The Enthusiast (2 page)

Barney was at Cal Poly on scholarship, and Dad and I were
getting along better. We had a lot in common. He was a middle manager and I was a middle teenager, not an athlete but not one of those guys who get beaten up all the time, either, and bright but not nearly as bright as Barney. My biggest talent at school was writing book reports that sounded like the books. Dad and I let other people amaze us—Barney, Dad's scientists, and Mom, who'd never believed in Controlled Dynamics anyway. One night a few months after the layoffs, when Dad was pushing his dinner around on his plate like a kid, she said, “Look on the bright side. It's not your whole life, okay? It's just the work part.”

“That
controls
the other parts,” Dad said.

“No, it doesn't. We should be having fun,” she said, pointing to the living room, where “One Note Samba” was on the stereo.

“We should go to Brazil. To Carnaval.”

“What am I celebrating?” Dad said. “Going broke?”

“Carnaval is
held
for broke people. It cheers them up. Celebrate being out of that job.”

“You're right,” Dad said, pulling farther back in his chair as if the bright side were a confession being beaten out of him. He waited for a long enough pause, got up, and went out to the garage. A few minutes later I went out there and pulled a web chair up next to his.

“Is there anything?” I said.

“A salad bar,” he said. “I'm waiting to hear back.”

“The one on Cathode? Fresh Connection?”

He shook his head. “In Altadena. In a mall.”

Seventy minutes away, and not even freestanding. Right then I wanted to join the Communists. That would have been just like me, signing up right before they went bust, but I wanted some heartless comrades to help me kill the directors of Controlled Dynamics, burn their second homes and salt the earth.

I waited for a lull and then got up, the same technique Dad had used to get out of the kitchen. Given the pension situation, it might be my only inheritance.

 

T
he day after my first kite buggy ride, Don came back and brought a friend. They rode their buggies for hours and let me take a few turns. By noon there were thirty spectators. I called my best friends, Cliff and Andy. We watched all afternoon, clapping when they swung their kites across the sky to change direction. Three days later we drove to Torrance to buy kites and buggies, denting the college money we'd saved from our fast-food jobs. Mom and Dad had figured out that I could go to state college in the fall if I worked part time there, but I was free for the summer. The layoffs were killing the Valleycrest Mall, and all the local burger work had gone to forty-eight-year-old physicists.

One day Don and his friend left for a dry lake they'd heard about in New Mexico. Cliff and Andy and I set up a slalom in the parking lot and buggied every day, our lines singing over the premises that had stolen our fathers' balls.

Dad, in his web chair, asked what part of the parking lot we were riding in. When I told him, he nodded, transit-faced, and said, “Those were the new rows. That was when we put people on for the B-1. Dave Gotbaum used to park there till he got Ted's job.” I stopped telling him about it.

We got a few more guys into buggying, and the security guard who'd stayed on for the mop-up waved at us from a window sometimes. One day in August Andy saw him and said, “It's weird that they've never tried to stop us. You'd think they'd be scared we'll break our legs and sue them.”

“There's no money left to sue them for,” I said.

“That guy is doing it anyway,” Cliff said.

“What guy?” I said.

“This lawyer in L.A. He's suing them for everyone that lost their pension.”

“Why?” Andy said.

“It's public-interest law,” Cliff said. “It's the thing where they crusade for the little guy.”

I found out the lawyer's name that night, made myself wait until 9:06 the next morning, and called him. “Mr. Troup?” I said. “My name is Henry Bay. I'm a student? I live in Rancho Cahuenga? And I heard that you're suing Controlled Dynamics.”

“Well,” he said, “our firm has filed a suit on behalf of some former employees against some former officers of that company.” He sounded about sixty, his voice eastern and precise.

“My father's a former employee,” I said.

“We'll be making claim forms available down the road.”

“Okay. Thank you. Um, the reason I'm calling? I'm going to be going to college there in the fall. In the L.A. area.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. At Cal State Los Nietos. In the pre-law program.” I'd checked it on the paperwork fifteen minutes earlier. “I was wondering if you had any openings in your office for someone to help out part time. Just running errands or anything.”

“I see. Well, there's nothing like that right now, but why don't you give me a call in a few months, around November? There might be something along those lines then.”

“Okay. Sir? I really believe in what you're doing. They really messed things up here.”

