Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes (8 page)

“So, Fat Boy, what you doin' here? I ain't seen you in three years or so. Thought you hated my guts.”

I smile sheepishly. “Naw,” I say. “I never hated your guts. I was just scared of you, that's all.”

Ellerby approaches the old Pontiac with reverence, circling slowly, touching the rough, dark gray primed doors and mirrors, peering in under the hood at the engine highlighted by the droplight. Dale's eyes follow him suspiciously, then dart back to me.

“So how is old Scarface?” he asks.

“Not so hot. She's in the hospital.”

“Got herself sick or somethin', huh? Too bad. I kinda liked her. She was a real hardass.”

“Yeah, well,” I say, “she's not sick like that. She's having head trouble. She just stopped talking one day. Wouldn't get out of her desk. They finally had some guys come and take her right from school.”

Dale moves closer to Ellerby, as if to be certain he doesn't get away with any spare engine parts. “That right? That don't sound like her. I thought she'd end up kickin' somebody's ass. Like that prick Mautz.”

I smile. “Quit talkin' before she could get around to that.”

“So how come you come to see me?” He looks at Ellerby and can't stand it anymore. “What you lookin' at?” It's a challenge.

Ellerby looks up in surprise. “Nothing,” he says. “I mean, I've got a car just like this, and I've been looking for somebody to work the engine. Dealer's too expensive.
You know a lot about this thing?”

Dale puffs up. “I know ever'thing about this thing. You want anything did to it, I'm your man. Course you got to pay.”

“Course,” Ellerby says back. “Tell you what. I can do the body work on one of these babies, but I'm not much of an engine man. Maybe we can trade some labor.”

“Maybe,” Dale says, his defenses down a bit in the face of this common interest.

I answer his original question. “The reason I came to see you is I remember once you told Sarah Byrnes that she didn't get her scars from a boiling pot of spaghetti. Remember that?”

“Remember it? Shit, she liked to took my head off. That's how I knew I was right.”

“You still think that?”

Dale smiles. “Never heard her come out an' deny it, did you? Why? What binness is it of yours?”

“The people at the hospital are just looking for reasons she might have quit talking.”

Dale leans against the car door. “Well, there's a bunch of goddamn geniuses,” he says. “One look'll give you all the reasons you want.”

I agree. “Yeah, but they're looking for more. I mean, she's always looked like that, but she just
stopped talking recently.”

“Well, I don't know nothin' about talkin' or not talkin', but I'll tell you what. There wasn't no pot of spaghetti. You can count on that.”

“Sarah Byrnes tell you that?”

“Hell no. Scarface didn't tell nobody nothin'. But I know. I seen her with her dad a couple a' times, an' I know.”

“How…”

Dale stares as if I'm a dog turd on his plate. “You guys seen my old man? Think I can't tell when somebody's got a nasty pappy? Hell, I seen Sarah Byrnes with her daddy once even before I
knew
he was kickin' her ass regular an' I could tell right off.”

“You think her dad burned her?”

Dale shrugs. “You figure it out.” He looks a little closer at me. “Hey, Fat Boy, you lost some weight, huh? An' growed. I might have a hard time takin' all your shit from you these days.” He laughs. “Guess I changed careers just in time.”

“No, Dale,” I say, “I think you wouldn't have any trouble taking all my shit even today.”

Ellerby gets Dale's number for business purposes, and we're outta there.

 

“What do you think?” I ask Ellerby as we glide through the darkened streets away from Dale Thornton's house toward the freeway.

“I think Dale Thornton lives in a very scary part of town,” he says. “And I think he knows about cars.” Then he answers my real question. “I think guys like Dale Thornton don't lie.”

“So you think Sarah Byrnes's dad did something to her, like to her face?”

“I don't know,” he says, “but when I want to know about swimming, I ask Lemry. When I want to know about my teeth, I ask my dentist.” He glances over. “Always go to the expert. If I wanted to know about hard times, I could do worse than to ask Dale Thornton.”

