Rats Saw God (11 page)

We left the retained heat of the barn for the woven-rubber-tubing lawn chairs scattered randomly outside the huge swinging doors. A cool, but clammy, Gulf breeze rewarded us for the completion of our project.

Rhonda's attention to Matt Whiteside in the ensuing hours was so blatant I was a bit embarrassed to be sitting four lawn chairs away. Matt didn't appear to be aware of her fawning, or at least he didn't mind it. If she were stalking Matt in hopes of provoking me, she was succeeding only in easing whatever residual guilt I felt over… well, over letting her kiss me, I guess. Dub must have been equally aware of Rhonda's translucence, because when Rhonda said she wanted to see Matt's aquarium-confined tarantula, Dub
hacked up the swig of Busch she had just taken.

Bill was stretched out on a deck chair with Holly curled across his lap. Her arm was around his neck and his hand rested on her hip. The two were representing the Grace Jesters Drama Club and the journalism department, respectively, in the following night's homecoming court festivities. Lynnette, skittish as usual, was interrogating the couple about the event, which was, by then, only twenty hours away.

“But won't y'all just freak if they call your names? What if one of you wins and has to dance with someone else, won't you just freak? Does the gym really look like a tropical paradise? Do you know what you're going to wear?” Lynnette catechized rapid-fire with visions of
Cinderella
in her head.

Holly did her best to respond patiently before Lynnette interrupted with her next question. I was glad Doug had passed out. Had he been sentient, I'm afraid he would have excommunicated Lynnette for such unabashed false convention-worshipping.

“All they do to turn the gym into a tropical paradise is put up three or four fake palm trees, bring in a little tiki hut to serve punch out of, and, oh yeah, they give you plastic leis as you walk in the door,” Holly said.

“Imagine how long boys can joke about ‘getting lei-ed' at the door,” Missy added.

“I want to go,” Dub said, startling those assembled, Lynnette excepted.

“I think you
should
go.” All the heads that had turned to stare at Ms. Varner swiveled toward Samantha, who was speaking. “Well, why not? You can't really just sit back and
laugh at teenagers in their natural habitat your whole life unless you've done some clinical research.”

“Sure you can,” Missy said. “That's why we have John Hughes movies—so we
don't
actually have to go to high school dances.”

Dub jutted out her lower lip and blew her hair out of her eyes before explaining.

“It's not that I need to see kids puking in the parking lot or middle-aged teachers in kimonos hosing down couples on the dance floor to be able to laugh at them,” Dub explained. “I just want to go to at least one dance, see what it feels like to get dressed up, maybe wear makeup, introduce a boy to my parents, watch him fidget on my front porch. I want the whole Hallmark-Card-Norman-Rockwell-American-rite-of-passage thing. It's a life experience I've never had. And it sucks to realize I probably never will.”

I wondered briefly how much Dub had had to drink but was restored to the present from my mental score-carding of the night's consumption by sharp taps on my Doc Martens. Samantha, sitting perpendicular to me, was signaling me by kicking my foot. I tried to read the senior's face, but her back was to the open barn doors. All I saw was silhouette.

“Double U, sometimes I don't understand you,” Missy said. “Getting your wisdom teeth out is a ‘life experience,'”—Missy made the international quote mark sign with her fingers—“but you don't see people paying a cover charge to get into the dentist's office. I swear, you are the only person I know who makes decisions based on what will provide the best material for a diary.”

“It's too late to care about it now, anyway. Shockingly enough, nobody's asked me to go with them,” Dub said.

Veg, Zipper, and Virginia left together shortly after midnight in Veg's Volkswagen bus. I asked them for a ride, as both Doug and I were carless, but Dub volunteered to take us home. The move elicited a lip-parted head swivel from Rhonda and a smirk from Missy, who'd had surprisingly little to say all evening. Missy, though, was the driver and I accepted the offer despite the prospect of occupying close quarters with the doubly spurned Rhonda.

