Me and My Daddy Listen to Bob Marley (25 page)

It was early May, still cool in the mornings. Theodore Munney wore his usual work clothes, both his shirt and his pants the color of grass when it gets gobbed up around lawnmower blades, a timeless outfit no one in the town of Berker would have looked at twice in 1953 and one no one looked at twice now in 2003. Calvin Bergdoll, in contrast, dressed like an onion, in layers he could subtract and add depending on temperature. The deepest strata were T-shirts with frayed necklines, thin as Saran Wrap, and over those, several layers of plaid in varied styles, colors, and check schemes, including always at least one pajama top. On his pate rested his current favorite cap, one he had paid for, gold mesh ventilation in the back and a navy blue front with the words Almost Heaven and a silhouette of the state of West Virginia. Noticing an out-of-state car waiting for Blackie's parking space, Calvin stopped, stretched his back, and ran his hand over the slight push-out of his belly, the only interruption in his otherwise svelte figure. This mystery, he knew, was the talk of many in the town of Berker, how could anyone eat like Calvin Bergdoll did and still preserve such slimness? Package that and you'll be a
millionaire, one of his daughters had told him once.
Just good genes
. Calvin humbly smiled.

To avoid the hubbub of the Bygone Days setup on Main Street, Calvin cut behind the Coke plant, skirted the Little League field, and then shuttled the sidewalkless backstreets on the rump side of Berker. Theodore Munney rode in silence, his face turned out the open window. Was Bygone Days a good thing or a bad? The biscuit travesty forced the question again. Now they were passing the house where Calvin had lived until he was eight, Cal scowling over how they'd let the porch screen shred, and three blocks later, the little house his mother had occupied in her final years, the two big water maples out front violated to stumps by the current owner whose name Calvin would not deign to mention. Bygone Days did generate civic pride, something sorely diminished over Cal's lifetime in the town of Berker, once a proud little village named by young surveyor George Washington himself, in honor of the county's fine Berkshire swine. But Bygone Days meant his bride of forty years was away all weekend helping at the Fine Arts Room, and it lured hordes of gawkers to town and threw off Calvin's schedule. Further, almost all the food at Bygone Days was out of his price range, and he couldn't help but suspect that the overstimulation of the celebration was at least partly responsible for Theodore Munney's recent behaviors.

As they neared Theodore Munney's trailer, the houses got narrower, the dogs grouchier, until the pavement gave up altogether and they were rutting through the potholes of Roundhouse Hollow. “Take your time, my boy, take your time,” the Benevolent Landowner offered as Theodore Munney dropped out the door, but Cal kept the engine running. Growing grass did not wait. Yes, the only Bygone Days food Calvin could afford were the Cub Scout hot dogs, and those upset his stomach. He did, however, look forward to the pancake breakfast at
the Fire Hall on Saturday morning, reasonably priced, all-you-can-eat, and a fund-raiser, satisfying Cal's stomach, pocketbook, and liberal leanings all at once. And over the past couple years, as Calvin was aging into a county elder, Bygone Days held one other allure—the anointing of the Knight of Olde Berker.

Theodore Munney recrossed his yard with his distinctive gait of an unconfident chicken. He swung into his seat, the stuffed pillowcase of dirty laundry perched in his lap like a chubby beheaded child. “Now that's a good lad,” lauded the Benevolent Landowner.

“WreckupatSlanesville. Themboysdealindrugs.”

As they neared Main Street again, Calvin directed Blackie down a parallel detour. Despite the seduction of the Bygone Days setup—no, not even Cal was immune—he could risk not even a peek. Not with the matter of the Lions Club booth. But Calvin could feel Theodore Munney's eyes straining to penetrate through the intervening block, and at each intersection, Cal fought the urge himself. Then, at the corner of Bluebonnet and Shute, Blackie took his own wheels, veered left. And spilled them plop into the brouha.

Stout women poled up canopies for the crafts fair while apprentice volunteer firemen pushed brooms through gutters and veterans speared American flags into parking meter tubes. Those storeowners who'd weathered Wal-Mart wheeled wares out of doors, porta-potties were wrestled off trucks, and overhead, cousins Tick and Carroll Might dangled from ladders, precarious cupids in camouflage pants, stringing the Bygone Days banner. Roland, the little man who lived daytimes on the bench in front of the courthouse and nighttimes in the courthouse furnace room, oversaw it all from his seat at the stoplight. Theodore Munney thrust his head and shoulders into the stir, someone shouted his name, he pretended not to hear, and the Lions Club booth loomed.

