by Doug Worgul
“I asked you, what are you doing here?”
A.B. rubbed his throat. He looked out his window.
A white man in a heavy black sweater and black pants stood next to the car with his arms crossed. He had short-cropped almost-white gray hair. About a half-inch below each eye was a horizontal scar about an inch long.
“I thought I saw somebody I know come in here,” A.B. rasped, staring at the scars.
“I’m the only one here,” said the man. “Do you know me?”
His voice was chill and even.
“No,” said A.B. “I don’t know you.”
“Then I guess this is goodbye,” said the man.
He pointed back toward the entrance of the alley and A.B. wondered if the man meant for him to back his car out of the alley, which would be somewhat tricky.
“Goodbye,” said the man.
A.B. put his car in reverse and carefully backed out. As he was about to drive off, he looked back into the alley. The man with the black clothes and gray hair stood under a streetlight waiting for A.B. to leave. Then A.B. saw that behind the man, down at the far end of the alley, Warren Dunleavy had stepped out of a shadow and he, too, watched for A.B. to go.
A bad case of the hiccups prevented A.B. from sleeping much that night.
*
Bob Dunleavy is not ashamed of his son’s mental illness. Not anymore. But the spitefulness of it, the specific way it inhabits his son’s life, the way it shoves his son’s shoulders together and possesses his face and animates his voice beyond proportion, the way it shits on the floor of his son’s once tidy mind—these he carries with him always, like stones in his pockets. They bruise and chafe when he walks. They are heavy and awkward, and because they are there, little else fits in his pockets. They knock together and he hears them and he is never not reminded of them.
They are made heavier by the fact that nobody knows they are there.
Actually, Pug Hale has known for a long time. But almost nobody else.
*
A few weeks after A.B. first spotted Warren and his mysterious signs, Bob Dunleavy was sitting down to lunch at Smoke Meat when A.B. rushed up to his table with the news that he’d seen Warren again and that he was quite sure that somebody was following him. Somebody dangerous. Like maybe somebody from the Mafia. Or maybe a spy, although he couldn’t figure out why a spy would be following Warren around at night, because don’t spies work for Russia or China? And why would the Russians or the Chinese be spying on Warren? Anyways, the guy was scary and was dressed in black and had really creepy scars under his eyes and shouldn’t they maybe tell Pug about it?
This is when Bob decided that perhaps it was time to share Warren’s story with his friends, if for no other reason than to prevent A.B. from exploding.
After the lunch crowd was mostly gone and he’d finished his coffee and sweet potato pie, Bob motioned A.B. and LaVerne over to his table. Pug and Ferguson were there, so he waved them over, too.
“You guys know I’m kind of a private guy and that I don’t talk much about personal stuff,” he said. “That’s just the way I am. Marge, my wife, thinks I should ‘open up’ more. Whatever that means. I guess I’ve just always had the idea that you keep your problems to yourself. You got your problems. I got mine.”
LaVerne nodded. He was in agreement with this philosophy. Bob continued.
“Maybe some of you have heard me mention that I’ve got a daughter, Linda. She’s married and lives over in Lawrence with her husband, Jim. They’ve got two kids, a girl and a boy. Well, as you now know, I’ve got a son, too. Though you’ve probably never heard me talk about him. Except Pug. And there’s a reason for that.
“Anyway, the reason I don’t talk about my son is not that I’m embarrassed or anything, but because it’s complicated. And it’s strange. And, well, it’s a private thing. But I told A.B. about it awhile ago, and there’s no reason not to tell you guys.”
LaVerne squirmed a bit and wondered if it would be rude to excuse himself and go back to the kitchen and turn the briskets.
“My son Warren has a mental illness,” Bob said. “It’s a delusional disorder.”
He paused.
