The End of Vandalism (15 page)

Margo began as an outpost and has remained one. The houses are far apart and small. Whereas other towns thrived and then dwindled, Margo never thrived and so dwindling was not an issue. Even Boris has more handsome pages in its history than Margo. Margo has the lake, too, just south of town, which you would consider a benefit until you actually stood on its shores. Lake Margo is fed by the same aquifer as Walleye Lake, but as is the case with some siblings, they could hardly be less alike. Walleye is clean and broad and, when viewed from above, is shaped like a big healthy muskrat. Most years it is full of northern and walleyed pike—hence the name—and many a young camper has been sent off to bed with the promise that “we’ll get up and fish Walleye in the morning.”

Lake Margo, by contrast, has the outline of an elemental protozoan, and though it is deep, it is full of weeds that seem to have evolved specifically to foul the blades of outboard motors. There is a large gasoline distributorship to the east, and after a rain the water sparkles with fragile pastel oil rings. No connection has been proved, and the matter has been tied up in court so long that the county judges are all tired of it and tend to recess defensively whenever it comes up. But the lake often smells of gasoline, which helps explain why Walleye Lake has a thriving tourist business featuring a water slide while Margo has the Little Church of the Redeemer with its falling-in roof and ragbag revivalists.

Tiny and Joan Gower kissed passionately for several minutes, with the gray light coming through the window of the homely cottage. Then Joan straightened her gown and its pale cross and walked down the hill to the church. Johnny and Tiny drove to Morrisville, where Tiny picked up his car and a box of L’Oréal No. 3 Soft Black hair color before returning through the dark countryside. Joan was in the basement of the church playing “This World Is Not My Home” on the piano when Tiny came down the stairs. He stopped and listened to her sing.

They made love on the piano bench, on the steps, and in the bell tower, where there has not actually been a bell since the big lightning storm of 1977. Finally they sat in the kitchen, worn out if not exactly satisfied, smoking Father Christiansen’s Canaria d’Oros and languidly reading the intimidating instructions that came with the hair dye.

“You don’t want to do your eyebrows, do you?” said Joan. “It could cause blindness.”

“In that case, no,” said Tiny.

“I like when the eyebrows are different,” said Joan, and she smiled. Then she read: “Some people are allergic to haircoloring products. Allergies can develop suddenly even though you have been coloring your hair for some time. The simplest and most effective way to find out if you are allergic is to do the following Patch Test.”

“Nah, forget that,” said Tiny.

He poured the coloring into the developer and shook the mixture while Joan pulled on the transparent gloves provided.

“I know what it is to profoundly change,” said Joan. “I wasn’t always in the ministry. I was an actress for many years in Chicago. I tried to be, anyway. It’s a very hard business to be in. I come from Terre Haute, and when I left there they all warned me. ‘Joan,’ they said, ‘the only way people get ahead in that business is by sleeping around.’ So I went to Chicago and I took an acting workshop and I did sleep around to a certain extent but apparently not enough, because it took me two years to get a part in a play. It was called
Au Contraire, Pierre,
a French comedy, and I played a pregnant woman. I had a thing to wear on my stomach and, you know, I really studied for that part, because I wanted to make it special. Wow, this is black. I mean, it’s really black.” She lathered the coloring into his hair. “Well, for instance, some pregnant women have to lie on their backs for months, and I knew this, so I suggested that it might be comical for me to lie in a bed onstage during the whole play and never move. But they said no, they didn’t want that. Don’t you think that could have been funny? If it was done right? And I knew that some women have to sit down all the time and put their legs up to keep from getting varicose veins, but they didn’t want me to do that either. The last thing that I thought might be interesting was the fact that pregnancy can cause forgetfulness. But instead of asking anyone, because of course they would say no, I just started acting forgetful—you know, as if I couldn’t quite remember my lines. I admit it was tricky, what I was trying to achieve. Then one day when I came to the set they told me I had been replaced by another woman, and I should clean out my locker and go.”

“You got screwed,” said Tiny.

“I agree,” said Joan. “Wait a minute. I got some on you. Hold still.”

She ran a towel carefully over his forehead.

