The Art of Crash Landing (22 page)

R
ichard Hambly's overdecorated, overheated home is filled with dusty antiques and uncomfortable-looking chairs. Mr. Hambly points me to a wingback chair, and I pick my way around the coffee table, step over a metal magazine rack overflowing with issues of
Arizona Highways
, and settle myself gingerly on the chair's faded, sagging seat.

“That upholstery is genuine horsehair,” Mr. Hambly tells me.

“Super,” I reply, grateful that I'm wearing jeans today; it's nice to have something between my legs and the itchy seat. I'm in no mood to ride bareback.

Luke sits on the perimeter of the furniture grouping, grinning at me from his clean, nonhairy wheelchair.

“Can I get you some tea? It will have to be instant iced, I'm afraid. There's a problem with my gas line.” He frowns and adds, “I wonder if I should put out the pilot lights on my stove and hot water heater . . .”

“I'm sure everything's fine,” I say. “You know how those people at the gas company are . . .”

Hambly frowns, wondering, I suppose, about my insider knowledge about gas company employees, but he doesn't ask me to explain further. He just excuses himself and goes into the kitchen.

Luke gives me a questioning look. He's smart enough to have picked up on both Mr. Hambly's surprise at our arrival and the strangeness of that last exchange about the gas company. I give Luke a wide-eyed
beats me
shrug, grab an issue of
Arizona Highways
and settle back in my prickly chair to thumb through the magazine's pages. Acting casual is the key to deception.

The dish-clattering noises from the kitchen stop, and the old man reappears carrying what looks to be a heavy tray. I hurry over and take the tray from him, against his protests, and then set it on the coffee table. Hambly crosses to a settee and leans hard on its carved wooden arms to lower himself into the seat. He waves his hand at the plate of cookies and three iced-tea glasses on the tray, so I hand Luke a glass and take one myself. My stomach is empty and I'm grateful for the Lorna Doones, no matter how stale they may be, which is very. The tea is sweet enough to remove the enamel from my teeth but I take a couple of polite sips anyway.

Mr. Hambly clears his throat. “Latter Day Saints? Jehovah's Witnesses?”

Luke and I both laugh. I think he's laughing out of surprise, but I'm laughing because Luke, in his white dress shirt and dark tie, really
does
look like a religious door-knocker, which is probably what gained us entrance into the Hambly home in the first place.

Luke introduces himself and me. As soon as he mentions that I work at the library, the old man scowls.

“Library?” he says, but in a tone that's suggestive of something more along the lines of an organized crime syndicate.

“What I'm here to discuss has nothing to do with the library.” I try to move us back to more neutral territory. “I'm looking for some information.”

His frown deepens. “Young lady, I'm getting so old and forgetful, I could probably hide my own Easter eggs. I can't imagine what sort of information you think I possess.”

“About my grandparents.”

“Your grandparents? Do I . . .” He stops, his eyes slowly widening in recognition. “You're related to Tilda Thayer.”

I nod. “She's my grandmother. I'd like to know more about her and my grandfather.”

“I wouldn't have much to say about that.” He crosses his legs and looks around the room. He's giving me the impression of someone trying a little too hard to act casual. “Tilda looked like you, fair, curly hair. Your grandfather Eugene was the opposite. Dark, straight hair. Dark eyes. They were betrothed.” He reaches over and fiddles with his tea glass, centering it on its little coaster. “I really don't know what sort of information you're looking for.”

I decide to ask him straight out. “I want to know how my grandfather died.”

He exhales as if he'd been holding his breath. “No.” He shakes his head. “No, no . . . I'm sorry, but no.”

“Please?”

“No.”

“Pretty please?”

“That was a lifetime ago,” he says.

“I want to know what happened.”

He shakes his head. “Water under the bridge.”

“What water? What bridge?” It comes out more irritated than I'd intended. I pause for a moment and then try again. “It's my family, but no one will tell me anything.”

Instead of replying, the old man looks down at his lap and smooths the crease in his trousers with an unsteady hand.

I try a smile. “Pretty please with a cherry on top?”