“He wasn’t always sick. When he was in high school he was normal. I always thought he was a little too serious maybe, but he was smart and he liked movies and books and he had big ideas. Well, he kind of had a breakdown when he got to college. First semester. He stopped going to classes. He stopped showering. He got in arguments with his roommates. It was bad. If we had known what to look for, we probably would have seen it coming, but the truth is we probably couldn’t have done anything about it. That’s just the way these things are. You can’t prevent these diseases. You can treat ‘em, but you can’t cure ‘em.”
His voice got caught in his throat. He paused again. Ferguson put his hand on Bob’s shoulder. Bob nodded.
“It’s all right,” he said. “It is. We’ve been dealing with this for almost twenty years. In my son’s case, the way his illness is would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic and sad. He’s fixated on the book Watership Down. It’s a novel about rabbits. Warren thinks the author, Richard Adams, is a prophet. Like in the Bible. He thinks that the book is like scripture and that the things in it are true, or will come true. Even though it’s all about rabbits. He’s always saying things like ‘The prophet Adams saith’ this or ‘The prophet Adams saith’ that. And he’s always talking about ‘When it comes to pass.’
“The doctors say that maybe his name, Warren, has something to do with it. Because a warren is a rabbit community. Maybe that contributed to his fixation.
“So Warren thinks his mission is to spread the word of the prophet Adams. He thinks that secret police are out to destroy us all or something. So he sneaks around at night and puts signs on telephone poles in Lapine, which is the language the rabbits speak in the book, and these signs are supposed to warn us to beware of the secret police. The sign he usually puts up—“inle hrair elil owslafa”—supposedly means “Fear the uncountable and unknowable enemy police.” Another sign he has—“inle efrafa owslafa”—means “Fear Woundwort’s Gestapo.” I’m not sure if those translations are exact.
“Marge and I have done all we can for him. He lives in an apartment by himself. It’s not bad, and he actually keeps the place pretty clean. He gets Social Security. It’s not that he can’t function. He just doesn’t have a firm grip on reality. Like I said, he’s pretty smart. Lots of times you can actually have real conversations with him. He loves the Royals. We’ve got season tickets. He goes to almost every home game. Anyway, it’s sad and it’s difficult. But it’s something Marge and I had to deal with. Lots of people have had worse things happen.
“I guess that’s it.”
But it wasn’t it for A.B. “What about Pug?”
“I told Pug because I wanted him and the police to know that Warren is out there and what his problem is. He acts strange, but he won’t hurt anybody. He’s not dangerous. But if the police see him acting bizarre, I wanted them to know how to handle it.”
A.B. wasn’t done. “Bob, did you tell Pug about the guy I saw following your son the other night? He was scary. I don’t know if he was going to rob your son, or what.”
A.B. turned to Pug. “I can tell you all about it, Pug. I can fill out a report if you want. It happened down by the Plaza. The guy scared the crap out of me.”
Pug looked at Bob. Bob nodded. “A.B. that guy wasn’t going to hurt Warren. He was there to protect him.”
He sighed. “If I could, I’d follow Warren around myself to keep an eye on him and make sure nothing happens to him. But I can’t. I’ve got a company to run. I’ve got a wife and a daughter and grandkids, too. They also need me. So, I hired somebody to be where I couldn’t be. To keep an eye on my boy. Make sure nothing bad happens to him. That’s who you saw. His name is Michael Zosimus Owen.
We call him M.Z. He was a Navy SEAL in Vietnam. An honest-to-goodness war hero. He lives in our guest house. His job is to watch over Warren.”
Bob had said all he cared to say on the subject of his son. He stood up. “Thank you all for listening and understanding.”
*
LaVerne and A.B cleared the lunch tables in silence, until A.B. had to say something. “Damn, boss. Poor Bob and his wife.”
LaVerne wiped barbecue sauce off the seat of a chair. “He and his wife have done right by their son. Bob’s a good man.”
A.B. stood at the front window. He could see the telephone pole up on 17th Street.
LaVerne pushed the chair up to the table. “All I know is you’d have to be crazy to like the Royals.”
32
April 1968
Angela and her father, the Rev. Dr. Clarence E. Newton, were waiting for LaVerne at the bus station. His return home from Plum Grove was delayed three hours when the bus he was to switch to in Joplin was delayed due to a flat tire. It was 1:30 in the morning and LaVerne could tell Angela had been crying. Her eyes were red and swollen. She clenched a white handkerchief in her left hand.
Rev. Newton stood behind his daughter with his hand on her back. He was wearing his black preaching suit, a starched white shirt, and a blue necktie. His eyes were cold and wary and his chin was thrust forward as it sometimes was in the pulpit when he was admonishing his congregation.
It was April 10. Kansas City’s east side smoldered. Three nights of rioting and rage had burned away the city’s thin skin of civility. Three National Guardsmen stood at the bus station exit watching LaVerne, Angela, and her father. One of them leaned over and said something to one of the others and they laughed. LaVerne pulled Angela close and held her.
“I saw that this was happening on a TV in the Joplin station.”
Angela nodded and dabbed her nose with her hanky.
“Five people have been shot and killed. And folks are burning down their own neighborhoods. Raymond’s at Momma and Daddy’s. We’re going to stay there until things are settled down.”
Rev. Newton tipped his head in the direction of the exit. “Let’s go.”
At the exit, Rev. Newton said “Excuse me, please” to the Guardsmen but they didn’t move. Angela, LaVerne, and Rev. Newton squeezed past them single file. LaVerne heard one of them say “That guy plays for the Athletics. I’m pretty sure of it. I wonder why he’s not in Oakland.”
Outside, as they got into Rev. Newton’s black Oldsmobile, LaVerne noticed the smell of burning tires. He heard sirens.
LaVerne, Angela, and Raymond stayed with Angela’s parents for a week, until order had been mostly restored in the city, and LaVerne and Angela’s neighborhood seemed safe enough for them to return.
LaVerne was bored and angry, and his shoulder hurt. He stalked around the apartment snarling and glowering like a caged leopard.
Down in Plum Grove, he had missed Raymond so bad it ached, but now everything about Raymond annoyed him—his insistent babbling, his runny nose, the way his applesauce dribbled down his chin, the way he smeared his peas on the tray of his highchair, his shitty diapers, and his constant need to be picked up and held. LaVerne’s brooding festered, and after a day or two the contagion infected Angela. By then anything any of the three of them said or did resulted in an exchange of hostilities.
Curfews imposed to quell the unrest had kept everyone in their houses at night, and the fear of further violence inhibited almost everybody from venturing out during the day. But, finally, when their supplies of food and patience were depleted, Angela and LaVerne agreed that he should go get some groceries and a little time by himself out of the house.
*
The grocery store’s windows were boarded up with sheets of plywood. Spray painted on one of the boards were the words “Opened for business.” On another was painted “MLK we will not forget”.
The aisles and shelves of the store were nearly empty, but LaVerne scrounged together a couple boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese, three cans of chicken noodle soup, a can of SpaghettiOs, a package of hot dogs, a half-gallon of milk, and a loaf of Wonder bread.
On the way home, at the corner of 27th and Olive, LaVerne turned north on Olive, even though the way home was west on 27th. When he got to 22nd, he turned left and two blocks later parked his car outside Municipal Stadium.
It was abandoned. A temporary chain link fence circled the stadium. He walked around to the players’ entrance. From the fence he could see that doors were chained and padlocked. This is what he expected to see, but he wanted to see it anyway.
Back in the car, LaVerne drove north on Brooklyn. Eight blocks later he turned west onto Interstate-70. About three hours after that he pulled off at Salina, Kansas, and used a pay phone at a Sinclair station to call Angela to tell her he was on his way to Oakland, California. Also that she should probably go stay with her folks for awhile.
“Angela? It’s me. I just wanted you to know I’m okay.”
Angela was frantic.
“Where are you?” she shouted. “I thought you’d been hurt. Or worse. With all the police and soldiers and crazy rioters. Thank God you’re alright.”
LaVerne hesitated.
