Killer Diller

by Edgerton, Clyde

  “Do you want to escape?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it, really. But, you know, maybe I do. I think maybe I do. I hadn’t thought about it before.” Mattie looks at Wesley and smiles. “I think maybe I do.”

  “Well, let’s figure us out something. Do you want to go to Myrtle Beach?”

  “No, I just want to go home where I can be by myself and cook.”

  “Wesley,” says Phoebe, “it’ll be the biggest mistake of your life.” They’re sitting on their bench at the mall. “I almost wish you hadn’t told me. You’re leaving me, too. And Mrs. Rigsbee, just when she needs you the most.”

  “Phoebe, I don’t think you understand.”

  “I think I do understand.”

  “No, you don’t. They’re playing around with us. See? They’re playing around with Ben. It ain’t fair. I can’t just sit there and watch him get carted off after we finish that gig.”

  “Wesley, you’re...”

  “He’s a good man. We’re making a plan. Myrtle Beach. And listen. I want to ask you . . . to go, too. Did you know my mama and daddy were married in South Carolina?”

  “Wesley. Wesley, my father . . . Don’t you see? Don’t you see that you’re . . . Wesley. I can’t just make a decision about that right here in the mall, now.”

  Chapter 19

  Wesley stands with Vernon just outside the door to the garage and scuffs at the oil-packed dirt with the toe of his shoe. Holister is inside the garage, preparing some spray paint.

  Vernon stands, rocking. He is frowning at Wesley through the thick lens of his glasses. “I wish I didn’t have to go to school. I never been on TV. Why couldn’t they have this thing at night? Looks like they could have it at night.”

  “It won’t be but three songs before lunch and then three afterwards. But I don’t know exactly how it’s going to go.” On the ground is a canvas bag holding Wesley’s trowel, hawk, chisels, and other masonry equipment. “I figured you might like to borrow this stuff. Just don’t say anything about any of this to anybody. The mortar tub is in the shed behind BOTA House. Tell Mrs. White I said you could have it.”

  “I don’t want, I don’t, I don’t want you to leave. It’s the first band I ever been in.” Vernon looks down at the ground. His rocking slows. He looks in the garage at his father, who has a mask over his face, spray-painting with green paint over the last orange on the hood of their old GMC bus.

  “You got a whole . . . a whole garage, here,” says Wesley. “And your daddy, and a house and everything.”

  “Yeah, but... what about the band? They’re supposed to vote me in.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe you can start a band or something.” Wesley sticks out his hand. “Besides if I do go anywhere, I’ll be back. You remember how to shake hands, don’t you? You take it easy.”

  Sherri carries a cymbal and a snare drum. She hips open the swinging door into the upstairs dining room at Eastern Link-Comm. “Where you want us to set up?” she asks Santa Claus, who is lifting small wrapped presents from a cardboard box and arranging them on a table.

  “Ask her,” he says, nodding toward Ms. Clark.

  “Hi.” Sherri shifts a cymbal to under her left arm, extends her hand to Ms. Clark. “I’m Sherri Gold, with the band. Where do you want us to set up?”

  “That corner there in the back. We don’t want the music to be overwhelming, you know.”

  Ned Sears is standing by the window, looking out. “They’re here!”

  “Who?” asks Ms. Clark.

  “The folks from the nursing home. And there’s no press here. Have you seen any press?”

  “No, but there’s a camera in my office,” says Ms. Clark.

  “We don’t even have chairs in here yet,” says Ned. “Where’s the maintenance man?”

  “Yes.”

  “I said, where is he?”

  “Gosh, I don’t know. He was supposed to have all the chairs in here by ten A.M.”

  “Get your camera,” Ned says. “Then we’ll worry about the chairs. I will be darned.” Ned’s hand is on top of his head. “I wanted some shots of them getting off the elevator.”

  Downstairs, Wesley walks outside. There are four blue vans parked in a line. He sees Mrs. Rigsbee getting out of the second one. She’s wearing her old brown sweater, and she’s sure moving slower than usual. The drivers are standing in a group nearby, smoking and talking. Attendants are helping the old people. Wesley walks over to Mattie. “Hey,” he says to her. “You got here okay.” He lowers his voice. “Come on up with the rest. I’ll tell you what to do.”

