Social Blunders

by Tim Sandlin

  I dropped Bobby’s bicycle on the grass and walked across the yard toward Clark and the house. Behind me, someone said, “That’s not a costume, it’s underwear.”

  Clark peered across the lawn. “Don’t come any closer, Mr. Callahan.” Since last night’s botch job, he’d done some homework. An orange extension cord ran from the plug under the light socket to the bucket, where he’d stripped the last six inches of wire and wrapped it around the handle.

  “Clark, what in hell are you doing this time?”

  His forehead rippled. “You laughed at me. You said only an idiot tries to kill himself with electricity.”

  “I meant breathing fumes from an electric motor.”

  “No one takes me seriously.”

  “I take you seriously, Clark. So does your father.”

  “No, you don’t. You all think I’m a clown.”

  “You don’t have to die to prove your emotions are real.”

  He balanced a foot on the bucket. “The world is an awful place, Mr. Callahan. I’ll never fit in here.”

  Clark stuck his foot in the water and his finger in the light socket.

  ***

  I rammed him as hard as I could with my shoulder. The momentum broke Clark free from the charge but not before I caught a stiff zap. I landed on my left side on the concrete porch and slid into a column. When I looked back, Clark lay on his face in the spreading water from the dumped bucket.

  Clark was dead weight as I rolled him over on his back. His face had gone slack and gray. Both eyes were nearly closed, but not quite—twin egg-white slits showed in the folds. I felt his neck for a pulse but couldn’t find one, so I doubled up my fist and belted him in the chest. The body didn’t jerk or anything, was like hitting a sack of potatoes. I put my ear to his heart and held my own breath, listening. Nothing.

  From the street someone called, “Is he all right?”

  I grabbed hair and pulled Clark’s head back like they teach you in the artificial respiration films in high school. In the films, the victim’s mouth falls open and the savior goes to work, but in my case, Clark’s jaw locked. First I tried prying it open with my thumb, then I slapped him hard. No good.

  I jumped off the porch and ran to the garage for a screwdriver. All the way across the yard, I rehearsed what my life would be like if I let him die. My life, Billy’s life, Clark’s mother, who must have been at the Prescott party too—losing a child is the worst thing that can happen to anyone, and being the cause of someone losing a child may be second.

  Back at Clark’s body I jammed the screwdriver between his molars and twisted. I may have broken his teeth, I don’t know, but somehow I got him open. Some of the people from the street had come into the yard, but no one offered to help. I didn’t expect them to. Clark was my responsibility.

  The door opened and Shannon appeared in the light, still wearing her grass skirt and leis.

  I said, “Call an ambulance.”

  She disappeared without a word. I pulled Clark’s head way back until he almost faced the wall, then, holding his tongue down with the screwdriver, I took a deep breath and put my mouth against his.

  My lips on another man’s. You can be repulsed at the thought of something all your life and then not even think about it when the time comes to act. A minute ago touching a man on the face was the least likely thing I would ever do.

  A shadow crossed the rectangle of light and Eugene knelt beside me. He was dressed in a gorilla costume with no head.

  “Who is it?” he asked.

  Clark’s chest rose when I blew into him, but when I stopped, so did he. “Clark Gaines. Billy’s boy.”

  “Why isn’t he breathing?”

  “Electrocuted himself.”

  I don’t know if the information meant anything to Eugene or not. He probably didn’t remember the name Billy Gaines, and if he did, I doubt if he connected his attempt at finding me something to do with this body on the porch.

  Eugene used his teeth to pull off his gorilla paws. “Move up closer to the head,” he said. He put his palms on Clark’s chest and pumped. I went into a three exhalations, then listen pattern. Clark’s lungs would work one or two breaths, then stop again. He wasn’t dead, but he couldn’t stay alive on his own.

  Shannon reappeared with jeans, a T-shirt, and a pair of sneakers. “You’ll need them in the ambulance,” she said.