Calvin Bergdoll's sugar squirted up. He yanked his eyes to the opposite side of the street. Where, yes, a lone Cub Scout towed a red wagon piled with hot dog buns,
Truant!
Cal's guts soured—

“Gonnashootoutupthetracks.” Theodore Munney's machine-gun stutter bumped Calvin from his demons. He glanced out the windshield on Theodore Munney's side. In the field beside the grade school milled men in blue and gray, the uniforms baggy in peculiar places and clingy as long underwear in others. Cal's face tightened.
Republican stuff
. A few were pitching canvas pup tents the color of putty, and a copper cauldron already dangled from a tripod of sticks. Here was another bad side of Bygone, and Theodore Munney needed no such influence, having just a few weeks ago asked Calvin to drive him to the high school to talk to the recruiter who trolled the halls as a kind of Republican-funded guidance counselor.

“Gonnashootoutupthetracks,” Theodore Munney fired again.

By now the tents were behind them, Blackie rolling down Town Hill and into the valley where Calvin lived. In Cal's head jarred something he'd overheard at the Senior Center then chosen to forget. This year, along with their usual encampment and marching in the parade, the Civil War reenactors were to perform some kind of fake battle for the benefit of the tourist-train gawkers. The battle would be staged in a defunct cornfield a mile up the river behind Calvin's house.

Cal cleared his throat. “Yes, I did hear that.” His voice was measured now, at once autocratic and compassionate. The Progressive Mental Health Worker seasoned with a strand of Stern Father. “I never did understand why people would want to be involved in something like that, and I know you don't either.” But in the darkest levels of Calvin's brain sediment slurked a knowledge Cal was not even aware he was about to speak from: that his own family had favored the Confederacy. That Roland, the little man on the bench, who used
to show up at Calvin's mother's asking for odd jobs or money, was, according to family legend, a descendant of Calvin's family's slaves.

“But if you had to take a side,” the Progressive Mental Health Worker continued, and now he was addressing a more general audience—a meeting of mental health workers, or a collection of handicapped people, or his six children—than he was Theodore Munney, “you'd want the Union.” His eyes flicked to the side of the road where a black and brown dog rump vanished into the cockleburs and broom sedge. “That's the blue clothes,” he said.

THEODORE MUNNEY HAD
only wanted to cut grass for fifteen minutes. After that, Calvin had generously and patiently driven him the two miles back into town where he dropped him at Theodore's second-favorite hangout spot, the BP station, even though Cal had reason to suspect that the back room of the BP was one place Theodore was absorbing inspiration for his insubordination. Now, with Theodore Munney's chopped-grass-colored clothes spinning in the washer and Cal's wife in town setting up the Bygone Days' Fine Arts Room, Calvin was having his quiet time.

He took it in the TV room with his deer heads, First Buck and Biggest Rack, looking on from their mounts as Cal watched the Arts Channel, a commercial-free station that aired segments of ballets and operas and symphonies often backdropped with beautiful scenery from European ruins. The Arts Channel not only permitted Calvin to exercise his cultivated side, not easy in a county that had just gotten its second stoplight, but also lowered his blood pressure and his sugar, too. He was enjoying a concoction of leftover beef stew, a can of peas, a can of sardines, and some past-due milk he'd picked up for a very reasonable price at the County Pride supermarket. He dipped two chunks of old Italian bread into his creation to soften them. His
daughters insisted that people with diabetes shouldn't eat white bread. Even though it didn't taste sweet, they said, it somehow turned to sugar in your body. An interesting but suspect fact.

As Cal chewed, he eyed the carry-around phone he'd placed within reach before he'd sunk into the bog of the couch. He'd already checked the answering machine—although he had no idea how you retrieved messages, he knew a blinking light signaled one—but it had been blank. He took a long swallow of his SunnyD orange drink. Well, with the anointing of the Knight of Olde Berker not until tomorrow night, they'd probably make the nomination calls this afternoon or evening. He pictured the committee cloistered in the bowels of the courthouse, possibly in the room beside the one where Roland slept, possibly throwing their arms up in relief and in disbelief that here they'd sat for hours and had only now thought of the obvious choice.
Doughnuts all around!

