Chapter 1 #9
One of Mother’s slips hung from a doorknob.
Mother herself was nowhere to be found. Only the little kitten, Belvedere, long dead, was here, alive again, batting around a paper wad.
From this window a fellow could see, down the block, the elegant Minton place.
As a teen one night he’d lingered under a lamppost, watching the Mintons move around inside.
Mrs. Minton had paused in front of a window, holding up a vase.
In her genteel way. For Mr. Minton to admire.
Well, that struck a chord. No genteel proffering of vases was happening back at his house.
No sir. There it was time for the slaughter.
Two goats and a pig, each of which he knew by name.
He was damn well meant to help. With the slaughter.
Of Emile (goat) and Sally-Bob (pig). While Clarabell (goat) looked on.
That night, from her pen, Clarabell sent out a series of mourning bleats. He’d badly wanted to go to her.
Sit, Father had growled. Sit, you.
Oh, those days, those brutal days.
(Dear man.
My charge wanted me to know him. To understand who he was, what he’d done.)
Then (a ray of hope) his first-ever time on the course out at Cheyenne C.C.
: the lush deep grass, the expensive leather bags, the clubs themselves (gleaming, weaponlike), the way the men (local Wyoming clodhopper big shots he’d long since outclassed) would step grandly out of fine golf carts (like spaceships in their newness) and survey things casually, then issue some offhanded order to a kid (him, a caddy trainee, in that pair of khakis Mother’d managed to scrounge up from somewhere and a button-down of Father’s she’d heroically altered) and then, end of the round, the guy would slip you a quarter, maybe a half-dollar.
How old are you, son? Twelve? Really? You look younger. You did fine with that bag, though. You surely did. It’s about as big as you are, slick. You two were wrassling, weren’t you? Sometimes it was winning and sometimes you were.
It felt like a secret society a kid might someday join.
He (even he) might someday become a man who tipped big and padded off across that lush fairway like a king, talking about the best steak joints in Los Angeles/Reno/Canada, about some fellow some other fellows had beaten the living shit out of, after which there was going to be no more trouble on that front, believe you me.
Leaning into one another to whisper brutal, necessary secrets, cigarettes held out behind them, out of the circle, and then, once the secret had been shared, the men would step abruptly back, breaking the huddle, and take deep, punctuating drags, as if to cleanse by smoke the sin of the secret, and one of them might cast a glance over at him, the lowly caddy, as if to say: If you heard that, son, I trust you’ll keep your royal trap shut.
And he would.
He always would. That’s what powerful men did.
Stayed quiet. Held secrets. Ran things from inside a tight protective circle, making perilous decisions only they were savvy enough to make, leaving normal morality to the mere earthlings, who lived and ate and died dully down below, never knowing the extent to which they were being shielded by a beneficent distant pulling of strings.
Going home, after a day like that? Heartbreaking.
Everything back at home was so mean, so old-fashioned, so frugal.
He was using too much dish soap? Having had his morning of fun, he could come down to earth and put every last cent of his tip money there in the Common Jar and get cracking on some badly neglected chores, mister, and darn well stop playing the dandy?
No.
No, no.
It was all too small.
(Did I see? Did that make sense?
Yes, I said.)
He wasn’t going to live like that.
So: college in Michigan and that summer he’d become a wiry bantam rooster of an expert moving low and fast among his citified classmates and the following magical autumn when, by way of certain compliments, nicknames, and fellowships bestowed upon him by faculty, it became clear that the mastery of a short list of subjects (econ, sedimentology, organic chemistry) could make his dream (of stepping out of a spaceship-like cart into a circle of adoring caddies who’d just been enviously/fearfully discussing him and his beautiful new shoes) come true.
And it had all been accomplished. Not easily, but smoothly.
With work, hard work, but no real struggle.
Up, up, up he went. (Could I even begin to imagine the thrill of that?) He loved the work and believed in it.
(He loved the work and it loved him back, he always said.) He became part of a tribe, a tribe of brothers (and some sisters, yes, even back then) and soon emerged as a leader of that tribe.
He’d loved the tribe. Loved it dearly. Was proud to be part of it, thrilled to be giving his days to it and to find himself rising up effortlessly within it.
