Wheatyard stared at me across the living room, from the heavily-worn plaid couch which, despite my earlier imaginings, bore not even the slightest trace of bulky Victorian fustiness. There were no portraits of grim pioneer ancestors either.
It was the only room I would see in the house. As we entered he immediately sat down, with no indication of showing me further. Even the nickel tour was forgotten. In the next room at the back of the house I could see only a few cabinet doors covered with taped-on sheets of paper, and through the doorway I heard a low hum that suggested a refrigerator. But nowhere, in the living room nor what I assumed was the kitchen, could I see the vacuum cleaner which I heard during earlier phone calls. The dingy living room carpet showed he rarely vacuumed.
As soon as Wheatyard was seated, he continued to talk about his writing, in monologue, looking away from me. I listened attentively for several minutes, then made a comment that suddenly silenced him. He stared strangely, as if seeing me for the first time.
"I can't believe you'd say that," he said, his voice hurting with vulnerability I never would have expected.
Even out of the sun, inside the house the heat was no less severe than outdoors. The air hung like cobwebs, heavy and close, making me wish we were back in the front yard, where despite the sunburn at least the occasional wisp of breeze might cool our sweaty brows.
Inside was dim, despite the brilliance of the afternoon. Dark, heavy curtains fully covered the few windows, the sharp sunlight only leaking in at the very edges. When we entered, in the shadowy gloom I struggled to make out the room's contents, discreetly, trying not to seem nosy or rude. But deep down I wanted to be nosy, to find out as much as possible about Wheatyard's life, and given his natural reticence I might need to be rude.
My eyes slowly adjusted, and I saw that the walls were covered with clippings from vintage magazines, studio photographs of Burt Lancaster and Eartha Kitt and Maynard G. Krebs and others, advertisements for cigarettes and long-gone brands of whiskey. And, back in the far corner, vibrant Expressionist prints from Berlin's long-ago artistic heyday. I remembered just enough from my high school German classes to recognize the artists—Klee, Kokoschka, Lionel Feininger and, farthest away, what must have been a Kandinsky. Our teacher had attempted, mostly in vain, to expose us to German high culture. Most of my classmates ignored her, and I too had forgotten most of the Beethoven and Wagner and avant-garde literature.
But the one thing that stuck with me was the Expressionists—die Brücke, the Bridge school, and die blaue Reiter, the Blue Riders. Though any sort of context—the spheres of influence, the personal bonds between artists—had long since escaped me, many of the images remained, some of which I genuinely admired. Partway down, beyond the end of the couch and partly obscured by a floor lamp, I was heartened to spot an Emil Nolde—the exact print which had been taped to the wall behind my back-row desk in German class. The Nolde was a vague but evocative mountain landscape of blue waters and purple ridges and a dash of yellow sunshine, a lovely image that stayed stuck in my mind for all the years since.
But my high school reverie instantly vanished as Wheatyard repeated himself, in the same hurt tone. Despite my hopes in the front yard, he had again strayed from telling of his past life, and returned to his art.
"I can't believe you'd say that," he repeated. "You must hate my writing."
"Did I say that?" I countered, now fully back in the present. "Did I say I hated your writing?"
"You might as well have."
"I only said your writing is difficult—not bad, but complex. Complicated, challenging. You have to admit it's not the easiest prose to read."
He said nothing, looking down at his folded hands, still sitting sunken deep into one end of the broken couch. Before him, perched on an aluminum TV tray, was his battered Smith-Corona typewriter, the constant companion he had fondly spoken of several times over the past few months. The typewriter sat sideways, facing a folding chair, where he must have sat as he worked. Next to the typewriter stood a half-empty jar of Folgers Crystals—the apparent fuel for his writing binges—and below on the floor teetered a stack of typed pages at least two feet high.
"You have to admit," I repeated. He remained silent. "I thought you were proud that it's challenging, unconventional, non-mainstream. Difficult to read at first, but with intellect and effort the reader gets a unique reward. Not like Crichton or Stephen King, who serve up their books on a platter."
I moved closer as I spoke, from the armchair to the opposite end of the couch, hoping the narrowed distance might came him and make him realize I wasn't attacking.
"On a platter," Wheatyard snickered, reaching out and tapping the keys, whose imprinted letters, I could see now that I was nearer, were nearly worn off from overuse. "O-N-A-P-L-A-T-T-E-R." He smiled shyly, as if flattered.
"That's your phrase, remember."
"Of course I remember. I say it all the time, ever since I coined it for an essay I sent to Time about the deplorable state of American literature."
"Time magazine? You're kidding."
"No, I'm serious." He laughed lightly. "That must have been my masochistic phase."
"Elmer Glaciers Wheatyard, in Time."