I sit back. Ellerby's right, and I'm smart enough to have figured that out. But Sarah Byrnes is my friend. She was with me when nobody else was. In the days of my life when my body embarrassed and humiliated me every time anyone laid eyes on me, Sarah Byrnes—this person with fifty times my reason to be embarrassed and humiliated—walked with me, even ahead of me. I can't stand to imagine someone hurting her like that on purpose.

I'm standing behind Brittain and Jody at Lemry's desk, minutes before the second bell. Because my ears are tuned in like a phone tap from the Nixon White House, I can't help but overhear the conversation.

“We're thinking of dropping the course,” Brittain is saying to Lemry.

“We?” Lemry says, eyebrows raised.

“Jody and me.”

“Too demanding?” Lemry asks. She doesn't mean it. Brittain is a straight-A student. The guy has a memory like a fax machine.

“No,” he says. “I don't think the subject material is cut out for us.”

You don't have to be an astrophysicist to know Brittain's speaking as if he has a turd in his back pocket
is going as far up Lemry's feminist nose as is possible without the use of an exploratory probe. “I'm having pronoun trouble here,” she says. “‘
I
,' meaning
you
in the singular, ‘don't think the subject material is cut out for
us'?”

Brittain nods while Jody shifts nervously from foot to foot. I put my mouth close to her ear. “If you ever want a boyfriend who encourages freedom of expression,” I whisper, “dial 1–800-FAT-BOY.” I have decided over the past few days that passive admiration may not be the best way to get a girl. If it were, Jody'd have been mine long ago.

She smiles nervously and moves a step away from me.

“I just don't think it's healthy for us to sit by while people knock the Lord,” Brittain says, ignoring Lemry's challenge to separate himself from Jody. “It's blasphemy, pure and simple.”

“Then I would think the Lord would want you to stay and defend him.” Lemry glances around Brittain to Jody. “Jody, is Mark talking for you?”

Jody nods. “Yes. I mean, I guess so. We decided to take our electives together this year.”

Lemry nods. “Well, I hate to be the one to break up your little alliance, but I'm an educator, not a dating service, and in order to drop a class after five days you need my signature on your drop card. I'm willing to sign
yours, Mark, on the grounds that you don't feel compelled to stand up for your convictions, and I don't want it to appear as if the school is challenging your religious beliefs. I won't, however, sign yours, Jody, because wanting to be with your boyfriend twenty-three hours a day does not constitute reason for a transfer. Of course, you're free to pursue the issue with the front office.”

“No,” Jody says without expression, “that's okay.” She turns to walk to her seat.

I can feel myself falling out of love with Jody. It's like she's the Pillsbury Doughgirl. Doesn't this girl ever tell anybody to go to hell?

Brittain stands stiff before Lemry's desk, his neck and face reddening. “That isn't fair,” he says, in the perfectly controlled tone that makes me want to cram a banana down his throat, then reach in and peel it. “You're persecuting us because of our beliefs.”

“Mark,” Lemry says patiently, “I said I was willing to sign your drop slip. A number of my beliefs may even match yours. Now the bell has rung. Either give me your card, or take your seat.”

Brittain glances over at Jody, but she does not acknowledge him. Having forgotten why I was standing there in the first place, I walk toward the seat behind Jody,
the one Brittain seems about to vacate. “Excuse me,” I say, just loud enough for him to hear, “is this seat taken?”

Brittain crumples his card and walks briskly to his seat, and I willingly step away. Truth is, this class wouldn't be half the fun without his Jimmy Swaggart zeal. I return to my regular seat across the aisle to find a note folded neatly on the desk top. I open it and silently read: 1–800-FAT-BOY
doesn't have enough digits to be a real phone number. Please advise.

 

Sarah Byrnes sits across from me in what has become our nightly standoff. It occurs to me that if she actually is understanding every word I say and choosing not to respond, it pisses me off. Today I'm going to try to find out.

“Brittain almost quit Lemry's class today,” I say, in keeping with so-called normal conversation. “Lemry would have let him go, but he tried to take his girlfriend with him.” I didn't mention Jody's note or my lustful imaginings about her. Sarah Byrnes has never been someone with whom I felt comfortable talking about my illusory love life. Since she can't imagine having one of her own, talking about it seems cruel.