He hesitates, seeming to consider something, which is a step up from
no
.

Finally, he says, “You work at the library?”

I nod.

“Then I have a proposition for you.”

I have a feeling this ancient man's proposition isn't the type I'm used to getting. I say “Let's have it . . .” and then sit back, curious as to what he has in mind.

“There used to be a used bookstore not too far from here,” he says.

“Okay.”

“It closed last year.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.” I have no idea where this is going, but since Mr. Hambly seems to, I play along.

“So I'd like to start utilizing the public library.”

“Good idea.”

“There's only one problem,” he says.

Here it comes.

“I don't have a library card.” He's smiling when he says this, and I smile in return, relieved that his problem can be solved so easily.

“Well, just come in and fill out the form. All you'll need is—”

“No, no, no.” He's shaking his head. “That will never work.”

Hmm . . . I wonder if maybe it's not just his house that's dusty and jumbled, but also the space between Mr. Hambly's ears. I keep my tone gentle when I say, “It works for everyone else.”

“That may well be,” he says with a look on his face that tells me he noticed my patronizing tone. “But
everyone else
isn't banned from the library.”

“Banned?”

He nods.

“You got
banned
from a library?”

“That is correct.”

I search the old man's face to see if there's any indication that he's joking, but he seems sincere. I ask the obvious question, “How do you get banned from a library?” Oh, fingers crossed that this story is as funny as it promises to be. Surely poop won't be involved, right? I glance over at Luke and see him grinning at me. He's thinking the same thing.

“It's a long story from a long time ago,” Hambly replies. “Which, interestingly enough, involves your grandfather.”

“Come on, you have to tell me.” I'm wheedling now.

He lifts his shoulders in a little noncommittal shrug. Suddenly, I understand what's going on.

“You want your library privileges back,” I say.

Now there's a little twinkle in his eyes.

“Tell me what you know about my grandfather, and I promise I'll get you unbanned.”

“Are you certain that you—”

“No problem at all,” I assure him. I'm lying, of course, but it's for a good cause so I plunge ahead. “Trust me. A few minutes of your time now, and you'll be able to use the library whenever you want.”

“Well . . .” He does that shrug thing again.

“And I'll increase your maximum checkout. You can have six books at a time instead of five.”

“Ten.”

“Seven.”

“Eight.”

“Deal!” Generosity is easy when you have no intention of ponying up.

Hambly grins, triumphant. I'm pretty sure he would have settled for seven. He takes a sip of his iced tea, and then settles further back into his chair.

“How should I start . . .” he says, pausing for effect. He's swinging his crossed leg, his fingers knitted and resting on his knee. Just as I'm starting to wonder if his fussy mannerisms and home-decor preferences hint at something more than old-man fastidiousness, he drops the bombshell.

“Your grandfather and I were lovers.”

I'm pretty sure my eyebrows touch my hairline at this pronouncement, but at least I hadn't made Luke's mistake of taking a sip of tea at that very moment. Luke coughs and sputters loud and long enough that Hambly and I both stand to go to his aid. Luke manages to get a breath and croak “I'm fine” as he gestures for us both to sit back down.

Hambly waits until Luke's struggles fade into occasional throat-clearing noises, before he starts to talk of Gene, and how their boyhood friendship had blossomed into something more in high school.

“But this was the fifties,” he says. “In a small town in the middle of the Bible Belt. All we knew of homosexuality was what we'd read in the Bible. So Gene dated your grandmother Tilda, and I dated her best friend, Fritter.”

Luke makes a little half-cough at this one as well, but it didn't catch me completely off guard. I'd already seen the photo in the yearbook.

“Of course, dating the girls,” Hambly explains, “was a total sham.”

“A total sham?” I ask.

“A ruse.”

“Mr. Hambly, I know what
sham
means. I was questioning how it could have been a
total
sham?”

“Well, obviously you're right. I suppose it wasn't a sham for Gene, because here you are—his progeny.” He gestures at me with a magician's flourish. “But it was a sham for me.”

Hambly stops and pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket.
Rather than use it, he sets it on his lap, folding and unfolding it three times before continuing.

