actually given it some real thought. Sorry I was such a jerk. Not your fault.
The Diminutive WolfMan
There’s a note on the bulletin board near the school entrance indicating I’m supposed to see Mr. Lambeer before his class today. I’m a little early because I had to deliver my list to Almost Doctor Wells and because I’ve been cruising Main Street since seven o’clock, thinking I should go into Halls Garage and talk with Rudy. But I ran the dialogue every possible way I could think of and couldn’t get it right.
Even with the morning’s extracurricular activities I get to school almost twenty-five minutes before class starts, and hunt down Mr. Lambeer in his room. He is working on lesson plans. Rumor has it his are finished for the year. The guy is tight.
“Mr. Wolf.”
“Mr. Lambeer.” I nod.
“Have a seat.”
“No thanks, I already have one,” I say and pat my butt. You have to get up pretty early in the late evening to stay ahead of me. But I do sit. It’s okay to joke with Lambeer as long as you do what he says.
“I hate to keep flip-flopping but I’m afraid I’m going to have to put the kibosh on your Malcolm X project again and I don’t want to use a lot of class time arguing with you about it. That’s why I asked you in.”
“Why the kibosh?”
“I talked with Ernie Graves, who’s chairman of the school board, and I have to agree with him. With the school bond levy coming up, it just makes us look frivolous.”
I say, “But it’s not frivolous. The lesson is there no matter the outcome. I get enough signatures for a referendum on a Malcolm X Avenue and it gets voted up or down. If I can’t get the signatures, it dies. And part of the project is a discussion of people’s verbal responses.”
Lambeer puts on his skeptical look. “Ben, you can’t tell me you’re not going to try and make the people of Trout look bigoted and uneducated.”
“I’ll ask everyone the exact same questions. I’ll show them to you before I do.”
“Knowing what answer you’ll get.”
“But if I know the answer I get, if I can predict that closely, that says something about the nature of how we see race, at least in this small part of the country.”
“That’s the end of it, Ben. It’s not going to happen.”
Lambeer is digging a hole he doesn’t want to be in, and he doesn’t even know he’s got a shovel. I raise my hands in surrender.
“I’m glad you understand,” he says. “Now get busy choosing your project, because you’re already way behind.”
“I’m on it,” I say at the door.
Now I figure a teacher gets you alone to deliver bad news for one of two reasons. Either he doesn’t want you to be embarrassed in public or he doesn’t want to be embarrassed himself. Of all my teachers, going way back to kindergarten, Lambeer is head and shoulders above all others for not giving a shit whether a student is embarrassed, so I figure the guy he’s protecting wears his very same undershorts. I don’t want to let him off quite so easily.
Beware the short terminal guy with nothing to lose.
I raise my hand as class begins.
“Mr. Wolf. Please tell me this has something to do with what we discussed about your term project.”
“This has something to do with what we discussed about my term project,” I say.
“Hallelujah,” he says.
“Hosanna,” I say back. I have no idea what that means.
“Fill me in.”
“I’m doing the Malcolm project anyway. I’ve been thinking—”
Lambeer’s jaw clamps. “Never a good thing,” he says through gritted teeth.
“How can I respect myself if I don’t do the project I think I’ll learn from most?”
Lambeer says, “Frankly I’m not interested in your self-respect in this case.”
“Lemme make my case,” I tell him. “You’d have to agree that nothing is more curre
nt in this society than bigotry, and the pearl of bigotry is racism,” and before he has a chance to respond, “and Malcolm is the perfect example of a guy who got it. He starts out as a street thug and a pimp, because that’s the kind of well-paying job a black guy in his time could get. He goes to prison, starts to educate himself, comes out, and joins a group founded itself on bigotry, the Black Muslims, a group that called all white men devils. But Malcolm X is smart and he goes to the source, which is Mecca, and he finds every color of person there is in that crowd headed for Mecca and if he’s gonna hate some color he’s gotta hate some of the people walking down that road beside him. So he comes back to say, ‘Hey, we’re doin’ it wrong,’ and he gets shot by people who hate, for preaching inclusion.”
“THAT’S ENOUGH!”
Oops. We have ignition.
“I’ve been as nice as I know how to be about this! I’ve let you take up way too much valuable class time with this foolishness! I’d better not hear another word! Not one more word! You will change your project or you will fail this class.”
“Yes sir,” I say.
“Good! Now what’s your project going to be?”
“Afraid I have to stick with Malcolm.”
I finish the period in the library.
So here I sit in Mr. Phelps’s office with Phelps and Lambeer, neither of whom knows he’s totally outclassed because he’s about to try to reason with a guy who has no use for a diploma.
“Mr. Lambeer tells me you’ve become somewhat incorrigible in his classroom, Ben—to the extent that your grade is in danger. And he tells me that, though you’re aware a failing grade could cost you your diploma, you won’t change your attitude.”
I look right at him, as if I’m waiting for the rest.
“Well?”
“Other than the incorrigible part, he’s right.”
“Mr. Lambeer has told me about your proposed project,” Phelps says, “and I have to agree, it’s frivolous.”
I shrug.