I mention CAT class. “We even talked about you a little,” I say. “About what it must be like to be burned
and everything.” I think I see a flicker, but that road has dead-ended before. “Actually, Lemry cut that short because you weren't there to give your permission or your input.”

Nothing.

“Dale Thornton thinks your dad had something to do with you getting burned.”

Sarah Byrnes's head jerks, and she penetrates far enough into my eyes for corneal surgery. Her jaw clamps tight; then, as quickly as she looked, she's glazed over.

“That's what I thought,” I say. “You've been hearing me all along. You could talk if you wanted to, I'll bet. I thought you were too tough to just pull an el foldo.”

Nothing.

“Anyway, I remembered what Dale said that day right before we closed shop on
Crispy Pork Rinds,
how you almost tore him a new one when he said you knew about bad dads the same way he did.” But the shock effect is gone. I badger her a little longer, but this girl has a will of steel, and that's it for today.

I see the nurse headed our way and think better of mentioning Sarah Byrnes's response. If she's faking, there's a reason, and if I blow her cover she'll get even. And if you had your choice of having Saddam Hussein or Joseph Stalin or Adolf Hitler or Sarah Byrnes after
you, you'd pick A, B, and C only, before you picked D. On the off chance she's not faking, if I just penetrated her catatonia for a second before it regained control, then nothing has changed. I'll try her out a few more times before I say anything to anyone. Shit, maybe I should grow up to be a psychologist.

 

I plop the note Jody left on my desk during Lemry's class three days ago on top of Ellerby's burger bun.

“What's this?” he asks as I snatch it back from between his greasy fingers.

“The legal document for my entry into heaven.” I give him enough history to lend meaning to the strange message.

“No shit,” he says, reading as I hold the note. “I didn't think Jody Mueller was real. I mean, I considered her Brittain's Stepford wife.”

“Yeah, well, reconsider. The girl has hidden taste.”

“Did you give her your number?”

“Not yet.”

“Want me to ask the waitress to turn up the heat?”

“What?”

“Sounds like your feet are cold. She gave you that note three days ago. I'd have written my phone number in permanent marker on the back of Brittain's alligator
shirt before the class was over if I was in your covetous state.”

I laugh. “When the time's right. Listen, I been meaning to ask you about the other day in Lemry's class.”

Ellerby chomps down on his burger. “Which day is that?”

“The day you talked about Sarah Byrnes. About shame.”

“What's to tell?”

“Ellerby, I've known you since the first day I turned out for swimming. You haven't uttered a serious sentence in four years.”

He smiles, paraphrasing the punch line from the old joke about the kid who went through his entire life without uttering a word. On his seventeenth birthday his mother brought out a beautiful angel food cake with a sweet rich buttery frosting. The boy blew out the candles and began to cut the cake, then stopped and put down the knife. He said, “Mother, I don't mean to be impolite, but I like chocolate frosting on my angel food cake.” Well, of course, the whole family was astonished, and they gasped and then cheered and patted him on the back. When his mother finally asked why it took him so long to speak, he said, “Up till now, everything's been okay.”

“Right,” I say, watching Ellerby polish off the burger on the third bite.

“I just said what I believed, that's all,” he says, swallowing.

“Yeah, I know. I heard you. It's just that I hadn't heard much about what you believe before that day. Or since.”

Ellerby sits back in the booth. “Beliefs.” He smiles. “You're talking to the son of a preacher man,” he says. “You better set aside a few hours before you get me started on that.

I glance at my watch. “I ain't goin' nowhere. I've wondered about you being a preacher's kid. Is that tough?” I've never heard Ellerby complain.

He shakes his head. “Not with my dad.” He nods toward the window, in the direction of the Cruiser. “How do you think I get away with driving that beast?”

“I figured you must be as hard to handle at home as you are at school.”

He smiles again. “Shit, man. If my dad said the word, I'd have it sanded down and primed by morning.”

“I've never thought of your old man as scary.”

