by Mike Heppner
My God, Olden said to himself. He thought about his father. He thought about Bartholomew Hasse. He thought about his small, orchestrated life.
Hoisting himself, he placed his foot on a low branch and began to climb, using his hands only to keep his balance. Near the top, the four main trunks were no longer discernible in the mass of intersecting twigs. Above a ceiling of evergreens, the air became cooler as the breeze skimmed across an unbroken expanse. All around, the tops of the pines twisted in the wind, little mad arrowheads of fuzzy green. The landscape cleared around the lake, frozen to a pale crisp. He spotted his own shack, Julian’s house, a cluster of summer cottages near the water. Straight ahead—as if connected to the tree by an imaginary line—the tower stood, apparently larger from this perspective. The line streamed, passing through Olden’s house at the midpoint. Even here, the equation made sense. A straight line between two points—well, that’s simple. But between three points? This required effort, a conscious decision. A plan.
XXI
Suckass
My Darling Boy, Who’s Going to Be a Dentist
1966
He acts like he hates it, but look at him! Look!” Doreen Mould means well. She sits on a high stool behind the register at the Warm Devotions Christian Book Store every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoon, volunteering her time. A breezeway lined with potted plants connects the bookstore to the Unity International Non-Denominational Church and Community Meeting House, Shepherd Dane T. Foote presiding. Non-denominational, meaning non-denominational Christian. Meaning no Jews, no Hindus, no Buddhists and certainly no Muslims. It’s not that we wish them harm; it’s just that we don’t approve of their beliefs and practices. Muslims are the worst.
“Steven can be hyperactive sometimes. Like when I took him to the doctor last month. I went with him into the examination room, because you never know about those people. They go off to medical school and they get all sorts of crazy ideas in their heads. So I’m standing there, holding my purse, and the doctor tells Steven to disrobe. ‘Steven,’ I whisper, just trying to be helpful, ‘the doctor is asking you to take off your clothes, so you’d better strip and pronto! Don’t worry, Mother will be right here.’ Poor Steven! His face goes beet red and he starts to cry, and I say, ‘My goodness, Steven, what’s wrong?’ and he says, ‘I don’t want him looking at my ding-dong!’ Precious. ‘Steven,’ I say, ‘I’ve seen your dingdong and it’s such a pretty little thing and you’ve got absolutely nothing to be ashamed of,’ but I can tell that we’re getting nowhere, so I reach over and I tug on his pants and—wouldn’t you know?—he’d worked himself up into such a fury that he’d given himself a . . . well, you know. The darnedest thing. The doctor said he’d never seen a boy his age do something like that. Said most boys are ten years old before they can . . . well, you know.”
The ladies laugh and clap as Steve sits on his own little chair and goes blink-blink. He stays quiet most of the time, unless his mother asks him to sing “A Mighty Fortress” or “One, Two, Buckle My Shoe” or “Hound Dog,” and then he rises from his chair and stares down the neck of his shirt, drooling the words “You unt nun buh how daw, crin awl time” until she says, “Oh, Steven, you’re making yucky-ucky,” and wipes his mouth with a Kleenex. Again, the ladies laugh and clap. Their husbands are salesmen and police officers and factory foremen. It is 1966. The era of the housewife is drawing to a close, but these ladies don’t know that yet. They have heard rumors of misguided young women roaming the commons at Midwestern University, handing out leaflets and chanting strange slogans, but thus far no such dissent has made its way into the suburbs. Doreen Mould, like many of her contemporaries, has no use for equal rights. Even this job is little more than a hobby, an amusement, a way to serve the Lord and to get away from the television. Doreen has no desire to challenge her husband. Warren “Barndoor” Mould is a mean man who loves his family and would do anything to protect his wife and son. He once strangled a drifter with a curtain cord because he caught him trespassing in the backyard. A nigger. The police said, We’ll let this one go, Barn.