“Anyway, that night I happened to be in a bar, and I managed to let it slip that I was an actress. Well, this man started talking about a well-known star—or starlet, I guess you’d say—who you always see on TV. He said some terrible things about her and what she supposedly did in order to become famous. I mean, unless he was a bug on the ceiling there is no way he could have known what he was talking about. And the more he talked the louder he got, and the more bitter he got, and it was ‘Fuck this’ and ‘Fuck that,’ and the more he reminded me of the people back in Terre Haute and the warning they gave me when I left home. So finally I hauled off and hit him just as hard as I could across the face. But you understand, this is when I knew I had to change. Now we let it sit for twenty-five minutes. Then, let’s see… we rinse your hair and apply the Accent de Beauté shampoo and conditioner.”

“My scalp feels strange,” said Tiny.

Joan Gower pulled the blackened gloves off, one finger at a time. “That means it’s working,” she said.

Tiny went to see Johnny White. They could hear the music from the dance studio, the bass like a heartbeat. Johnny said there was a possibility that Tiny could get four hundred and twenty-five dollars a month to work for the Room. It all depended on whether he was any good at talking in front of a group. Johnny said it was not that hard, and from what Tiny had seen at Joan’s church, this had the ring of truth. Johnny said he would coach Tiny. Tiny would start off talking to kids
and gradually work up to the adults. Tiny would be required to wear a tie and to look everyone in the eye at all times. He would be expected to emphasize drugs rather than alcohol, because people were more afraid of drugs. Johnny said there was fair demand right now for speakers in the high schools.

So one Saturday night Tiny found himself sitting at a basketball game between Pringmar and Romyla in his new black hair and a clip-on necktie, waiting for halftime when he would speak. Like many of the smaller gymnasiums in Grouse County, this one was cramped and outmoded, with a rounded ceiling that was so low on the sides that corner shots with too much arc would hit the rafters. Seeing this, Tiny felt less nervous. His efforts might not amount to much, but they could not be sillier than the spectacle of these children in badly fitting jerseys bouncing basketballs off the ceiling. Then the first half ended, a boy and girl swept the yellow floor with push brooms, and Tiny climbed onto the stage and with both hands took hold of a microphone that had been set up in front of the pep band.

“Hello, folks,” he said. “My name is Charles Darling and they call me Tiny. You might wonder how I got that nickname. Well, if you think that’s strange, you should meet my brother Fats. If you’re not home, I’ll just slip him under the door. But I jest. What I’m here to talk about today is no laughing matter, which I’m sure you’ll agree with, and that’s drugs …” Tiny spoke for fifteen minutes and showed a short film. The reaction was about what he had hoped for, which is to say that most of the students ignored him completely, and then the program was over, and the Romyla pep band played “Cocaine,” and Tiny walked off the stage and sat down. The Room distributed questionnaires the following Monday in
health classes at the Romyla and Pringmar high schools. After getting the responses back and reading them, Johnny White said they were basically what you would expect, although a handful of students had seemed to get a favorable rather than an unfavorable impression of amphetamines, which is something Tiny would have to work on.

And he did work. He had never worked so hard on anything, with the possible exception of his big plan (never carried out, for lack of a decent accomplice) to steal fifty-five miles of copper wiring from the Rock Island Railroad. And, although he had hopes of getting paid, this had not happened yet. He had money left from Colorado and was also trying to launch a new business in which he would go from town to town washing windows. Squeegee and bucket in hand, Tiny thought he had found an unfilled niche, but others did not see it that way. Most people gave Tiny quizzical or suspicious looks and told him to keep moving. Some people with filthy windows got angry, asking, “What are you trying to say?” Once in a while he got a taker, but not often. The whole thing seemed misunderstood and forlorn as Tiny drove the empty plain between the towns.

In this sense the window washing blended well with the high school talks, which Tiny did more of as the weather got colder. He gained confidence, as Johnny had said he would. Minor problems no longer fazed him. In Stone City, for example, before the biggest audience Tiny had yet faced, his tie slipped from his collar and fell to the gym floor, and he was able to laugh along with everyone instead of, say, heaving the podium into the crowd. Another time, there was some kind of scheduling mistake and he had to sit through a play rehearsal on the stage of the Grafton gym. Tiny did not
mind, because he was feeling somewhat distracted and this gave him the opportunity to settle down. The drama featured Claude Robeshaw’s son Albert and an Asian girl whose name Tiny did not know. (This was Lu Chiang.)

