by James Siegel
“Huh?”
“I’m from the newspaper. I just wanted to ask you a few questions.”
“Newspaper?”
I’d said nothing to dissipate that dazed look of his.
“That’s right.”
“I don’t really feel like talking. I’m… you know…”
Yes, I knew. But there were other tenets of my profession, which were maybe less than noble. The one, for instance, that says you have to get the story. Even when that story involved the kind of personal disasters that made up most of the news these days. You know what I’m talking about: murdered wives, missing babies, beheaded hostages-there were a lot of those going around.
It’s pretty simple. Even when someone doesn’t feel like talking, you have to feel like asking.
“I understand he drifted into your lane,” I said.
He nodded.
“And then, uh… what’s your name, sir… slowly, so I don’t misspell anything.”
“Crannell. Edward Crannell. Two Ls.”
I dutifully scribbled it down. I’d always forgone the tape recorder for the more tactile sensation of writing notes. Maybe I had an instinctual abhorrence of tape’s permanence-even at the beginning, long before I began taking liberties.
“Where are you from again, Mr. Crannell?” An old technique; ask a question as if they’ve already given you the answer.
“Cleveland,” he said.
“The one in Ohio?”
He nodded.
“Long way from home.”
“I’m in sales. Pharmaceuticals.”
“Rented car then, I guess?”
He grimaced as if that fact had just occurred to him; maybe he’d rolled the dice and forgone the accident insurance.
“So he came right at you, just drifted into your lane. That’s what happened?” This area of Highway 45 was devoid of a single curve-it had the unrelieved monotony of a ruler-drawn line.
Crannell nodded.
“I beeped the horn at the last second. He jammed on the brakes… I guess he couldn’t get out of the way.” He looked down in the general vicinity of his dust-covered shoes and slowly shook his head. “Jesus…”
“Have they checked you out, Mr. Crannell? Are you okay?”
He nodded. “I was wearing my seat belt. They said I was lucky.”
“Oh yeah.”
Swenson was poking around the wreck. Fine black cinders hovered in the air like gnats. The fire had mostly burnt itself out-it looked like the fire engine had sprayed it with anti-incendiary foam.
“Any idea why he did that? Why he drifted into the wrong lane? Did he fall asleep, maybe?”
Crannell seemed to ponder this for a moment, then shook his head no. “Don’t think so. I really can’t tell you.”
“Okay. Well, thank you.”
I walked a few feet away and snapped some pictures. Black car, purple sky, white-shirted sheriff, green cactus. If the Littleton Journal published in color, it really would’ve been something.
On the other hand, black-and-white was probably more appropriate. When I saw it on the front page of the Littleton Journal the next day, it seemed to capture the immutable contrast between life and death.
FOUR
I’d joined a bowling league.
It was kind of by accident. The town’s bowling alley, Muhammed Alley-it was owned by a failed middleweight named BJ who thought the name was hysterical-doubled as the town’s best bar.
I don’t mean it had a nice decor, had an interesting snack menu, or was frequented by hot-looking women.
I mean it was badly lit, sparsely filled, and in need of fumigation. It smelled like used bowling shoes.
When I first came to Littleton, I was in fugitive mode. I wasn’t seeking company; I was consciously avoiding it.
For a while, I managed to do a fairly good job of that at Muhammed Alley.
BJ doubled as the bartender, and unlike the general image of small-town barkeeps, he was blessed with no perceptible curiosity. Other than asking me what I wanted and quoting the bill-three margaritas, no salt, came to $14.95-it took several visits before he uttered an excess word.
That word-or two words, actually-was nice play, spoken only in my general direction, the result of center fielder Steve Finley making a tumbling circus catch in center field.
I was perfectly content with the lack of social interaction. I drank in the loneliness like I drank in the tequila-in small, bitter sips.
After a while, company found me.
One of the two insurance men in town-Sam Weitz, a transplanted New Englander with an obese wife suffering from type 2 diabetes-started drinking more or less the same time as I did. Generally late evening, when most everyone else was headed home to their families.
Not us.
Unlike BJ, Sam was imbued with curiosity. Maybe you get used to asking lots of personal questions in the insurance business. He struck up a conversation and stubbornly kept it going, even when confronted with my mostly monosyllabic answers.
One thing led to another.
Being that we were drinking in a bowling alley, one night he actually suggested bowling.
I was on my third margarita, already floating in that pleasant state I call purple haze, in honor of Hendrix, one of my musical idols. After all-doesn’t enough alcohol let you kiss the sky?
I must’ve mumbled okay.
I bowled a ridiculous 120 that night-making generous use of both gutters. Surprisingly, I kind of enjoyed hurling a heavy ball down a wooden alley, sending pins scattering in all directions-at least a few of them. I saw a kind of life metaphor in those flattened pins, how they reset just like that, virtually daring you to knock them down again. There was a lesson there about pluck and resilience, which I thought I might make use of.
Eventually, we were joined by Seth Bishop, self-confessed town hell-raiser-at least back in high school, where he was voted least likely to succeed, a prophecy that turned out to be pretty much on the money, since he nowadays subsisted on welfare and occasional Sheetrock jobs.
