"It was your idea," I whispered. "Your goddam idea."
But she wasn't having that. "I didn't tell you to write Jeroma's obituary. That was your idea."
"It was a whim," I protested. "A goof, for God's sake. I didn't know what was going to happen!"
Only maybe that wasn't the truth. I flashed back to my first orgasm, in the bathtub, assisted by a bubbly handful of Ivory Soap. I hadn't known what I was doing when I reached down and grabbed myself . . . only some part of me, some deep, instinctual part, had known. There's another old adage, this one not Ben Franklin's: When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Sometimes the teacher is inside us.
"Wanderly was your idea," I pointed out. "So was Amos the Midnight Creeper. And by then you knew what was going to happen."
She sat on the edge of the desk--her desk, now--and looked at me straight on, which couldn't have been easy. "That much is true. But, Mike . . . I didn't know it was going to spread."
"Neither did I."
"And it really is addictive. I was sitting next to you when you did it, and it was like breathing secondhand crack."
"I can stop," I said.
Hoping. Hoping.
"Are you sure?"
"Pretty. Now here's one for you. Can you keep your mouth shut about this? Like, for the rest of your life?"
She did me the courtesy of thinking it over. Then she nodded. "I have to. I could have a good thing here at Circus, and I don't want to bitch it up before I can get on my feet."
It was all about her, in other words, and what else could I have expected? Katie might not be sucking on Jeroma's eucalyptus drops, I could have been wrong about that, but she was sitting in Jeroma's chair, behind Jeroma's desk. Plus that new look-but-don't-touch tumbly hairdo. As Orwell's pigs might have said, blue jeans good, new dress better.
"What about Penny?"
Katie said nothing.
"Because my impression of Penny--everybody's impression of Penny, in fact--is that she doesn't have all four wheels on the road."
Katie's eyes flashed. "Are you surprised? She had an extremely traumatic childhood, in case you missed it. A nightmare childhood."
"I can relate, because I'm living my own nightmare right now. So save the support-group empathy. I just want to know if she'll keep her mouth shut. Like, forever. Will she?"
There was a long, long pause. At last Katie said, "Now that he's dead, maybe she'll stop going to the rape survivor meetings."
"And if she doesn't?"
"I guess she might . . . at some point . . . tell someone who's in especially bad shape that she knows a guy who could help that someone get closure. She wouldn't do it this month, and probably not this year, but . . ."
She didn't finish. We looked at each other. I was sure she could read what I was thinking in my eyes: there was one sure-shot, never-miss way to make sure Penny kept her mouth shut.
"No," Katie said. "Don't even think of it, and not only because she deserves her life and whatever good things there might be for her up ahead. It wouldn't be just her."
Based on her research, she was right about that. Penny Langston wasn't a super-common name, either, but there are more than three hundred million people in America, and some of the Penny or Penelope Langstons out there would win a very bad lottery if I decided to power up my laptop or iPad and write a new obit. Then there was the "in the neighborhood" effect. The power had taken a Wanderlee as well as a Wanderly. What if it decided to take Petula Langstons? Patsy Langfords? Penny Langleys?
Then there was my own situation. It might take only one more obit for Michael Anderson to surrender completely to that high-voltage buzz. Just thinking about it made me want to do it, because it would take away, if only temporarily, these feelings of horror and dismay. I pictured myself writing an obituary for John Smith or Jill Jones to cheer myself up, and my balls shriveled even more at the thought of the mass carnage that could follow.
"What are you going to do?" Katie asked.
"I'll think of something," I said.
*
I did.
That night I opened a Rand McNally Road Atlas to the big map of the United States, closed my eyes, and dropped my finger. Which is why I now live in Laramie, Wyoming, where I'm a housepainter. Primarily a housepainter. I actually have a number of jobs, like many people in the small cities of the heartland--what I used to refer to, with a New Yorker's casual contempt, as "flyover country." I also work part-time for a landscaping company, mowing lawns, raking leaves, and planting bushes. In the winter, I plow out driveways and work at the Snowy Range ski resort, grooming trails. I'm not rich, but I keep my head above water. A little more above it than in New York, actually. Make fun of flyover country all you want to, but it's a lot cheaper to live out here, and whole days go by without anyone giving me the finger.