“I'm sorry. Tell me your name again?”

“Henry. Henry Bay.”

“The fiduciaries at that company were cowboys, Henry. It was the Wild West and they thought they could make their own
law, if you will. Fortunately, there are mechanisms in place for bringing the cowboys of this world to terms.”

“Yes. Thank you. Thanks very much.”

“Surely,” he said, and hung up.

I was too excited to sit still. I went outside and walked, getting out of breath so I could breathe in more of my first purpose ever. We'd all been acting like this was how it was, you got in your web chair and shut up, when all this time there were mechanisms. And I could help. I could make coffee. “Very strong and very black, Henry,” I could hear Troup say. “We have eighteen hours to put these papers before Judge Harridan so our friends from Controlled Dynamics can learn a little something about fulfilling one's obligations.”

“It's already brewing, sir. I've learned a few things myself these past few weeks.”

His snowy eyebrows would flicker and he'd hand me an inch of paper. “Then tell me what you make of this finding, Henry. Your expert opinion.” But with a twinkle. I'd pour us each a cup and start reading, helping Dad in a way not even Barney could.

 

A
few days later Barney came home on a break from summer session. He'd gone college-style, a button-down shirt and corduroy sport coat with jeans and sneakers. As we walked to AM/PM for charcoal, he said, “Dad's a wreck, huh? Is he looking for work?”

“He's waiting to hear from a salad bar.”

“Those jerks,” Barney said, nodding toward the Controlled Dynamics buildings. “They got talented people in there and had them work on crap. Not just talented people. Dad. He believed in it.”

“There's a guy who's suing them,” I said. “I might get to
help.” I told him about Troup, the cowboys, and my decision to take pre-law.

“Jesus,” Barney said. “Henry, that's great.”

“We have to see what happens,” I said. “Dad says he doubts if we'll get anything.”

“I hope you nail these people,” Barney said. “I hope you ream them out completely. That's great that you can do something like that.”

My face flushed and I turned away, pretending to study the clouds over Capacitor Parkway.

 

A
week later, by the speed run, Andy said, “Did you guys know there's a magazine?” He took it out of his daypack:
Kite Buggy
, with a cover photo of a guy riding ten feet off the ground. The big cover line was
STEPPIN' OUT FOR SOME AIR WITH FREDDY PASCO.
The smaller ones were
PARA-KITE TORTURE TEST!
and
DO
YOU
NEED CUSTOM STRUTS
?

In retrospect, the halftones and color registration were criminal acts, the paper was Bumwad Brite, and of course there was a magazine; there's a magazine as soon as five people find a new way to hurt themselves. At the time, though, I knew none of that.

I read it in bed that night. There's a once-only Eden for you, your first copy of a magazine about your first enthusiasm. You need a strategy (page by page? flip through and go back?), but you'll read that first one twice anyway. There were motor-drive photos of Freddy Pasco in action, a story about a buggy breaking sixty miles an hour at the Bonneville Salt Flats, and ads for better wheels than the buggies came with, better bearings than the wheels came with, and bushings machined in someone's garage, using the same space-age metals that Con
trolled Dynamics had relied on for precise Pentagon-bilking applications.

The next day I typed a letter on loose-leaf paper and mailed it to
Kite Buggy
's parent company, Dobey Publications of Clayton, Illinois.

A few days later I got a scrawled note on the letterhead of the Clayton Quality Fast Printing Company:

As a Future Litigator of America, I recognized the breezy thanks and the offered assignment as the sops they were, but I was over there buggying every day anyway. I borrowed Dad's camera, shot two rolls, wrote a page of copy, and sent it all off. A few weeks later, as I packed for college, an envelope arrived with two copies of the new
Kite Buggy
and a note from Rensselaer:
Henry—Good stuff. Thanks, Jim.

There were four photos on the cover, two of them mine. The headlines slashed across them were
ANDY WEISS RIPS IT AT RANCHO
and
CLIFF STARNER: “I'M TAKIN' IT TO THE EDGE!”
The story on Cliff said he lived in Florida, where buggy dealers were putting people on waiting lists. “Sarasota this year was intense,” he was quoted as saying. “Chicks, kites, and waves. Damn.” A shot of me illustrated an item on Alabama:
BIRMINGHAM IS BUGGY-BURGEONING!
A photo of Andy accompanied my piece on Rancho Cahuenga, which had been amped to the point of hallucination. “The primo buggy park is drawing mega-crowds,” it said. “City fathers are coming from all over the U.S. to check it out.”

