Barrel Fever (10 page)

You may have read that our so-called “neighbor” Cherise Clarmont-Shea reported that she witnessed me leaving my home at around one-fifteen on the afternoon of December sixteenth and then, twenty minutes later, allegedly park my car on the far corner of Tiffany and Papageorge and, in her words, “creep” through her backyard and in through my basement door!!!!!! Cherise Clarmont-Shea certainly understands the meaning of the word creep, doesn’t she? She’s been married to one for so long that she has turned into something of a creep herself!! How many times have I opened the door to Cherise, her face swollen and mustard-colored, suffering another of her husband’s violent slugfests! She’s been smacked in the face so many times she’s lucky if she can see anything through those swollen eyes of hers! If the makeup she applies is any indication of her vision, then I believe it is safe to say she can’t see two inches in front of her, much less testify to the identity of someone she might think she’s seen crossing her yard. She’s on pills, everyone knows that. She’s desperate for attention and I might pity her under different circumstances. I did not return home early and creep through the Shea’s unkept backyard, but even if I had, what possible motive would I have had? Why would I, as certain people have been suggesting, want to murder my own grandchild? This is madness, pure and simple. It reminds me of a recurring night-mare I often have wherein I am desperately trying to defend my-self against a heavily armed hand puppet. The grotesque puppet angrily accuses me of spray-painting slogans on his car. I have, of course, done no such thing. “This is insane, preposterous,” I think to myself. “This makes no sense,” I say, all the while eye-ing the loaded weapon in his small hands and praying for this nightmare to end. Cherise Clarmont-Shea has no more sense than a hand puppet. She has three names! And the others who have made statements against me, Chaz Staples and Vivian Taps, they were both at home during a weekday afternoon doing guess what while their spouses were hard at work. What are they hiding? I feel it is of utmost importance to consider the source.

These charges are ridiculous, yet I must take them seriously as my very life may be at stake! Listening to a taped translation of Khe Sahn’s police statement, the Dunbar family has come to fully understand the meaning of the words “controlling,” “vindictive,” “manipulative,” “greedy,” and, in a spiritual sense, “ugly.”

Not exactly the words one wishes to toss about during the Christmas season!!!!!!!!

A hearing has been set for December twenty-seventh and, knowing how disappointed you, our friends, might feel at being left out, I have included the time and address at the bottom of this letter. The hearing is an opportunity during which you might convey your belated Christmas spirit through deed and action. Given the opportunity to defend your character I would not hesitate and I know you must feel the exact same way to-ward me. That heartfelt concern, that desire to stand by your friends and family, is the very foundation upon which we celebrate the Christmas season, isn’t it?

While this year’s Dunbar Christmas will be seasoned with loss and sadness, we plan to proceed, as best we can, toward that day of days, December twenty-seventh — 1:45 P.M. at The White Paw County Courthouse, room 412.

I will be calling to remind you of that information and look forward to discussing the festive bounty of your holiday season. Until that time we wish the best to you and yours.

Merry Christmas,

The Dunbars

EVER since Dad and Rochelle threw me out I have been staying with my sister and her family. Marty doesn’t want me living inside the house proper so I sleep in the garage. He says he wants me back here so I can keep an eye out for the sons of bitches who broke in and sawed the handlebars off his motorcycle.

It’s a good thing nobody tried ripping off his shingles — that way he’d have me sleeping on the roof.

Vicki told me I should count my blessings. “There’s plenty of people who got it a lot worse than this. People in Europe are living in drain-pipes with flies crawling all over their faces. They’re eating cardboard and bathing in their own spit. Over in China they have to sleep standing up in muddy ditches. This here,” she said, spreading out her arms to indicate majesty, “this here is nothing to look down your nose at. You’re living like a king. Look at everything I’ve done for you.”