  When the elevator doors open upstairs near the dining room, Wesley rolls out Miss Emma. Ned Sears is down on one knee, holding Georgia Clark’s Pentax ME Super to his face. Behind Wesley, residents from Shady Grove begin to unload slowly. The automatic elevator doors keep hitting old people, who then stagger in little short steps, are clutched at by other old people, who then get hit themselves by the doors, closing again. There are many little grunting noises. The camera flashes. It flashes again. Ned advances the film, stands, reaches down his hand to Miss Emma—in her wheelchair. Miss Emma picks up several M&M’s from her lap, and places them in Ned’s hand. Ned withdraws his hand, gives a half-bow, pockets the M&M’s.

  “I used to have everything I wanted,” says Miss Emma.

  Santa Claus takes a present from the stack on the table and hands it to Miss Emma.

  “I used to have everything I wanted,” she says to Santa Claus. “Do you know who you are?”

  “Excuse me?” Santa turns up his hearing aid.

  “I said, Do you know who you are?”

  “Well... yes, yes I do. I’m Santa Claus.”

  “That’s right!”

  The elevator opens again. Ned twirls, drops to his knee and flashes light into a full elevator. J. D. Smith, a twenty-two-year veteran of Shady Grove, standing in back, wearing soiled khaki shirt and pants and an old, wide red tie with palm trees, yells “Japs!,” faces into the back corner and covers his head.

  Wesley rolls Miss Emma into the dining room. Two men in overalls are placing folding chairs around long tables.

  The maintenance supervisor is standing in a doorway and holding two fold-up chairs. “I didn’t know,” he says to Ned. “I thought it was going to be in the dining room downstairs. They’ve changed their minds three times on this already.”

  “These chairs were supposed to be in place at ten A.M., sir,” says Ned. “It’s now eleven-thirty A.M. I am making notes of this for Mr. Snaps. I think he’ll be interested in the foul-up.”

  The maintenance supervisor tucks his chin, stares at Ned.

  Ned starts toward the band, stops, looks around, puts his hand to the top of his head, then continues on over to the band. “Who told you-all to set up here?”

  “Ms. Clark.”

  “Is it too much to ask you to move to the other corner?”

  “It’s right much,” says Larry. “But it ain’t too much. I don’t think it’s too much. Does anybody else think it’s too much?”

  Santa is shaking hands with J. D. Smith. J. D., backed into a corner, draws up each time the camera flashes.

  Ms. Clark is on the phone. “If they have any kind of press credentials let them in. . . . Credentials. . . . Credentials. Something that shows they work for the press, for a newspaper. . . . Well, read it to me. . . . Yes, that’s the radio. That’s Good Morning Charlie, for heaven’s sake. Let him in. . . . Yes, I did send them a pass. . . . Let them in, goddammit.”

  Good Morning Charlie and Jake Davis arrive and begin setting up to record the luncheon speakers and the pre- and after-lunch music for playback on “Weekly Happenings in Christian Higher Education.”

  A reporter and photographer arrive from the Star.

  The Channel 9 television crew arrives with their equipment. They set up and test their lights. The room turns blue-white. Some of the old people turn to look. Their faces have turned bright gray and yellow.

  Now the pre-lunch
music, performed by the Noble Defenders of the Word— “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “The Time Is Near,” and “Do, Lord”—is over. Ms. Clark has made several remarks, Ned Sears has said the blessing, and everyone is eating.

  The band has their own small table. “It’s going to be at least a week before Shanita and me can get there,” Larry says to Wesley. “We can’t leave before I get my paycheck.”

  “Look,” says Ben to Wesley, “if you just talk a little bit it ain’t going to give us time to load all the equipment. We need to be loaded and cranked and ready to go when you come out.”

  “Don’t worry. It’s going to be more than what they wrote up for me to say. Y’all will have plenty time to load up.”

  “What did Phoebe say?”

  “She said that if she’s not on the front porch waiting, she can’t go.”