Matt, Missy, Bill, and I served as pallbearers for the comatose Doug Chappell. As we carried his limp body to the cargo space of Missy's Land Cruiser, Dub followed, genuflecting, sprinkling warm spittle from a Busch empty, and speaking in near-Latin,
“In nominee padre, et fille…”

As it turned out, Rhonda ended up riding home with Lynnette. I climbed in the backseat of Missy's forest-green status symbol, and Missy and Dub got in front. We pulled out of the private road leading up to the Whiteside ranch and onto Farm Road 1212. Missy cracked her window open electronically and punched in her cigarette lighter.

“Deary,” Dub said, “smoking is so eighth grade.”

Ignoring Dub, Missy tapped a Merit out of a pack in her purse. “So, Barney, how are we going to get Otis here safely into bed?”

I glanced behind me. A drool puddle had formed under Doug's mouth. “We can't really count on Doug helping us out. I need to get ahold of Stan Jr. He could take care of him. I won't be able to deactivate their home security alarm.”

Missy reached into the glove box, pulled out a cellular phone, and waved it blindly into the backseat. “If this doesn't work, I say we just leave the video he made tonight on their front doorstep with a note saying, ‘I asked for a
kidney
-shaped pool, damn it!'”

I dialed the Chappell “children's line.” Thankfully, twenty-year-old Stan Jr., answered, though he spoke a language understood only by those awakened from a deep sleep.

“Gorrdom ssshh bagror?” he said. His inflection rose at the end of his greeting, so I was pretty sure he meant it as a question.

“Stan, it's Steve. Can you meet me at your front door in about ten minutes? Doug is pretty messed up.”

“Doog gnik cufeb rette bsiht,” he grumbled before hanging up.

Pulling up in front of the Chappells' red-clay-shingled Spanish-style hacienda, I was relieved to find Stan had at least partially understood my plea. Doug's sibling was spread-eagled on his back on the front lawn, asleep. His robe was untied, revealing a pair of Mickey Mouse–adorned boxers. A pubic hair exhibition was visible through the open fly of his shorts.

“Now, this is classy,” Missy said as she turned off the engine. “Kind of kindles all my maternal fires.”

I hopped out and closed Stan's robe before shaking his shoulder. Stan struggled to stand up.

“What happened to Boy Wonder?” Stan slurred, though he was looking at the two unfamiliar girls dragging his sibling out of the Land Cruiser.

“Twack attack,” I answered.

Stan scratched his blond stomach hair and grinned. “Did he ever tell you about the drum set he got when he was thirteen?” I shook my head. “He played it every Saturday morning. Mom was happy that he showed so much dedication. What she didn't know was that the son of a bitch was only playing because he knew I'd come in wasted the night before.” Stan walked over to where Dub and Missy had propped up Doug against Stan's Toyota. He took Doug's chin in his hand and used his thumb and index finger to force a lunatic smile on his brother's face. “Tomorrow your ass is mine, little brother.”

Stan, as ventriloquist, nodded Doug's head and manipulated his lips.

“Yes, sir,” my automated friend responded.

Stan then supplanted Dub on Doug's right side. I moved to take Missy's place, but she waved me off. “Think how it will horrify him if I can describe the inside of his room. Maybe I'll leave my purse and act offended when he can't remember me being there.”

Wrapping Doug's arms around their necks, Missy and Stan made slow progress toward the house. As they disappeared inside, I realized I was alone with Dub.

“Tomorrow will be a day Doug will remember,” Dub said, breaking the silence that I perceived as awkward within seconds of our companions' departure. Dub was still looking in the direction of the open front door. I took the liberty of staring at her profile. I knew before looking that she wasn't beautiful. Her face had a cartoon puggishness to it, like an animated character
smacked with a frying pan—the eyes huge and splayed at dolphin width. Separately her features would have seemed comical; together they gave her a funkiness that caught your attention like a log cabin in Genericwood Estates. Though I could see only one eyebrow from my angle, I had often noted how they harmonized her stray features. They were dark brown, her original hair color, and they arched and descended like a designer's French curve—striking and perfect.