“We had talked, you know, Gene and I, of moving away together. To the East Coast, or the West. Someplace large enough that we could live as a couple. I talked about it, anyway. Gene just listened. But I hoped that someday . . .” Hambly stops and looks down at his gnarled hands for a second. When he looks back up his eyes shine with unshed tears.

“Neither one of us went to college. After high school, Gene went to work for his dad—tractor supply. I got a job and a small apartment in Woodall.”

When the elderly man pauses for a sip of his tea, Luke says for my benefit, “It's a town about thirty miles north of here.”

Hambly nods and continues. “Anyway, having my own place made things easier, but still we were careful. Nobody knew me in Woodall, I could drop the girlfriend pretense, but Gene was still here, living in his parents' house . . . he just couldn't seem to find a way to break it off with Tilda.” Hambly looks around and tries to smile. “Does anyone need more tea? How are we doing with cookies? I have some Oreos if you'd prefer.”

Luke and I both shake our heads and reassure him that we're fine. After a few awkward seconds Hambly takes a deep breath and starts talking again.

“We managed to see each other some, but not as much as either one of us would have liked. Then there was his twenty-first birthday party and, well . . .” The old man smiles. “That took care of the Tilda issue. Or at least I thought it did.”

“What happened at the party?” I ask.

Hambly shakes his head and chuckles. “Oh, I really shouldn't . . .” but luckily he does. He tells us of the birthday party for Eugene at his parents' house. There'd been a large crowd and a fair amount of drinking. “Gene's dad was mixing some powerful drinks in the
kitchen. Gene rarely drank, but I'd talked him into a couple Gibsons, and he'd gotten pretty silly.” Hambly smiled. “That night was the first time Gene told me he loved me.”

Hambly fiddles with the hanky in his lap and then sighs and goes on with the story. “We went up to his room. We locked the bedroom door, but for some reason forgot the door to the jack and jill bath.”

“Uh oh,” I say.

He nods. “It was all so trite. Tilda walked in, there was a scene, as you can imagine, and she ran back out. By the time Gene and I got dressed and downstairs, Tilda was gone. Jonah drove her home.”

“Jonah was . . .”

“Fritter's brother. So of course Fritter knew something was up. She cornered us, asking Gene what he'd done, that sort of thing. He stammered something or another but Fritter isn't stupid. One look at our red faces and she guessed what had happened.”

“She was pissed, I bet.”

“She was furious. She was livid. She was . . .” He shrugs and leans forward, lowering his voice. “She and I had dated, so I'm sure she found it degrading on that level. Plus, everyone knew she'd always had a thing for Gene. Her outrage was as much for her sake as for Tilda's.”

“Did she tell anybody?”

“Oh no. There's no way she'd bring that humiliation on herself. Or on Tilda, I suppose. She never told a soul.”

“So that's why Fritter banned you from the library,” I say.

Hambly looks away and sighs. “No. I'm afraid there's quite a bit more to it than that.”

I wait, hoping he'll continue when he's ready. He does.

“She banned me because I killed him,” he says in a quiet voice. “I killed your grandfather.”

I
glance at Luke and find him staring at me. He looks over his shoulder at the entry hall, and then back at me and the jumble of closely packed furniture between us. I'm pretty sure he's trying to calculate an escape route should our somewhat effete host become murderous.

“You killed him?” I say. “Like, with a gun or a knife—”

“Don't be stupid. I didn't
attack
Gene. I would never . . .” There's another shaky pause. “But his death was my fault. It was entirely my fault.”

He makes a squeaking sound, abruptly stands and walks into the kitchen, leaving Luke and me to sit and listen to the old man's muffled sobs. It's obvious to me, and to Luke if I'm correctly interpreting the glower he's sending in my direction, that this is too much for Hambly. At this point a nice person would go apologize to the old man and then leave. Unfortunately for poor Mr. Hambly, Luke is marooned on his small island of clear space and can't make it to the kitchen. And I'm not all that nice.

Hambly comes back with a small plate of Oreos. “Found them!” he says, his voice cheerful, his eyes still wet.

