Christine (47 page)

He cleared his throat, seemed to consider, and then said nothing. I let go of him and worked at getting my crutches under me. I worked a little harder at it than I had to, maybe.

“I'll give you a little gratuitous advice,” my father said finally. “Don't let him know what's between you and her—and never mind the protestations that there isn't anything. You're trying to help him some way, aren't you?”

“I don't know if there's anything either Leigh or I can do for Arnie, Dad.”

“I've seen him two or three times,” my father said.

“You have?” I said, startled. “Where?”

My father shrugged. “On the street. Downtown. You know. Libertyville's not that big, Dennis. He . . .”

“He what?”

“Hardly seemed to recognize me. And he looks older. Now that his face has cleared, he looks much older. I used to think he took after his father, but now—” He broke off suddenly. “Dennis, has it occurred to you that Arnie may be having some sort of nervous breakdown?”

“Yes,” I said, and only wished I could have told him that there were other possibilities. Worse ones. Possibilities that would have made my old man wonder if I was the one having a nervous breakdown.

“You be careful,” he said, and although he didn't mention what had happened to Will Darnell, I suddenly felt strongly that he was thinking of it. “You be careful, Dennis.”

Leigh called me on the telephone the next day and said her father was being called away to Los Angeles on year-end business and had proposed, on the spur of the moment, that they all go along with him and get away from the cold and the snow.

“My mother was crazy about the idea, and I just couldn't think of any plausible reason to say no,” she said. “It's only ten days, and school doesn't start again until January eighth.”

“It sounds great,” I said. “Have fun out there.”

“You think I should go?”

“If you don't, you ought to have your head examined.”

“Dennis?”

“What?”

Her voice dropped a little. “You'll be careful, won't you? I . . . well, I've been thinking about you a lot lately.”

She hung up then, leaving me feeling surprised and warm—but the guilt remained, fading a little now, maybe, but still there. My father had asked me if I was trying to help Arnie. Was I? Or was I maybe only snooping into a part of his life which he had expressly marked off-limits . . . and stealing his girl in the process? And what exactly
would
Arnie do or say if he found out?

My head ached with questions, and I thought that maybe it was just as well that Leigh was going away for a while.

As she herself had said about our folks, it seemed safer.

• • •

On Friday the twenty-ninth, the last business day of the old year, I called the Libertyville American Legion Post and asked for the secretary. I got his name, Richard McCandless, from the building's janitor, who also found a telephone number to go with it. The number turned out to be that of David Emerson's, Libertyville's “good
” furniture store. I was told to wait a moment and then McCandless came on, a deep, gravelly voice that sounded a tough sixty—as if maybe Patton and the owner of this voice had fought their way across Germany to Berlin shoulder to shoulder, possibly biting enemy bullets out of the air with their teeth as they went.

“McCandless,” he said.

“Mr. McCandless, my name is Dennis Guilder. Last August you put on a military-style funeral for a fellow named Roland LeBay—”

“Was he a friend of yours?”

“No, only a bare acquaintance, but—”

“Then I don't have to spare your feelings none,” McCandless said, gravel rattling in his throat. He sounded like Andy Devine crossed with Broderick Crawford. “LeBay was nothing but a pure-d sandycraw sonofabitch, and if I'd had my way, the Legion wouldn't have had a thing to do with planting him. He quit the organization back in 1970. If he hadn't quit, we would have fired him. That man was the most contentious bastard that ever lived.”

“Was he?”

“You bet he was. He'd pick an argument with you, then up it to a fight if he could. You couldn't play poker with the sonofabitch, and you sure couldn't drink with him. You couldn't keep up with him, for one thing, and he'd get mean for another. Not that he had to go far to get to mean. What a crazy bastard he was, you should pardon me fran-cayse. Who are you, boy?”

For an insane instant I thought of quoting Emily Dickinson at him: I'm nobody! Who are you?

“A friend of mine bought a car from LeBay just before he died—”

“Shit! Not that '57?”

“Well, actually it was a '58—”

“Yeah, yeah, '57 or '58, red and white. That was the only goddam thing he cared about. Treated it like it was a woman. It was over that car that he quit the Legion, did you know that?”