Dub's body was an enigma. All of her clothes seemed purchased with an all-star wrestler in mind. A voyeur would have a better chance of spying Dub's mystery flesh through the gaping arm holes of one of her short-sleeved shirts than other traditional cleavage opportunities. Dub shunned more feminine garments neither out of a need to hide weight nor latent lesbian masculinity. “Comfort” was the one-word answer she would give to explain her fashion sense, but I think she was savvy enough to oblige the masses to deal with her on her own terms. Spiral perm her and dress her at the Limited and she would have evaporated in the halls of Grace.

I saw the light in Doug's upstairs room come on. Belatedly and poetically, I realized why Samantha had been kicking me earlier. She had seen Dub and me hugging. She knew Dub wanted to go to the homecoming dance. Steve, thy name is rube.

I frantically rummaged my wit for suitably ambiguous, noncommittal (read, “safe”) methods of asking Dub to the homecoming dance—avenues that offered retreat and reduced the risk of rejection, double entendres like “I can't tell you how much fun the homecoming dance sounds” or
“Imagine not going to the dance.” I considered tossing out “I've got tomorrow night off and nothing to do,” like a bucketful of fish innards on a shark safari.

My best move would have been to drink my share of the beer at the Whiteside barn, but that was an option no longer open to me. My inhibitions were still cruelly intact, and my tongue felt like a two-dollar hunk of salted beef jerky.

Instead, with each frittered second, I confirmed my wusshood. My palms were swamps and my heart that of a speed freak. When at last I had chosen words, I found I was unable to speak. I had to relinquish control of my motor skills to my spinal column. My brain became merely a terrified observer. The sound I made, however, didn't come out in the form of a sentence; I squeaked.

Dub heard, though, and turned around to face me. “Did you say something?” she asked.

I could only listen in horror as my fearless reflexive system assumed control.

“Are you looking for someone to take you to the dance tomorrow night?” my mouth asked.

“You are pathetic,” she said, emphasizing all three words. “What the hell does that mean—‘Are you looking for someone to take you to the dance?'” Dub paused and shook her head slowly before driving home another stake. “Is that your coy way of asking me out, or are you wondering if we should have Missy drop me off somewhere on Westheimer to go on a manhunt?”

“Forget it,” I said. Missy was bounding out of the house, but she hesitated when she sensed the contention.

“No. Tell me what you meant. I mean, I already confessed to wanting to go. Were you making sure I wasn't lying?”

By now I was embarrassed and wanted to bail, but Dub had blocked my retreat. I stood there with my head bowed. This should have been easy. I couldn't even ask a girl to a dance who had not only said she desired to attend, but had also spoken affectionately of me.

“Look, can we talk about this some other time?” I said after lengthy silence assured me Dub wasn't about to let me off the hook just because we had an audience.

“No time like the present,” she said.

I contemplated the likely postrejection results of this encounter. I would abandon all hope of a life colored by passion or meaning. I would melt into the blue-and-gold-painted halls of Grace, trade up to an invisible Accord, join the Future Teachers. No one would ever see me again. But now I would face my destiny like a man. I raised my head and spoke evenly.

“Dub, please go to the homecoming dance with me.”

Missy raised her eyebrows, unaware this had been the theme. For one of the two times I would ever witness, Dub seemed unsure of herself. She glanced snappishly about. It occurred to me: She had expected me to back out. In fact, I think she tried to push me to it. Relief hit me even before she responded. The balance had shifted in my favor. I had made Dub nervous.

Guess what. There was an ugly scene at the dinner table caused by one of the York children tonight, and I wasn't involved in it
at all. I didn't say a word during the entire exchange.