I don't want an Oreo, but I take one, and when it turns out to be even staler than the Lorna Doones, I smile my approval and thank him anyway. I'm not nice enough to leave before my curiosity is assuaged, but I'm not a complete jerk.

Hambly sits back down and clears his throat. “It happened in Tulsa.”

His voice steadies as he tells us that just a week after the fateful birthday party, Gene's father decided to let his son handle a sales call on one of their largest accounts. “Gene had just turned twenty-one, you see. His father wanted to increase his responsibilities.”

When Gene told Hambly about the planned trip, Hambly talked his lover into letting him come along.

“We were careful, of course,” the old man says. “At the hotel, Gene checked in alone. I didn't go up until later.”

He goes on to tell us how Gene wanted to stay in for the evening, but Hambly insisted on going out. “The opera was in town and I really wanted to go, but Gene wouldn't hear of it. He was afraid one of his father's clients would see us there. But I pouted, and he let me talk him into going somewhere else.” He takes a slow breath and exhales between pursed lips. “There was one bar in Tulsa that was rumored to be frequented by the homosexual crowd.” The old man is shaking his head as he continues. “Gene was afraid to go. ‘Let's just stay in,' he said when I suggested it. But I insisted, and he didn't want to disappoint me. You see, I thought it would be fun, it would give us a taste of what it might be like to live somewhere else, where there were other people like us.”

The afternoon sun has slipped down far enough in the sky that the light from the window now catches the edge of the silver tray on the coffee table. An arc of reflected light illuminates Mr. Hambly's sagging throat. I see it move as the old man swallows, fighting tears.

“We got to the bar and it was exactly what I'd been hoping for.
We danced,” he tells us. “I know it sounds stupid, but at the time it was a big deal, holding him in my arms, being out on the dance floor with other couples . . .” His eyes are closed and he's smiling and swaying ever so slightly. Then he sighs and opens his eyes.

“It got late and Gene had an early meeting the next morning, so we left. It was raining outside . . . not hard. Soft rain. It was March and neither one of us were wearing jackets. We started toward the car—it was parked just down the street—but when we came to a coffee shop with a cigarette machine, Gene ducked in to grab a pack. I waited under the awning. He didn't have change, I guess, because through the window I saw him go up to the man behind the counter and say something. The man shook his head. Then Gene turned to two men sitting on stools at the counter, but they just stared. They kept staring as Gene walked right past the cigarette machine and out the door. He said ‘Let's go' and continued toward the car. I caught up and asked him what happened. He didn't answer me.”

Mr. Hambly leans back a little and the reflected light moves to his face. It's not in his eyes, but he notices it anyway and turns his head to find the source. With exaggerated care, he scoots the tray to the far end of the coffee table to knock out the glare.

He settles back into his chair and continues in a soft voice. “We walked fast. We should have run. Two people stepped onto the sidewalk between us and the car. It only took me a second to realize they were the same men I'd seen through the diner window. They must have gone out a back door and run to get ahead of us. They were both just wearing trousers and white undershirts that were almost transparent from the rain. I remember . . .”

Hambly stops for a second, running one thumb across the other, pushing the loose skin to the knuckle and then back down. He looks up at me. “I remember thinking that they must be cold. I wasn't afraid yet—it hadn't occurred to me that they had stripped
to keep from getting blood on their good shirts and jackets. I was shivering and wishing they'd get out of our way. I remember turning to Gene and asking him if he had a towel in his car. He didn't answer me, though. He kept his eyes on the men.

“I hadn't even noticed that the tall one was holding something until he moved his arm out from his side. The streetlight near us was burned out, but the light across the street was enough for me to see the pale wood of the baseball bat. That's when I remember getting scared. Looking at the wooden bat tapping the puddle at that man's feet.

“I thought it was a robbery,” Hambly says. “I pulled out my wallet and tossed it to the shorter man. He grabbed it out of the air and laughed as he stuck it in his pocket. He looked at the one with the baseball bat and said, ‘I wonder if faggot money spends as good as human money?'”

