by Tom Reamy
Story of a person who hates reality, paints her/himself into a wish-fulfillment picture. And wasn’t there one by Clark Ashton Smith? “The Willow Landscape” it was called… if memory ain’t failing.
Where was I?
Oh. Yeah. Right. This is Tom’s entry in the I-can’t-stand-it-no-more-lemme-outta-here! Sweepstakes.
And a super entry it is.
Which leaves two stories yet to comment upon. Now, if you’ve been keeping track, I’ve gotten around to each story in the order I’d been advised by Jim Loehr of Earthlight Publishers that they would appear in the book.** Only exception has been grouping the three intended-as-movies pieces so I could get them out of the way quickly. But now I depart from the table of contents to discuss “Waiting for Billy Star” penultimately, leaving “The Detweiler Boy” for last.
**It should be noted that there are two unpublished stories in the Reamy oeuvre, not available for inclusion in this volume because they will be appearing in The Final Dangerous Visions (“Potiphee, Petey and Me”) and in New Voices IV (“M is for the Million Things, ” which Tom wanted to re-title “They Sleep So Poorly While They Live”).
“Waiting for Billy Star” is easy to talk about. It’s a poignant, unadorned version of the traditional ghost-returns-for-its-true-love story. But highly effective, of its kind, not only because it’s told simply and straightforwardly, but because Tom demonstrates another of his strong points: an uncanny ability to establish locale. A feeling that you know what the landscape, the background, looks like.
Very hard to do. Even some of our most vaunted “masters” of the fantasy story fail to limn the background. Their tales take place in an echoing void, sans color, sans scent, sans all.
But even in this snippet Tom was able to create the world inside and outside that roadside truck stop in Caprock, Texas.
Another thing: because this is such a familiar trope, you know the ending before it hits. You know it when Cliff speaks to the narrator, Wade, at the cash register on his way out, when he tells Wade, “She said she’d wait for him here.” Hell, you know it from the title and from the moment that Cliff tells Susanne that Billy Star is dead. You just know what’s coming.
But consider Tom’s skill. Unlike the long-winded Hawthorne or the wearisome Eliot (George, that is), who tip their ending ten thousand words before the conclusion and then plod along point by obvious point with dreary narrative that expends thirty-three hundred words telling you what you’re going to see, thirty-three hundred words showing it to you, and thirty-three hundred words telling you what you’ve just been shown (one assumes because they viewed their audiences as dull-witted and slow on the uptake), Tom races to his denouement with staccato dialogue and one final paragraph of beautifully tragic imagery.
He was an instinctive storyteller; even with this most obvious and predictable form of fantasy, Tom knew how to manipulate the reader to let the reader enrich him/herself.
Like John Lee in “San Diego Lightfoot Sue,” Tom had a way of allowing people to be better than they were ordinarily. Like this story, the quality that is most universally remembered about Tom by those who knew him, was that he was a nice man.
A nice man wrote this nice little story.
Bringing me, at last, to the last story, the one that lasts longest in the memory, “The Detweiler Boy.”
Trying to talk about Tom’s work, so deeply informed by his life and his nature, without (as I’ve said earlier) treading in territory that is clearly terra incognita, is difficult. I have always believed that a writer is a self-cannibalizing creature using everything s/he has ever known, learned, felt or suspected in transmogrified literary terms. Writers are keeks, taking guided tours through other people’s lives, and reporting back in. But this isn’t fiction, it’s hommage, and…
“The Detweiler Boy” is Tom filing a report on some of the places he had been, some of the people he had known, interpreting in a singular way some of the secrets those people would rather die than have revealed. As a result, there are psychosexual aspects to this truly frightening narrative that open doors into the darkness of our souls, doors that take integrity and great courage to open. Doors that give onto a labyrinth of torments created by over five thousand seven hundred years of the Judeo-Christian Ethos.
In the creation of this extraordinary black diamond, Tom is in the loftiest tradition of the High Art dreamers—Poe, Kafka, Mary Shelly, Bierce. His descent into the maelstrom out-eldritches even the three stories by Lovecraft one might correctly call excellent.
A fable that speaks to our hidden fears and seldom-acknowledged hungers.