"They never published it, never even sent an acknowledgment letter. Most publishers still go through that little formality, but not Time. But I'm glad they didn't. I regretted sending the essay before the mailbox door had even closed, and not getting an acknowledgment let me just forget about it sooner. I didn't even keep my own copy. I hardly remember anything about the essay other than books on a platter."
"You must be proud of that phrase, though, if you still remember it after forgetting everything else."
"It must have been the only good thing about the essay. What was I thinking? Did I really think that big money-grubbing corporate Time would actually publish my condemnation of the publishing industry it was in bed with?"
"Know your audience, but also know your medium."
"Hey, that's good. Yours? Sounds like Marshall McLuhan."
"Who?"
"The medium is the message? Form over content? Oh god, never mind. I keep forgetting you're a business major. And one with a master's degree, who loves business so much that he put himself through six years of it."
"Ten years, if you include my time at the bank," I replied, feeling relaxed for the first time since we came inside. "But loving it, no, not really. It's a necessary evil—steady paycheck, health insurance, comfortable retirement. If that's enough."
"Ah, finally. A crack in the buttoned-down facade. The wing-tipped facade."
"I've never owned a pair of wingtips."
"Symbolism, remember? My point is that having things not work out exactly the way you planned, spending the summer alone in Champaign mailing resumés all over the Midwest, not going straight from the academic business cult to the corporate business cult like all your consultant friends, now has you thinking a corporate career might not be all it's cracked up to be."
"Okay, so I'm not as enthused as I used to be," I said, pulling back, defensive. "But I still have to eat. Speaking of which, how do you eat?"
It was the most direct question I had asked him about his personal life.
"Tillsburg's cost of living, for one thing," he replied, his stating of the obvious clearly meant to evade the question.
"Yeah, but you have to have an income. You haven't published anything—yet—so you're not making money off your writing. You must be getting money from somewhere else."
"Okay, I confess. I have a billionaire patron out in the Hamptons who can't get enough difficult metaphorical fiction."
"I'm serious."
"Or...I'm a high-class gigolo, servicing the lonely lady professors of Champaign and Urbana, with the occasional humanitarian mission to Decatur. Since 1985."
"I'm serious."
"Alright, alright," he said quietly, his joking tone gone. "I get a check every month."
From? was the followup I didn't need to voice, as it w
as understood, though unspoken.
"From the state. Rehabilitation Services."
Rehabilitation? Worker's comp? He didn't seem like the physical labor type. Permanent disability? He wasn't disabled—his fingers, hands and arms all worked properly, judging from his typing output, and he walked well enough.
"Rehab Services, Mental Health Division."
He said it so flatly, so matter-of-fact and without the verbal smirk that came with the patron and gigolo jokes, that I knew he was serious.
"Okay, I'll come clean. You deserve that. You've been a good companion this summer, done some good listening without ever really hearing anything about me."
I said nothing. I had nothing to say anyway, and sensed that he'd keep talking without any further prodding. Once he finally got going, it might make his rants on literature seem tight-lipped and reticent.
"Here goes. I was diagnosed manic-depressive when I was fourteen. Just diagnosed, mind you. I never really believed that was true. Sure, I had my highs and lows, but any teenager does. I'd get violent sometimes, fights, and nobody at school had any idea what to do with me, so I figure that all of that—the diagnosis and then sending me away for treatment—was just a convenient way of dealing with me."
I remembered Hanratty's own diagnosis of mental illness, and how I thought that pat opinion seemed unfair, an objection that Wheatyard now echoed.
"But isn't that kind of severe? All because of a few fights?"
"Well, one fight in particular." He paused and loudly cleared his throat. "It was my sophomore year at Tillsburg High. This kid—a cocky asshole football player—was teasing me about something I don't even remember, and I got so agitated that I just couldn't take any more. But the kid wouldn't let up, he had me backed up against the lockers and I felt trapped, so desperate, and the only way out was through him."
Suddenly he rose from the couch and walked to the far end of the room. He stopped and stood motionless, staring straight ahead at the wall, seeming not to see the dazzling Klee print which hung directly before his eyes.
"And I...went...through...him," he said, his words deliberate and his voice a hoarse croak. "With my fists, and then my pocket knife."
"God."
"Didn't kill him or anything, but I messed him up pretty bad. He was only in the hospital for a few days, but the scars would disfigure him for life. His family was poor, and had no insurance for plastic surgery or money for a lawyer to sue us. When he got back to school he swore to everyone that he was going to kill me."
"How'd you stay away from him?"
"I didn't have to. They diagnosed me immediately and sent me away, first to this shithole group home in Decatur and then a bunch of other shitholes, Lincoln and Edwardsville and Quincy and some other little towns, whoever would take me."