“You say it,” said Albert.

“You say it,” said the girl.

“In this scene—”

“Don’t say it like that,” said the girl.

“Why don’t you say it,” said Albert.

“Go, ‘In this scene, Melville’s hero relays part of his daring plan to the mysterious and dark-haired Isabel,’” said the girl. “Put a taste of suspense in there.”

Albert repeated the introduction, and he and the girl took their places on a wooden bench.

“This strange, mysterious, unexampled love between us makes me all plastic in thy hand,” said the girl. “The world seems all one unknown India to me.”

“Thou, and I, and Delly Ulver,” said Albert Robeshaw, “tomorrow morning depart this whole neighborhood, and go to the distant city.”

“What is it thou wouldst have thee and me to do together?” said the girl.

Albert stood. He put his hand on his narrow chest. “Let me go now,” he said.

The girl rose and wrapped her arms around Albert. “Pierre, if indeed my soul hath cast on thee the same black shadow that my hair now flings on thee… Isabel will not outlive this night.”

The girl collapsed and Albert held her by the waist. They began making out. A handful of students clapped and whistled and stamped their feet, and a teacher said, “What
did I say about the kissing. Pierre and Isabel! What did I say!”

Tiny began his talk by acknowledging the damage he had done not only in this gym but elsewhere. He blamed it all on drugs and alcohol, and examined in some detail the breakdown of his marriage and the pain involved in a bad hangover. He did not dwell long—he never did—on the concept of the Room, because no one understood it, and he did not understand it himself. His tie stayed in his collar, and when he asked for questions Jocelyn Jewell stood up with a high school yearbook and said, “Is it true that you graduated in 1969?”

“Yes,” said Tiny.

“Do you remember by any chance the caption on your senior picture?”

“No, ma’am,” said Tiny.

“Well, I have it right here. ‘If trouble were sand, I would be a beach.’ Can you tell us about this?”

“I’d say it was self-explanatory,” said Tiny.

“I also have something else, and this is a comment, not a question,” said Jocelyn Jewell. “Do you know the part in the film you showed where the boy is writing the letter to his parents?”

“Yes,” said Tiny.

“And he goes, I forget what it was exactly, something like, ‘Dear Mom and Dad, I’m having a great time in college but I need more money for drugs.’”

“Right.”

“I just think that’s kind of unrealistic. Because I don’t think anyone would come out and say that.”

“Yeah, maybe not,” said Tiny.

The next question was from Albert Robeshaw. “With so much emphasis on drugs, don’t you think it makes our country look pathetic or something?”

“It takes a big nation to admit it has large problems,” said Tiny.

Then Dane Marquardt stood, but Albert Robeshaw did not sit down. “I want to second what Albert said. Our country is pathetic,” said Dane.

“Where would you go, assuming you could go anywhere?” said Tiny.

“Copenhagen,” said Albert.

“I would, too,” said Dane.

“What’s the drug situation there?” said Tiny.

“It’s much better than this dump,” said Dane Marquardt.

“It was founded in the eleventh century,” said Albert Robeshaw. “It has a temperate climate.”

Principal Lou Steenhard walked up to Tiny and took the microphone. “Mr. Darling is a drug counselor, people, not a travel agent,” he said.

“Well, I’m not really a drug counselor either,” said Tiny. “They call me a drug lecturer.”

“I have a question about drugs,” said Albert. “You know when they fry the egg on television and say this is your brain on drugs? Well, I wonder how effective that is. Because I just get hungry for eggs.”

It was cold and windy when Tiny left the gym. Winter was coming and he was glad. To him it was the most honest of the seasons. He drove to Morrisville and stepped into the jazz-dancing salon underneath the Room. There were mirrors everywhere, and with his hair and his tie he really didn’t look like himself. He danced along with the perspiring women for a minute and then went upstairs. Johnny sat on the edge of his desk, spinning the cylinder of a six-shooter.