I looked at the carpet remnants she had laid upon the concrete floor for use as a bed, and at the table she fashioned by placing a board on top of the grill. For decoration she had nailed up a poster picturing a baby orangutan sitting behind a cluttered desk, up to his neck in paperwork. The poster reads “One of these days I’ve got to get organizized.”

I used to think that Vicki had something going for her but now, when I ask myself how I ever got such a notion, I shrug my shoulders and chalk it up to my past ignorance and youth. I was maybe ten years old when Vicki decided, out of nowhere, to join her high school chorus. She auditioned and was accepted, just like that. I can recall listening to her practice all alone in her room, holding a stick of deodorant in place of a microphone. Her voice was nothing special but she never allowed that fact to dampen her spirits. “I’m very much into music. I’m so much into the whole fucking entertainment industry that it practically scares the life out of me. I’m destined for something big, some-thing bigger than the both of us. Something huge.” I watched as she stood before the mirror, brushing out her hair and challenging her reflection. “You are a winner, at the top of your game. You call the shots, nobody but you.” She would then change her clothes three or four times while discussing her future and all the records she would release. I would observe her, lying on the bed with a stuffed animal and see that as a record cover: Vicki, The Early Years, or Playfully Yours, Vicki! I had it all worked out.

I figured that, once her career took off, Vicki would go through several managers before turning to me. “Please, Chug. If you want me to beg I will. I need you now because, damn it, you’re the only person I can trust.” As her manager I would ac-company her on all of her concert engagements, where ordinary people would approach her, thrilled and nervous, their faces shiny with admiration. Vicki might sign autographs and pose for snapshots but with the understanding that none of these people could ever be her true friends, only her fans. After a concert we would be led out of the stadium to a waiting tour bus equipped with a refrigerator, bathroom, and comfortable seats that fold into beds when you’re ready to call it a night. Vicki would curl up in the seat beside me and whisper, “What do you think of the way I performed 'Love Don’t Stand a Chance'? Honestly, Chug, what’s your opinion?” Then I would tell her, honestly, taking her fragile personality into consideration. First I would mention that her hair and makeup looked really great. “That satin poncho is a knockout!” I would highlight all the positive aspects, and then, very gently, I might say, “Perhaps at tomorrow night’s show it would be a good idea to hold the weeping until the end of the concert.”

Vicki would nod her head and remove a small notebook from her tour purse. “Good idea, Chug,” she would say. “Excellent suggestion.”

The band members would twist in their seats, trying to read what she had written down but Vicki, feeling their watchful eyes, would hold the notebook tight against her chest. They would know damned good and well tomorrow but tonight it’s just between Vicki and her brother. And that is what I had al-ways planned to be, her brother. Not in order to grow rich I never really thought of that. It would be her idea to make me her manager — not mine. Of course I would often be surrounded by enthusiastic crowds of people asking, “What’s she really like?” That would be fun, sure, but only for a little while. I would never have used her as a ploy to get my name in the papers or to put out a record of my own. Far from it. That’s some-thing our father would try. He talks like he can smell money from a distance of five miles. He’ll see someone wearing a tweed cap and driving a sportscar and say, “Now there’s a guy with something in his wallet.” That, to me, is like seeing someone on crutches and guessing they have a problem with their leg. Any idiot can do that.

Our father would be the first in line, hoping to cash in on Vicki’s success. He would want his own album or a guest appearance on a television special and Vicki and I would have to spend many long hours explaining that, despite what he may have read in the magazines, it really doesn’t work that way. After the way he has treated us it would be both entertaining and embarrassing to hear him say, “But a lot of people just sort of . . . talk through a song. All right, OK, maybe I can’t 'sing' but I sure as hell can talk, can’t I? C’mon kids, you know I can pull it off. Get me a record, just one. One record for your old dad. I can make it a hit, you know I can. One hit record for Daddy.”

Vicki and I would watch him beg. Then we might call in a few record executives and watch him beg some more.