And never along the way had there been a moment of hesitation or doubt or anything but a growing gratitude that he’d been formed in such a way that his natural strengths were just what the world required.
Then came a challenge. A drumbeat, a steady drumbeat.
Of objection. To who he was, to what the tribe was about.
Their enemies were hyperbolic, hysterical, irrational, over-the-top, panic-stricken.
Piss and moan, piss and moan was all they knew how to do.
They were losers, trivial people, reckless in speech and action.
They took but knew not from whence the bounty flowed.
They were rude, dismissive, sent insulting letters to his home, talked him down in public, all while understanding not the first damn thing about what he, what they (the tribe), actually did: how bold it was, how risky, how often they failed, losing, sometimes, millions in the trying.
Terrible, I said.
And to come to the point: What had he ever “denied”?
Nothing. He’d challenged, sure, he’d asked for a higher level of certainty, he’d pulled at loose threads in certain specious arguments, he’d pointed out the existence of a range of valid scientific opinions out there re what, exactly, was happening.
And for that, he’d become the villain of the piece, the principal baddie.
That must have been difficult, I said.
Yes, he said. Yes it was. Thank you. For understanding that.
But it didn’t matter. The tribe saw him clearly. The tribe knew what was what. The tribe was made, to a person, of honest, straightforward, trustworthy, hardworking folks.
Salt of the earth.
Good people all.
He wanted me to know that.
There’d been no sin involved in any of it, none at all.
Then his eyes widened at a sound from across the room.
—
He was dying, for reasons unclear, in the least appealing room of his magnificent home.
A pair of red velvet drapes hung on the eastern wall, as if to frame a view out a window. But there was no window. The space would also have been ideal for a valued painting. But there was no painting and no indication that one had ever hung there.
These purposeless drapes seemed part of some abandoned attempt to render the room regal.
Above the fireplace hung the helmet from a suit of armor.
On a side table near the love seat a set of miniature brass knights was arranged around a lamp as if laying siege to it.
This aspiration to regality competed with an earlier attempt at an Old West theme: on the wall above the dresser hung an arrangement of antlers, an old saddle, two Colt .
45s in an African blackwood display case.
An empty medical bed took up what was left of the room but the speed with which my charge’s illness had overtaken him meant that he’d never felt well enough to be transferred to it.
Hear that? he said.
Yes, I said.
We were hearing the thrashing sound one of our ilk will sometimes make as it struggles itself into being.
One must want desperately to appear and, even so, might only partly succeed: one might arrive in waves, or in a diminished state.
One’s appearance might be distorted by detritus from one’s psyche or the manner of one’s passing.
Even having succeeded, one might fade away before one’s desires were fully realized.
Two men of our ilk, approximately a third the size of real men, stepped out from behind the useless drapes, one from the right, the other from the left.
Growing ever more full-sized as they came, they crept toward my charge, clad in shiny blue (three-piece, wide-lapeled) business suits over which, for reasons unknown, white lab coats had been thrown.
Then, in the next instant, the white lab coats would be on the inside, with the shiny blue business suits outside, these transitions occurring every second or so.
Gentlemen, I said. You’re intruding.
We’re not, said the first man.
We’re more than welcome here, said the other.
More welcome than you, said the first.
Than you are, said the other.
Than you’ll ever be, said the first.
Old friends, said the other.
Of your charge, said the first.
Work colleagues, said the other. From way back.
Mel, said the first, by way of introduction.
Also Mel, said the other.
In life we were both named Mel, said the first.
And both worked closely with your charge, said the other. But never actually met each other. That’s what was so funny about it.
Mel G., said the first. Call me Mel. Or just “G.”
Mel R., said the other. “R.” is fine.
They stepped around me, one on either side, to directly address my charge.
How’s it hanging, pal? said G.
It’s us, buddy, said R.
Who have gone on before, said G.
To rest eternal, said R.
Though in neither case did you attend, said G.
Or flowers, said R.
Not to worry, said G. We exist in a realm beyond such petty concerns.
What matters to us, said R. Is all the good work we three did together.
In the name of science, said G.