I Think You're Totally Wrong (12 page)

CALEB:
I'm against the death penalty, but with an asterisk. I'm more against releasing the Lockerbie bomber after only eight years. The Scottish prime minister let him go because he had terminal cancer. It was the “humanitarian thing to do.” He lived the rest of his life, as a hero, in Libya. That's cruel and unusual treatment of all the victims. Anders Breivik, the Norwegian guy who killed seventy or so people, has a possibility of parole in twenty-one years. Life imprisonment is superior to execution, but execution is superior to setting Anders Breivik free.

DAVID:
Now who's the moral relativist?

CALEB:
(into DVR)
It's Friday, around noon, and we're driving to the town of Skykomish for lunch.

DAVID:
Are Khamta and his wife trying for a second kid?

CALEB:
They weren't at first, but now they are. She's three or four years older than he is; I think she's forty-one.

DAVID:
Is she a Buddhist?

CALEB:
Khamta is only mildly Buddhist. Julie's traveled and she's interested in Laotian culture, but that probably had little to do with her marrying Khamta, who left Laos when he was seven, stayed in a refugee camp, and was one of two families sponsored by the Methodist church in Coupeville.

DAVID:
What does Julie do?

CALEB:
She's a photographer. She works for department stores, and she's working now at McChord Air Force Base for some big project. She went to Peru and did a nice collage of children.… Okay, here's the meth house we visited last night.

DAVID:
It's brutal.

CALEB:
It's an absolute sty. You wouldn't have wanted to stay there.

DAVID:
I can survive anything.

DAVID:
When I gave that reading at Suzzallo, I didn't recognize you. I don't think I'd seen you for—what?—fifteen years if not more.

CALEB:
From 1991 to 2008! Seventeen years. We'd exchanged a few emails.

DAVID:
I remembered you as having long dark locks—down to your shoulders if not longer. Very dramatic. You looked like a heavy-metal drummer; it was a big part of your identity, I always thought. It was interesting to see the photos of you at your house—how your hair receded year by year. When did you join the bald club?

CALEB:
About ten years ago. I didn't want to look like Gallagher.

DAVID:
Bald with long hair. Gotcha. Ridiculous.

CALEB:
Even short hair bald looks dumb. The skin yarmulke.

DAVID:
Shaved is the way to go. Just admit who and where you are in life.

CALEB:
It's easier.

DAVID:
In my thirties I was endlessly trying to finesse my hair so it'd look decent.

CALEB:
I started losing my hair in my late twenties. I thought long hair was an asset with the ladies. Actually, for every one woman the hair attracted, it repelled ten. Terry said she wouldn't have looked twice at me had we met in my long-hair days. The shaved head opens up the widest spectrum of options for the balding guy in the dating world, unless your head is shaped like a potato.

DAVID:
If I had my druthers, I'd have more hair. Baldness ages one. And a lot of the people Laurie has had crushes on had long hair—Cat Stevens, James Taylor, Todd Rundgren, Taylor Kitsch.

CALEB:
Taylor Kitsch?

DAVID:
The kid in
Friday Night Lights
. It's nothing I think about overly much. I shaved my head by 1997, early forties.

CALEB:
I probably started to shave regularly when I turned thirty.

DAVID:
Now I do it practically every other day.

DAVID:
So this is the little town of Skykomish?

CALEB:
Burlington Northern, the railroad, leaked oil or pollutants into the water supply underground, and the whole town was dug up. There are two restaurants, but only one was ever open at any given time, and the grass you see used to be twenty-foot-deep pits.

DAVID:
Every building was simply picked up and moved?

CALEB:
Or razed. The structural engineers had to figure it all out.

Train whistle
.

DAVID:
Will this be endlessly long?

CALEB:
Could be five cars, could be a hundred. Barouh was with his girfriend and their son and dog down the mountain, straddling the track, not paying attention; the stereo's blasting, and they didn't hear the train whistle. The train nailed the bed of the truck, killed the dog instantly.

DAVID:
How dumb do you have to be?

CALEB:
Every time Khamta and I come to a train track, we shout out, “Barouh! Barooooouh!”

DAVID:
Is he an oblivious guy?

CALEB:
Unofficially, he's got ADD. He's hyper and always
focused on something else. Whenever I call he says, “I'm busy—can I call you right back?”

DAVID:
Who was injured besides the dog?

CALEB:
The girlfriend and the son were airlifted by helicopter to Harborview. She was messed up, missed six months of work. The son just had bumps and bruises.

DAVID:
Barouh had no injury?

CALEB:
Just scrapes. Didn't even see a doctor, but that was the final straw. The girlfriend left.

Here we are—the Cascadia Inn.

DAVID:
Laurie has what she calls “cellular issues”—periodic biopsies, mini-scares about dysplasia, her cells' repair mechanism—but she doesn't really fill me in on to what degree she's worried, whereas I would tend to want to talk about it.

CALEB:
Maybe she'd like you to ask.

DAVID:
Believe me, I ask. She's John Wayne: strong, silent type.

WAITRESS:
Hi. Two?

DAVID:
Two. Do you have wireless?

WAITRESS:
Yes.

DAVID:
Oh, good. Let me get out my laptop.

CALEB:
So Laurie's okay?

DAVID:
We think so. She's now a health fiend. How's Terry's health?

CALEB:
Three babies, three miscarriages. Basically, she was pregnant for five-plus years. I mean, she's beautiful. She loves taking walks, works out at home with aerobics videos.

DAVID:
Who was that jumping up and down on the bed back at your house?

CALEB:
Gia; she's the middle one.

DAVID:
Pretty cute. How about the other kids—are they as sweet-tempered?

CALEB:
I've won the lottery three times. You said you didn't enjoy the first couple years of parenthood.

DAVID:
I struggled a little bit. Did you not?

CALEB:
Struggle? A little, but for every negative there're three or four positives.

WAITRESS:
Today's specials are a Denver omelet and the chicken salad sandwich. Coffee?

DAVID:
Do you know how to dive into a swimming pool?

CALEB:
Sure.

DAVID:
It's something I've never learned to do.

CALEB:
You can't?

DAVID:
I can sort of do it, but it's basically a belly flop.

CALEB:
You've never dove from a diving board?

DAVID:
It's embarrassing, but I've never learned.

CALEB:
You just jump headfirst. Let me show you a bungee jump.

DAVID:
Computer's yours.

CALEB:
YouTube: Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. Gimme a couple seconds.
(plays video)

DAVID:
Were you afraid?

CALEB:
I was more afraid of chickening out.

DAVID:
How do you get back up?

CALEB:
A second person came down on a winch, latched onto me, and back up we went.

DAVID:
Are you proud you did it? Did you learn something?

CALEB:
Conquering fear—all that bullshit.

DAVID:
How did you get to the moment where you jumped off?

CALEB:
I'd made the choice the previous day, signed up, and paid ninety bucks. I imagined not doing it, and between the two, I had to jump. The guy counted down, “Five, four, three, two, bungee!”

DAVID:
Can I see the bungee jump again?

CALEB:
Sure.
(replays)

DAVID:
It's hard to imagine what's in your body, your heart—I don't know how you control that. You must have felt so relieved. Were you just hanging there afterward?

CALEB:
For about five minutes, upside down, waiting for this guy to drop on the winch. The whole way back he told me about how they paid him a dollar a day to risk his life.

WAITRESS:
Are we ready?

CALEB:
Yes. I'll have the Denver omelet.

WAITRESS:
The cook has stopped serving breakfast.