The shadows that walked the streets for Tom in Hollywood were terrible creatures indeed; and in this story he manages to capture them for a burning instant in the dark glass of his artistry, in a way that I don’t think anyone who reads “The Detweiler Boy” will ever be able to completely flense from memory.
It is a surprising and excellent… awful story.
I hope no one mistakes my use of the word awful.
And now the pages turn brown. And now the glue that binds the covers begins to consume the endpapers. And now the spine cracks. And now the fragile triangles of the corners fall. And now the story ends.
It is dark where I sit writing. One light above the lover with which I share my dreams, this machine like Tom’s machine, intended for the spinning of webs beautiful and terrible beyond any telling. Over such a machine he spent his last moments.
And now the story ends, and now the words run out.
And now, shadows, you can go.
HARLAN ELLISON
Los Angeles
12 September 1979
Twilla
Twilla Gilbreath blew into Miss Mahan’s life like a pink butterfly wing that same day in early December the blue norther dropped the temperature forty degrees in two hours. Mr. Choate, the principal, ushered Twilla and her parents into Miss Mahan’s ninth grade home room shortly after the tardy bell rang. She had just checked the roll: all seventeen ninth graders were present except for Sammy Stocker who was in the Liberal hospital having his appendix removed. She was telling the class how nice it would be if they sent a get-well card when the door opened.
“Goooood morning, Miss Mahan,” Mr. Choate smiled cheerfully. He always smiled cheerfully first thing in the morning, but soured as the day wore on. You could practically tell time by Mr. Choate’s mouth. “We have a new ninth grader for you this morning, Miss Mahan. This is Mr. and Mrs. Gilbreath and their daughter, Twilla.”
Several things happened at once. Miss Mahan shook hands with the parents; she threw a severe glance at the class when she heard a snigger—but it was only Alice May Turner, who would probably giggle if she were being devoured by a bear; and she had to forcibly keep her eyebrows from rising when she got a good look at Twilla. Good Lord, she thought, and felt her smile falter.
Miss Mahan had never in her life, even when it was fashionable for a child to look like that, seen anyone so perfectly… pink, and… doll-like. She wasn’t sure why she got such an impression of pinkness, because the child was dressed in yellow, and had golden hair (that’s the color they mean when they say golden hair, she thought with wonder) done in, of all things, drop curls, with a big yellow bow in back. Twilla looked up at her with a sweet, radiant, sunny smile and clear periwinkle-blue eyes.
Miss Mahan detested her on sight.
She thought she saw, when Alice May giggled, the smile freeze and the lovely eyes dart toward the class, but she wasn’t sure. It all happened in an instant, and then Mr. Choate continued his Cheerful Charlie routine.
“Mr. Gilbreath has bought the old Peacock place.”
“Really?” she said, tearing her eyes from Twilla. “I didn’t know it was for sale.”
Mr. Gilbreath chuckled. “Not the entire farm, of course. I’m no farmer. Only the house and grounds. Such a charming old place. The owner lives in Wichita and had no use for them.”
“I would think the house is pretty run down,�
� Miss Mahan said, glancing at Twilla still radiating at the world. “No one’s lived in it since Wash and Grace Elizabeth died ten years ago.”
“It is a little,” Mrs. Gilbreath said pleasantly.
“But structurally sound,” interjected Mr. Gilbreath pleasantly.
“We’ll enjoy fixing it up,” Mrs. Gilbreath continued pleasantly.
“Miss Mahan teaches English to the four upper grades,” said Mr. Choate, bringing them back to the subject, “as well as speech and drama. Miss Mahan has been with the Hawley school system for thirty-one years.”
The Gilbreaths smiled pleasantly. “My… ah… Twilla seems very young to be in the ninth grade.” That get-up made her look about eleven, Miss Mahan thought.
The Gilbreaths beamed at their daughter. “Twilla is only thirteen,” Mrs. Gilbreath crooned, pride swelling her like yeast. “She’s such an intelligent child. She was able to skip the second grade.”
“I see. From where have you moved?”
“Boston,” replied Mr. Gilbreath.