"But why did anyone have to take you? What about your family?"
"Family."
He stood silent for a moment, his body turned toward me again but still looking away.
"After a year in group homes, I didn't have a family to go home to."
My silence urged him on, though part of me dreaded hearing what he had to say.
"March 9, 1976, my parents were driving home from a party, down a county highway at 2 A.M., pitch-black. My dad was driving, sober, my mom asleep in the passenger seat. People who were at the party said later that they had never seemed happier, after some really tough times together. They were finally getting along, just coming out from under all of that when—"
I held my breath, waiting, wanting but not wanting to hear what would come next.
"—a drunk driver coming the other way, 80 miles an hour with no headlights on, swerved across the center line and hit them head-on. Both killed, instantly."
The story he went on to tell, for the next hour in fits and starts to my respectful silence, was heartbreaking. Heartbreaking, although I knew it probably wasn't unique in the annals of the state juvenile system. Mental cruelty, violent altercations, constant clamor, endless group therapy sessions meant more for killing time than rehabilitating anybody—I'll simply leave it at that. No need for further specifics.
Yet as he spoke I couldn't help thinking that none of it—though fascinating—explained why he was still getting a check from the state every month, one just enough to live on. I assumed the state's responsibility ended when he turned eighteen, and didn't extend into his thirties. Though I continued to listen, I felt my mind drift back, trying to remember a scene, any scene, from Longing Dissolute Midnight about checks, cash, payment of any kind. All I came up with was J.P. Morgan passing a thick envelope to Jimmy Stewart's Mr. Smith under the oilclothed table of a grimy diner on New Year's Eve. I struggled to decipher that scene, assuming it meant anything at all. Maybe it meant nothing, and Wheatyard was just indulging a whim, toying with the premise of the great Morgan and the beloved Mr. Smith illicitly occupying the same unlikely space.
Finally Wheatyard's words won out, and I let the question go.
While he lingered in the group homes, Frieda shuttled through a string of foster families until she turned eighteen and then all but disappeared. He said they were already drifting apart at the time, as teenaged siblings often do, with the tragedy and living apart finally ending their relationship for good. She took their parents' deaths much harder than he had—she was needy and far more dependent on them than he ever was, and from the occasional phone call afterward he realized she went to pieces for a while. Slowly the calls dwindled away. The last he heard from Frieda was a letter, postmarked Indianapolis, in which she revealed she had married—at age twenty—an older man and that they were very happy.
For a moment I thought about probing around for her married name, then later dialing up directory assistance in Indianapolis and making the call. But had I asked, he surely would have questioned the relevance of her married name to me, and might withdraw in suspicion. Besides, he had finally opened up, and I could learn more listening to him now than I ever would from Frieda over the phone, if I could even find her.
The responsibility of minding Elmer Glaciers Wheatyard until he turned eighteen fell to the juvenile system and that long succession of group homes. But after reciting the litany of homes again, his words slowed as he mentioned a group home in Centerville, at the far southern end of the state. Then he suddenly fell silent, stopping short with a worried glance at me, without saying anything more about what happened there. The silence was broken only by the resurgent hum from the next room, clearly that of a refrigerator cycling on. I sensed shame in his glance, and wondered what he might be ashamed of.
He looked away, and several hushed minutes ticked away before he spoke again.
"But I've only told you how my family ended, which isn't the whole story," he resumed, his voice lighter but eyes still uneasy. "So I'll back up and tell you from the beginning. I grew up on a farm west of here, outside of Bement. Just me, my mom and dad, and Frieda. Sometimes, when times were good, we'd hire some help at harvest time, but mostly it was just the four of us. We never had much money, but I guess we were happy."
Centerville was clearly off-limits. Though I longed to hear more, anything about that, I was soon drawn back into his chosen words, grateful for whatever he was willing to tell.
"Dad drank too much, especially during the winter when there was nothing better to do. Tinkering with machinery, months before spring, only takes up so much time. So at first he drank at a bar in town, fifteen miles away, but after he ran his truck off the road a couple of times my mom finally decided she'd rather have him drunk at home than dead in a ditch. She let him have as much as he wanted after that, as long as he only drank at home. She promised to leave him alone, gave up the living room and the TV to his nightly binges, anything to keep him off the road.
"But once winter was over he would cut back on the booze, always sobering up for planting. He'd get through the summer and the harvest, making just enough money to hold us through another winter. We were poor, though I didn't realize it at th
e time. Dirt-rich but cash-poor. We had all that great soil under us, and as long as we got the planting and harvesting done on time we'd never be destitute.