“No,” I said. “What happened?”

“Ah, shit. Ancient history, kid. I'm bending your ear as it is. But every time I think of that sonofabitch LeBay, I see red. I've still got the scars on my hands. Uncle Sam had three years of my life during World War II and I never got so much as a Purple Heart out of it, although I was in combat almost all that time. I fought my way across half the little shitpot islands in the South Pacific. Me and about fifty other guys stood up to a banzai charge on Guadalcanal—two fucking million Japs coming at us hopped to the eyeballs and waving those swords they made out of Maxwell House coffee cans—and I never got a scar. I felt a couple of bullets go right by me, and just before we broke that charge the guy next to me got his guts rearranged courtesy of the Emperor of Japan, but the only times I saw the color of my own blood over there in the Pacific was when I cut myself shaving. Then . . .”

McCandless laughed.

“Shit on toast, there I go again. My wife says I'll open my mouth too wide someday and just fall right in. What'd you say your name was?”

“Dennis Guilder.”

“Okay, Dennis, I bent your ear, now you bend mine. What did you want?”

“Well, my friend bought that car and fixed it up . . . for sort of a street-rod, I guess you'd say. A showpiece.”

“Yeah, just like LeBay,” McCandless said, and my mouth went dry. “He loved that fucking car, I'll say that for him. He didn't give a shit for his wife—you know what happened to her?”

“Yes,” I said.

“He drove her to it,” McCandless said grimly. “After their kid died, she didn't get any comfort from him at all. None. I don't think he gave much of a shit about the kid, either. Sorry, Dennis. I never could shut up. Talk all the time. Always have. My mother used to say, ‘Dickie, your tongue's hung in the middle and runs on both ends.' What did you say you wanted?”

“My friend and I went to LeBay's funeral,” I said, “and after it was over, I introduced myself to his brother—”

“He seemed like a right enough type,” McCandless broke in. “Schoolteacher. Ohio.”

“That's right. I had a talk with him, and he
did
seem like a nice enough guy. I told him I was going to do my senior English paper on Ezra Pound—”

“Ezra who?”

“Pound.”

“Who the fuck's that? Was he at LeBay's funeral?”

“No, sir. Pound was a poet.”

“A what?”

“Poet. He's dead too.”

“Oh.” McCandless sounded doubtful.

“Anyway, LeBay—this is George LeBay—he said he'd send me a bunch of magazines about Ezra Pound for my report, if I wanted them. Well, it turns out that I could use them, but I forgot to get his address. I thought you might have it.”

“Sure, it'll be in the records; all that stuff is. I hate being fucking secretary, but my year's up this July, and never again. Know what I mean? Never-fucking-again.”

“I hope I'm not being a real pain in the ass.”

“No. Hell, no. I mean, that's what the American Legion's for, right? To help people. Gimme your address, Dennis, and I'll send you a card with the info on it.”

I gave him my name and address and apologized again for bothering him at his job.

“Think nothing of it,” he said. “I'm on my fucking coffee break, anyhow.” I had a moment to wonder just what it was he did at David Emerson's, which really was where Libertyville's elite bought. Was he a salesman? I could see him showing some smart young lady around, saying,
Here's one fuck of a nice couch, ma'am, and look at this goddam settee, we sure didn't have nothing like that on Guadalcanal when those fucking stoned-out Japs came at us with their Maxwell House swords.

I grinned a little, but what he said next sobered me quickly.

“I rode in that car of LeBay's a couple of times. I never liked it. I'll be damned if I know why, but I never did. And I never would ride in it after his wife . . . you know. Jesus, that gave me the spooks.”

“I'll bet,” I said, and my voice seemed to come from far away. “Listen, what
did
happen when he quit the Legion? You said it had something to do with the car?”

He laughed, sounding a little pleased. “You're not really interested in all that ancient history, are you?”

“Well, yeah. I am. My friend bought the car, remember.”

“Well then I'll tell you. It was a pretty funny goddam thing, at that. A few of the guys mention it from time to time, when we've all had a few. I ain't the only one with scars on my hands. Get right down to the bottom of it, it was sort of spooky.”