My parents don't understand why I chucked it all, and my father doesn't try to hide his disappointment; he sometimes talks about my "Peter Pan lifestyle," and says I'm going to regret it when I turn forty and start seeing gray in my hair. My mother is just as puzzled but less disapproving. She never liked Neon Circus, thought it was a sleazy waste of my "authorial abilities." She was probably right on both counts, but what I mostly use my authorial abilities for these days is jotting grocery lists. As for my hair, I saw the first strands of gray even before I left the city, and that was before I turned thirty.
I still dream about writing, though, and these are not pleasant dreams. In one of them I'm sitting at my laptop, even though I don't own a laptop anymore. I'm writing an obituary, and I can't stop. In this dream I don't want to, either, because that sense of power had never been stronger. I get as far as Sad news, last night everyone in the world named John died and then wake up, sometimes on the floor, sometimes rolled up in my blankets and screaming. On a couple of occasions it's a wonder I didn't wake the neighbors.
*
I never left my heart in San Francisco, but I did leave my laptop in dear old Brooklyn. Couldn't bear to give up my iPad, though (talk about addictions). I don't use it to send emails--when I want to get in touch with someone in a hurry, I call. If it's not urgent, I use that antique institution known as the United States Post Office. You'd be surprised how easy it is to get back into the habit of writing letters and postcards.
I like the iPad, though. There are plenty of games on it, plus the wind sounds that help me get to sleep at night and the alarm that wakes me up in the morning. I've got tons of stored music, a few audio books, lots of movies. When all else fails to entertain, I surf the Internet. Endless time-filling possibilities there, as you probably know yourself, and in Laramie the time can pass slowly when I'm not working. Especially in winter.
Sometimes I visit the Neon Circus site, just for old times' sake. Katie's doing a good job as editor--much better than Jeroma, who really didn't have much in the way of vision--and the site hovers around number five on the list of most visited Internet landing-spots. Sometimes it's a notch or two above the Drudge Report; mostly it lurks just below. Plenty of ads, so they're doing well in that regard.
Jeroma's successor is still writing her Getting Sloshed with Katie interviews. Frank Jessup is still covering sports; his not-quite-joking piece about wanting to see an All Steroids Football League got national attention and landed him a gig on ESPN, Mohawk and all. Georgina Bukowski wrote half a dozen unfunny Speaking Ill of the Dead obituaries, and then Katie shitcanned the column and replaced it with Celebrity Deathstakes, where readers win prizes for predicting which famous people will die in the next twelve months. Penny Langston is the master of ceremonies there, and each week a new smiling headshot of her appears on top of a dancing skeleton. It's Circus's most popular feature, and each week the comments section goes on for pages. People like to read about death, and they like to write about it.
I'm someone who knows.
*
Okay, that's the story. I don't expect you to believe it, and you don't have to; this is America, after all. I've done my best to
lay it out neatly, just the same. The way I was taught to lay out a story in my journalism classes: not fancy, not twee or all hifalutin. I tried to keep it clear, in a straight line. Beginning leads to middle, middle leads to end. Old-school, you dig? Ducks in a row. And if you find the end a little flat, you might remember Professor Higgins's take on that. He used to say that in reporting, it's always the end for now, and in real life, the only full stop is on the obituary page.
For Stewart O'Nan
Here's an anecdote too good not to share, and I've been telling it at public appearances for years now. My wife does the major shopping for us--she says there'd never be a vegetable in the house otherwise--but she sometimes sends me on emergency errands. So I was in the local supermarket one afternoon, on a mission to find batteries and a nonstick frypan. As I meandered my way up the housewares aisle, having already stopped for a few other absolute necessities (cinnamon buns and potato chips), a woman came around the far end, riding one of those motorized carts. She was a Florida snowbird archetype, about eighty, permed to perfection, and as darkly tanned as a cordovan shoe. She looked at me, looked away, then did a double take.
