Shame

by Alan Russell

She turned her neck, the motion adding to her agony, and saw him crossing the street. But she never saw his face, dammit. And he was wearing a sailor’s outfit.

  An older man with a dog on a leash came running over. Doors to houses began to open. Elizabeth wanted to yell instructions, but she didn’t have the breath, and they wouldn’t have heard her over the horn.

  Part of her was aware that the horn was still blaring and that she should disengage her hands from it, but her fingers wouldn’t, couldn’t, release their hold. A woman came through the back door and talked to her. Gradually, she was able to regain control of her fingers and pull back from the wheel. The horn was silenced.

  People kept asking her if she was all right, and that made her feel weepy and stupid. When she gulped it hurt, and when she cried it hurt even more.

  The police had been called. She could hear sirens. But before they arrived her phone rang. It was the same number calling.

  She answered the call. Caleb was on the other line.

  21

  THE UNIFORMED OFFICER put a blanket over Elizabeth’s shoulder and helped her over to his patrol car. Officer Lowery was young but had a calming way about him. He spoke slowly and sincerely and reminded Elizabeth of a youthful Jimmy Stewart with a Kevlar vest.

  Before taking a seat, Elizabeth carefully turned around in a full circle. It was an awkward way of surveying what was going on around her, but it spared her from having to move her neck. A handful of police were already on the scene. Some were taking statements, while others were cordoning off her car with crime scene tape. Elizabeth resisted Officer Lowery’s guiding hand. She stood her ground, trying to remember something, doing her best to be unmindful of the whispers and stares of the bystanders.

  “The ball,” rasped Elizabeth. She spoke through clenched teeth. It hurt less to talk that way, but it still hurt.

  “What ball, ma’am?” asked Officer Lowery.

  Elizabeth swallowed some saliva. She’d had strep throat before, where every swallow was painful, but this was much worse.

  “Tennis ball,” she said. “Should be over there.” She pointed in the direction. “He tossed it on top of the car to divert my attention.” Another swallow, enough for her to finish the sentence. “Maybe you’ll find some trace evidence.”

  “I’ll tell that to the detectives, Ms. Line. They should be here any minute now.”

  He motioned for her to sit down, and only then did Elizabeth allow herself to be seated in the squad car. She felt better for having remembered, for having at least tried to contribute something. It embarrassed her that she hadn’t been able to offer more.

  “Try to get comfortable, Ms. Line,” he said. “An ambulance will be here shortly.”

  “No...need,” she rasped.

  “How about we let them determine that? Now I know you’re in pain, but I wonder if you can give me a description of your assailant. All we have so far is that he’s dressed as a sailor, and there’s certainly no shortage of those around here.”

  Elizabeth nodded. She coughed slightly, and reached up to her throat, as if trying to ward off the pain.

  “You want some crushed ice?” the officer asked.

  She shook her head. Even doing that hurt. In the distance, Elizabeth could hear a siren. The ambulance.

  The officer pulled out a pad.

  “Did you get a look at who attacked you?”

  “I did,” she said.

  Then she took a big gulp, but this time not for the pain. “I can even tell you who did it.”

  Caleb froze at the door, hearing voices inside, then realized it was only the television. He’d borrowed Lola’s Mustang to go call Elizabeth from a pay phone. Now he followed the sounds to the living room and found Lola sitting on the sofa. Even though she had to have heard him enter the house, she stiffened slightly upon seeing him, and her greeting sounded strained.

  “You’ve been on the TV,” she said, nervously running her fingers up and down the buttons of her red silk blouse. “Lots.”

  Caleb said nothing, just sat down on the sofa and frowned at the television.

  “They’ve been doing all sorts of live new spots. From sheriff’s headquarters, from your house...”

  “Anna and the kids weren’t there, were they?”

  She shook her head. “They’re in hiding, or at least that’s what one report said.”

  “Good.” Maybe Elizabeth had actually followed through, he thought, and helped them.

  “I thought I’d be better about all this,” Lola said. “But I’m feeling awfully uncomfortable. I guess I’m not as brave as I wanted to believe.”