Hambly runs a shaking hand through his thin hair. “Before I could even take another breath, the short one grabbed me by the hair and threw me to the ground. I heard Gene shout ‘Hey,' and then I heard a crack that sounded like a home run, and Gene fell to the ground next to me. I managed to get up and get a couple licks in, but it didn't take them long to get me back on the ground. They kicked and swung the bat, and at some point they must have hit my head, because that's the last I remember of that night, or any other day or night that week.”

Hambly's voice is almost a whisper as he talks about going in and out of consciousness in the hospital. He tells us he remembered once asking about Gene, and a nurse replying, “Is that your wife? Should we call her?” At some point he was lucid enough to tell someone his name and his hometown, and the next day his mother appeared by his bed.

“By the time I found out about Gene, he'd been in the ground
for two days,” Hambly says. “I never even had a chance to say good-bye.”

He goes on to talk about his injuries, the weeks spent in the hospital and his eventual return to Gandy to finish healing at his mother's house.

“Didn't the police investigate?” I ask.

Hambly gives a dismissive snort. “Right before I was discharged, a cop came and took a statement. He stood at the door, and didn't write anything down. From the look on his face I'm sure he thought Gene and I had gotten exactly what we deserved. The Tulsa newspaper never even mentioned anything about the attack. It was as if it had never happened.”

According to Hambly, nobody in Gandy put two and two together—Eugene's death and, several weeks later, young Richard Hambly coming home with injuries.

“No one knew?”

“Well, my mother knew, but she wasn't talking. And of course I'm pretty sure Tilda figured it out. And Fritter.”

He looks over at me with a tired smile. “The thing is . . . as broken as my heart was by Gene's death, I was comforted by the fact that he loved me, that even if he lived a lie with everyone else, he was honest with me.” Hambly clears his throat. “And then Tilda Thayer gave birth to your mother. All along he'd wanted it both ways. Gene may have loved me, but he made love to her. He just couldn't resist the opportunity to live a normal life. Normal from the outside anyway.”

He's not fighting the tears anymore. They roll down his withered cheeks. “He would have married her. He would have kept up the charade.”

Dust motes drift through the shaft of sunlight cutting across the room. The three of us sit there, feeling the pause stretch
thinner and thinner until it seems as if our breathing is too much.

“Why did you stay here?” I ask. “This can't be an easy place to live as a gay man.”

“Around here homosexuals of my generation are referred to as
confirmed bachelors
.” He smiles. “And no. It wasn't always easy, but it's better than it used to be. However, to answer your question, I'm not sure why I stayed. It was familiar, maybe that was it. Or it could be that I wanted to punish myself. Gene was gone; why should I deserve happiness?” He reaches down to straighten his trouser cuffs. “Eventually, of course, I let go of that kind of thinking.”

I open my mouth but before I can say anything, Luke asks my question for me, “How?”

Hambly and I both turn to look at Luke, surprised at the note of urgency in his voice. His face flushes pink under our attention, but he goes ahead and finishes his question. “How did you do that? How did you forget?”

I consider Luke sitting there, and I wonder again what put him in that wheelchair. I feel a quick stab of guilt when I realize I'd given no thought at all as to how this little emotional hoedown might be affecting him.

Hambly shakes his head. “I never said anything about
forgetting
.” And then he glances at his watch and stands. It's time to go.

He holds the front door open as Luke exits and I follow. I thank Hambly, and he nods politely. Luke continues wheeling his chair to the car, but I pause next to the old man and whisper, “By the way, there's nothing wrong with your gas line.”

He gives me a knowing look and nods.

Luke and I are almost at the car when Mr. Hambly, still standing in the doorway, says, “Young man?”

It takes Luke a second to maneuver his chair around on the
narrow walkway, but Hambly waits until we're both facing him to continue.

“I never forgot Gene or what happened. But there came a day when I understood that he was gone, but I was still here with a whole lifetime ahead of me. And I knew that as much as I loved Gene, until I let go of him, I'd never be able to grab ahold of anything else.” To illustrate his point, Mr. Hambly holds out a trembling, age-spotted hand, open, palm up.

The old man is talking to Luke, but I'd swear he's looking right at me.