The Good Father (21 page)

Danny sat in the library looking at pictures of Seagram and his wife, Rachel. She was a pretty brunette with laugh lines around her eyes. She looked like a good wife, like the kind of wife who never said anything mean, who played with her children and cooked complicated meals, and liked to give head. The children were bright-eyed, pink-cheeked. They looked like kids who got good grades and played team sports. Happy children from an intact home whose parents loved them. Children who weren’t shuffled back and forth between their mom and dad for the holidays. Children who never had to listen to their mothers screaming at their fathers how they “fucking hated” them. How they “wished they would die in a fiery car crash.” Children who never had to watch their fathers slam doors and kick holes in the wall.

It was clear. Not only did they have good parents, these children; they had each other. Someone to play with, someone to lean on. They weren’t like Danny, an only child who, when he was six, snuck out of his house one night and slept in the car just to see if his parents would notice. They didn’t. Here they were on vacation, a happy family smiling beside a lake. Here they were on a sailboat, floating on Caribbean waters. Here they were at Christmas standing next to a giant tree, bright lights flashing like smiles.

He e-mailed himself the pictures, the articles. He wanted to look at them later in his room. To make some notes.

He first noticed
the girl
in Russian History. She was reshelving books about the civil war. She had light brown hair and a pointy nose. Her ears stuck out a little but not too much. Something about her face made his chest contract. Something about her light summer sweater and the swell of her buttocks against her slacks. He hid in Current Events and spied on her as she made her way through the stacks. She had a bright white smile and an easy laugh. Everyone around seemed to know her. Danny couldn’t turn his eyes away. She was the kind of girl, he thought, who gets up early to swim laps, then delivers Meals on Wheels after work. The kind of girl who doesn’t just drop off the meal but stays to hear stories, to look at pictures of grandchildren.

He lay in bed that night and thought about her. He pictured them sailing on Caribbean waters. The thought of her in a bathing suit made his skin tighten. Downstairs the frat boys shouted at the TV and ate pizza they’d found in a box under a towel. He could hear the baseball announcer calling the game, that clipped rapid tone, the flat vowel sounds of an eastern industrial city.

In September he registered people to vote. The Seagram campaign coordinator said she’d never seen so many signatures collected in one day. He was good with people. He saw things about them. He chatted up housewives in supermarket parking lots. He talked sports with jocks. He stood on street corners with the illegals waiting for work and learned what the slang words were for
pussy
in Ecuador and Brazil.

After his shift ended he would go to the library and read about Texas. He felt it was important to know everything he could about the place where he was living. The girl didn’t work every day. She did the afternoon shift Monday through Wednesday, and morning on Thursday and Friday. Her name was Natalie. Danny got to the point where he could recognize her silhouette from a distance. He became familiar with her clothes, her outfits: the jean jackets and the long skirts. She wore an anklet on her right leg. It was something a boyfriend might have given her. He wondered if she wore it to bed. If she showered with it on.

He thought about talking to her many times, but he never did. She was so clearly the perfect girl, and he worried that if he spoke to her she would say something or do something that would ruin it, and then she’d be just another pretty girl with a great ass he had slept with.

He was happy in Austin. He liked the weather and the people. He liked riding his bike beside the water. He even liked the frat boys with their beer bellies and affectionate head butts. There was a girl he couldn’t stop thinking about, and a job that felt right to him. He had found a purpose. A cause.

And then he saw the tower. And everything changed.

The University of Texas clock tower was built in 1937. It stands just over three hundred feet tall on the west end of the campus. It is the tallest building for blocks in each direction. The first time Danny noticed it he was standing on the corner of Twenty-first and Guadalupe handing out flyers. He had worked the area for two weeks, but this was the first time he could remember looking up. The time on the giant clock read 3:15 p.m., gold hands crossing over brass roman numerals.

He left the flyers on top of a garbage can and walked toward the main concourse. Entering from Twenty-first Street he passed a monument to student soldiers killed in World War I. He climbed the steps toward the main administration building, past Benedict Hall and Mezes Hall, past statues of George Washington and Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy. He stood on the wide concourse staring up at the tower. It held a strange hypnotic power over him. For some reason he thought of the funnel cloud that nearly killed him back in Iowa. This, too, felt like the arm of God somehow.