  “Few of us are.”

  She kept biting her lower lip, wanting to say more, but resisting the impulse.

  Caleb sensed the unsaid: Lola wanted him out. “I’m not the man they’re talking about on the television,” he said. “I’m not my father.”

  “I know that.”

  “I wish I had your intuition.”

  “It doesn’t mean I don’t have my doubts. I do. But they’re as much about me as you. There are times when I want to do what’s safe, as opposed to doing what’s right.”

  Welcome to my world, thought Caleb.

  “Is that writer going to help you?” Lola asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  The television volume went up, not for a commercial but another news break. “Here we go again,” said Lola.

  A news anchor sat at his desk in a studio, offering an extra-somber face to the camera, his expression so serious that few wrinkles emerged through his thick pancake makeup. “This is Donald Jones with KGSI News,” he said. “We have a breaking story on Caleb Parker, son of serial murderer Gray Parker, who is a suspect in three recent murders in San Diego County. Our own Lisa Wong is on the scene in Coronado. Lisa?”

  The shot changed to the reporter on the street. “Thank you, Donald. I’m standing on H Street in Coronado where just minutes ago it is believed that Caleb Parker, son of infamous serial murderer Gray ‘Shame’ Parker, attacked and attempted to strangle true-crime writer Elizabeth Line in her own vehicle.”

  “What?” Caleb’s outburst was shrill. “That’s impossible,” he said, then turned to Lola. “You know that’s impossible.”

  He stopped talking so that they could hear more.

  “...where Ms. Line escaped serious injury by sounding her horn and attracting attention. According to witnesses, the assailant was dressed in a sailor’s outfit. Unfortunately, that’s the dress of choice for many thousands of San Diegans today, as the aircraft carrier Constellation just pulled into port this afternoon. Despite that, police are continuing their search for Parker throughout the downtown area.”

  “What the hell is going on?” said Caleb. He slapped the arm of his chair and then smacked his own forehead. Lola pretended not to notice; her eyes never wavered from the television.

  “Elizabeth Line is probably best known for writing the book Shame, a biography of Parker’s father. Whether Line is acquainted with Caleb Parker is not yet known, but she has been in the San Diego area for at least the last two days. I had the opportunity to interview her this morning at the sheriff’s press conference, where she proved very reluctant to talk about her involvement in this case.”

  “Who says I attacked her?” asked Caleb. “Who the hell says that?”

  The camera shot changed from the street to the studio. With a somber and stentorian voice, the anchor asked, “Lisa, have the police confirmed that Parker was the assailant?”

  The anchor believed in practicing journalism the way trial lawyers practiced jurisprudence: always know the answer before asking the question. The screen split, allowing viewers to see both the anchor and the reporter.

  “Police on the scene won’t say anything for the camera,” said Lisa, “but I just got off the phone with SDPD spokesperson Karen Coben, and she told me that Elizabeth Line herself identified her attacker as Caleb Parker.”

  “No,” said Caleb. His mouth was open and his head
was shaking. “No.”

  Lola sat very still, frozen like an animal trying to escape being noticed.

  “Maybe that’s why she couldn’t talk to me,” Caleb said. “I noticed her voice sounded funny, but I didn’t really think about it. She was breathing heavily when she called, and her voice sounded raspy and strained.”

  Lola didn’t say anything, still wouldn’t look at him.

  “You don’t believe me,” Caleb said.

  “That’s not it,” she said quietly. “Like you, I’m trying to figure out what could have occurred.”

  “I’m not insane, and I don’t have rabies.”

  “I never suggested...”

  “Your tone did. You don’t need to be scared of me. I haven’t murdered any women. And I didn’t attack Elizabeth Line. I just wish I’d stayed here so that you could be sure of that.”

  Caleb tried to think of something, anything, to make her believe. But he’d already exhausted his resources in gaining her tenuous trust. There wasn’t anything he could say or do. It was a wonder she wasn’t already screaming.