“I know what you mean, Greta. Steven sometimes has trouble controlling his bowels. Even now he’ll poo his pants at least once a month, but I don’t make him wear a diaper because I don’t want to humiliate him. We went to the Thursday-night sermon a week ago, and I’d dressed him in his nice yellow suit because Shepherd Foote was giving the service, and I wanted to make a good impression. Not just for my sake— Steven will be an usher one day, and it’s important for him to fit in with the rest of the congregation. So we’re sitting in one of the pews, and Steven leans over and says ‘Mommy,’ and I say, ‘What, and shush,’ and he says, ‘I made poop in my underwear,’ and I say, ‘Oh no, Steven, not now.’ Right in the middle of the first epistle. Of course we couldn’t just stay there for the rest of the service, so we stood up and hurried out of the chapel, and I took him into the ladies’ room to get cleaned up. Mrs. Foote was sitting at the vanity table, doing her hair, and I said, ‘Good evening, Mrs. Foote, we had a little accident,’ and I took down Steven’s pants—which were ruined—and I showed her, and she said, ‘My, what a mess,’ which it was, all down his legs and stinky too. I couldn’t very well make him wear those pants out of the building, so I just told him to go bare-butt naked, and he said, ‘Mommy, I don’t want to,’ and I said, ‘Oh hush, no one will see you, and if they do, so what?’ and so I carried him out through the lobby, and—wouldn’t you know it—the bell choir was getting ready to play the doxology, and I figured heck, if you can’t laugh at life then what good’s living, so I held Steven up over my head and twirled him around and the girls in the choir giggled and I laughed and Steven was crying and I said, ‘What are you crying for?’ and I took him out to the parking lot and he made wee all over the car seat.”
The ladies laugh and Steve sits and blinks. The only reason why he comes here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoon is because it’s either that or the baby-sitter, and you never know about those people. Darn near the only ones willing to work for those cheap wages come up from Downriver or the north side of Crane City, and most of them are— what do you call it, when one of their grandparents did it with a Negro? Octoroons. Orangutans is what Doreen Mould calls it, and she calls it like she sees it. Not that Steve minds the long waits while his mother runs the register. The bookstore is calm and quiet most of the time, with just his mother and a few of her friends. The stock hasn’t turned over in five years. Ceramic virgins. Dried flower arrangements. LP records of Perry Como or Mahalia Jackson or Lawrence Welk, but no Frank Sinatra ever since he took up with that hippie. Motivational pamphlets: “America Is God’s Country and Jesus Is Our God,” “Moderation: It’s the Right Thing to Do,” “Explaining the Draft to Your Young Ones.” Holy Cross refrigerator magnets. Steve likes to make the magnets stick together, and sometimes he puts them in his mouth and his mother has to say stop it. Some of her friends are pretty nice, too. Mrs. Tyler is an older woman, slightly decrepit but good at making funny faces, like the one where she acts like President Johnson. Eye’m Layn-dyn Jawhn-sun, and eye ’m an eem-buh-sul. A sick woman, in and out of the hospitals. Had cancer once, then she didn’t. Then she did. Then she didn’t. Did. Didn’t. Did. Mrs. Fleet is new to the group, a young wife with pretty brown legs. Rumored to own a diaphragm. Steve once stuck his head up her long dress and his mother said stop it and Mrs. Fleet said “It’s okay, he doesn’t know what to look for,” and Steve had no idea what that meant.
“I never spank my boy, but when I do, I believe in doing it on the bare bottom. The child won’t make the connection any other way. A good, firm whack on either cheek, and then one on the crack for good measure. Last month, we went to a dinner party at my sister-in-law’s house. Steven was looking at the wedding pictures on the wall, and he said, ‘Who’s that woman? She’s ugly.’ Terese pretended not to hear, but I knew he’d hurt her feelings, so I said ‘Steven, you come here and take down your drawers.’ Warren tried to say we’ll jus
t go, but I said, ‘No, no, he’s got to learn.’ Steven knew I meant business, so he pulled off his pants, and I said, ‘Underwear too,’ and he took off his underwear and I had him lay right on the buffet table—we moved all of the leftover rib-eyes and vegetables out of the way—and I gave him three good swats, cheek-cheek-crack, and that was that. I had Terese stand over my shoulder, and I said ‘You watch good now, so when you and Lance have your first one you’ll know what to do.’ Then I told Steven to get up off of the table and put his pants back on, and Terese said, ‘Can he have some ice cream?’ and I said, ‘Of course he can.’ He’s been punished. He knows he did the wrong thing. Now he can have his ice cream.”