I was annoyed by all the lying, but no one else was. Andy bought five copies and Cliff kept saying the “chicks and waves” thing in a “whoa, dude” accent till we begged him to stop.

The night before I left for college, I put my kite and buggy away in the garage and stood there for a while looking at them. I wished I could take something with me—the kite, a leaf rake, a web chair with my despondent dad in it. Finally I turned the lights off and went inside, and in the morning I left for Cal State Los Nietos to save my family.

W
alking through the college library with an introductory law book in my hand, I saw a broad-shouldered blond guy sitting at a table shaking his head with melancholy awe at the book he was reading. He looked up, saw me, and said, “Have you
read
this?” as if we already knew each other and he was sure I'd want to be alerted to the book's contents right away. He held it up:
The World Rushed In
, by J. S. Holliday. I shook my head.

“The gold rush,” he said, and read aloud, running his spread fingers under the words as if sight-reading music: “‘What a dilemma they faced. They had to justify their staying in California far longer than expected, leaving wife and family with insufficient funds; had to argue that another season in the mines would surely produce success. At the same time, they
had to explain why no one else should come to California.'” He closed it and sighed. “What have you got there?”

I held up
Property Disputes and Contests
. “The sequel?”

He nodded and stood. “Gerald Hauser. History major. From Peta
lu
ma,” he said, getting the most from the klaxon place name.

He was tall, with reddish skin and expectant blue eyes. In the age of Seattle flannel he dressed like a guy just back from World War II, in saddle shoes, pressed gabardine pants, and a spread-collar shirt cut like a sail.

“I could eat,” he said. “I've been sloshing that gravel all day in my lucky pan that I brought from St. Louis. Would you like to join me?”

We went outside. Cal State Los Nietos, just east of east L.A., looked disappointingly like my high school, the same low brown classroom buildings and smog-tolerant ice plant, with high-rise dorms thrown in. For a few years I'd been picturing a college version of myself, a lanky guy leaning in a doorway, shrugging hair out of my eyes and looking wry, but Los Nietos wanted me to be the same non-lanky study hall doodler I'd always been.

Gerald talked all the way across the darkening campus, about the gold rush, Increase Mather, Albert Ayler, and the debased public architecture we were passing. When he got going his hand gestures and self-astonished voice made him look like a trader on the commodities floor. The names he cited, like his clothes, were from worlds I knew nothing about. I heard Barney saying, “You see what happens when we get out of that town?”

“Look at this,” Gerald said, stopping to point at the glass-and-concrete student union, his hand an upturned bowl that asked, “What
happened
here?”

“This is a car dealership,” he said. “They're not the buyer's friend in there, either. This is not the home of the no-dicker sticker.” His expression had that sad wonder in it again, as if he were standing on a cliff and watching the age of craft and proportion sail away for good. He dropped the hand onto my shoulder and did a car salesman's too-close voice. “Henry, let me ask you something, Henry. Henry, is there a number in your mind that would cause you to walk out of here with a college education today?”

“There is a number,” I said, “but it's irrational.”

“You people are all the same,” he said.

He lived in the same dorm I did, but coming into his room from the fluorescent corridor was like falling for a prank. He'd nailed graying redwood planks over the white walls and replaced the plastic furniture with a bedroll, a scarred card table, an old wooden swivel chair, lamps with scorched shades, a propane camp stove, and an ice pail. It was a cabin in there. He wouldn't see his security deposit again in this world.

“I can't stay too long,” I said. “I have a job at Doctor Taco.”

“What do you do over there?”

“I'm a fry chef. I've got hot fat spattering on my arms all the time.”

“Ah.” He took a bowl of stew from the ice pail, put some in a saucepan, and lit the stove.

“The worst part is cleaning the fryer hoods,” I said. “You have to put the filters in a garbage can full of acid. They give you gloves, but they're not long enough, so you get acid down your arms.” I rolled up a sleeve and showed him the red stripes.

“That sounds good,” he said. “Is there travel? You have conventions?” He took beat-up blue enamel plates and tin forks out of an old oak cabinet. “Where are you in from?”