“You’re not going to be thanking God when I tell you this. I’m in Salina, Kansas. I’m going to Oakland, Angela. I got to talk to Finley. It’s not right what they did. Just throwing me away. I can still play. They just need to give me some time. So, that’s where I’m headed. I’m sorry about this, Angela. I didn’t plan it. And I’ll come back once I talk to them. I got seventy-two dollars. I checked. I’ll be okay. Just take care of yourself and Raymond and don’t be mad at me. I’ll be back soon.”
Angela’s voice was quiet and urgent.
“Nothing good can come from this LaVerne. Nothing. This is selfish and irresponsible. You have a responsibility to your family. You can’t just go runnin’ off like this. You’re a black man out there alone ten days after they killed Dr. King, and dozens of others have died in riots.”
LaVerne felt hollow and dark. “I just have to talk to them.”
Angela went cold.
“You do not have to talk to them. You’re choosing this. You’re choosing this instead of us. You need to be a man, LaVerne. You need to think hard about this. Real hard. You need to do what’s right here and be with your wife and child at a time like this. You need to be a man and face facts. The fact is the Athletics don’t need you anymore. The fact is we do. So you choose, LaVerne. You choose.”
She waited for him to say something.
“I love you,” he said as he hung up.
He stopped in Hays for gas and realized he was hungry, which reminded him of the groceries. The milk was warm by then, so he drank it, thinking that if he waited much longer it would spoil. Then he ate five slices of the Wonder bread.
By Limon he was hungry again. He wrapped three hot dogs in slices of Wonder bread and ate them like that, which made him thirsty so, when he stopped for gas in Bennett, he bought four bottles of Coca Cola. When he went to the counter to pay, the attendant reached down under the cash register and retrieved a baseball bat which he put on top of the counter without comment, his left hand gripping the handle.
West of Denver he parked at a truck stop and slept the night in the car.
In the morning he was so cold he thought maybe he had frostbite on his fingers and toes. His shoulder hurt bad and he was stiff and sore all over. He hobbled inside to the truck stop restaurant for coffee. He wanted to stay inside for awhile to warm up, but one of the truckers, who was paying for his breakfast at the cash register, put his hand on LaVerne’s shoulder and said “Mister, it pains me to give you this advice, but with all that’s been going on the last couple weeks, I don’t think it’s safe for you to be here.”
*
LaVerne knew that driving through the Rocky
Mountains for the first time should have been an experience he shared with Angela, so he tried not to look at them much. Their beauty was painful.
The radio in his ‘61 Ford Falcon Futura hadn’t worked since they bought the car two years earlier, but he tried the on-off knob anyway. It still didn’t work.
West of the mountains, somewhere along dusk between Rifle and Parachute, a large brown rabbit jumped out from the scrubby brush alongside the highway. In the moment before LaVerne hit and killed it, he thought to himself that it must be a jackrabbit like the kind he used to see in Texas because it was big and had tall ears and a black tail not like the little rabbits with white tails that they have in Kansas City.
When he heard the thump, he quick looked in his rearview mirror and saw the animal twitching on the road. He pulled over onto the shoulder, got out of the car and walked back to where the rabbit lay. It was still and blood was beginning to seep out from under its body. LaVerne cried off and on the rest of the way into Utah.
*
In Utah he looked for signs of life, but didn’t see any. Only road and miles of red dirt and scrub brush.
East of Hinckley he pulled over to take a piss and almost stepped on a big black-and-white striped snake, which sent a shudder through him and hindered the completion of his task. He didn’t consider a snake to be a sign of life.
*
At Salina, Utah, he turned onto US-50 and was reminded that it was in Salina, Kansas, that he had called Angela to tell her that he was going to California. This made him feel like crying again. But nothing came. So he screamed instead. Until his voice gave out. After which crying came easily.
Nevada was bleak, dry, and barren. Like Utah only worse. LaVerne considered the possibility that at some point miles back he had missed an exit and was now on his way to Hell.