Steve normally stays in his little seat, but when work is slow, his mother lets him wander the empty corridors of the church next door. Dane T. Foote’s portrait hangs inside the main atrium, its textured surface made smooth and shiny by a thin layer of shellac. Looking at the picture, Steve knows that if Shepherd Foote ever asked him to do something—even something bad, like take money from the register or write bad words in the men’s room—he would do it, he would have to do it, because Shepherd Foote is an important, well-respected man, and Steve understands that he must listen to him and obey his every word. Steve’s favorite place to go in the entire complex is the breezeway, where the smell of car exhaust rises from the interstate, gathering in a sweet, toxic cloud a foot above the indoor-outdoor carpet. Tall potted plants reach over his head. Alone, he kneels and prays to one of them, wondering, What if God was really a potted plant, and we all had to do what it said?
“This was last summer, when we were driving north to Mackinac Island for the Fourth of July weekend, and about two hours into the trip I got to thinking, Hmmm, Steven sure is acting quiet back there, and I looked over my shoulder, and I said, ‘What’s that smell? Oh, Steven, you didn’t! . . .’ ”
Sheesh at Rest
1999
Well, I sure don’t know what to do. I told the gal at the desk, Look, I gotta get up at the crack of dawn. I don’t need this noise. We’re sorry, sir—if you were sorry, you’d do something about it, wouldn’t you? Instead of standing around, Oh, look at what Billy did to Bobby. Finally I said to heck with it. I go back to my room, these kids are still screwing next door. I might as well watch a girlie flick while I’m at it. We’ll just have ourselves a real good time, never mind that it’s three in the morning and I gotta be downtown in six hours. You wanna talk about racket. You know, when I was that age—and it wasn’t long ago— there was a little thing in the world, and you know what it was called? Common decency, hunh? Common decency, and we all had it and now it’s gone, and I think it’s a darn shame.
Course we had rock ’n’ roll back then too. Oh yeah! Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band. I can remember them like lickety split. None of this “I killed her and I threw her in a garbage can.” The rap stuff that the kids at the store listen to. No, no—I tell you what, that’s a whole lotta junk. Not my style. Not my bag, as they say. When I was a kid, they knew how to write the rock ’n’ roll lyrics. Jackson Browne. He had a way with words that I could never figure out.
But these kids, the ones next door. If I was running this place, I’d be on the phone right now, saying, “You wanna go to a flophouse, that’s one thing, but this is a respectable establishment.” Kids these days have way too much longitude. Not enough parental guidance. See, that’s where Lydia’s wrong. You need a man in the house to level things off. You need a man and a woman, and if there’s a kid, then all the better. I know, with me—now, my mom was a great woman, and anyone would tell you that. But if it wasn’t for my dad, I would be a real loser. ’Cause it was my dad who said, Look, you better shut up, or I’m gonna smack you right in the face. And I learned from that. Those are the lessons that can help you get through life.
My approach with Simon is a little different. I never hit my son, because that’s not a very modern technique. I believe in the Mahatma Gandhi principle of being fair to people. That’s why I’m a good dad. I did a decent job and I worked hard—and I always put my family first. Not all guys can say that. You think I want to spend the rest of my life behind a cash register? No, I do not. But when you’ve got a family, and you’ve got a child who’s depending on you, then you do what it takes. Before I met Lydia, I was on the fast track, man! I had brochures coming in from companies all across the country. I could’ve gone to Japan, worked for the Ford Motor Company. I talked to one of their recruiters over the phone. None of the other guys in my class got their phone calls returned—I did! We talked for a good long time. They were very interested. But I said no because—I mean, I would’ve said no, because Lydia and I were gonna get married, and I wanted to put the relationship first, which is what I did, and that’s what I’ve always done—put Lydia first, put the family first, and now this is what happens.
