Flabbergasted: A Novel

by Ray Blackston

  "I'll take care of Mr. Gruber, sir."

  "Great. And one other thing-who decorated our lobby with all those flowers?"

  "They're dahlias, sir. From Beatrice. She cashed out on Wednesday. Sold everything. Over three quarters of a million bucks. Wanted to say thanks. Said she's baking you a pie, too."

  "A pie?"

  "Peach, I think."

  "And you say they're called dahlias?"

  "Primrose yellow."

  Mr. Brophy set his glasses on the desk and rubbed his eyes. "How do we get these people as clients?"

  "This is South Carolina, boss."

  "Yes ... yes, it is," he said, extending his hand. "Congratulations, Jay. Proud of you."

  "Thank you, sir." I pulled open the mahogany door.

  "And Jay?"

  "Yessir?"

  "Who's that friend of yours who gives the surfing lessons?"

  "His name is Ransom, sir."

  "Could you get me his number?"

  "Will e-mail it at lunch."

  "Great. And one more thing ..."

  "Sir?"

  `Just remember, that's a big city you'll be moving into. Don't talk to the bums."

  "Appreciate the tip, sir."

  Back in my office, I high-fived myself six times. Make that seven.

  I stayed late that night, reassuring clients that the market would come back, but mostly I sat at my desk and thought, pondering once again life's mercurial momentum. Dallas to Carolina, Carolina to Manhattan. Where would it stop, and when? When did a person accumulate enough to just stop and bake cookies for their stockbroker?

  But then reality hit. My drive home evaporated into the countless thoughts and anxieties that accompany promotion. Stoplights came and went, the traffic seemed liquid, and I did not remember turning onto my street.

  After a celebratory pizza, I collapsed on my sofa, thinking of sprawling Manhattan and how I'd fit in, of blaring cab horns and if I'd learn to whistle, of Broadway plays and how many I'd get to see, and of the Amazon rainforest, wooden huts on skinny stilts, and a girl at peace with God and her bag of dark chocolates.

  Sympathizing with a client who'd just lost thousands is easy, but doing the same with a girl who's been dumped-that's another matter.

  Seated in the corner of a red plastic booth, alone with two females at lunch hour, I watched the crowd file into the deli, past our intensity and the warm scent of sourdough bread.

  "He just said it without any emotion," complained Lydia, sobbing into a napkin. Her navy blouse hid the tear stains, and a Carolina First Bank name tag hung crooked at the third button.

  "Surely Joe gave a reason, Lydia," I offered, the words halfhearted as I inspected my sandwich. My lunch plan had been to share my big news, but as soon as I'd walked in, it was evident that the relational would trump the vocational. Big news would have to wait.

  Darcy adjusted a clip in her hair before helping to comfort her jilted friend. Oddly, the clip was white, though her dress was indeed an Ann Taylor, and it did indeed match her car. "Guys don't give reasons," said Darcy, talking directly to Lydia. "Ending a relationship to them is like ending a visit to the men's room.... They just expect a pull of the handle to clean everything up and leave nary a mess."

  I swallowed a second bite of turkey on wheat. "That was so very eloquent, Darcy."

  Lydia blew her nose, hid the tissue, and slurped her cola. `Joe said he was leaving to play winter baseball in the Dominican Republic and needed to be free to concentrate ... as if some pro scout is more important than me."

  "How long had you two been seeing each other?" I asked.

  She picked at her salad, flicking tomatoes, gathering croutons. "Not long-about the same as Stanley and Rona.... We actually double-dated with them once."

  "Whoa!" said Darcy. "How did that go?"

  She blew her nose again and said, "Not so good. Joe said Stanley uses too many big words, and Joe was frustrated 'cause he didn't have his dictionary with him. He just kept nodding his head while Stanley preached a sermon over dessert. Me and Rona ended up drinking coffee and talking about the fall fashions."

  "How many dates with Joe?" asked Darcy, adding cream to her gourmet coffee.

  "Nine and a half," said Lydia. "Eight and then he went on a road trip for ten days and then he picked me up last week after I got off work at the bank. We went for pizza and the batting cages again, and I thought I loved him. Now I gotta explain everything to fifty nosy singles at church, which is even worse than getting dumped."

  The tea was too sweet, and I was out of advice. Handing her fresh napkins was my final attempt at compassion.

  "Men, they just do not ..." said Darcy. She looked angry.

  "We're not all that way."

  "Yes, you are," said Lydia. "And the athletic guys are the worst. No wonder they're always cocky and always self-absorbed and always embarrassing themselves on national TV."

  I tried again. "Isn't there a verse somewhere about all things working out for good. . ."

  "That doesn't apply to baseball players," said Lydia.

  `Jocks have their own verses," said Darcy. "Like, I am the center of the universe and I am immortal and I can dump whoever I want whenever I want."

  "But I thought y'all said baseball players can't read."

  "Audio cassettes," said Lydia.

  "Yeah, audio cassettes," said Darcy, rising from the booth. "And it's one more piece of evidence to back up my theory."

  "What theory?" I inquired.

  She dropped her tip on the table. "The one I wrote about last Sunday. That the closest thing to purgatory is our church singles group."

  "That was you?"

  Darcy pulled her blonde mane over one shoulder and handed me the lunch tab.

  Another talk was over, another tide crested.

  I felt bad for Lydia and her relational rope burn. She wiped her eyes, stood, and dropped her napkin on the table. "Thanks for trying, Jay."

  In line to pay the bill, I looked out the deli window to watch Lime Sherbet ramble away: a blonde mane, a red mane, one tall, one short. Like mismatched socks on a clothesline, just a-blowin' in the wind.

  Blue lights flashed from the northbound lanes of 1-385, but through the darkness and across the median it was impossible to tell if the patrolman was Officer Theologian.

  I honked anyway-we were southbound.

  There were few volunteers to join our work project-only four of us willing to spend the weekend pounding nails with Preacher Asbury Smoak. We were en route to McClellanville, a coastal town over two hundred miles away, somewhere north of Charleston and, according to our map, a mere dot on the road, a lone dot bordered by salt marsh on one side, national forest on the other. The preacher said he'd meet us Friday at midnight. We'd sleep at his house and begin work at daybreak.

  At low volume I tuned in to the golden oldies, though rampant snoring, emanating from three of four corners, muted the lyrics. Ransom Delaney in the passenger seat with his head against the window, Steve Cole behind me, and Maurice Evans-sixty-three-year-old janitor extraordinaire-breathing light rhythms into corner number four. Like dogs who can't harmonize, they seemed content to snore and snort over each other in sporadic gulps of pure Southern air.

  Forty miles passed. Ransom woke. Said he was hungry and could we stop at the next exit. But the next exit contained only a cheap motel and a convenience store.

  He was already back asleep when I parked amid the neon.

  My offer to buy snacks was met with a mumble for beef jerky and orange soda, which sounded good, so I doubled the order. Steve said a MoonPie and a chocolate drink would do for him, but Maurice said he didn't care for anything now, thank ya kindly.

  "What's the matter, Maurice?"

  "Nothin' the matter. I stopped eating junk food."

  But an all-night grocer summoned his appetite. After ten minutes of browsing, Maurice walked out with raw carrots, blueberry bagels, and Perrier water.

  "Everybody happy now?" I asked, cranking the
engine.

  "Yeah, uh-huh, mmmyeah."

  Bypassing Charleston, we traveled north on the coastal route, a lonely stretch of highway lacking any feature except for a blackened stillness and the heavy scent of salt marsh. McClellanville lay somber. No streetlights to illuminate a sign; no landmark worthy of direction. Asbury said to turn left six miles north from the center of town, but if this qualified as a town, then I was qualified to teach Revelation.

  At a quarter to twelve, my comrades were back asleep. Even worse, beef jerky had wedged between my teeth, and my drink was lukewarm.

  Off the highway and onto a narrow dirt road, I felt claustrophobic from the tall grass lining the shoulders. Slasher grass, I called it. Like limber green razors, bending forth to slash the unwary.

  "Anybody awake?"

  There was no response. The odometer showed two miles since we had turned off the highway, though it felt like twenty. In my rearview mirror, trails of dust rose and collapsed into the glow of red taillights. Two lefts, then right again. The road dipped and curved, dust rose and fell, and the slasher grass scraped our doors in dry, bristly taunts.