“Boston. I hope… ah… Twilla doesn’t find it difficult to adjust to a small town school. I’m sure Hawley, Kansas, is quite unlike Boston.”
Mr. Gilbreath touched Twilla lovingly on the shoulder. “I’m sure she’ll have no trouble.”
“Well,” Mr. Choate rubbed his palms together. “Twilla is in good hands. Shall I show you around the rest of the school?”
“Of course,” smiled Mrs. Gilbreath.
They departed with fond murmurings and goodbyes, leaving Twilla like a buttercup stranded in a cabbage patch. Miss Mahan mentally shook her head. She hadn’t seen a family like that since Dick and Jane and Spot and Puff were sent the way of McGuffey’s Reader. Mr. and Mrs. Gilbreath were in their middle thirties, good looking without being glamorous, their clothes nice though as oddly wrong as Twilla’s. They seemed cut with some out-dated Ideal Family template. Surely, there must be an older brother, a dog, and a cat somewhere.
“Well… ah, Twilla,” Miss Mahan said, trying to reinforce the normal routine, “if you will take a seat; that one there, behind Alice May Turner. “Alice May, will you wave a flag or something so Twilla will know which one?” Alice May giggled. “Thank you, dear.” Twilla moved gracefully toward the empty desk. Miss Mahan felt as if she should say something to the child. “I hope you will… ah… enjoy going to school in Hawley, dear.”
Twilla sat primly and glowed at her. “I’m sure I shall, Miss Mahan,” she said, speaking for the first time. Her voice was like the tinkle of fairy bells—just as Miss Mahan was afraid it would be.
“Good,” she said and went back to the subject of a get-well card for Sammy Stocker. She had done this so often—there had been a great many sick children in thirty-one years—it had become almost a ritual needing only a small portion of her attention. The rest she devoted to the covert observation of Twilla Gilbreath.
Twilla sat at her desk, displaying excellent posture, with her hands folded neatly before her, seemingly paying attention to the Great Greeting Card Debate, but actually giving the rest of the class careful scrutiny. Miss Mahan marveled at the surreptitious calculation in the girl’s face. She realizes she’s something of a green monkey, Miss Mahan thought, and I’ll bet my pension she doesn’t let the situation stand.
And the class surveyed Twilla, in their superior position of established territorial rights, with open curiosity—and with the posture of so many sacks of corn meal. Some of them looked at her, Miss Mahan was afraid, with rude amusement—especially the girls, and especially Wanda O’Dell who had bloomed suddenly last summer like a plump rose. Oh, yes, Wanda was going to be a problem. Just like her five older sisters. Thank goodness, she sighed, Wanda was the last of them.
Children, Miss Mahan sighed again, but fondly.
Children?
They were children when she started teaching and certainly were when she was fifteen, but, now, she wasn’t sure. Fifteen is such an awkward, indefinite age. Take Ronnie Dwyer: he looks like a prepubescent thirteen at most. And Carter Redwine, actually a couple of months younger than Ronnie, could pass for seventeen easily and was anything but prepubescent. Poor Carter, a child in a man’s body. To make matters worse, he was the best looking boy in town; and to make matters even worse yet, he was well aware of it.
And, she noticed, so was Twilla. Forget it, Little Pink Princess. Carter already has more than he can handle, Miss Mahan chuckled to herself. Can’t you see those dark circles under his eyes? They didn’t get there from studying. And then she blushed inwardly.
Oh, the poor children. They think they have so many secrets. If they only knew. Between the tattle-tales and the teachers’ gossip, she doubted if the whole student body had three secrets among them.
Miss Mahan admonished herself for having such untidy thoughts. She didn’t use to think about things like that, but then, fifteen-year-olds didn’t lead such overtly sexual lives back then. She remembered reading somewhere that only thirty-five per cent of the children in America were still virgins at fifteen. But those sounded like Big City statistics, not applicable to Hawley.
Then she sighed. It was all beyond her. The bell rang just as the get-well card situation was settled. The children rose reluctantly to go to their first class: algebra with Mr. Whittaker. She noticed that Twilla had cozied up to Alice May, though she still kept her eye on Carter Redwine. Carter was not unaware and, with deliberate, lordly indifference, sauntered from the room with his hand on Wanda O’Dell’s shoulder. Miss Mahan thought the glint she observed in Twilla’s eyes might lead to an interesting turn of events.