  In desperation, Caleb said, “Tie me up.”

  “What?”

  “You’re ready to call the police, and I don’t blame you. So tie me up for a few hours. That way you’ll know I can’t be a threat to you or anyone else.”

  Now she was looking at him. “Tie you?”

  “Or lock me up, or cage me, or do whatever it takes to give you peace of mind. I don’t know why, or even if, Elizabeth identified me as her attacker. I only know I didn’t do it, and she can tell you that same thing.”

  He put his hands together and held them out, not to beseech but to be tied.

  “That’s not necessary,” Lola said.

  But both of them knew that it was.

  Caleb sat trussed up on the sofa. Lola had used duct tape to secure his hands and feet. While she was binding him, they didn’t speak, but Caleb had trembled uncontrollably. Lola had put a comforter over him, but it hadn’t helped. Caleb’s claustrophobia made being bound a torture.

  Together they watched the local news, and Caleb saw his greatest fears being played out in front of him. His nightmare worsened when he saw the trailer on national news. If he hadn’t been tied up, Caleb would have run out of the room, out of the house. The anchor said, “Like father, like son, the Shame murders past and present,” and then Caleb saw a face from the past. “Why’s everyone so surprised he’s a killer? Over twenty years ago he tried to kill me, and I told everyone it was just a matter of time before he started murdering people just like his daddy.”

  “I know her,” Caleb said. Even through her overly generous use of makeup, and the passage of years, he recognized Earlene Crosby.

  “Who is she?”

  “A girl from high school.”

  Not just any girl. Earlene’s folks had owned one of the biggest ranches in the county. And she’d been pretty, Texas pretty. Along with her looks, Earlene had been the class sprite, the provocateur; the boys had all wanted to please her, had ached to do her bidding. In many ways it had been easier for Caleb to face up to his male classmates. With the boys it was mostly a physical thing. They were happy with beating him up. But the girls were more dangerous. To them he’d been a curiosity, a regular novelty, and Earlene Crosby had been the most curious of all. Caleb had been afraid of her interest and at the same time desperate for it. Earlene had a car, and when they were both seventeen, she had coaxed Caleb into going with her on a private (“Just our secret, Cal”) picnic out to O. C. Fisher Lake.

  “When Mr. Toad said that the warriors in that religion used to drink bull’s wee-wee,” Earlene said, “I just about lost it.”

  Mr. Toad was the name for Mr. Joad, Caleb and Earlene’s world history teacher. The previous week they’d been studying religions of the world.

  “Now what religion was that?” Earlene asked.

  “Zoroastrianism,” he said.

  “Zor-ro? I can’t even say it. How are you supposed to practice a religion you can’t even pronounce?”

  “It’s not widely practiced anymore. People found something else to worship.”

  “Well, I shouldn’t wonder, what with their men having to drink that you know what.”

  “Makes Sunday communion look wonderful in comparison, doesn’t it?”

  She started laughing. “Stop it, Cal, ’fore I split a gut.”

  Caleb couldn’t believe he was making Earlene laugh, couldn’t believe that she was there with him. Girls like Earlene were in another class, like that other religion they had studied, Hinduism. She was a Brahmin. And he was an Untouchable. Definitely an Untouchable. Lower than low. That she had arranged for their being together was a miracle. Cal had been suspicious about that. He had figured she was somehow setting him up. But to be with Earlene, he had been willing to take that chance.

  And maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t some trick. Earlene was daring enough. She had a reputation around school of being fearless, like the time she’d ridden Tommy Lee Baker’s motorcycle, done a wheelie as she drove past the Riva Cinema Theatre, even though she’d never been on a bike before. It was the kind of thing only a movie star, or Earlene, would have done.

  Caleb dared another quick look at Earlene. Her complexion was very white; she had a few moles scattered around her body that showed just how white she was. She had straight brown hair, and her bangs went almost to her eyebrows. Earlene was small, not much more than five feet, but most of that was curves. She wore tight blouses and tighter pants.

  “How do you say that religion again?” she asked.