“Rancho Cahuenga.”

He shook his head. “Controlled Dynamics. My, my.”

“You know about that?”

He paused, turning the answer into a story. “I come to town, I have to connect for propane,” he said, pointing to the camp stove. “I have to find my man. It turns out he's by the railroad tracks. Have you been down there?” I shook my head. “That's the
end
of town. Your cars on blocks, your discarded appliances, your three-legged dogs with open sores. My man sells propane, live bait, and Mad Dog 20/20. That's what's by the tracks. In fact, they're tearing the depot down right now.” He pointed to the wood on his walls. “I acted swiftly. Sheetrock is a great invention, but it smells like a bank branch.”

He turned the flame down and stirred the stew. “Now, the train station—at one time, that was where you had your tin-type picture taken. Family portrait every five or ten years, you in your only suit, your wife in the bonnet, standing under the name of your town. You know what they're putting there now? An automated ticket kiosk. Stainless steel. You pose in front of that, it's out of the picture.” He gave me a plate of stew. It was tomatoes and a trace of meat, thickened with corn meal.

“But in their day?” he said. “The railroads screwed
everyone
. The farmers, the miners, the Indians, the government. When we say ‘the golden spike,' we're making use of our language for once. So, Controlled Dynamics…yeah, I followed that. That's modern-day.” He waved the modern day away. “But the railroad men were lions. These guys now are small-scale replicas. With hearts like cafeteria veal.” He measured the thinness with his fingers. “But they did try to carry that fucking torch.”

 

G
erald could talk to anyone. One day he came to pick me up at Doctor Taco when I had twenty minutes left on my shift. “I
know I'm early, big boy,” he called to me from the counter. “I'm gonna have some of this food I keep hearing about.”

My co-worker offered to take Gerald's order. Gerald read his name tag, said, “Ramon, I'm Gerald,” and shook his hand. “Henry and I are taking some young ladies to a foreign movie this evening. He could use a little something foreign. What's the best thing to eat here?”

“I don't know,” Ramon said. “I guess the Enchi-Rito.” Gerald nodded. Ramon got one from under the heat lamp and sold it to him.

Gerald tasted it, watched the great age sail away again, and said, “Ramon, do you eat these?”

“No, I don't eat that. I bring a sandwich.”

“Right. Do you mind if I do a little work on this? I've got some groceries out in the car.”

Ramon shrugged. It was 4:40 and we were slow. Gerald dashed outside, came back with a brown bag and started pulling out vegetables. “We're gonna doctor this taco,” he said. “Its own freezer truck won't recognize it.” He looked around at the deep fryers and the grill. “Is there a stove?”

“Stove, no,” Ramon said.

“See, a restaurant with no stove,” Gerald said. “They'll put these kinds of obstacles in a man's way time and again.” Ramon nodded. “That's a great tattoo, by the way,” Gerald said.

“Thank you.”

“We'll do this on the open grill here,” Gerald said, cutting up onions and bell peppers. Ramon reached for the grilling oil, but Gerald stopped him. “Yeah, we're not gonna be using that today,” he said. “That was made by scientists. The international zaibatsus give the scientists a few million carloads of animal debris and they make that. Years later it turns up in breast milk, and hearings are held. Here we go.” He took a bot
tle of olive oil from his groceries and poured some on the grill. “You know about Sam Giancana?” Ramon shook his head. “He worked at the Mafia,” Gerald said.

“Mafia, yeah,” Ramon said.

“He was called Momo by those who knew him. He worked closely with President Kennedy.” The vegetables hit the grill sizzling. “Momo had himself a house in Chicago. Little kitchen in the basement. He was fixing himself some sausage and peppers one night. Peppers just like these sweethearts here. A man with all that wealth and respect, he could have called up any place in town and had it sent over, but he knows it's better when you cook it yourself.” He split the Enchi-Rito open and dumped its filling onto the vegetables. “That's when they came in and killed him. A twenty-two-caliber weapon was used.”

“Shit.”

“I know. A man can't even eat his supper.” He opened four cellophane spice envelopes and shook them over the food on the grill. Oregano and cumin steamed up the room.

“They finished him in the finished basement,” I said.

Gerald smiled and said, “That's right, big boy.” Ramon looked at me blankly. I never knew what to say to Ramon. Gerald scooped the stuff on the grill into the Enchi-Rito wrapper.