“He isn't scary. I'd do it out of respect.”

I'm aware I've known Ellerby almost four years and I know almost nothing about his family. In fact, often as not I think of him as an orphan that my mother feeds.

“When my brother died,” Ellerby says, his eyes almost dreamy, “times were hard. My mother couldn't quit crying and my dad just lost himself in his work. I remember wishing for Sunday to hurry up because I knew I'd at least see him at church. Mom was so hurt she couldn't even talk to me, and after about six months I started thinking my brother was the only kid in the family worth being happy about. I got it in my head that it should have been me who died. When Dad finally started getting back to normal, he was so busy trying to take care of Mom and running the church and all, he seemed to have forgotten about me. I was just a little shit, but I packed my stuff in my brother's old gym bag and lit out for my uncle's.

“Only problem was, my uncle lives on the East Coast. Cops picked me up five blocks from home and called Dad. When he came down to the station I ran and buried my face in his chest and babbled how sorry I was, that I was sorry it was Johnny instead of me, and Dad dropped to his knees with me and held me tight and told me right there, on the cold concrete floor, how bad he'd screwed up. Since that day, I haven't had a better friend.”

Ellerby's eyes are shiny and he continues quietly. “Beliefs. Man, I changed the face of God for my old man forever.”

“What do you mean? How?”

“By making him explain to a nine-year-old kid why God would let a preacher's son die when he was going to grow up to be a preacher, too. I told him I thought God must be dumb, cheating them
both
out of a high draft pick like my brother. I said I thought if you were a preacher, God ought to give you a little extra protection. You know, like cops don't give each other tickets?”

“What'd he say?”

Ellerby smiles. “He said he thought so, too. That he was as surprised as I was when it happened. Anyway, that's when we sat down and tried to figure out God's job description. You heard a piece of it the other day in class.”

“You were a real hit with Brittain.”

“That stuff scares guys like Brittain. Guys like him don't want to be accountable for shit. They fall to their knees on the deck when they should concentrate on swimming hard. That's why I said what I said about your friend Sarah Byrnes. She's been around all my life and I've done nothing; stayed as far from her as I could because I don't like thinking about her pain. But that's chicken shit, because once a thing is known, it can't be
un
known.” He sits back and folds his hands behind his head. “Dad and I sit around and watch the God network
a couple of hours a week just to see what guys like Brittain are thinking. You know, keep up with the enemy.”

Ellerby stands. “That, my friend, is about as much philosophical bullshit as I can take in one night. Let's crank up the Cruiser and spread the word.”

 

The Cruiser slows to a stop in front of my house a few minutes before midnight. “Get some sleep,” Ellerby says. “We've got a tough meet tomorrow.” He squints into his side window. “Look, isn't that Dale Thornton's wagon?”

I cup my hands around my eyes to block the light from the dash. “Hard to imagine there's
three
of these things.” As I say it, the door to the wagon swings open and Dale steps out. “Wonder what he wants. You didn't steal anything from his garage the other night, did you?”

We meet Dale in the middle of the street. “Hey, man,” Ellerby says, “got her running, huh?”

Dale locks his fingers into his belt loops, a stance preceding the moment he used to kick my butt, or take my lunch money. He says, “Yeah. No sweat.” He stands, eyes shifting from one to the other of us.

I'm on past conditioning. “You pissed, man?”

Dale smiles uneasily. “Naw. Why would I be pissed?”

“To tell the truth, Dale, up until the other night, I never saw you when you weren't. It was just a guess.”

He looks at the ground. “I wasn't always pissed,” he says. “I just needed to make sure all you guys were a-scared of me.”

“It worked. What brings you out this late?”

“Got to thinkin',” he says. “The other night. You guys talkin' about Scarface.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. She really laid up in the crazy house? Like you said?”

I nod. “Yup. Why?”

“Well,” he says uneasily, “we was purty good friends there for a little bit. After that stupid newspaper, when she was kinda mad at you for goin' off to be a jock…”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Helped me out of some tough spots. You know, let me talk without tellin', stuff like that.”

I say, “Yeah.”