"I know you," she said. "You're Stephen King. You write those scary stories. That's all right, some people like them, but not me. I like uplifting stories, like that Shawshank Redemption."
"I wrote that too," I said.
"No you didn't," she said, and went on her way.
The point is, you write some scary stories and you're like the girl who lives in the trailer park on the edge of town: you get a reputation. Fine by me; the bills are paid and I'm still having fun. You can call me anything, as the saying goes, just as long as you don't call me late for dinner. But the term genre holds very little interest for me. Yes, I like horror stories. I also love mysteries, tales of suspense, sea stories, straight literary novels, and poetry . . . just to mention a few. I also like to read and write stories that strike me funny, and that should surprise nobody, because humor and horror are Siamese twins.
Not long ago, I heard a guy talking about a fireworks arms race on a lake in Maine, and this story came to mind. And please don't think of it as "local color," okay? That's another genre I have no use for.
Drunken Fireworks
Statement given by Mr. Alden McCausland
Castle County Police Department
Statement taken by Police Chief Andrew Clutterbuck
Arresting Officer Ardelle Benoit also present
11:15 AM-1:20 PM
July 5, 2015
Yes, you could say Ma n me did a good deal of drinking and lounging around out to camp after Daddy died. No law against it, is there? If you don't get behind the wheel, that is, and we never did. We could afford it, too, because by then we were what you might call the idle rich. Never would have expected that, Dad being a carpenter all his life. Called himself a "skilled carpenter," and Ma always added, "Barely skilled n mostly distilled." That was her little joke.
Ma worked down to Royce Flowers over on Castle Street, but only full-time in November and December--a dab hand at those Christmas wreaths, she was, and not bad when it came to funeral arrangements, either. She did Dad's, you know. Had a nice yellow ribbon on it that said HOW WE LOVED THEE. Almost biblical, don't you think? People cried when they saw it, even ones Dad owed money to.
When I got out of high school I went to work at Sonny's Garage, balancing wheels, doing oil changes, and fixing flats. Back in the old days I also used to pump gas, but accourse now that's all DIY. I also sold some pot, might as well admit it. Haven't done it for years, so I guess you can't charge me on that, but in the eighties that was a pretty good cash-and-carry business, especially in these parts. Always had enough jingle to go out steppin on Friday or Saturday night. I enjoy the company of women, but have stayed away from the altar, at least so far. I guess if I have any ambitions, one would be to see the Grand Canyon, and another would be to stay what they call a lifelong bachelor. Less problems that way. Besides, I got to keep an eye on Ma. You know what they say, a boy's best friend is his--
I will get to the point, Ardelle, but if you want it, you have to let me tell it my own way. If anyone should have a little sympathy for tellin the whole story, it's you. When we was in school together, you wouldn't shut up. Tongue hung in the middle and running at both ends, Mrs. Fitch used to say. Remember her? Fourth grade. What a card she was! Remember the time you put gum in the toe of her shoe? Ha!
Where was I? Camp, right? Out on Abenaki Lake.
Ain't nothing but a three-room cabin with a lick of beach and a old dock. Daddy bought it in ninety-one, I think it was, when he run into a little dividend from some job. That wasn't enough for the down payment, but when I added in the income from my herbal remedies, we was able to swing it. The place is pretty skeevy, though, I'm willing to admit that. Ma called it the Mosquito Bowl, and we never fixed it up worth a tin shit, but Daddy kep to the payments pretty regular. When he missed, Ma n me chipped in. She bitched about giving away her flower money, but never too hard; she liked going out there from the first, bugs and leaky roof and all. We'd sit out on the deck and have a picnic lunch and watch the world go by. Even then she wouldn't say no to a six-pack or bottle of coffee brandy, although in those days she kep her drinking mostly to the weekends.