Still, life goes on. Six a.m., rise ’n’ shine! Gotta go out and get a job. Of course, soon as I start the car, the gosh-darn engine craps out. Ain’t this a treat, like I need this, getting up at the crack of dawn, I just had the dang thing in for a tune-up. Now you’d think—and this would make sense, wouldn’t it?—but you’d think if there was something wrong with the car, and you’ve already got it in the shop, you’d think they might say something about it. Just for convenience’s sake. I mean, wouldn’t that be dandy? Instead of two days later, I’m sitting on my rear end, having to deal with this nonsense.
I go back inside to call the mechanic, they’ve got some girl answering the phone, she doesn’t know what the heck’s going on. Did you try to start the car, sir? No, I put my hands on it and did a little dance—what is this junk? Finally I get a tow set up. Took ’em until nine o’clock, I’m sitting in bed, going over my résumé—right there on top: Steve Muld, M-U-L-D, fifty copies of this garbage. Some guy named Steve Muld’s gonna get the job, eighty-seven grand plus full benefits, meanwhile I’m making shakes for $5.50 an hour, sixty hours a week, picking up change in the parking lot for a box of Wheaties and a cold hot dog. You know, I’m a reasonable person. I’m standing in the copy center, Can I have fifty copies of this please? You’d think, okay, look, it’s Steve M-O-U-L-D on the charge card, right? And then over here it’s . . . you’d think someone would’ve noticed that. That’s part of the deal, in my mind. They got these kids working in these places, fourteen, fifteen years old, Oh, look what Billy said to Cathy, meanwhile the manager’s got his head up his ass and I just wasted nine dollars on a bunch of crap. That’s all that is! That’s poor training.
So I say okay. I’m not gonna let this get me down. I go outside, the guy with the tow truck’s there, telling me they’re not gonna get to it right away because they’ve got all four lifts up, well isn’t that fan-friggin’-tabulous, what the heck good is that gonna do me? Now I gotta take the bus, that’s just great, ridin’ in style—fifty alcoholics and a puddle of vomit, some old lady talking my ear off and the whole place smells like sin, you can’t even breathe, now I gotta listen to some guy telling me about his daughter, he’s got a picture of this little kid, tells me when he finds her, he’s gonna punch her so hard, just you wait, mister, I’m gonna punch her so many times her teeth are gonna fall out, on and on until finally we get to my stop and I stagger outside, thank the Lord above, and my clothes are dirty and—oh! great!—there’s a footprint on my briefcase!
But the good thing about getting off here instead of downtown is: Vega knows retail. Because downtown, what do you want? You want the twenty-four-hour drugstores and the hi-tech stereo shops. The Rent-to-Owns. And I don’t mean to sound racist but it’s just a fact—that’s what people want down there. And I can show you the figures on that without a problem. The statistic printouts. This is all common knowledge.
But in Vega you’ve got a more diverse population. And that means more stores and more different kindsa stores. Downtown North Crane City, try selling sunglasses in one of the malls. They don’t want sunglasses there because it’s not a diverse enough population. In Vega yo
u’ve got three whole chains of sunglass stores, plus the headquarters for Slick Shades U.S.A., right across the street from the Candle Factory. I go in, totally unannounced, Hi, I’m Steve Mould, I’d like to speak to your senior representative. Oh, I’m sorry, he’s not in today. Some woman with a hooker hairdo gives me an application. I’m like, Honey, this ain’t cuttin’ it! So she gets her supervisor. Finally: a man. We go up to his office, he starts asking me questions. What do I know about the company, the usual. I say, Well, I’ve heard about your company for a long time, and I’m very impressed with the way you do business, and I’d like to be a part of your management force. He says what do I know about sunglasses? I say that I know they’re . . . pretty good. I mean, I know they’re a big part of being outside and working under the sun, so in that sense I think it’s incredibly important to have fashion eyewear that accommodates our needs in an ever-changing society. He says, I see you’re not wearing sunglasses right now. And that’s when I notice, yes, everyone in this building is wearing sunglasses, even though we’re indoors and it’s the middle of February and it’s not even a bright day outside. I say yes, I’m not wearing sunglasses. That’s very true, sir, and I respect you for pointing that out. And the reason I’m not wearing sunglasses is . . . I don’t feel I need to wear them . . . in order to prove my qualifications for this job. I thought that was pretty smart.