The local Exxon owner-Marv Riskin-rounded out our foursome.
After a while, we joined a league-Tuesday nights at 8.
One night Sheriff Swenson made an appearance, noticed I was keeping score, and told the league president to check the card for accuracy.
When Seth asked me what that was about, I told him I’d run into a little ethics problem in my last newspaper job.
“Boned your secretary?” he asked, kind of hopefully.
“Something like that.”
Tonight we were playing a team comprised of Littleton’s lone chiropractor, one of its two dentists, a doctor, and an accountant. No Indian chief.
Near the end of his second Bud, the doctor started talking about the body from the car.
They’d brought him the accident victim so he could fill out the death certificate. There was no coroner in Littleton, which made him the de facto ME.
“He was charred pretty good,” the doctor said. “I don’t get to see a lot of burn victims. Not like that.”
“Thanks for sharing, doc,” Seth said.
“Some of his insides were intact,” the doctor continued, undeterred. “Not a pretty sight.”
“Can you change the subject, for fuck’s sake,” Seth said. “What about a nice 18-year-old girl who OD’d? Don’t you have any of those?”
The doctor didn’t seem to get the joke. When he began describing in great detail what a burned liver looked like-apparently like four-day-old pate-Seth leaned in and said:
“Let me ask you something, doc. Is it true what they say about doctors? I mean do you get, what’s the word… immune to naked pussy after a while? It doesn’t do anything to you anymore?”
Sam, who was preparing to bowl, stopped to wait for the doctor’s answer. It appeared as if he was busy conjuring up images of naked pudenda being lasciviously displayed for the doctor’s enjoyment. Back home he had a 280-pound wife gorging on cream-filled Yodels.
�
��That’s an ignorant question,” the doctor said.
Calling Seth ignorant wasn’t really going to offend him. “I’ll take that as a no,” he said.
“Have they ID’d him yet?” I asked the doctor. I was nursing a Coors Light, having figured out that tequila and getting the ball to travel down the center of the lane were mutually exclusive. The headline of my story was:
Unidentified Man Dies in Flaming Car Crash
The doctor said: “Yeah. They found his license.”
“It didn’t burn up?”
“He had some kind of metallic card in his wallet that acted like insulation. They were able to make out his name.”
“Who was he?”
“I don’t know. Dennis something. White, 36, from Iowa.”
“Iowa? That’s funny.”
The doctor squinted at me. “What’s funny about it? It’s a state, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it’s a state. I was just ruminating on the great cosmic plan. A man from Iowa runs head-on into a salesman from Cleveland on a highway in California. It’s kind of funny, don’t you think?”
“Actually, no.”
Sam had rolled a seven, and now was edgily eyeing a difficult two-one split. He took a deep breath, sashayed into his delivery, and sent the ball straight down the middle, missing all three pins.
“There is something funny, though,” the doctor said.
“Other than that roll?” I’d dutifully recorded Sam’s score. It was crunch time; we were twenty pins behind with only five frames to go.
“He was castrated.”
“Huh? Who?”
“The deceased.”
“You mean in the accident?”
The doctor lifted his Bud, took a long sip.
“Nope,” he said. He slid out of the seat-not without some difficulty since he was a good thirty pounds overweight-and rummaged through the rack for his ball.
“What do you mean?” I had to shout a little to make myself heard over the din of the alley, but it was like trying to speak through a raging thunderstorm.
The doctor lifted a finger to me: wait.
He bowled a strike, then went into a victory dance that reminded me of the Freddy, a spastic-looking step from the sixties I’d caught on an old American Bandstand clip. After he settled back into his seat and meticulously penciled in an X, he said: “I mean, he was castrated.”
“When?”
“How do I know? Some time ago, I guess. It was done surgically.”
Seth must’ve overheard us.
“He had no balls?” Seth asked.
The doctor shook his head. “You want to say it louder. The people in the back of the alley didn’t hear you.”
“He had no balls?” Seth shouted. “That ought to do it.”
“You’ve got a problem, son,” the doctor said.
“You have no idea, pop.”
I tried to tally up what number beer Seth was on-I guessed seven. Not to mention the Panama Red he’d toked out in the parking lot.
“Why would someone have been castrated?” I asked the doctor.
“Good question.”
“Well, is there any medical reason?”
“Not really-testicular cancer, maybe-but both testicles would be highly unusual. Not like that.”
“Poor guy.”
“I’d say so. By the way, that’s confidential, okay? Don’t put it in the paper or anything.”
“I think everyone in the bowling alley might’ve already come into this information.”
The doctor blushed. “Me and my big mouth.”
Or Seth’s.
That night I had a dream. I was 9 years old and being chased down an empty road by a man trying to steal my entire marbles collection.
The clumsy symbolism wasn’t lost on me.
FIVE
We interrupt this program to bring you the following message.
My motel TV gets only three channels.
Nothing I particularly want to see. I leave it on to keep me company-to ward off encroaching fear.
It’s like a nightlight.
A few minutes ago, someone knocked on the door. I thought it was them.
I have two other friends worth mentioning with me here. Smith and Wesson.
They’re new friends, but considered reliable in times of need.
I pointed them toward the door of the motel room. Sic ’em.
It was the maid.
Luiza, I believe her name is, an illegal for sure. This worries me.
They can do things to an illegal. They can make her do whatever they want her to.
Okay, I know.
I sound deranged, beyond the pale.
Bear with me.
You have to see it like I did.
You have to piece it together.
Before my dad left home, he’d take Jimmy and me to breakfast at the Acropolis Diner every Sunday morning.
The paper placemats there had connect-the-dots on them.
The pretty, smiling waitress would hand me a pencil worn to the nub, and I’d wale away at it-at least till the blueberry pancakes and maple syrup arrived.
Here’s the thing.
It would take me until the last dot to figure it out. Sometimes not even then-despite the generous clues provided at the top of the page.
What four-legged creature is a noisy neigh-bor?
What mammal is always spouting something?
Horse? Whale? Platypus?
I just couldn’t see it.
I wasn’t good at connecting the dots. I couldn’t connect the dots, for example, between my dad and that smiling waitress, whom he was apparently sleeping with on a regular basis. He’d leave our family for her by the time I was 9.
I’m better at connecting things now.
Not right then, though. Not at the very beginning-before things got truly weird.
A man died in an accident and a woman turned 100, both on the same day.
Life and death.
It happens all the time, doesn’t it?
The next morning, I went online.
There’s a little-known Web site listing every registered sex offender in the United States-NSOPR.gov.
I’d already called the sheriff’s office for his name. Dennis Flaherty. From Ketchum City, Iowa.
The Web site is mostly visited by moms and dads who want to make sure that the neighbor who’s always staring at their 5-year-old hasn’t ever dabbled in pedophilia. These days, the authorities are supposed to alert you when a registered pervert moves into the neighborhood. It sometimes slips their minds.
In certain states, sexual predators can avoid jail if they agree to make themselves less dangerous. And how do they manage that? Not through therapy. It doesn’t work with NAMBLA members.
They agree to have their testicles taken off.
That’s right. Repeat offenders become like nervous batters against Roger Clemens: two strikes and no balls. It’s next to impossible to rape someone when your libido has been surgically removed.
I got no hits on Dennis Flaherty.
I tried spelling it differently.
Still nothing.
I kept at it for a while. I got a few Dennises, but no one who lived in Iowa. After a half hour or so, I gave up.
I switched to the online phone directory for Ketchum City.
There were three Flahertys.
The first one wasn’t home.
The second one said there was no Dennis in the house.
Then I tried the third one.
“Hello?”
“Hi, this is Tom Valle of the Littleton Journal.”
“The Littleton what?” It was a woman. Older, her voice sounded weary, lived in.
“The Littleton Journal,” I repeated, remembering when I used to be able to impress people with something more prestigious. “It’s a newspaper. I’m calling about Dennis.”
“Oh.”
Bingo.
“May I ask what relation you are to him, ma’am?”
; “Relation? I’m his mother.”
“Has anyone spoken to you about Dennis, Mrs. Flaherty?”
“Yes.”
“So you know about the accident.”
“Yes.”
“I’m terribly sorry for your loss.” It’s amazing how many times I’d uttered those words. To mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, grandparents, fiancees, husbands, wives-often enough to have long ago achieved the utter hollowness of platitude.
“Thank you,” Mrs. Flaherty said.
“This must’ve been a shock to you.”
Silence. “Yes.”
“Did Dennis live with you, Mrs. Flaherty?”
“No. I’d lost touch with him.”
“For how long?”
“How long?”
“Since you’d last seen him?”
“I don’t know. Five years.”
“But you’d spoken to him?”
“No.”
“What kind of business was he in?”
“Business? Why? He died in a traffic accident. That’s what they told me. What does it matter what business he was in? I’d like to go.”
She didn’t. She stayed on the line-I could hear raspy, shallow breathing. A smoker, I thought. Probably widowed or divorced. I’d lost touch with him, she’d said in the flat consonants of the Midwest-not we’d. She sounded half-annoyed at the unexpected intrusion, but half-flattered at the attention. Maybe she didn’t want to answer my questions, but she couldn’t bring herself to hang up. Not yet.
“Was Dennis ever in trouble with the law, Mrs. Flaherty?”
“What?”
“Was Dennis ever arrested?”
“What are you talking about?”
I’m talking about your son’s castration.
“I’d like to know if he ever did anything he shouldn’t have? Something, I don’t know, sexual?”
“What is this? What are you asking me? My son was a good person. Any problems he had were because of her.”
“Her?”
“His wife.” She made wife sound like the worst vulgarity on earth.
“What problems were those?”
“His depression. His drinking. You try living with a whore.”
“So they experienced some marital difficulties.”
“She experienced every man who looked at her. She was trash. I don’t even know if my grandson…”