  “Call Billy Gaines and tell him to meet us at the hospital. Moses Cone is closest, so I guess that’s where they’ll take him.”

  “Okay.”

  “Billy was at Skip Prescott’s a half hour ago. He might still be there.”

  Shannon started to ask a question, but didn’t. She moved to go inside, then turned back to me again. “He’ll want to know what happened; what do I tell him?”

  I had no answer.

  27

  The ambulance attendants stuck paddles onto Clark’s chest and jolted him with a battery and got him going, then at the hospital he stopped again in the emergency room. I watched him start and stop until a nurse spotted me in the corner and chased me into the waiting room.

  Billy, Skip, Cameron, and a woman I didn’t know sat on pastel chairs like you see in institutional cafeterias. The waiting room walls were legal pad yellow and the tube lighting buzzed. Hart to Hart played on an elevated TV with a bad picture and no sound. Robert Wagner wore a tuxedo while Stephanie Powers pounded out her next best-seller.

  Skip glared at me in blatant hatred, but Billy came over and shook my hand and thanked me for bringing Clark in. He introduced me to his wife, Daphne.

  “I don’t understand why Clark was at your house,” she said.

  Billy and I stared at the tile floor. He was still in shock at having a son who’d attempted suicide. He hadn’t gotten around to blame yet.

  Skip had. And Cameron. My fathers had hated me from the start and now they hated me with good reason, which made them more confident in their hatred. Cameron still wore the three-piece suit he’d been in when he came to threaten me earlier in the day. Skip had on the tennis shorts uniform. It was hard to see anything the two had in common besides Skip’s sister and my mother.

  Hart to Hart ended and the news came on and went off while we sat in silence. Every now and then an orderly or a nurse came through and everyone looked up expectantly. The nurses were professional at ignoring people in the waiting room. Billy cleaned his glasses. Twice he asked Daphne if she wanted a Coca-Cola and both times she said “No.” Skip smoked a cigarette.

  I thought about how I would feel if Shannon killed herself. That’s what fiction writers do—see someone in trouble and try to feel what they feel. If Shannon committed suicide, I couldn’t conceive of ever recovering. People do live through it, but I don’t know how. Maybe they have no choice.

  I watched the side of Billy’s face as he blinked, his attention on Daphne. His face wasn’t sneaky or complicated; it accepted, like an animal. Innocent. I got in a fight once to stop a kid from killing kittens, but what I’d done to Billy was so much worse than killing kittens. All that pride I took in knowing right from wrong and refusing to do wrong had turned out nothing but hooey. Accidental cruelty is just as evil as doing it on purpose.

  ***

  The emergency room doctor was Egyptian, I think. He looked Egyptian and wore a name tag that said Dr. Faroub. He walked with that straight-up way you never see in Americans.

  He came toward me, fingering the stethoscope in his jacket pocket. “Your son, he will live.”

  My stomach unclenched. “Not my son. His.”

  Dr. Faroub turned to Billy. “The boy suffered a grand mal seizure, which brought on heart failure. He should lose weight and receive counseling. Counseling is a help for the children.”

  Billy shook the doctor’s hand. “Thank you for saving him.”

  “Suicide is illegal, you know.”<
br />
  “How can you tell he did it on purpose?” Daphne asked, which might have been a meaningless question if anyone but Clark had stepped in a wired bucket of water and stuck their finger in a light socket.

  Dr. Faroub looked from Daphne to Billy. “The boy had a note in his pocket saying he wanted his body going to the Duke Medical School…so his father couldn’t touch him.”

  Daphne raised her hand to her cheek. Of all my extended family members, she was the one who’d been left in the dark. “Clark idolizes his father,” she said.

  Dr. Faroub shrugged and repeated, “Counseling is a help for the children. Will you proceed to the front, there are forms.”

  “I already gave them my insurance card,” Daphne said.

  “There are always more forms.”

  After the doctor clicked away, Billy’s legs kind of went out from under him and he sat down quickly.

  “It’s my fault,” he said.

  Cameron looked at me. “No, it isn’t.”

  “Why would Clark be mad at you, William?” Daphne asked.

  Cameron stood up. “The doctor said something about forms, Daphne. Don’t you think you should take care of that?”

  Daphne’s eyes traveled from Cameron to Billy to me, where they stayed a long time. The woman may have been dressed by Wal-Mart, but she wasn’t stupid. She knew a story lay beneath the facts, only she was Southern enough not to demand explanations in public.

  “Okay,” she said. “Billy, you want a Coke?”

  He shook his head, no.

  ***

  I don’t know if they’d been waiting for word on Clark or for Daphne to leave the room, but as soon as she left, Skip and Cameron turned nasty.

  “I hope you’re happy,” Skip said.

  Women use that sentence when they’re pissed. Generally, men only say it when they mean it.

  “Why should I be happy?” I said.

  Cameron turned sideways, away from me. He seemed to be addressing the television. “You wanted to place our lives in upheaval and now you have. Your goals are met, but I promise you, the price will be heavy.”

  “I never wanted to place your lives in upheaval.”

  “Then why seduce Skip’s wife? Why drive Billy’s son to suicide? There can be no motivation other than harming us.”

  “Skip’s wife seduced me.”

  Skip doubled his fists and took a step toward me. “Katrina told us how you got her stinking drunk and had your way with her, then you blackmailed her into an affair.”

  “She made me eat her in the sauna.”

  Cameron turned to stare in my direction. “Your relationship with Gilia stops now.”

  “I’m afraid so,” I said.

  Billy suddenly let out a sob. “Why does Clark hate me?”

  “Simple,” Cameron said. “This…person turned him against you.”

  “I hope you’re happy,” Skip said. The evening had cut off his ability to vocalize bile.

  I felt terrible about Clark and Gilia and everyone else who suffered because of my existence, but these men were persecuting me for events they had set in motion.

  I said, “I’m not the only one to blame. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t raped Lydia in the first place.”

  There was silence, then Billy said, “Raped?”

  “Why can’t any of you take responsibility for your actions? I’m nothing but the product of this crime, you’re the cause.”

  “Nobody raped your mother,” Cameron said.

  “She was a slut,” Skip said.

  “Bullshit. You got her drunk on vodka shot into oranges with a hypodermic needle, then the five of you raped her over and over and when you were done you stood in a circle and urinated on her body.”

  Billy’s face was twisted in pain. His voice came in a choke. “That’s a lie.”

  “My mother wouldn’t lie about something so important.” A Whitewater roar started in my ears. My mouth tasted of tin.

  “Your mother was a slut,” Skip repeated.

  “Babe Carnisek admitted you all raped her.”

  Had he? I couldn’t remember if the word rape was used or not. Cameron was watching me like an owl on a mouse. When he spoke, his voice was deliberate. “Your mother gave us each some fudge and a tumbler of her daddy’s scotch. After we drank, she offered us two dollars apiece to have sex with her.”

  “No.”

  “We were sixteen- and seventeen-year-old boys. What did you expect us to do?”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “We were all virgins,” Billy said.

  Skip said, “I wasn’t.”

  Billy went on. “We were all virgins and scared to death, but she insisted. I was so frightened I couldn’t get erect. She called me a ‘worm’ and made me give back the two dollars.”

  This didn’t make sense. All the relationships of my life had been shaped by Lydia’s rape. “Why didn’t you tell me that when I came to your house?”

  Billy looked down at his hands. “I couldn’t admit I’m a worm.”

  “Your mother was a slut,” Skip said for the third time.

  “Face it,” Cameron said. “You’ve been had.”

  “I need to use the telephone.”

  ***

  Didi answered on the eighth ring.

  “What’s wrong?” she said.

  “Is Babe home?”

  “Whenever the phone rings at midnight, somebody’s died.”

  “No one died, Mrs. Carnisek. This is Sam Callahan, I need to ask Babe a question.”

  “He goes to sleep after the weather and sports.”

  “Could you wake him up? It’s important.”

  The phone was silent a long time. A short black man in a white uniform came down the hall, sliding a floor buffer from side to side in rhythm to music only he could hear over a pair of earphones. He was smoking a cigarette, but instead of using the sand ashtrays at either end of the hall, he let the ash get long until it fell from its own weight and was swept under the floor buffer. I concentrated on breathing.

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry to wake you, Babe, but I have to know what happened on Christmas Eve 1949.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Sam Callahan. I was at your house the Saturday before last during the Washington-Detroit game. You might be my father.”

  “I remember.”

  “I need to know what happened the night I was conceived.”

  He hesitated a moment, then said, “A bunch of us screwed your mother.”

  “I was hoping for details.”

  “Let me think.” The black guy came close to the pay phone and I put a finger in my ear to cover the whish of his buffer.

  “I was at Skip Prescott’s house listening to colored music on the record player,” Babe said, “and a friend of his sister telephoned and asked us to a party.”

  “Yes.”

  “Your mom was mad at her daddy about something, so she screwed us.”

  I inhaled deeply. “Whose idea was it?”

  “Was what?”

  “Having sex. The five of you having sex with Lydia.”

  “Hell, we were such young punks none of us even knew what hole to go in.”

  “So the sex was her idea?”

  “She paid us money to do her.”

  Everything that had happened in my life up to that point suddenly became void. I closed my eyes to block the nausea and leaned my head against the wall next to the phone.

  Babe’s voice was hesitant. “After you left the other day, I got to thinking, and I don’t believe I was quite honest while you were here.”

  “You lied?”

  “Didn’t lie so much as forgot the whole truth. You can ask Didi, that’s not like me.”

  “W
hat’s the truth?”

  “I’m probably not your father after all.”

  I didn’t say anything. I was beyond the ability to react.

  “The truth is I squirted so quick I don’t think I ever got far enough in to make her pregnant.”

  “Oh.”

  “She cussed me out for messing on her belly.”

  ***

  I walked all night. It must have been raining, but I don’t remember. I don’t remember feeling anything, inside or out. The police stopped me down by the interstate. I must have answered enough questions not to be taken in as a drunk, but I don’t see how.

  Dawn found me lying on Atalanta Williams’ couch with my head in her lap, sobbing. Fingers ran through my hair. Her other hand rested on my shoulder.

  She said, “I knew all along my Jake couldn’t have done what your mama said.”

  Her bathrobe smelled like flowers. I could easily have stayed on that couch for years. Another day at home—waking up, looking out at the weather, deciding what to wear—was more than I could face. Going on was too much responsibility.

  “I wish you were my mother,” I said.

  Atalanta gave me a squeeze on the shoulder and said, “So do I.”

  Part Two

  WYOMING

  1

  Rule Number One of Being Sam Callahan: In times of torment, fly to Maurey. The evening after Halloween, All Souls’ Night itself, I landed in the Jackson Hole Airport during the first real snowstorm of the year. Because the flight attendant thought I was handicapped, she helped me down the airplane steps and across the runway to the terminal where Hank Elkrunner awaited. I did feel arthritic, especially in the knees and feet. The world looked the way I imagine it would if you’d just survived a plane crash where other people were killed. Objects appeared brand new; I couldn’t come up with the word that went along with the thing.

  Hank said, “Welcome home.”

  I said, “Oh.”

  He drove to the ranch through blowing snow and no heat in his pickup. On the radio, Jimmy Buffett sang “Peanut Butter Conspiracy”—a song glorifying shoplifting. At the ranch, Hank led me to my private cell in the barracks he and Pud built years ago for Maurey’s recovering legions. Without undressing, I crawled between the sheets of a twin bed and lay on my back, neither awake nor asleep. The plywood ceiling had knot whorls in the wood grain that stared down at me like eyes. Pissed-off, judgmental eyes. Female eyes.