The Evil B.B. Chow & Other Stories (19 page)

This was perfect, incredibly perfect, both plausible and inviolate. Who could argue with temporary blindness? Not even a lunkhead like Larsen. He hitched up his pants and reached for the bottle, thinking that if he got the choreography just right, he could even blame Beth for this. She was the one who was so wild about lye, anyway. He didn't even know what it was for. (Termites? Mildew?)
I was just sitting there
, he heard himself saying,
when all of a sudden
. . .

Beth opened the door with the portable phone in her hand. She looked at him as he was reaching for the lye and he looked at her and in that single moment, less than a moment, an
instant
, Flem knew that his wife was on to him,
had doped out the whole thing, and he felt both a deep and abiding shame and the consequent urge to throw himself down before her prostrate, or possibly supine, and further, a sense of regret that anyone, even his wife, should know him, his craven self, so thoroughly. He pondered whether his decision to adopt a policy of abject inaction in regard to Larsen's novel might have precipitated the present rather lurid scene; and, again, further, whether he might not distract Beth by throwing something at her (the lye, for instance) and then rushing past her and out the screen door.

Rather than confronting him, though, allowing him to experience his mortification and be done with it, Beth gazed at him quizzically and—in a move that stoked his long-held suspicion that she was actively collaborating with Dr. Oss—left without a word.

Now Flem wondered, annoyingly, if there was a God and more precisely how God might choose to punish him. Would it be snakes, or something with fire, or maybe having to watch the last play of the 2002 Super Bowl—the ball barely clearing the uprights, the Patriots going nuts, the Rams in agony—over and over. He sought out his wife, but found Belle standing guard outside their bedroom.

“She doesn't want to see you,” Belle chirped. “You screwed up big-time. What didja do, Dad? Are you having an affair?”

Flem looked at his daughter's glossed lips and skimpy
T-shirt. The word
jailbait
flashed unpleasantly before his eyes. “Don't be silly,” he said. “Your mother's just tired.”

“No, she's pissed,” Belle said calmly. “I told Larsen you were sick. You might want to remember that next time the whole allowance thing comes up for review.”

Flem spent the rest of the afternoon puttering around the carport. He had about finished alphabetizing his tool kit when he heard Beth sigh in the doorway.

“You mad?” he said quietly.

She frowned. “Not mad so much as . . . disappointed. You're acting like an idiot, Fleming, and you're expecting Belle and me to act like idiots as well. Read the damn book and give him the snow job, or tell him you're not going to. But quit hiding. It's pathetic.”

Flem certainly couldn't argue with that.

Chapter Six: Soul Daddy Bones Comes Acallin'

Red Lawson had known he was different, even before he had entered into the black maw of uncertainty that was the Galaxion's mother ship, even before he snuck out of his dorm and down to Big Willy's jukejoint and seen the black folks dance and slide to the mysterious bubbling current that flowed from the place like the scent of fatback sputtering on a potbelly stove
.

The place was famous for miles around and Red could still remember his mama telling him: “Don't you go too
near that place, young man. That dam of iniquity is no place for a young boy with a 166 IQ like you.” But tonight, Red couldn't help himself. He had tried to study his study cards of gingivital bacteria. But the music called out to him and washed over him like a river. And it led him out of his room and across the railroad tracks, past the hobos lounged around their snapping fires. He hesitated in front of Big Willy's, peeking through the steam-laden windows into a room roiling with black sweaty limbs that beckoned to him like serpents of temptation
.

He entered the dark continent of smoke and music, and a giant bouncer type with a massive, gleaming head said, “Whobe dis little white boy?”

The music halted, and every lambent brown eye in the room fixated on him. The crowd began to ooze forward, like black lava, swallowing Red up. Suddenly, a voice rose up from the bowels beneath the room. “Dat be Daddy!” the crowd chanted, “Ooooo-yeah, man, dat be de Daddy!” The lava parted, like the Red Sea before Moses, and there stood the man known as Daddy Bones. He was dressed in a sharkskin zootsuit and a goatee clung to his chin like a small black furry animal of some kind
.

“Who are you?” Red questioned
.

The room boomed with laughter
.

