The Long and Faraway Gone

 

Dedication

For Rick

 

Contents

 

Bingham

August 1986

In summer, season of the Hollywood blockbuster, Bingham got to work at eight in the morning and didn't leave until long after midnight. His only break from the movie theater was dinner at six—­thirty minutes of blissful, beautiful solitude he spent parked out by the lake, eating fast-­food tacos and listening to the water slop against the red-­clay bank.

Well, unless a crisis arose, which it usually did. Earlier today, for example, five minutes till six, an old lady rammed her Cadillac into the Dumpster out back. Bingham had hurried across the parking lot and found the lady scowling at the Dumpster and laying on her horn. The Cadillac's horn, instead of honking, played “Boomer Sooner,” the University of Oklahoma football fight song.

“Ma'am!” Bingham said. “Are you injured? Should I call a doctor?”

She looked okay. The Cadillac, a tank, didn't have a scratch on it. The crushed flank of the Dumpster, on the other hand, looked like it was bent double with laughter.

“This is unacceptable!” She scowled at him. “This is intolerable!”

Of course it was. During the bargain matinee, the old lady had complained that Junior Mints were missing from the box of Junior Mints she'd purchased from the concession stand. She'd complained that the lobby ashtrays were dirty. She'd complained that the movie was too loud, the auditorium too chilly, the movie now not loud enough.

Bingham tried to look grave and pained and determined to right wrongs. But exactly what wrong here could the manager of the Pheasant Run Twin Theater be expected to right? He guessed the old lady had accidentally shifted into drive instead of reverse and then stomped the gas.

“This parking lot is a death trap!” the old lady said.

Bingham could feel the heat of the day radiating in waves up off the asphalt, radiating off the buckled Dumpster and the molten-­glass sweep of the Cadillac's big windshield. He'd lived in Oklahoma City his entire life, thirty years, and couldn't remember an August this hot.

He tugged the collar of his shirt away from his neck, but that just let more heat in, not out. And the extra pressure on the knot of his tie made it feel as if someone had stepped on his throat.

“Ma'am, maybe you'd like to come inside where it's cool and—­”

Bingham heard giggles and glanced over. His entire night-­shift crew—­his crack squad of lazy, lax, and disrespectful teenage doormen and concession girls—­had crowded onto the exit stairs of auditorium number two. Bingham could practically feel the vibrating hum of their rapt attention. They were never so stoked as when they sniffed the possibility of someone's, preferably his, humiliation.

“Don't you have something better to be doing right now?” Bingham snapped at them. Like sweeping the lobby or wiping down the candy glass or restocking the nacho boats? Like maybe actually doing your jobs for once?

“Mr. Bingham,” O'Malley said. O'Malley, the obnoxious dick, who despite repeated written warnings had the sleeves of his orange doorman's blazer pushed up to his elbows like he was in
Miami Vice.
Who had assumed his standard operating expression of angelic innocence (widened eyes) and sly amusement (an almost-­smile). “You know, I don't believe there
is
anything better we could be doing right now, Mr. Bingham.”

That triggered a new round of giggling.

The crabby old lady muttered something that Bingham couldn't make out. It sounded like, “You haven't furled the flag, mister.”

You haven't furled the flag, mister?

And then she threw the Cadillac into reverse, missing Bingham's foot by an inch, and veered away.

Now, a quarter past midnight, Bingham still hadn't had dinner yet. And he wasn't close to being done for the night. The last of the late-­show customers were gone, the doors locked behind them, but the hourly audits awaited him, along with the gross reports, next week's schedule, and a stack of purchase orders the size of a phone book.

It never ceased to amaze Bingham how much paperwork was required to run a movie theater that generated such little revenue. The Pheasant Run was a cramped twin adrift in a sea of massive new multi-­multiplexes, situated at the far ass-­end of a ghost mall that—­too small, insufficient parking, no anchor tenants—­had been half empty ever since the Oklahoma oil business went bust four years ago, in the summer of '82. Monarch Entertainment, which owned the Pheasant Run, was itself a struggling regional chain with a bleak economic outlook.

Like you're one to talk,
Bingham reminded himself,
about bleak economic outlook.