  Over at the next table, J. D. Smith, recovered from the camera flashes, is wrapping brownies in napkins, and putting them down inside his shirt and into his shirt and pants pockets.

  Wesley stands, tries to move slowly, take his time. He puts his hands in his pocket, fingers his bottleneck. He starts around a long table, speaking to Miss Emma as he passes her. Then he bends over and whispers to Mrs. Rigsbee. He goes on out and waits for her. Together they go into a little alcove.

  Mattie sits down heavily in a chair. “You sure this is going to work?” she asks Wesley.

  “Yes. All you have to do right now is just go downstairs. Then when you get home, go in and lock the door, and don’t let anybody in. You got a key?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “Then get straight in bed. You’re looking kinda washed out.”

  “But listen, son. You need to serve out your time and then settle down. They’ve been pretty patient with you. Do you understand? What are y’all going to do, anyway?”

  “I don’t know for sure. But I’ll be seeing you before too long. Now, just go down those stairs and wait in the lobby part— where the guard is—and leave everything else to me.”

  Mattie gets up, straightens her skirt, holds on to her pocket-book, and starts off, a little wobbly, for the stairs. She stops, turns. “You be good.”

  “I will.”

  “I’ve done all I can with you.”

  “Yes ma’am. I know. You sure have. Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  Wesley reaches into his back pocket for the note he’s written in wobbly handwritting. It’s not there! The other back pocket. His front pocket. He pats both front pockets, both back pockets, looks around. His shirt pocket. Ah. There. He goes into the dining room, hands the folded note to Ms. Clark, and speaks to her before heading towards the band table. Ms. Clark walks across the room and hands the note to Santa Claus and whispers in his ear. Santa turns up his hearing aid and listens again, then reads the note.

  My name is Mattie Rigsbee and I am here today visiting my sister Pearl Turnage who is in Shady Grove rest home. My visit is over and I need to go home. I am interested in talking about leaving my will to Ballard University. I am downstairs in the lobby wearing a dark brown sweater and am wondering if you could give me a ride home instead of a taxi. I know that you are the treasurer at Ballard from your pictures in the paper about all your fund raising activities.

  Thank you,

  Mrs. Mattie Rigsbee

  Ms. Clark has approached the microphone up front and is introducing Ted Sears to the guests. A very old, short, happy woman, returning from the bathroom and looking for her seat, stands back to let Sears by.

  Santa Claus slips over to Ned Sears and whispers in his ear. Ned gets his car keys from his pocket and hands them to him.

  “So it’s my pleasure,” says Ms. Clark, “to introduce one of Hansen County’s most important leaders—”

  Why can’t they ever say “North Carolina’s,” thinks Ted.

  “—for a brief statement, followed by several songs from the band and then Mr. Wesley Benfield will give a short testimony.”

  He shouldn’t be part of my introduction, thinks Ted.

  At the lectern, Ted pulls a folded piece of paper from his gray pin-striped suit coat pocket, and ad-libs as he unfolds it. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to be here today. It’s always a pleasure for me to visit those folks in our community who are making this world a better place. Eastern LinkComm’s record in bringing jobs to our community is an enviable and proud record. Their outreach to our community is symbolized by this fine lunch for those among us who have, in many cases, fought the good fight, run the good race, climbed the highest hill.”

  In her mind Miss Emma is out on the freeway in her wheelchair, running the good race, climbing the highest hill, then —down the far paved incline—she hears her bright spoked wheels whine and whisper in high, soft tones. She feels the constant light breath of the whirling wheels against her thin, ghost-white thighs.

  Ted is reading from his prepared statement.

  “How the Ballard family meets the world’s present critical challenges will not only determine how we propel ourselves into the twenty-first century, but also the role the Ballard family will play as Christian witnesses to the citizens of this state, indeed, to the world.

  “How exciting it is to be near the heart of an industrial geoplex giant, Eastern LinkComm, headquarters for some of the world’s most influential and far-reaching decisions in this Age of Information. But especially, from our point of view, how exciting to be able to impact on this and other Hansen County businesses—large and small—in a positive way beyond what we are now doing.