“Who he be? Eberbody know Daddy Bones!” the big bouncer bellowed. “He da most famousest black 'n blind
singer in alla East St. Louis! He like Ray Charles and Blind Lemon Johnson all wrapped in da one! Yassah!” The crowd surged forward, as if to masticate Red, but he cried out, lifting his voice until it pierced the sky above the ceiling above him: “I came to play!”

“What dat? What he say?”

“I came to play,” Red proclaimed again
.

“He say he come to play, he come to play!” Again, laughter cascaded around him. But Daddy Bones silenced the crowd with his finger, which was like a twig, held to his papery lips. “De boy wanna play, we let em play,” Daddy Bones intoned
.

Red marched toward the small raised stage, and Daddy Bones pressed the sax into his hands and Red lifted the instrument to his lips and began to blow heavenward. He felt the river of his soul swell with every color in the rainbow!

“Y
OU HAVEN'T MENTIONED
Larsen's novel,” Dr. Oss said quietly.

“No.”

“Where are things?”

“Sort of a standstill, I guess.”

Dr. Oss arched his chimpy little brows.

Standstill
was perhaps a bit vague. The past three weekends, he had left messages on Larsen's work machine citing,
respectively, an abscess conference, an allergic reaction to coconut, and a family death: all cross-checked with Belle and his secretaries.

“You've read the novel?”

“Sure.”

“Yes?”

“Somewhat.”

Dr. Oss pursed his lips.

“Say,” Flem said, “how come you're so gaga to know about Larsen's novel all of a sudden? Who put the fire in your little red engine?”

Dr. Oss set down his pad and looked squarely at Flem. “We are here, Mr. Owens, to ask questions. For several weeks, this issue has preoccupied you. Then it disappears. I am simply asking why.”

“It's like I told you, it steams me, that's all. Him going off and writing a novel and expecting me to be his cheerleading section. And then it's cruddy, and what am I supposed to do? Tell him? Which would crush the guy. Then I'm supposed to feel guilty, when he's the one who, who brought it on himself.”

“Yes?”

“Sure. He didn't have to write this thing. He could have gone on like the rest of us, wiring jaws shut and battling plaque buildup. He just had to be different.”

“Perhaps he's frightened,” Dr. Oss said softly.

“Of what?”

“Of disappearing.”

T
HAT NIGHT
, B
ETH
ordered Flem to stop by Home Depot for ceiling tile, and he was standing there trying to decide between cream ocher and chiffon (which looked identical to him, though to Beth the discrepancy was clearly grounds for divorce) when he heard Larsen say: “Please get down from there, Teddy. Jake, please help your brother get down.” The three of them were farther up the row; Teddy had climbed into a sink display.

Flem was not frozen in place, exactly, but he felt an odd, dreamlike sharpening of his senses that seemed to recommend against movement. All around him, people were buying caulk guns and levelers and sconces, devices to brighten their lives, their hands running along edges, knocking on wood, testing consistencies. Flem watched Teddy totter into a maze of grills. “Jacob, could you please, your brother, Jake!” But Jake was into the rotisserie skewers now, waving them like a pirate. “I'm serious, Jake. Teddy, please, honey, come back. Both of you.”

Jake said, “No way, loser!” and ran in the other direction, and Teddy laughed, too, and put an artificial wood chip in his mouth and something went
boom
, and this was hard for Flem to watch, because he'd supposed Larsen was having
a grand old time, somehow, not struggling to keep his kids under control.

“Teddy, honey, spit that out. That's not candy!”

He felt embarrassed for Larsen, and vaguely relieved. Once Larsen saw him, he could act surprised and help corral the kids. They would have to deal with the novel, true, but then at least that would be off his conscience and into the world again. Flem said “Ted!” and “Hey!” but Larsen didn't appear to notice him. Jake shotput a brick toward his brother, which landed at Flem's feet. The boy rushed by. Larsen trundled after him, passing Flem, saying nothing.

F
LEM SET ASIDE
Saturday, locked his study, and cleared his desk of all but half a box of paper clips. By 3
P.M
., he had constructed what he considered a passable model of the Arc de Triomphe. He napped until dinner. At half past ten, having completed chapter 7 (of 57), he slogged to bed.

