The city’s official Web site immediately depressed him. Gatlinburg had obviously gotten bigger in the last decade and a half, but it didn’t appear to have grown. Every activity seemed geared toward the elderly or mentally disabled: trolley rides; chair-making demonstrations; self-guided Segway tours of the city; Cooter’s Place, a museum dedicated exclusively to The Dukes of Hazzard; and “the most photographed attraction in Gatlinburg,” Christ in the Smokies, a six-ton marble carving of Jesus’s face with eyes that follow you around the room.
“Fucking creepy,” he muttered.
Clicking “accommodations,” Ray found a company inexplicably named Safari Leasing that rented log cabins guaranteeing “beautiful mountain views with speedy access to restaurants and attractions.”
Good enough, he thought and opened the bottom drawer of the desk. Under a pile of old tax returns and current overdraft notices, Ray dug around until he found a three-inch stack of business cards bound with a rubber band. Tucked deep inside was a Visa card in the name of Walter Beddow.
Walter Beddow had been one of Ray’s favorite hospice patients. A lifelong travel writer, Walter circled the globe several times before pancreatic cancer forced him home. Ray sat for hours as the man gave him a tour of the world he knew he’d never get to see: the azure water of Plitvice Lakes in Croatia, the remnants of the orchard at the Killing Fields, Japan’s Bridge to Heaven.
“I’ve seen the whole world, Ray,” Walter said between small sips of water. “I don’t know what the next world is going to be, but I’m dying to get there.”
The hospice had very strict rules regarding caregivers receiving gifts from patients, but Walter—who’d never settled in one place long enough to start a family—insisted Ray take some of his most cherished possessions: travel journals, photographs, and a Pulitzer Prize he won for a series of articles about Polish concentration camps reopening as tourist attractions.
“It was the damnedest thing I’d ever seen. Normal families smiling for pictures in front of a walk-in furnace. What the hell is wrong with people?”
Walter did not give Ray his social security number, but after hearing stories of the man’s escapades in countries where seventeen was considered over the hill, Ray was pretty sure Walter wouldn’t have minded.
Besides, Ray needed a credit card. Miranda had maxed out their others—all fourteen of them. It had also come in handy with his new girlfriend. Recently he’d been keeping iTunes gift cards in his pockets like dog treats. And while effective at keeping Courtney pacified, it had done nothing to help him end the relationship. Ray’s role in his own extramarital affair had largely been a passive one. It was just something that repeatedly happened to him while he was at work. He never initiated, asked for, or expected sex. That, to his way of thinking, somehow made him less of a criminal. Ray had never studied the law, but he could only imagine “She touched me first, Your Honor” would be a slightly more tenable defense when he inevitably went to trial. Arguably, his biggest mistake had been assuming the teenager would get bored with him and leave him alone. That had not happened, and Ray believed the time had come to find a more active solution.
Perusing the Web site for Gatlinburg’s Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum, Ray heard Courtney’s text tone calling from his phone: She’s my cherry pie, cool drink of water such a sweet surprise …
“It’s fucking six-thirty in the morning,” he mumbled while scolding himself for not turning his phone off.
The text read: NEED 2 TALK 2 U ASAP
Ray sighed. He liked texting for the most part. Generally, he was a big fan of anything impersonal and succinct, but the shorthand of texting disappointed him. It was as if the world had finally figured out the perfect way to communicate, then decided to do so using only Prince lyrics.
He responded: WHAT ABOUT? IS MARVIN OKAY?
She’s my cherry pie, cool drink—
He set his phone to Vibrate.
HES GOOD I JUST TOOK P TEST! POS!!
“What?” He needed coffee. Dragging himself into the kitchen, Ray thumb-typed: I DON’T UNDERSTAND. USE YOUR WORDS.