He'd been with Monarch since he was sixteen years old. He'd worked his way up from doorman to assistant manager to, now, manager. And yet his salary was still so low he couldn't afford a decent apartment, or a car with a consistently functional transmission, or an oral surgeon to extract a wisdom tooth that on bad days felt like a wood screw being screwed slowly into his jawbone.

He glanced at the security monitor on his desk. The monitor was pretty much worthless, with a fuzzed-­out black-­and-­white picture the size of a wristwatch. Bingham couldn't even tell if that was O'Malley or his junior henchman lounging against the ticket box, yawning, when he should have been working. And the angle of the video camera was so narrow it captured just one small slice of the lobby, leaving the rest of theater entirely unmonitored. Where God only knew what violations of the Monarch Employee Handbook were currently afoot.

A few weeks ago, Bingham had found half a bottle of Evan Williams whiskey hidden behind the boxes in the storeroom. In the old days, in Bingham's day, you waited till your shift was over to get shitfaced, and you did it in the park behind the mall, not on the theater premises.

Bingham suspected that his teenage employees were also swiping one-­sheets, and feeling each other up in the back row of the auditoriums during breaks, and using the lobby pay phone for personal calls, and letting half of Oklahoma City into movies for free. On top of that, they'd run off the one decent employee Bingham had landed that summer, a polite, obedient kid who went to Casady, the city's best private high school.

Bingham had grilled everyone, individually, about the bottle of Evan Williams. Nobody cracked, not even O'Malley's junior henchman. He was the baby of the bunch, sixteen years old according to his application but probably a year younger than that. Bingham had hoped he might be the weak link.

But O'Malley's junior henchman had just about perfected the sly angelic expression that his master was the master of.

“I don't know where it came from,” he said.

An hour ago, though, a rare triumph, Bingham had been in the lobby when the pay phone rang. O'Malley's junior henchman had answered it, but Bingham moved quickly to snatch away the receiver.

“Give me that,” he'd said.

O'Malley's junior henchman had shrugged. “It's your friend, Pet Shop Boy.”

“Donald?” Bingham said. Donald was his loony friend who worked upstairs at the mall pet store. He trailed bits of cedar chips, the kind that filled the hamster cages, wherever he went. “What do you want, Donald?”

“Listen,” Donald said. “There's this band playing the Land Run tonight. Blow off work and meet me there.”

Bingham wondered sometimes how Donald could cross the street without getting hit by a bus.

“I can't blow off work, Donald,” Bingham said. “I'm the manager of the theater.”

“They're the next U2. Just this one time, trust me.”

Every band that played the Land Run, according to Donald, was the next U2.

“Good-­bye, Donald.”

Bingham hung up. O'Malley had observed all this. Of course he had.

“I was under the impression,” O'Malley said, “that personal calls were not allowed on the lobby pay phone.”

Wow, it was amazing, how much Bingham couldn't stand O'Malley. The obnoxious dick. And he couldn't stand O'Malley's underage junior henchman, who followed O'Malley around like a dog, tail thumping. He couldn't stand the other doormen, Tate and Grubb, both of them lazy and dumb. He couldn't stand any of the cashiers or concession girls either, Melody and Janella and Theresa and Karlene.

Karlene was moving to Hawaii at the end of August. She'd saved her money all through high school. She was so stoked. She was so pumped. She was going to get a job at a resort and take classes in dolphin biology at the community college and learn to surf and and and.

Karlene! Shut up for two seconds about Hawaii!

August was always a staffing nightmare. Every August, the employees who'd graduated from high school the previous May left the theater and moved on with their lives. And Bingham? Every August, Bingham stayed behind and scrambled to fill the schedule. With a new crop of teenagers who'd been put on earth for the sole purpose of making his life miserable.

He started filling out next week's schedule. What Bingham despised most about O'Malley, he decided—­and he'd given the subject a lot of thought—­was how
smug
O'Malley always was. Like O'Malley had already beaten the game. Like no turn of the cards could possibly surprise him.

Bingham, at age eighteen, had been the same way. It kind of boggled his mind now—­all the surprises that life had up its sleeve. Just wait, you dick.