“What was?”

“Aw, it was a kid's trick. But nobody really liked the sonofabitch, you know. He was an outsider, a loner—”

Like Arnie,
I thought.

“—and we'd all been drinking,” McCandless finished. “It was after the meeting, and LeBay had been making an even worse prick of himself than usual. So a bunch of us are at the bar, you know, and we could tell LeBay was getting ready to go home. He was getting his jacket on and arguing with Poochie Anderson about some baseball question. When LeBay went, he always went the same way, kid. He'd jump into that Plymouth of his, back up, and then floor it. That thing'd go out of the parking lot like a rocket, spraying gravel everywhere. So—this was Sonny Bellerman's idea—about four of us go out the back door to the parking lot while LeBay's shouting at Poochie. We all get behind the far corner of the building, because we know that's where he'll finish backing the car up before he takes off. He always called it by a girl's name, I told you it was like he was married to the fucking thing.

“ ‘Keep your eyes open and your heads down or he'll see us,' Sonny says. ‘And don't move until I give you a go.' We were all sort of tanked up, you know.

“So about ten minutes later out he comes, drunk as a skunk and feeling around in his chinos for his keys. Sonny says, ‘Get ready, you guys, and keep low!'

“LeBay gets in the car and backs her up. It was perfect, because he stopped to light a cigarette. While he did that, we grabbed the back bumper of that Fury and we lifted the rear wheels right off the ground so that when he tries to pull out, spraying gravel all over the side of the building like usual, you know, he's only gonna spin his wheels and not go anywhere. You see what I mean?”

“Yeah,” I said. It
was
a kid's trick; we had pulled the same thing from time to time at school dances, and once, for a joke, we had blocked up Coach Puffer's Dodge so that the driving wheels were off the ground.

“We got some kind of shock, though. He gets his cigarette lit, and then he turns on the radio. That's another thing that used to drive us all fucking bugshit, the way he always listened to that rock and roll music like he was some kid instead of old enough to qualify for Social-fucking-Security. Then he put the tranny into
DRIVE
. We didn't see it, because we were all hunkered down so he wouldn't see us. I remember Sonny Bellerman was kind of laughing, and just before it happened, he whispers, ‘They up, men?' and I whispers, back, ‘Your pecker's up, Bellerman.' He was the only one who really got hurt, you know. Because of his wedding ring. But I swear to God, those wheels
were
up. We had that Plymouth's rear end four inches off the ground.”

“What happened?” I asked. From the way the story was going, I thought I could guess.

“What happened? He pulled out just like always, that's what happened! Just like all four wheels was on the ground. He spun gravel and ripped that rear bumper out of our hands and pulled about a yard of skin off with it. Took most of Sonny Bellerman's third finger; his wedding ring got caught under the bumper, you know, and that finger popped off like a cork coming out of a bottle. And we heard LeBay laughing as he went out, like he knew all along we was there. He could of, you know; if he'd gone back to use the bathroom after he finished shouting at Poochie, he could have looked right out the window while he whizzed and seen us standing around behind the building waiting for him.

“Well, that was it for him and the Legion. We sent him a letter telling him we wanted him out, and he quit. And, just to show you how funny the world is, it was Sonny Bellerman who stood up at the meeting right after LeBay died and said we ought to do the right thing by him just the same. ‘Sure,' Sonny says, he says, ‘the guy was a dirty sonofabitch, but he fought the war with the rest of us. So why don't we send him off right?' So we did. I dunno. I guess Sonny Bellerman's a lot more of a Christian than I'll ever be.”

“You must not have had the back wheels off the ground,” I said, thinking of what had happened to the guys who had screwed around with Christine in November. They had lost a lot more than some skin off their fingers.

“We did, though,” McCandless said. “When we got sprayed with gravel, it was from the
front
wheels. I've never to this day been able to figure how he pulled that trick off. It's kind of spooky, like I said. Gerry Barlow—he was one of us who did it—always claimed LeBay threw a four-wheel drive into her somehow, but I don't think there's a conversion kit for something like that, do you?”