He tossed his phone on the yellow Formica table and flipped on the radio. Pretentious nonsense from Coldplay whined from the speaker, and Ray immediately switched it off. The rising sun was just starting to peek through the window, casting the room in an amber glow like a photograph from the ’70s. His favorite mug was at the bottom of the sink under a stack of plates, and pulling it out would have triggered an avalanche of chores, so he opened the dishwasher and grabbed Miranda’s Kentucky Wildcats travel mug. He plugged in the expensive cappuccino machine Bailey won at the Miss World Illinois Pageant (Carbondale, Illinois) and glanced out the window to see if Cindy Ellis was exercising. When he didn’t see her, he scanned the magnetic poetry on the fridge: i hate stupid people
Ray removed the word “stupid.” Then the word “people.” Then “hate,” until “i” was left all by itself.
His phone buzzed.
The screen read: DON’T B MEAN—IM PREGNUNT!! :(
Ray stared at it for a long time. Mr. B, his sophomore American history teacher, once told him that when the colonists first arrived in the New World, the Native Americans literally could not see the ships approaching because their minds were not capable of processing the enormity of the situation. That was happening to Ray.
“Don’t be mean. I’m pregnunt,” he read aloud and immediately felt the cold hand of providence reach down his throat, pull out his lungs, tie them into a balloon animal, and stuff them back into his chest. “Fuck me.”
Had Ray’s life been a movie, shrieking violins would’ve played as a spiraling red background accompanied his short drop to the chair.
This has to be a joke, he thought. Courtney’s sense of humor was questionable at best, and this was just the kind of fucked-up thing she would find hilarious.
He texted back: ARE YOU KIDDING?
After a few seconds she replied: NO! NOT FUNY!!
Maybe she misread the test, he thought, hoped, prayed.
He texted: ARE YOU SURE?
YES VERY 4 TESTS!!
He took a deep breath and texted: IS IT MINE?
The moment he hit Send, he wished he hadn’t. The question implied she was a slut. Furthermore, it said to a jury that not only was he a pedophile but he was an insensitive one.
She responded: DUH!!
Ray felt like he was being pulled underwater. He needed a plan, something simple and effective, like murder but not murder. Ray wasn’t a murderer; he was just an idiot. He pulled his robe tight around his shoulders and felt the rough embroidery of the Miami Hilton logo set against the aged softness of the terry cloth. Ray liked embroidery; he respected its endurance. It never faded, it never shrank, when the robe was threadbare and ready for Goodwill, the embroidery still looked great. Embroidery was a survivor. Ray Miller had always been more robe than embroidery, but that was about to change.
“Florida.” Ray whispered, barely recognizing the voice as his own.
From the pocket of his robe, Ray pulled out Walter Beddow’s credit card and rubbed it between his fingers as if trying to summon a genie. A plan came into focus. Ray would go to Florida and become Walter Beddow. He had no family there, no ties at all, so there’d be no reason for anyone to look for him. The Visa bill was paid automatically from a bank account also in Walter’s name, which eliminated a paper trail. And if he rented a car, no one could trace his plates. Ray Miller could very easily cease to exist. That realization was a bit depressing, but he could tend to his wounded ego on the beach. Plus, with a large percentage of Florida’s population being over sixty-five, hospice work would be plentiful.
Ray was now nodding furiously. This was happening. He was going to become a fugitive from his own life. The clock on the wall read six forty-one. If he was out the door by seven, he could watch the sun set in the Gulf. Rummaging through the useless detritus of the junk drawer, Ray managed to find a pencil and starting making a list: clothes, cash, his nurs
ing license—he’d worry about changing it to Walter’s name when he got there—his iPod …
“What else, what else…” he said, pacing furiously until two distant voices paralyzed him.
“A football!
“Cool! Throw it to me!”
“Go long!”
Crash! “Touchdown!”
Giggles in bare feet bounded into the kitchen. When the boys saw their father hunched over the table, they smothered him with hugs motivated by nothing but pure love and appreciation.
“Thanks for the football, Dad! It’s awesome!”
“You’re welcome, buddy.”
“Will you come outside and play with us?”
Ray sighed and smiled. “Of course I will.”
“What’s wrong, Daddy? Why are you crying?”
“Hm?” Ray touched his cheeks. They were hot and wet. How long had he been crying? Why hadn’t he before today? Wiping his face, he smiled at his sons.