  “Consider how much more we can do with the addition of modern air facilities in our community. The possibilities far exceed the risk of liabilities and we...”

  On route 24 near the college—one mile from Eastern LinkComm—Santa is driving Mattie Rigsbee home in Ned Sears’s white Continental. “And we’ll be mighty happy to make you a honorary member of the Ballard family, Mrs. Rigsbee,” says Santa. “We’ll keep your grass cut whether it needs it or not. And—my, my, I wonder where he’s going?”

  “Who?”

  “That boy in the glasses that we just passed—running down the road, the other way. He looks familiar.”

  “And so our trustees,” continues Ted Sears, “have approved a five-year plan for an expansion of our airport here at Ballard, to be named—at the insistence of our trustees and against my wishes—the Theodore B. Sears Regional Airport. A modern airport. What a bold move for the Ballard family! We will merely extend and pave the Ballard airstrip now in place, adding, of course, the appropriate facilities as we go.

  “In the immediate future, we will begin a telethon to help raise necessary funds from our friends and family. In these times of secular expansion, there is no greater need than that of the positive influence of Christ on the lines of transportation in and out of our beautiful, spiritually and economically rich Hansen County. We will all benefit. We will all grow together as we witness by our example. And as we grow and sow, so shall we reap.

  “Thank you and may God bless you all.”

  Scattered applause. Six or seven nursing home clients are asleep. Camera flash. Flash again.

  Ms. Clark introduces the band.

  The band stands. Ben looks around at everybody, counts it out, “One, two, three,” and Wesley sings, Do you drive a Cadillac? Do you drive a Pontiac? Do you park at the mall? Do you drive a car at all? Jesus, where do you park when you drive your car to town?

  After a few lines, Ted looks over at Ned. Ted has an odd smile on his face—his lips are upturned at the corners, but there is an element of fear in his eyes.

  At the end of the song there is enthusiastic applause from the audience. The happy lady who was looking for her seat earlier stands and approaches the band. She walks up to Wesley and asks him if she is allowed to dance. Wesley says yes. She dances through “Jesus Dropped the Charges.” Then while the band sings “I Need Your Loving Every Day,” eight or ten Shady Grove residents are up and dancing.

  The odd smile that is s
till now on Ted’s face is on Ned’s face also. He’s wondering if this is a case of blatant rebellion from a musical group that has been clearly told what is appropriate and what isn’t.

  When the song is over, Ms. Clark calls Ted Sears up to the lectern to introduce Wesley. Sears is thinking about those songs. What in the world kind of music was that, anyway? he thinks. We’ll have to huddle about that. He fingers the knot in his tie—yep, up over the button—tugs at his coat in back, straightening it. He looks at Wesley. And why in the world would anyone be without a tie to give a testimony?

  Sears approaches the lectern.

  The other band members quietly unplug the sound system, wind up cords, put away their instruments and begin carrying equipment out through the back doors and down the stairs.

  Ned is thinking, That music! For heaven’s sake. We can’t have that stuff played on the air. I thought Colonel Trent took care of this secular business. I’ll have to call him in for a little talk. This was his area. And I’ll have to corner these media people before they get out of here—ask them to edit out those songs. For crying out loud. I should have known better than to turn this band loose. They’re going to cause more harm than good.

  Ted is introducing Wesley, reading from a note card. “And I would just like to say that this young man has, through his faith in Jesus Christ, risen above difficult times, and we have come to know that Wesley Benfield is a shining example of what Christ can mean to one who has been in trouble. Wesley will be on the rolls of the Ballard family this spring. He will be a student at Ballard University. A fine student. A bright student. A Christian student. And we are proud. I present Wesley Benfield—to give a short testimony about what the Ballard family has meant to him. Wesley?”

  Scattered applause. Wesley touches his collar. The cord is in place. Linda’s Walkman is in his pants pocket and the cord runs under his shirt to his ear where the earphone is hidden by his hair.

  The TV camera, silently running, is on Wesley. It is hot in the room. Wesley tells himself to take his time—to wait just a minute before starting. Downstairs, the van will be warming up. He puts his hand in his pocket, presses the start button, stares blankly for a second, and then speaks: