Under the Beetle's Cellar
Page 36
“I thought a bed of his own in the kitchen might keep him out of my bedroom,” Molly said, with a meaningful glance at Grady.
“We’ll see,” he said with a smile. “How are your push-ups going?”
“I haven’t actually started the new program yet. It’s only April. But by the end of the year I’m going to have arms like Rain Conroy’s.”
“Jo Beth,” Grady said, “how about joining us? We’re going out to the lake to watch the sun set. If the world’s going to end at sunset, we thought the lake would be the best place to watch it happen.”
“Thanks,” Jo Beth said, “but I’ve got a date. And I’m late. Got to run.”
They watched her walk across the parking lot in her black tights and long gray sweatshirt. Before she got into her car, she turned and waved at them.
“We do good work together,” Grady said, throwing a kiss at his daughter.
“Yes,” Molly said. “We certainly do.” She ran her fingers over the repaired rear fender. “Thanks for getting this fixed.”
He patted the tailgate, and she hoisted herself up to sit next to him.
“I’ve been thinking, Molly.”
She tensed. Here it came. There was no putting it off any longer. “What?”
“About my lease and all.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Barbara Gruber called me.”
“Oh?”
“She’s going to Washington for six months to learn how to set up a DNA lab. But since she’s a good buddy of yours, I suppose you know that.”
“Uh-huh.”
“She’s looking for someone to sublet her house. It’s got a fenced-in yard, she says.”
“A perfect dog yard,” Molly said.
“That’s what she said. And the rent’s exactly what I’ve been paying. A real coincidence.”
“Yeah.”
“I told her I’d take it.”
Molly turned to look at him. His pale aqua eyes had always reminded her of Oriental Avenue on the Monopoly board. She took his face between her hands. “Oh, Grady! What a good idea. It’s only about a mile from me. I could help you with the dog.”
He laughed. “It is a good idea.”
She pulled his head down to kiss him, but Copper growled low in his throat.
Grady said, “Wait. Hold that thought.” He jumped down from the truck, took the dog by the collar, and led him up front and into the cab. He slammed the door and ran back to resume his position on the tailgate. “Now. Where were we?” He leaned down and kissed her, first chastely on the cheek, then lingeringly down her neck, his mustache tickling like butterfly wings, and finally on the mouth—a long, deep exploration that left them both breathless.
Afterward, he reached back into the cooler and took out a beer. He popped the top and handed it to Molly. “It will give us six more months to contemplate the eschatology of cohabitation,” he said.
“A new countdown.” Molly took a long sip of her beer. “Have you noticed how time tends to organize itself into a series of countdowns? As soon as one ends, another begins. Two weeks till your lease is up. Seven years till I’m fifty. Eight months till I can do fifty push-ups. One day to taxes. Fifteen days till my article is due.”
“Yes, and when they aren’t built in, we make them for ourselves.” He tipped his head back to take a long swig of beer. “What are you going to write about Jezreel? The story about Special Agent Rain Conroy and how Samuel Mordecai really met his maker is pretty sensational. Too bad you can’t tell it.”
“Not really. That’s not the story I want to tell. There’s a much better one.”
“Walter Demming?”
“Yeah. Walter Demming and his eleven kids. Don’t you wonder what happened down there underground for forty-nine days, Grady? You saw what it was like. Can you imagine living there for that length of time with all those children? I talked to Kim Bassett today. The first day they were down in the hole, the Jezreelites turned the lights off and left them in the dark. They were all terrified, she said, crying and screaming. To calm them down, Demming started telling them a story and he kept it going, an installment or two a day, during their captivity. Kim said he finished the story last night, just a few hours before he was killed. The characters were animals—a turkey vulture and an armadillo—and they had adventures that sound to me a lot like some of his and Jake’s experiences in Vietnam.
“And the way he let the FBI know where they were is remarkable—the poetry and the Vietnam reference. That cries out to be written about. And, Grady, there’s no question that what he did last night saved their lives.”
“Sounds like you’re a little in love with him,” Grady said.
Molly sighed. “I suppose I am, a little. All the children are. And they’re eager to talk about him. I’m planning to go to the memorial service on Tuesday; a few of the kids are going to give eulogies. And I want to see how they do over time. Kim had trouble sleeping last night, and her mom says several of the other children woke up screaming. I think they’re in for more than just bad dreams.”
“It’s a hell of a story,” Grady said, nodding.
“It is. I think what I love about Demming is his natural courage, the unselfconscious kind that just emerges out of character and the situation.”
Grady took hold of her hand. “Molly, that’s the reason I had to take Copper.”
She looked up, surprised. “It is?”
“Yes. I watched him work once, and he struck me as a creature who just couldn’t stop himself from being brave when the situation required it. He didn’t choose courage, it just bubbled up from his nature. I couldn’t stand to see that snuffed out. There’s so little of it around.”
Molly nodded.
“Oh-oh.” Grady pointed at the orange ball of the sun that was just beginning to flatten against the horizon. “It’s setting. We’re not going to make it to the lake.”
“I like it right here in the parking lot,” Molly said, sipping her beer and savoring the way the clouds on the horizon got suffused with orange and pink and gold.
“Me, too. Looks like the world’s not going to end today.” Grady lifted his can. “Here’s to the world continuing,” he said, “just as flawed and imperfect as it has always been.”
Molly smiled. “I’ll drink to that.” She tapped her can to his. Then she held it up in a salute to the dog, who was watching them intently, his nose pressed against the back window.
EPILOGUE
Excerpt from “Under the Beetle’s Cellar,” by Molly Cates, Lone Star Monthly, June 1995
… They don’t really hang out together much, they say. But sometimes they gather out on the playground and talk. They talk about the nightmares and the moments of panic when the school bus comes to a sudden stop or when the lights go out. They talk about how Bucky’s thumb-sucking has gotten out of hand, and about how Sandra’s persistent stomachaches are mostly in her head. They joke about going to therapy.
They talk about Josh and what it was like to watch him die.
And they talk about Walter Demming.
They say that in the beginning he didn’t seem to like them much, but, later on, when he walked the bus aisle at night checking on them, they would sense his presence and feel taken care of. They say he wasn’t someone you would think of as funny or entertaining, but the story he told became their all-time favorite; sometimes now they talk about Jacksonville and Lopez and argue about the ending, and they laugh. They say he didn’t like religion much, but he ended up praying anyway. They say he’s hard to describe, hard to pin down as this thing or that.
And that’s true. After all, he was a man who broke all his vows. When he came home from Vietnam, Walter Demming had planned, like Candide, to stay home and tend his own garden. He had vowed to avoid involvement, but he ended up intimately involved in the lives of eleven children. He had vowed to avoid violence, but he died in an explosion of apocalyptic violence. He had vowed to maintain his privacy, to attract no attention, but he became headline news arou
nd the world, and was awarded posthumously the Presidential Medal of Honor.
Fate, or whatever force it is that delivers people to that very place they have been avoiding, devised for Walter Demming a situation that compelled him to transcend his rules and act instead from his heart and his true nature.