“Sometimes grown-ups cry when they’re happy.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
Ray laughed. “No. I guess it doesn’t. I’m fine.” He wiped his face dry with the sleeve of his threadbare robe. “Why don’t you go get dressed and I’ll meet you outside.”
“Okay! Can we have pancakes after?”
“Sure.”
The boys let out a “wah-hoo!” and ran from the room, stripping off their pajamas, leaving them where they fell. Ray looked around his shitty kitchen at the reminders of the life he’d built with his family: photographs of trips, finger-painted refrigerator art, the shoe box from Bailey’s first pair of high heels now filled with hundreds of broken crayons. Everything had a story and Ray knew every one. He thought about his wife and daughter, somewhere in Tennessee doing what they loved most in the world. He thought about his boys, and how much they needed a dad, their dad, him, Ray Miller. He thought about Brixton and how much he loved her even though he’d yet to meet her. This certainly wasn’t the life Ray had imagined for himself; however, it was the life he’d made for himself. And he would deal with it like the man he was: a lying, pill-popping, adulterer with almost four kids, a forged credit card, and two women pregnant with his children. Ray Miller may not have been a great man, but he certainly wasn’t Walter Beddow.
His phone buzzed with a text from Courtney: COM BY 2NITE. WE NEED 2 TALK
“Yes, we do,” he mumbled to himself and texted back: C U @ 7
Florida would have to wait. For now, anyway.
chapter ten
Wesley James Veteto checked his veneered teeth in the hand mirror he kept in the breast pocket of his tuxedo and took a seat in front of the camera. An onyx stud the size of an acorn held the banded collar of his Van Heusen shirt in place and perfectly matched the impossibly tasteful ring worn on his left pinkie. The man lovingly known as Uncle Wes had spent the past two and a half decades carving out a niche as master of ceremonies, entertainer, and all-around cheerleader for every notable children’s beauty pageant in the Southern United States. Because of his immense popularity, Uncle Wes commanded a yearly salary in the six figures, plus numerous perks: first-class airfare, car service, suite accommodations, and a dog sitter. Many pageant organizers considered him as important to the pageants as the contestants themselves, going so far as to ignore years of tradition and national holidays to fit Wes’s increasingly demanding schedule.
As the official Web site of Birmingham’s 24th Annual Columbus Day Pageant and Celebration read: “Due to a scheduling conflict, this years festivities will be postponed until the third weekend in October, instead of the second. Just like one can’t imagine celebrating Christmas without Santa Claus, we cannot imagine anyone else but our beloved Uncle Wes crowning our ‘Nina,’ (Little Miss), ‘Pinta’ (Princess), and ‘Santa Maria’ (Queen). Thank you for your continued understanding.”
A former sergeant in the Marine Corps, Wes left the service after a disciplinary action forced him to pursue a career in the private sector. Third-generation military, Wes’s grandfather had served in Patton’s army and boasted of once sharing a bottle of whiskey with the general on the newly liberated streets of Palermo. His father, a lieutenant colonel, completed three tours in both Korea and Vietnam before retiring to advise President Reagan on the creeping Communist threat to America and her allies. Hoping that some quality time on the battlefield would finally give him and his father something to talk about, Wes entered Marine Division Recon training at Camp Pendleton. Ten days later he was expelled from the program and the corps.
“The incident,” as Wes referred to it, occurred several years before “don’t ask, don’t tell” was instituted, when official military policy was something more akin to “Don’t get caught with another Marine’s cock in your mouth.” Which he did. Twice. Luckily for Wes (and his father’s reputation), his lawyer was able secure an honorable medical discharge, the official condition being listed as a “persistent groin abnormality.”
While not keen to discuss his ouster, Wes was always eager to talk about his time in the corps, which delighted pageant organizers no end. His military service lent the pageants an air of patriotism, making them feel wholly American, even necessary. And in a post-9/11 world, what could be more important than that?
“I’ve spent time near the Middle East,” he once told a group of rapt mothers. “And let me tell you, ladies, they do not have beauty pageants there. They don’t have the kind of freedoms we enjoy here in this country.” He then choked up. “So when you say your prayers tonight, you think about that. About what we’re giving those people over there by having these girls up on that stage today.”