  The Blazer hit a root, jolting tires from ruts and friends from slumber.

  "Where have you gotten us now?" asked Ransom, grumbly and half awake. He turned on the dome light. Drops of orange soda stained his shorts.

  "He said the house was on this road."

  "Who would live here?" he asked, pointing at the blackness.

  "No one. It's his inheritance."

  Steve tapped my shoulder. "Can we go back and garden with Stanley and the daylily club?"

  I glanced in the mirror to see Maurice crossing his index fingers as if to fight off evil spirits, which was just fine, because if you're gonna get lost at night in the barren lowcountry, then what you need is an elderly janitor who thinks he's the exorcist.

  Steve gripped and shook my headrest. "We should just turn around and go home."

  I stopped in the road and cut off the dome light. "No way."

  "You don't understand," said Steve. "All sorts of evil lurks in the lowcountry."

  "Not sayin' you afraid, are ya?" asked Maurice between sips of Perrier.

  "I'm saying we should just go home."

  Enough of late-night arguments. "Gentlemen, as your driver, I say we plow through both the lowcountry and the lurking evil until we find this House of Asbury."

  Steve slumped back in his seat, muttering that I'd never but never drive him anywhere in the future.

  "Dude," said Ransom, "you won't be around in the future with that appetite for MoonPies clogging your veins and arteries."

  "That's right," said Maurice, taking down his cross. "You should avoid the red meat, too. That stuff may not kill ya fast ... but it'll kill ya slow, kill ya dead."

  "Men," I said, revving the engine, "this is no time to discuss red meat, MoonPies, or killin' us dead. So tell me, do we turn around or do we keep going?"

  We voted three to one to keep going, while Steve the Dissenter clutched his arms in mock disgust.

  After another mile of dust, roots, and claustrophobia, we spotted a rotting post in the headlights, the letters S M 0 A K carved from top to bottom. I turned my Blazer onto the driveway, a long, sandy path lined with six enormous oak trees. The oaks looked much friendlier than the slasher grass, so I parked beneath the last one and aimed my headlights at the front steps.

  Overgrown bushes spilled across the bricks. Two black shutters dangled awkwardly from the second floor. Mongrel weeds, four feet high and bending from their own weight, shadowed the porch.

  "That preacher had better be here," said Steve.

  "I don't see no lights," said Maurice.

  "I don't think he has electricity," Ransom added.

  "I don't believe this," said Steve.

  We'd been stood up. At 12:30 A.M. By a preacher who pets sharks on the head.

  This never happened in Dallas. In Dallas, the preachers were punctual.

  Or so I'd heard.

  We sat in the Blazer, beneath the oaks, eating junk food and raw carrots, sipping orange soda and Perrier water. Too tired to drive home, too sleepy to make decisions.

  "When's Jamie due?" I asked.

  "Late February," said Ransom, unwrapping his third beef jerky. "And what about you? Ever hear from Miss Missionary?"

  "Sent one letter each, but that was two months ago."

  He chewed his jerky and said, "Cool."

  High-pitched howls echoed through the blackness; three howls and a bark.

  "Lock the doors," said Maurice.

  "Already locked," Steve answered.

  I told them to go ahead and hide behind locked doors, but that I was going for a look around with my trusty Coleman flashlight. I shut my door, breathed the lowcountry, then turned to see Steve's face pressed against glass, his eyes wide, the window foggy.

  Stepping out from the shadowy cover of oaks, I let my light beam span across the house, revealing tattered curtains and more broken shutters. Another howl. Five more steps-I was almost to the porch-and some thing grunted loudly from behind a bush. So I was back in the front seat and okay let's wait till sunrise.

  "What was that?" asked Maurice, pointing at the house with a halfeaten bagel.

  "I dunno. Maybe a warthog," I offered, trying to catch my breath.

  "Warthogs don't howl, dude," mumbled Ransom, nearly asleep.

  "I was talking 'bout the grunts."

  "Howls, grunts, dilapidated house ... this-here work project beginning to remind me of my old neighborhood," said Maurice.