“I could do 'The Man in My Little Girl’s Life,'” he would say. “There’s all kinds of songs you can do without ever actually having to sing.”

“Oh?” the record executive would say. “Name a few others.”

Our father would massage his forehead. “Well,” he’d say. “There’s a lot of them, a whole hell of a lot.”

In my mind Vicki and I stand in the doorway watching our father beg for a recording contract. I figure that, to keep from laughing, I will have to bite the inside of my cheeks. Blood will rise up in my throat that same bitter taste you get after absentmindedly holding a coat hanger in your mouth. Afterwards the record executive will take Vicki and me to lunch at a steak restaurant, where we will recount every moment of our father’s pathetic display. “You two are the goddamned salt of the fucking earth,” the executive might say, slicing into his twice-baked potato. "But that father of yours, Jesus Christ, what a. .

Then Vicki and I would touch hands under the table, hoping that he might come up with the perfect word. I had this all worked out in my mind.

In her second year of high school Vicki dropped out of the chorus because the teacher was an asshole.

“I’m still into music like you wouldn’t believe,” she said. “But that son of a bitch Yelverton can kiss my rosy red you-know-what if he thinks I’m going to stand in the back row and take part in his bullshit Glen Campbell medley. I don’t need that shit and I practically told him that right to his face. I just about said, 'I don’t need this bullshit.' I was going to say, 'Who the hick cares about some lonely asshole stringing up telephone lines?' I don’t need this kind of bullshit in my life because I’ve got a career to think about. Hell, Chug, I can write my own goddamned songs and you better believe I will.”

She decided to drop out of school altogether because it was too much bullshit and, being a night owl, she hated the hours. She thought she might get herself a job in the music industry. She said it as though there was a thriving music industry in our town. Shortly after dropping out of school Vicki and Dad engaged in a violent argument when one of her boyfriends accidentally set the living room sofa on fire. I sat on the edge of the bed and watched her cram clothing into paper bags. “The day I allow that baldheaded bastard to smack me with a bag full of frozen chicken wings is the day I die,” she said, pausing to soothe the bruise on her forehead. “I don’t need this kind of bullshit in my life, not anymore. This bird is taking wing. I am out of here, friend.” She acted as though there was an airplane in the yard, the pilot tapping his fingers against the face of his watch, waiting. “The next time you hear from me I’ll be in California. California or Reno. I’m going to a place where people don’t have to live up to their necks in bullshit. This is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time,” she said. “One hell of a long time. Yes, sirree, Vicki has definitely met her quota of bull-shit once and for all. It’s time to grab the bull by the horns and say, 'Adios, bullshit.' Hand me that clock radio, will you Chug? Your sister is fucking out of here.”

It turned out that Vicki did not leave for Reno or California but, instead, for Ginger Treadwell’s. Ginger was the boyfriend who had set the sofa on fire, an older redheaded guy who lived three blocks away in a basement apartment he rented from his mother. Every now and then I would go by to visit her but she never came over to the house or phoned as she didn’t want to see our father. “Tell him I’m a model and a stewardess and never know where I’ll be from one day to the next. And tell him they’re making a movie of my life story and they want Boris Fucking Karloff to play his part.”

When she broke up with Ginger she moved in with Shane Lambson and then with Drew Hodges, who had a job driving a special bus for crippled people in a hurry. She was living with Drew when she met and fell in love with Marty Manning, a mechanic for the special buses. They dated in secret until she discovered she was pregnant. When he heard the news, Marty lifted his tool box over his head, threw it across the room, and asked for my sister’s hand in marriage. Vicki accepted. She said that, with Marty, she felt as though she had woken from a long coma of waste and unhappiness. She wrote a song about it and delivered it at the wedding while Marty accompanied her on drums. He wore a brown tuxedo at the ceremony but removed his jacket for the demanding solo. I couldn’t hear a word of Vicki’s song. Later on, at the reception, Marty made a speech, telling everyone just how much this new baby meant to him. He knelt down and toasted my sister’s stomach, saying, “This lady has given me the greatest gift a man could ever want — a new beginning.” He choked up for a moment and then tapped his glass against Vicki’s stomach, sloshing punch on her corduroy wedding dress.