Someone struck the floor bottom under Calvin's feet hard enough to vibrate his left slipper. He chose to ignore this in favor of a Wagnerian opera snippet featuring Brunhild. “I don't think my tarn helmet covers me completely,” the subtitle read. Cal squinted.
Tarn helmet
.
Now that's one you don't often see
. Under the floor, someone snarled. Someone snarled back. “A woman's anger passes quickly.”
Huh
. Calvin started to wag his head in agreement as he often did to demonstrate his intellectual compatibility with the Arts Channel, then stopped mid-nod.

The under-floor exploded into squeals and thrashes, concussion-hard
thwacks
and fratricidal growls. Calvin bared his bottom teeth in frustration, set his saucepan on the couch beside him, spread his knees, and glared into the carpet. “Quit that! You all quit that!”
Growing pains
. They fought down there as fiercely as his own children had fought up here, this litter of possums coming of age under
the TV room, never mind how easy he'd made their lives, weaning them himself with cookie sheets of cat food they gorged on after dark. “Quit that!” the Stern Father ordered once more, stomping his slippers. The cat food was left over from his own cats, now all dead or run away.
Cat food
. He'd tasted it a couple times.
Kind of fishy
. Now the possums were obeying, or they'd run themselves down, and Calvin moved his saucepan back onto his lap.
But a whole lot better than dog food
.

At that moment, the back door opened and shut. Calvin thumbed the mute.

A body blurred past the TV room door. Calvin tautened under his plaid.

Raising his hand slowly, as one would not to startle an animal, Cal tugged down his Almost Heaven cap and retracted like a turtle, and his beard helped, too, along with large glasses so light-sensitive an outsider could see through them only in semidarkness. His tinnitus, as it did in moments of crisis, admitted a thin laser of clear sound, and, the deer heads listening with him, Calvin detected the soft pop and hiss of the refrigerator seal.

It was his thirty-three-year-old son. The one who never left West Virginia, the one who never left town, the one who had only recently left the house. The son who used to have a few problems.

The son stepped into the TV room balancing a sandwich that looked to be baloney on a paper napkin, in his other hand a 7-Eleven coffee cup the size of a two-liter pop bottle. He settled into the dog-hair-ridden easy chair, threw a leg over the chair's arm, fixed his eyes on the television, and slurped. “Got any jobs for me, Dad?”

Calvin released the mute and feigned reimmersion in the Arts Channel. Using his hat bill as a sort of blind, he studied his son who used to have a few problems. Recently his son's oil-splattered
jeans had been hanging slack on his hips and even his elbows looked sharper than usual. His cheekbones knobbed against his skin and his eyeballs bulged, but the son had a hat bill blind of his own. Plus he almost always kept enough distance between himself and Calvin that Cal couldn't discern if there was blood in the whites.
That skinny
. . .
when it's just liquor he's into, he gets kind of fattish
. . . Calvin entombed that thought in his brain soil in favor of something he'd heard his bride say to a friend on the phone the other day. “He's just happier than he's ever been!” And, “He looks better than he has in years!”

“You can finish up that grass Theodore didn't get to.” Calvin plugged his mouth with beef stew and sardines.

“Okay.” The son unfolded onto his feet, already moving towards the door, taking his sandwich with him. “I can do it this afternoon. Could you pay me now?”

“And how am I to know how many hours it will take?” Cal asked peevishly. The Savvy Businessman, a legacy from his departed father. He would not be taken advantage of.

“It'll be worth at least ten dollars,” the son said.

Calvin spooned more concoction into his mouth, his eyes trained on a string ensemble performing Vivaldi's “Summer” in the National Botanical Garden of Wales. The son who used to have a few problems waited in the doorway. Cal reached the bottom of the saucepan and diligently scraped its sides. A second possum skirmish broke out, this one shorter-lived, but concluding with a squeal of acute injury, possibly death. The son leaned comfortably in the doorframe, also watching the National Botanical Garden of Wales.