There was a knock. O'Malley, probably. To report that the doormen were done stocking the concession stand when probably they had not even begun. Bingham walked to the office door. He realized that O'Malley, or his junior henchman, had managed to reverse the peephole. Again. Hilarious.

He opened the door. A man stood there. Something was wrong with his face—­his features were flattened and smooshed, like they'd been burned, like they'd melted together.

In the next instant Bingham realized the man had a pair of pantyhose pulled over his head. He had a shotgun in his hands.

Behind him stood another man. That man wore a rubber mask—­Freddy Krueger from
Nightmare on Elm Street
but missing the fedora.

Bingham was surprised how long it had been since he'd felt true fear. Fear that cramped your bowels and ballooned your heart and made you feel five years old again, your older cousin dunking your head underwater at the YMCA pool as you kicked and thrashed.

“Stay quiet,” the first man said. He placed the barrel of his shotgun against Bingham's chest and nudged him backward into the office. The design on his pale yellow T-­shirt was cracked and faded—­a dirt bike with flames coming from the exhaust pipe, above the words
CUTT'N' LOOSE
! “How many others working tonight?”

Bingham tried to think. He needed to sit down. The office was suffocating, sour with the smell of sweat. His? Theirs? He couldn't understand how the men had gotten into the theater. Bingham had locked the front doors himself. And the auditorium exits
—­

“How many?” the man in the Freddy Krueger mask yelled. He was all fired up, bouncing on the balls of his feet and jabbing his gun at Bingham. His gun was a pistol—­like a toy cowboy six-­shooter but much bigger, and not a toy.

“Five,” Bingham said. O'Malley, O'Malley's junior henchman, Grubb, Melody, Karlene. And Theresa. “Wait. Six.”

“What about the projectionist?” the first man said. Every time he moved his mouth, the fabric of the pantyhose sucked and stretched weirdly.

Bingham shook his head. “No. Harry's— He's already gone home.”

The first man turned to the man in the rubber Freddy Krueger mask. “Round them all up.”

Freddy Krueger used the pistol to give his partner a salute. He started to leave.

“Wait!” Bingham said. The man with the shotgun looked surprised. Or maybe that was just a trick of light and pantyhose.

“What?”

“You don't need them,” Bingham said. “They won't even know you were here.”

“Shut up.”

“I'm the one you want. Okay? I'll give you the money and you can get out of here. I'll give you whatever you want.”

The man with the shotgun turned to his partner. “You hear me? I said round them up.”

Freddy Krueger started to leave again. Bingham took a step toward him. He reached for his arm.

“Come on. They're just kids. You don't have to—­”

The man with the shotgun turned it sideways and used the butt end to punch Bingham hard in the chest. The pain was amazing, as if Bingham's sternum had been cracked in half. He stumbled backward.

“Open the safe,” the man said. He pressed the barrel of the shotgun against Bingham's ribs. “Do it now.”

Bingham lowered himself unsteadily to the floor and peeled back the corner of the office carpet. Sweat stung his eyes as he lifted the metal lid that covered the floor safe. The man with the shotgun stood right behind him, over him, breathing. Bingham dialed the combination. He handed up the night-­deposit lock bag, heavy with the full weekend take.

“Let's go,” the man said.

He marched Bingham across the lobby. For maybe two seconds, three steps, someone out in the mall by the fountain might have spotted them through the glass front doors of the theater.

If the lobby lights hadn't been off, which they were. If the mall hadn't been deserted, which it was.

The one other place that stayed open late on weekends was the jazz bar upstairs, but even it closed at midnight. Bingham wondered what had happened to Otis, the after-­hours mall security guard with the wild pimp Afro and the disco-­purple Lincoln Continental. Tied up somewhere, maybe. Or maybe just taking a nap out in the purple Lincoln, as was his habit.

The man with the shotgun prodded Bingham up the narrow stairs to the projection booth. The doormen and concession girls were already there, lined up facedown on the floor between the projectors, their hands tied behind them with cord. The man in the Freddy Krueger mask prowled back and forth, jabbing his pistol at them and shouting “Bang! Bang!” And then laughing his ass off. He had the Freddy Krueger mask pushed up and off his face and was wearing it like a floppy hat.