"We were poor, but I still had a pretty good childhood. Happy, or at least happy compared to everything that happened later. Frieda and I didn't have many friends, but we kept each other company, doing all those stupid kid things—flying kites, cannonballing at the swimming hole, starting brushfires, making up stories, riding our bikes as fast as we could, right up to the edge of the irrigation ditch. She would always pull up short, but I'd always try to clear it, like Evel Knievel, hitting the embankment on the other side every time. Just like Evel at Snake River Canyon. I'd end up at the bottom, knee-deep in muddy water, with bumps and bruises but unfortunately no broken bones. I heard somewhere that Evel broke every bone in his body during his career, and I always thought that was cool. I truly envied him for that."
He sat back down on the couch and reached for a chipped china dish from the endtable, withdrawing another piece of Bazooka which he unwrapped without offering any to me. Which for once didn't bother me, so focused as I was on his narrative.
"The farm had a couple of good years in a row. Too good, though, because it made my dad too optimistic, and one year he bought another three hundred acres, like he expected the high yields and high prices to go on forever. Bought the land on credit and put up the whole farm as collateral. He took on too much debt, or over-leveraged as you business people say. Then prices collapsed that fall, and he couldn't pay the mortgage. Any other farmer probably would have gotten a break from the bank, but Dad had a pretty bad relationship with his banker. When times were good he didn't play politics like he should have, didn't make nice. He thought he was invincible, that he could do it all himself and bankers were nothing more than a nuisance. So he didn't cultivate"—he smiled, clearly recognizing the metaphor—"the friendly relations with his banker that might have saved him."
He shook his head, the smile disappearing as his mouth clenched into a bemused grimace.
"The bank wasted no time foreclosing. We lost the farm."
By this time his body had relaxed into the decades-old contours of the couch, his foot tapping the leg of the TV tray as he spoke. His story poured out, as if it had a life of its own and needed to escape from deep inside of him. As if he was nothing more than the caretaker and was powerless to hold it back.
"The bank threw us off the farm that December. They let us keep our household possessions, which weren't worth anything anyway, but we lost everything else—the house, the land, the machinery, what little savings my parents had put away. We moved here, to Tillsburg, and lived rent-free in this very house. Or squatted, I guess. The house belonged to Aunt Maude, my grandfather's sister, who had moved into a nursing home over in Tolono. Since the house was sitting empty, she agreed to let us live here. Or at least Dad claimed she agreed. She was already pretty senile at the time—she didn't remember me or Frieda at all when we visited, and barely remembered Dad—and probably had no idea what was going on. She was only coherent enough to find the house key to give to him."
I was thirsty in the clinging heat, but didn't want to interrupt him. He didn't have the slightest inclination to be a good host, not offering a beer or anything else to drink, or opening a window to let in a little air. It was almost as if I wasn't there, as if he would have poured out his life story right there in his living room whether I was present or not. I just happened to be sitting at the other end of the beaten-up couch, an audience he didn't need or even acknowledge—when he looked toward me, his eyes were turned inward as if he didn't see me.
"Dad got a job at the elevator here in town, Horton Grain, which was run by an old buddy of his that he had kept in touch with, and I went to Tillsburg High, before it got consolidated. It was weird living in town after being on a farm all my life, changing schools, trying to make new friends. Even with lots of kids around, I didn't have any more friends here than I had out on the farm. I never really fit in. I wasn't into sports or cars and I didn't smoke pot, so that pretty much eliminated all of the social groups around here."
"Sounds familiar," I affirmed.
He looked at me as if I had suddenly appeared from thin air. Then, as if remembering my arrival two hours earlier, he began again but then stopped just as quickly, after only a few words.
"And then I stabbed that kid, and everything…"
He fell silent, looking away and fiddling with the keys of the typewriter, but not playfully this time. He typed out a few words, sideways, which seemed to calm him somewhat. But still he said nothing. I hoped he would go on, but I saw he needed to be nudged ahead.
"So, you were telling me about...that one group home," I struggled, fighting back something rising in my throat. "What...what happened there?"
He began to speak, then swallowed hard, but when he tried again the words choked in his throat. He coughed violently several times, and for a moment I feared for him before he slowly began to breathe normally again. I lowered myself back down on the couch, seeing that the danger had passed, but still leaned forward at the ready. Though recovered, he remained silent. This time, again on the cusp of telling something big, the words didn't just slow but instead abruptly stopped, as if refusing to come forth. He looked at me with a look of guilt, seeming to regret being so open, even though again he had said almost nothing about Centerville.
We sat for a long time in awkward silence, his monologue clearly over, looking away from each other, him at the typewriter and me toward the Expressionists in the corner. Finally I took the hint that it was time to go. I made the long hot drive back to Champaign, thinking the whole way, not even listening to the radio.