  "We ain't sleeping here, Jarvis," said Steve. And there was a pleading in his voice.

  "Yes, we are. Right here in this Chevy," I replied, cracking my window.

  "What are we doing here?" Ransom asked. "I thought we'd at least be in some sort of development. And who organized this, anyway? This is our work project, our service to the Lord?"

  "I needed a break from dating."

  "I sold my Clemson football tickets," Steve said.

  "My wife has all four sisters in town," Maurice said, crunching raw carrots. "I woulda gone anywhere to escape that. So I appreciate the invite, gentlemens."

  "G'night," said Ransom, and he leaned into the headrest.

  Maurice took a swig of Perrier, made the cross again, and shut his eyes.

  Half an hour passed.

  One by one, they dozed off.

  Through my window, a tenacious drone of crickets buffered the snoring and the snorting. My back complained of the posture, my head of the glass pillow.

  "I can't sleep in here."

  "Shh."

  "Neither can I," said Ransom. "This is even worse than white semiglossed mosquitoes."

  "Wanna tell ghost stories?" I inquired.

  "No, we do not wanna tell ghost stories," said Steve, still miffed at our accommodations.

  "Might as well," said Maurice, pulling a towel from behind his head. "Go ahead, Ransom, give us your best shot."

  Moonlight poured through the windshield, highlighting Ransom's frown as he considered the request. "I got a beautiful wife-we're gonna be parents in five months-and here I am at 2:00 A.M. in the lowcountry, about to tell a ghost story to the church janitor? ... Well, it's not really a ghost story, but if you dudes insist ..."

  "Yeah, the dudes insist!" said Maurice.

  "But only if I can tell it fast."

  "You cannot tell no ghost story fast," said Maurice. "You must pause for effect at appropriate moments."

  "Oh, brother," said Steve.

  Ransom cleared his throat. "I was twelve years old, still living with my dad in California. His house was only a mile from Newport Beach. My four friends and I had taught each other how to surf. Two of them, Carlos and Benny, were my best friends; the other two were twins, Perry and Peter. We learned mostly by watching the older dudes. We loved it so much we practically lived on the beach that summer. At night we'd sit on the sand and talk about surfing, then fall asleep and dream of the perfect
wave ... until a late Friday night in July when Carlos saw the white floating head."

  "Aww, man ..." said Steve.

  "Hush," said Maurice. He had shouldered up against Ransom's seat to listen in.

  "We'd paddled out at midnight, all five of us. It was one of those nights when the Pacific seems without motion, just slow rolling, as if the water was sloshing back and forth between L.A. and Melbourne. We were laying on our stomachs, feet dangling off the sides of our boards, talking of waves and girls and music. I was one month away from my thirteenth birthday. A mile down the beach, the lights from the amusement park went black, and only a quarter moon lit the ocean. We'd been out there for an hour, five junior high kids on a summer night. The ocean breeze had dried our mouths, so Benny wanted to paddle back in for a drink. Just then, Carlos said, `Don't play footsie with me, Ransom.' I said, `Wasn't me, Carlos-dude; my feet are on my board.' He turned to look behind him, and that's when he saw the head bobbing under the surface."

  "Do we gotta listen to this?" asked Steve.

  "Let the man tell his story," said Maurice.

  "So I turned to look for the head, but it was gone. Carlos swore he wasn't crazy. He said, `Yeah, Ransom, the head was white and I felt it bump my foot, and a floating head is weird, but a whole lot better than you playing footsie.' Benny wondered if Carlos had been sneaking in his momma's rum cabinet again, but Carlos swore he never touched the stuff.

  "The twins who were with us-Perry and Peter-they said it must've been a jellyfish, but Carlos said it couldn't have been a jellyfish because it wasn't as soft, and besides, it didn't sting; it felt like firm Jell-O, only warmer. So we stayed out there, just floating on our boards, hoping to see the white head again while the twins insisted it was a jellyfish.

  "Benny-dude said maybe Carlos had sipped something else besides rum, but Carlos said no, he wasn't under any influence and someone must've dumped a body in the ocean to hide the evidence, and surely the crabs and sharks ate everything but the head. Then we forgot about the head and went back to talking about girls and waves.