“How's it going?” Beth said.

“Great,” Flem said quickly. “Just great. No problems. Flying through.”

“Why don't I believe you?”

“Well, yeah, I've been a little distracted.”

Flem couldn't stop thinking about Larsen, there in the Home Depot, chasing after his hellions, looking out of sorts, sad. After an hour of tossing, he got up and wandered to
his study. He took up the manuscript. Something in the stillness of the hour, the impossibility of other activity, helped him focus, and he found himself, if not flying through Larsen's novel, at least skittering. It was a lot like watching TV. Red bumbled from one perilous situation to the next, from Mafia back rooms to Mexican gold mines, into Massive Government Conspiracies, always somehow managing to locate a local juke joint, where he could “blow the river of his soul” through his horn. When things got too hot, Daddy Bones appeared, or the Galaxions, or sometimes both. There was a lengthy naval digression, which Flem gathered was roughly based on the
Odyssey
and which was marred by the improbable appearance of Horatio Hornblower's great-great grandson Chop. Book II was a slow-moving affair, devoted to Red's strenuous wooing of Mona Divine, the “uniquely incomparable dental hygienist of his dreams.” And there were several subplots—Red's pilgrimage to the Hopi nation to treat Native American children for gum disease, most prominently—that felt both painful and extraneous.

Still, there was a certain undeniable momentum to the proceedings, once you got beyond the prose. Red wanted a lot of things and he got all of them, with little struggle. Larsen's novel was unlike life in this regard, and it lacked the tension that often accompanies life. But it was gripping
in a wishful, overblown way. By the end, a cloying family scene in which Daddy Bones announces that Red is his “onliest son” (thus allowing Red to
no longer feel different
), Flem felt, if not an identification with the hero, then at least not the overt hatred that had been his initial reaction.

Outside his study, dawn was creeping in, blue and hopeful, the stars punching out. He felt an odd fondness for Larsen, and imagined him pecking away at his keyboard in the faint morning light, grinning stupidly at his metaphors, smacking his lips.

I
T WAS A FINE
December day, a light snow melting off and giving the world a moist, tinkly sound. He rang the doorbell three times before Teddy Jr. appeared, in his long johns. “Is your daddy here?” Teddy Jr. stumbled backwards, landed unceremoniously on a box of Cap'n Crunch, and burst into tears.

The house was in ruin: dishes underfoot, trash heaped in the sink, alps of unwashed clothes. Larsen himself was in the den, hunched over a model rocket.

“What's going on over here?” Flem said.

Larsen shrugged. He pressed the rocket's nosecone against the fuselage. Flem could see his fingertips redden under the pressure.

“I came to talk about your novel. I finished it.”

“Hallelujah,” Larsen muttered.

“It's good. It took me a while to get into it, which, you know, sorry about that. But I really enjoyed it. I did. The plot and all, the characters.” Larsen would not look up. Flem shifted his feet. He could hear Teddy Jr. wailing away. “Where's Jude, Ted?”

“Good question,” Larsen said.

“Seriously, Ted. What's going on here?”

Larsen shrugged again. “We seem to have had a rift.”

“She's gone?”

Almost imperceptibly, Larsen nodded.

“Since when?”

“Wednesday? Thursday. Somewhere in there.”

“What happened?”

“The book was distracting me from her and the kids,” Larsen said quietly. “But there was other stuff, before that.”

“God, Teddy. Why didn't you tell me?”

“You wouldn't take my calls.”

Flem felt like someone had just punched him in the belly. He wished someone
would
punch him in the belly. “Christ, Teddy. I'm sorry. I've been, I really screwed up.” Flem looked around Larsen's den: scattered papers, an overturned file cabinet, his prized recliner smeared with what looked like feces but was likely chocolate pudding. Teddy Jr. continued to wail. A ribbon of black smoke rose from the backyard. Was it any wonder that Larsen should
imagine himself liberated from these circumstances: handsome, charismatic, soulful, somehow chosen?

“I don't guess this matters so much, but I really did enjoy the book. I'm sorry it took me so long to say so.” Flem laid a hand on Larsen's shoulder, which stiffened. “I guess I was a little jealous that you'd gone ahead and written a novel.”