As he was standing there a girl came up beside him. She was someone he’d registered to vote two days earlier. They’d talked about school and the weather. It was clear she was attracted to him, but he wasn’t interested. Susan something. Now she slid up beside him and said, “Can you believe he killed all those people here? It still gives me the willies.”

He looked at her. He had no idea what she was talking about. “The marine,” she said. “Charles something or other. Whitman. It was back in the seventies or something. He went up there with a rifle and just started shooting.”

She asked him if he had time for a cup of coffee. Danny made an excuse. He hurried to the library. The tower was looming in his head.

Natalie wasn’t working that day. Yesterday he’d overheard her ask for the day off. It was for the best. He had to be back at work in an hour and didn’t have time to pine for her today. He went straight to the computer lab and typed in
Austin, UT clock tower, Charles Whitman
.

The facts were these. Just after midnight on August 1, 1966, Charles Whitman, twenty-five, had strangled his mother with a rubber hose, then bashed the back of her head in. He then stabbed his sleeping wife, Kathy, five times with a hunting knife. The next morning he drove to the University of Texas, climbed to the top of the clock tower, and shot forty-six people with a sniper rifle, killing sixteen and wounding thirty, before he was shot and killed by police.

Danny read the reports. He found old TV footage, news reports from the day. He saw still photographs of victims on gurneys, of police hunkered down behind squad cars.

In the months leading up to the massacre, he read, Whitman had remarked to various people that a sniper could do a lot of damage from that tower. Cultural theorists called it history’s first modern crime, and said Whitman’s random shooting spree had given birth to the twentieth century.

Charles Whitman was born in Lake Worth, Florida, the son of a wealthy family. He was a gifted student, an accomplished pianist, and an Eagle Scout. But he had a violent father, who would later admit, “I did on many occasions beat my wife. But I loved her. I did and do have an awful temper, but my wife was awful stubborn. Because of my temper, I knocked her around.”

He also beat his sons, using belts, paddles, and, when nothing else was around, his fists to discipline them. In June 1959, shortly before his eighteenth birthday, Charles came home drunk and his father beat him badly and threw him into the swimming pool where he almost drowned. A few days later Whitman joined the Marine Corps. He was determined to get out.

In the marines he earned a sharpshooter badge, scoring 215 out of a possible 250. He excelled at rapid fire from long distances and seemed to be more accurate when shooting at moving targets.

The marines saw officer potential in Whitman, so they sent him to
Austin, Texas, to attend the university. In Austin he married his girlfriend, Kathy Leissner. He also started gambling and was arrested for poaching. His grades were average. The marines decided they’d made a mistake and called Whitman back to active duty. He was posted at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. He resented the Marine Corps and it showed in his behavior. In November 1963 he was court-martialed for gambling, usury, and unauthorized possession of a nonmilitary pistol. He did thirty days in confinement and ninety days of hard labor.

Back in Austin, he returned to school. He was determined to make up for lost time. Then, out of the blue, he was struck by fits of blinding rage. His wife convinced him to see a therapist. Whitman sat in his office and told him he had fantasies of going up into the clock tower and shooting people with a deer rifle. The therapist told Whitman they’d made progress and asked him to come back in a week.

Whitman started self-medicating with Dexedrine. He thought it made him a better worker, but in truth it made him sloppier. He went days without sleeping, sitting at the kitchen table trying to get organized.

On July 31 he bought a Bowie knife and binoculars at a surplus store and canned meat at the 7-Eleven. He picked up Kathy from work and took her to dinner. Back at home he sat down and wrote the following letter.

Sunday, July 31, 1966, 6:45 p.m.