The place was all paid off around the turn of the century, and why not? It was on the town side of the lake--the west side--and you both know what it's like over there, all reedy and shallow, with plenty of puckerbrush. The east side is nicer, with them big houses the summer people have to have, and I imagine they looked acrost at the slums on our side, all shacks and cabins and trailer homes, and told themselves it was a shame how the locals had to live, without so much as a tennis court to their names. They could think whatever they wanted. Far as we were concerned, we were as good as anybody. Daddy'd fish a little off the end of our dock, and Ma would cook what he caught on the woodstove, and after oh-one (maybe it was oh-two), we had the runnin water and no longer had to trot to the outhouse in the middle of the night. Good as anybody.
We thought there'd be a little more money for fixin up once the place was paid off, but there never seemed to be; the way it disappeared was a mystery, because back then there was plenty of bank loans for people who wanted to build and Daddy was workin regular. When he died of a heart attack while on a job in Harlow, in oh-two that was, Ma n me thought we was pretty well skint. "We'll get by, though," she said, "and if it was whores he was spendin the extra on, I don't want to know." But she said we'd have to sell the place on Abenaki, if we could find someone crazy enough to buy it.
"We'll get showing it next spring," she said, "before the blackflies hatch out. That okay with you, Alden?"
I said it was, and even went to work sprucin it up. Got as far as new shingles and replacing the worst of the rotted boards on the dock, and that was when we had our first stroke of luck.
Ma got a call from an insurance company down in Portland, and found out why there never seemed to be any extra money even after the cabin and the two acres it stood on was paid off. It wasn't whores; Dad'd been putting the extra into life insurance. Maybe he had what you call a premonition. Stranger things happen in the world every day, like rains of frogs or the two-headed cat I seen at the Castle County Fair--gave me nightmares, it did--or that Loch Ness Monster. Whatever it was, we had seventy-five thousand dollars that we never expected just drop out of the sky and into our Key Bank account.
That was Stroke of Luck Number One. Two years after that call, two years almost to the day, here come Stroke of Luck Number Two. Ma was in the habit of buying a five-dollar scratch-off ticket once a week after she got her groceries at Normie's SuperShop. For years she'd been doin that and never won more than twenty dollars. Then one day in oh-four she matched 27 below to 27 above on a Big Maine Millions scratcher, and holy Christ on a bike, she seen that match was worth two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. "I thought I was going to pee my pants," she said. They put her pitcher in the window of the
SuperShop. You might remember that, it was there for two months, at least.
A cool quarter million! More like a hundred and twenty thousand after all the taxes was paid, but still. We invested it in Sunny Oil, because Ma said oil was always gonna be a good investment, at least until it was gone, and we'd be gone by the time it was. I had to agree with that, and it turned out fine. Those were go-go years in the stock market, as you may remember, and that's when we commenced our life of leisure.
It's also when we got down to serious drinking. Some of it we done at the house in town, but not that much. You know how neighbors love to gossip. It wasn't until we were mostly shifted out to the Mosquito Bowl that we really went to work on it. Ma quit the flower shop for good in oh-nine, and I said toodleoo to patchin tires and replacin mufflers a year or so later. After that we didn't have much reason to live in town, at least until cold weather; no furnace out to the lake, you know. By twenty-twelve, when our trouble with those dagos across the lake started, we'd roll on out there a week or two before Memorial Day and stay until Thanksgiving or so.
Ma put on some weight--a hundred and fifty pounds, give or take--and I guess a lot of that was down to the coffee brandy, they don't call it fat ass in a glass for nothin. But she said she was never the Miss America type to begin with, or even Miss Maine. "I'm a cuddly kind of gal," she liked to say. What Doc Stone liked to say, at least until she stopped goin to him, was that she was going to be a dying-young kind of gal if she didn't quit drinkin the Allen's.
"You're a heart attack waiting to happen, Hallie," he said. "Or cirrhosis. You've already got Type Two diabetes, isn't that enough for you? I can give it to you in words of one syllable. You need to dry out, and then you need AA."
"Whew!" Ma said when she got back. "After a scoldin like that, I need a drink. What about you, Alden?"
I said I could use one, so we took our lawn chairs out to the end of the dock, as we most often did, and got royally schnockered while we watched the sun go down. Good as anyone, and better than many. And look here: somethin's gonna kill everyone, am I not right? Doctors have a way of forgettin that, but Ma knew.