As emcee, Uncle Wes believed it was his duty to personify America. His wardrobe was exclusively red, white, and blue, and while the more conservative observers did not consider a sequined Old Glory vest to be respectful, Wes could not have disagreed more.
“Oh, that’s just silly.” He chuckled. “I mean, what’s more American than drawing attention to yourself?”
If anyone questioned Uncle Wes’s sincerity, he or she needed only to wait until his show-stopping finale during the final “parade of girls.” As the contestants strode the stage in their ball gowns for the judges’ last looks, Uncle Wes performed his rendition of America’s second national anthem, Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA.” Singing to the contestants, he gave each one a small American flag while a carefully timed slide show—personal pictures of a uniformed Wes as well as pictures of Mount Rushmore, the Statue of Liberty, and Ronald Reagan—played on a screen behind him. Wes milked the moment like Betsy Ross’s breasts, extracting every last drop of life-giving patriotism and feeding it to the hungry crowd. It was enough to make a straight man cry. Being on stage gave Wes’s life meaning. He wasn’t carrying a rifle, or hunting down Muslims, but he was serving his country. And while some might have disagreed, Wes believed it was every bit as important as his time in uniform.
His career also allowed him the flexibility to spend significant time with Paulo, the five-foot-four-inch undocumented Cuban immigrant he’d lived with for the past fourteen years, and their teacup Yorkie, Shirley Temple.
Giving his hand mirror one last look, Uncle Wes double-checked his hair, a carefully crafted Elvis-inspired pompadour with oh-so-subtle highlights that appeared to glow onstage as if flecked with tiny fiber optics. Wes’s hair had become something of a celebrity itself. It commanded a full paragraph of his extensive bio, and visitors to unclewes.net were invited to check out a “hilarious interview” the hair had given to the webmaster. There was even a chapter dedicated to it in Wes’s self-published autobiography: Master (Sergeant) of Ceremonies: One Patriot’s Journey from Marines to Queens, which he sold at pageants for $15. Autographed copies (“the perfect Christmas gift for anyone on your list”) were a bargain at $20.
Among all the skeletons in Wes’s spacious walk-in closet was the potentially career-ending bombshell that his iconic hair was actually a very expensive toupee. It had become such a part of who he w
as that he rarely, if ever, removed it. Wes’s real hair was a series of errant strands and patchy clumps that lay on his lumpy skull like a comatose ferret. Without his toupee, he looked like a crazy old queen instead of the confident, sexually ambiguous semicelebrity he was. Even after fourteen years, Paulo had seen his partner without it only once, and on that day, deep down inside, a small part of his love for Wes died.
Playing up his slight but natural Southern drawl, Wes addressed the camera, “I just feel so blessed to be able to do what I do, and I just love these girls like they were my own, even the ones who never win anything, because they have worth, too. God has blessed each and every one of them—some more than others, obviously—in terms of money or looks or hair. And believe me, I know about hair!”
He let out a very well-rehearsed laugh to accent the very well-rehearsed line. “But when those girls step foot out on that stage, its not about what kind of house they live in, or who their people are, it’s about competition and talent and preparation and most of all … glamour!” He smiled and waited for the next question, which had been given to him before he sat down.
“You’ve been doing this a long time, Wes. Who are some of your favorite girls?”
Grandly rolling his eyes with an exaggerated folksiness that would make Dolly Parton blush, he bellowed, “Oh, my Lord, why don’t you just ask me to choose between chocolate and cheese! There are so many exceptional girls: Jonnaleigh Robinson is a doll, Bailey Miller is one of the best ever, Bethenea Jackson goes without saying, but”—Wes lowered his voice and leaned in as if revealing nuclear secrets—“between you, me, and the fencepost, there has never been a girl like Starr Kennedy. She is a superstar, with two r’s.” He chuckled. “You mark my words, that girl is gonna win herself an Oscar before she’s fifteen. I’d bet my eyes on it.”
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