  “Zoroastrianism.” A religion, remembered Cal, that believed there was a universal struggle going on between the forces of light and darkness.

  “Zor-ro-ass...Forget it. You’re smart, Cal. But you’re always so quiet. ’Course they say it’s the quiet ones you got to watch out for.”

  He basked in her praise. The farther they had gotten from Eden, the more human Caleb had felt. Earlene made it easy for him. She was a great talker. He could almost forget who he was, what he was. Little by little he had become more comfortable. He knew other kids did things like this. Caleb saw them going places together after school, and heard about their parties. But he had always been the outsider.

  Caleb had always imagined how nice it would be to just have a friend. That was about as far as his fantasies had taken him. Caleb thought about the opposite sex, dreamed about them, but he was grounded in the reality that he was Shame’s son, which meant he was dirty and defiled and something to be feared. Untouchable.

  The lake was out of the way, far enough from Eden for them not to have to worry about seeing anyone they knew. That made it special, like they were the only two people in the world. Earlene had outdone herself with the picnic basket. Though Cal had offered to take her out to lunch in San Angelo, she had told him a picnic would be more fun and had forbidden him to provide anything. “It will be my pleasure,” she had told him. Earlene had made three kinds of sandwiches, potato salad, some ambrosia, and even a pecan pie.

  “This is great,” said Caleb, holding up a sandwich.

  “Oh, come on.”

  “This is great,” Caleb said, digging into the ambrosia.

  But the truth of the matter was that he couldn’t taste anything. He was overwhelmed at being with her. That was what was great.

  Afterward, they fed the ducks and then walked around the lake. A few times Earlene’s body brushed up against his, and on each occasion it took his breath away. He had never felt so right with the world in all his life.

  As the sun was setting, Earlene gave him a long look and said, “I want to take you where you’ve never been before.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Oh, you’ll see,” she said. “Oh, yes, you will.”

  The way she said it, the way she promised so much with just her tone, made his stomach feel funny and his heart race. He was afraid, but not in the way he was usually afraid.

  She drove to an overlook ju
st outside the city of Wall, a spot that was deserted and quiet—a good place, Earlene said, for them to “talk.”

  Caleb had no expectations for what might happen there. Just being with Earlene made him as happy as he could ever remember, but that wasn’t what she wanted. She took Caleb by the hand, led him to the backseat of her car, and took a seat on his lap. His hands were sweaty. They didn’t even feel like his hands. He was all fingers as he tried to unlatch and unbutton her clothing, and was more a hindrance than a help in removing it.

  A full moon revealed her white skin, her nakedness. She looked like one of those classical statues. Cal had never seen anything so beautiful or so intimidating.

  “Come closer,” she said.

  At first Caleb was afraid to touch her. He didn’t trust his hands to do the right things and was sure no boy had ever been so stupid, but she drew him to her and demonstrated that he was more than ready for the dance, even if he wasn’t sure of the steps.

  “That’s right,” she told him. “That’s right.”

  Because of who he was, Caleb had been sure he’d always be alone. He couldn’t believe he was actually holding a girl, couldn’t believe he was touching her skin. She felt so soft, so wonderful. He cupped her breasts, felt her nipples harden.

  She reached for him, guided him into her, helped him get started. Caleb found her rhythm, and for once he forgot everything. He didn’t know who he was, didn’t remember his name and his roots, was just totally taken by the moment. His climax released him from gravity, from everything. He felt alive, felt as if his lifelong sentence had been commuted. The weight that was always with him, that forever seemed to be crushing his chest, was lifted.

  I love you, Caleb thought. And he would have told her that, but Earlene spoke first.

  “I used to see your daddy on the TV,” she said, “and in the magazines and papers. All the other girls had crushes on singers and actors, but your daddy was my first love.”

  Caleb thought he was going to be sick, but Earlene just kept talking. He wished he could run away. Caleb felt violated. Used. Earlene kept referring to Shame as his “daddy,” as if that were the most natural reference in the world. Caleb had never called him that. Never.