I don’t quite understand what it is that compels me to type this letter. Perhaps it is to leave some vague reason for the actions I have recently performed. I don’t really understand myself these days. I am supposed to be an average reasonable and intelligent young man. However, lately (I can’t recall when it started) I have been a victim of many unusual and irrational thoughts. These thoughts constantly recur and it requires a tremendous mental effort to concentrate on useful and progressive tasks. In March when my parents made a physical break I noticed a great deal of stress. I consulted a Dr. Cochrum at the University Health Center and asked him to recommend someone that I could consult with about some psychiatric disorders I felt I had. I talked with a Doctor once for about two hours and tried to convey to him my fears
that I felt some overwhelming violent impulses. After one session I never saw the Doctor again, and since then I have been fighting my mental turmoil alone, and seemingly to no avail. After my death I wish that an autopsy would be performed on me to see if there is any visible physical disorder. I have had some tremendous headaches in the past and have consumed two large bottles of Excedrin in the past three months.

Leaving Kathy at home, Whitman drove to his mother’s apartment. Inside apartment 505 he choked her with a length of hose until she passed out, then stabbed her with the hunting knife. In this way a boy surpasses his father. He placed her body in her bed and pulled up the covers. He left a note on the door for the super, asking not to be disturbed.

At home he went to the bedroom where Kathy was sleeping. He pulled back the sheet and stabbed her five times. Then he sat down to finish the letter he’d started earlier.

He wrote, “3:00 a.m.”

Both dead. It was after much thought that I decided to kill my wife, Kathy, tonight after I pick her up from work at the telephone company. I love her dearly, and she has been as fine a wife to me as any man could ever hope to have. I cannot rationally pinpoint any specific reason for doing this. I don’t know whether it is selfishness, or if I don’t want her to have to face the embarrassment my actions would surely cause her. At this time, though, the prominent reason in my mind is that I truly do not consider this world worth living in, and am prepared to die, and I do not want to leave her to suffer alone in it. I intend to kill her as painlessly as possible.

Similar reasons provoked me to take my mother’s life also. I don’t think the poor woman has ever enjoyed life as she is entitled to. She was a simple young woman who married a very possessive and dominating man. I was a witness to her being beaten at least one [
sic
] a month. Then when she took enough, my father wanted to fight to keep her below her usual standard of living.

I imagine it appears that I bruttaly [
sic
] kill [
sic
] both of my loved ones. I was only trying to do a quick thorough job. If my life insurance policy is valid, please see that all the worthless checks I wrote this weekend are made good. Please pay off my debts. I am 25 years old and have been financially independent. Donate the rest anonymously to a mental health foundation. Maybe research can prevent further tragedies of this type.

As the sun came up, Whitman placed the following items in a green footlocker:
One (1) Channel Master 14 AM/FM transistor radio, one (1) blank Robinson Reminder notebook, one (1) 3 1/2 gallon water jug, one (1) 3 1/2 gallon plastic gas jug, four (4) “C-”cell flashlight batteries, several lengths of cotton and nylon ropes, one (1) plastic Wonda-scope compass, Paper Mate black ballpoint pen, one (1) Gun Tector, one (1) green rifle scabbard hatchet, one (1) Nesco machete with green scabbard, one (1) Hercules hammer, one (1) green ammunition box with gun-cleaning equipment, one (1) Gene alarm clock, cigarette lighter, one (1) canteen filled with water, binoculars, one (1) green Sears rifle scabbard, one (1) Camillus hunting knife with brown scabbard and whetstone, one (1) large Randall bone-handle knife (with “Charles J. Whitman” inscribed on the blade) with brown scabbard and whetstone, large lock-blade pocket knife, one (1) ten-inch pipe wrench, one (1) pair of eyeglasses in a brown case, one (1) box of kitchen matches, twelve (12) assorted cans of food and a jar of honey, two (2) cans of Sego, one (1) can of charcoal starter, one (1) white-and-green six-volt flashlight, one (1) set of earplugs, two (2) rolls of white adhesive tape, one (1) solid steel one-foot bar, one (1) green rubber army duffel bag, one (1) green extension cord, several lengths of clothesline wire and yellow electric wire, one (1) pair of gray gloves, one (1) deer bag, one (1) loaf of bread, sweet rolls, Spam, Planters Peanuts, sandwiches, a box of raisins, one (1) plastic bottle of Mennen spray deodorant, three (3) rolls of toilet paper
.