Children.
She cleared her mind of random speculation and geared it to Macbeth as the senior class filed in with everything on their minds but Shakespeare. Raynelle Franklin, Mr. Choate’s secretary, lurked nervously among them, looking like a chicken who suddenly finds herself with a pack of coyotes. She edged her middle-aged body to Miss Mahan’s desk, accepted the absentee report, and scuttled out. Miss Mahan looked forward to Raynelle’s performance every morning.
During lunch period, Miss Mahan walked to the dime store for a get-well card which the ninth grade class would sign that afternoon when they returned for English. She glanced at the sky and unconsciously pulled her gray tweed coat tighter about her. The sky had turned a cobalt blue in the north. It wouldn’t be long now. Though the temperature must be down to thirty-five already, it seemed colder. She guessed her blood was getting thin, she knew her flesh was. Old age, she thought, old age. Thin blood, thin flesh, and brittle bones. She sometimes felt as if she were turning into a bird.
She almost bumped into Twilla’s parents emerging from the dry goods store, their arms loaded with packages. Their pleasant smiles turned on. Click, click. They chatted trivialities for a moment, adding new dimensions to Twilla’s already flawless character. Miss Mahan had certainly seen her share of blindly doting parents, but this was unbelievable. She had seen the cold calculation with which Twilla had studied the class, and that was hardly the attribute of an angel. Something didn’t jibe somewhere. She speculated on the contents of the packages, but thought she knew. Then she couldn’t resist; she asked if Twilla were an only child. She was. Well, there went that.
She looked at the clock on the high tower of the white rococo courthouse, and, subtracting fourteen minutes, decided she’d better hurry if she wanted to eat lunch and have a rest before her one o’clock class.
The teacher’s lounge was a reasonably comfortable room where students were forbidden to enter on pain of death—though it seemed to be a continuing game on their part to try. Miss Mahan hung her coat on a hanger and shivered. “Has anyone heard a weather forecast?” she asked the room in general.
Mrs. Latham (home economics) looked up from her needlepoint and shook her head vaguely. Poor old dear, thought Miss Mahan. Due to retire this year, I think. Seems like she’s been here since Creation. She taught me when I was in school. Leo Whittaker (math) was reading a copy of Playboy. Probably took it from on
e of the children. “Supposed to be below twenty by five,” he said, then grinned and held up the magazine. “Ronnie Dwyer.”
Miss Mahan raised her eyebrows. Loretta McBride (history/civics) tsked, shook her head, and went back to her book. Miss Mahan retrieved her carton of orange juice from the small refrigerator and drank it with her fried egg sandwich. She put part of the sandwich back in the Baggie. She hardly had any appetite at all anymore. Guess what they say is true: the older you get…
She began to crochet on her interminable afghan. The little squares were swiftly becoming a pain in the neck, and she regretted ever starting it. She looked at Mrs. Latham and her needlepoint. She sighed, I guess it’s expected of us old ladies. Anyway, it gave her something to hide behind when she didn’t feel like joining the conversation. But today she felt like talking, though it didn’t seem as if anyone else did.
She finished a square and snipped the yam. “What do you think of the Shirley Temple doll who joined our merry group this morning?”
Mrs. Latham looked up and smiled. “Charming child.”
“Yes,” said Loretta, putting away her book, “absolutely charming. And smart as a whip. Really knows her American History. Joined in the discussion as if she’d been in the class all semester.” Miss McBride was one of the few outsiders teaching in Hawley who gave every indication of remaining. Usually they came and went as soon as greener pastures opened up. Most were like Miss Mahan, Mrs. Latham, and Leo Whittaker, living their entire lives there.
It was practically incestuous, she thought. Mrs. Latham had taught her, she had taught Leo, and he was undoubtedly teaching part of the next crop. Miss Mahan had to admit that Leo had been something of a surprise. He was only twenty-five and had given no indication in high school that he was destined for anything better than a hanging. She wondered how long it would be before Leo connected his students’ inability to keep secrets from the teachers with his own disreputable youth.