It was puzzling that Marty Manning would make such a big production out of this when he already had one New Beginning in his past, a five-year-old daughter he never saw or spoke to. He claims he would love to spend time with Amber but can’t because the child’s mother is a manipulating ball-buster and a four-star bitch. He said he wanted this baby to be the real thing so he set to work, getting everything ready. He put a bigger sink in the kitchen and made a carseat by sawing the legs off a padded chair. He put locks on a few of the cabinet doors and had Vicki’s cat put to sleep. His mother had told him that a cat’s instinct is to sneak into the crib and suck the breath out of a newborn baby. It broke my sister’s heart but she went along with it. “I have to look toward the future,” she said, emptying the litter box for the final time.

I told her she was crazy to let him put her cat to sleep. I said, “Marty sucks, not Sabbath.”

Marty was sucking the brains right out of my sister’s head. He had her turn the dining room into a nursery. There is a decent-sized spare room down the hall but that is where Marty keeps his drum set and his weights, and he says it is off-limits because it is his domain. He was really banking on a boy but told Vicki to paint the dining room orange just in case. I visited her on that day and wound up painting the room myself while she drank three cans of Tab and asked me questions about Dad, what he was up to with his new girlfriend and how he can stand such a ball-busting four-star bitch. I had just stopped by, curious to see her. I didn’t know beforehand that I would be working and I wound up getting a lot of orange paint on my good shoes. Now they are no longer my good shoes, and every time I lace them up I think back on that day when we didn’t know anything about the baby waiting to be born. I imagined myself in the future, telling the grown child that I once painted the nursery orange but that it wasn’t my idea. I didn’t know if the child would be a boy or a girl. Maybe it would like me or maybe not. Maybe I would have gray hair or perhaps I would be bald on top like my father. Who can say what the future holds?

When she was eight months pregnant Vicki lost her job dispatching buses for crippled people because she had to sleep a lot and couldn’t make it to work on time. She had someone else punch in for her but they caught on when the buses didn’t show up and paralyzed people had to wait in the snow for hours on end. Marty told her not to look for another job until the baby enrolled in the first grade. He had spoken to his mother and said he didn’t want anything like those latchkey children. To hear him tell it the Latchkeys were a tough family who lived in his mother’s neighborhood and threw rocks at passing cars just for fun. Marty thought he had everything under control.

The baby, a boy named Marty Jr., was born on Thanksgiving Day. Vicki said it was symbolic because Marty Jr., like a pilgrim, was a newcomer to this strange and wonderful country. Also, being a Sagittarian, he would be quick with numbers and get along well with just about everyone but Capricorns, Leos, and Geminis. She tried her best to look on the bright side but still she turned away every time the nurse tried presenting her with the baby, fidgeting in its blanket.

Certain small, ugly creatures are considered adorable and cute. Take, for example, the baby orangutan pictured on the poster that decorates the garage wall. Nothing about this animal is pretty to look at but he doesn’t seem to care one way or the other. When an orangutan catches his reflection in a pool of crystal-clear water he doesn’t take the time to get depressed about his looks. Instead he just goes about his business, eating leaves and examining the heads of his friends and family, search-ing for mouthwatering fleas. A creature is cute as long as it has mournful eyes and lives in the woods. An ugly person can’t be carefree like the animals. From what I’ve seen on television, animals will mate without regard to who has a glossier coat or the longest whiskers. I don’t get the idea that apes turn down dates. They might talk but I doubt anyone’s feelings get hurt in the process. I could be wrong because I am not a scientist. I suppose that some ugly babies can grow up to be OK-looking but I doubt this will be the case with young Marty Jr.