Ramon said, “Did they eat it? The guys that killed him?”

“That's what I want to know!” Gerald yelled, throwing up his hands. He and Ramon laughed. “It wasn't reported! It's going to be missing from the record forever!” He handed the Enchi-Rito to Ramon, who took a bite.

“Damn,” Ramon said. “That's great.” I finished changing the fryer oil and threw away that day's paper hat. For weeks afterward, Ramon asked me when Gerald was coming in again.

 

S
ome people wondered what a history degree was good for, but I knew Gerald's success after college was guaranteed, that he'd have no trouble with the future because he knew it to be a weak fifth Xerox of the past. He told me that the people who really made money in the gold rush were the ones who sold the miners their pickaxes and sturdy pants. He would find the next gold rush, talk his way in, and know exactly where to stand.

He educated me more than college did, dragging me to museums and nightclubs in L.A. One evening, walking to his car to go hear jazz, I complained to him about pre-law. It wasn't the numbing subject matter that bothered me but the pity my fellow majors expressed when they heard my plans to go into public interest. Raised in a renaissance of land flips and LBOs, they knew which law schools fed into the business-moll firms of New York and Houston, and exactly how much the associates made there. They couldn't understand why I'd want to be on the losing side. I thought Gerald would be with me on this, but he sat on a bench by the library, closed his eyes, and said, “I see a K-car.”

The K was an economy model that Chrysler had introduced to stave off insolvency. “I dig the brother Lee Iacocca,” Gerald said. “He's not a railroad man. He means it. But I can hear that little four-banger. I can see a small office building in one of our nation's tertiary markets. Primary and secondary areas, the rent is prohibitive. I see metal desks and acoustical ceiling tile, and in spite of that tile I can hear the dental equipment in the next office. I see a Silex with half an inch of coffee always getting burned in it. The ground coffee comes on a truck from the office-supply place.” He opened his eyes and looked placidly at me.

“You don't think it's a good thing to do?” I said.

He shrugged. “I'm just telling you what I see.”

“I should get going,” I said. We didn't go to the jazz club and I didn't speak to him for two weeks. I missed him, but I owed it to Dad.

Our estrangement ended on November first, when I called Dan Troup, the lawyer who was suing Controlled Dynamics. He said there was an opening for an intern two days a week, and that I could come in the following Tuesday and give it a try. That afternoon I caught up with Gerald at the dorm's front doors and said, “Hey.”

He gestured up at the building's façade, twelve stories of gray slab with slotlike windows and flattened concrete drip marks. In a Slavic accent he said, “One day they come and said my farm is collectivize. Three years I wait the permission to come Moscow. Now I live in all-modern worker building.” He opened the door. “Pliz.” Relieved, I followed him upstairs and told him about my appointment with Troup, and we figured out the three buses I would take to get there.

I got up at five on Tuesday and put on my suit. On the first bus, I read a newspaper someone had left behind. A mail bomb had been sent to a laboratory that developed satellite tracking systems, killing a research assistant and costing an engineer half her hearing and most of her left arm. A communiqué sent to
The Washington Post
took responsibility for the bomb, which it said was a blow against “the tracking, banding, and tagging of the most endangered species of all, the free-ranging human individual.” The communiqué's signer, “Freebird,” had claimed credit for three other attacks, all in the past year. The parts of the bombs that were recovered were handmade and untraceable. The name Freebird was believed to be taken from the old Lynyrd Skynyrd song that jokers were always requesting
at rock concerts, regardless of who was playing. The problem for the jokers was that while the bomber was at large, yelling “Freebird!” at a concert would cause people nearby to wheel around and ask, “Song or the guy?” If you said the guy, it could lead to a fistfight, but of course so could the song.

The last bus went up Sepulveda Boulevard, a tertiary line through a primary city: movie theaters converted to Apostolic churches, marble banks turned Army Navys, and bowling alleys that were still bowling alleys. I thought the neighborhood would stay like that all the way to Troup's office, which would have the Silex and ceiling tile Gerald had predicted, and that Troup would be the flinty avenger I'd been picturing since our first phone call. He'd wear Haband and drive an Aries K, but the fiduciary cowboys who screwed deputy program managers and their fry-chef children would be sorry they'd ever heard of him.