Tietam Brown (8 page)

Now, the negatives. Let me see. Oh yeah, I was being molested by the guy I called Dad, and even at the age of almost nine, I knew that something about that was wrong. Sure, I'd made a cool $3.50 in the process, but I still had a hard time rationalizing Mr. Delanor's behavior. I wanted to tell his wife, but I knew I couldn't. She'd be devastated, and besides, I'd given my word.

I turned nine that August. I had a lot of money, 23 dollars and 75 cents to be exact, but my guilt far outweighed my income. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat. And most importantly, I couldn't tell anyone, because I'd given my word. To make matters worse, my real father, Antietam Brown IV, was legally fighting the Delanors' adoption efforts, despite the fact that he had shown no fatherly inclination in eight years and nine months. The legal proceedings were taking their toll on Mrs. Delanor, whose naps had become longer, whose drinks had become more frequent, and whose bedtime stories were becoming increasingly less coherent.

My birthday was supposed to be a good time for us. For our family. Dinner at Cappy's Catfish Shack followed by all the games I could play at Players II Arcade. Games that accepted quarters. Quarters that Mr. Delanor was more than happy to give me.

He came into my room that afternoon, while Mrs. Delanor was sleeping, holding a sack of quarters. A whole sack.

“This,” he said with a great big animated smile, “is for us. First I'll give you some, just like . . . always, right, chief? And then we're going to try something different, okay, sport? You see, you're going to put quarters in my pocket.”

He reached into his sack (of quarters, that is) and came out with two handfuls. He started singing “We're in the Money” in an overly nerdy type of way, a way that might have seemed funny if not for the ball handling that I knew was about to ensue. He danced up behind me and started singing that “money” song from
Cabaret
into my missing ear as he placed quarter after quarter into my pocket. Wow, what a birthday! Not only was I getting rich, but I also got to hear Mr. Delanor sing “Money makes the world go round, the world go round, the world go round” as he played Ping-Pong with my genitals.

Then he stopped. “Okay, chief, now it's your turn. Reach into that sack and start putting quarters into Daddy's pocket.”

And I'll be damned if I didn't start to do it. If I didn't just reach right into that sack and pull out a handful of quarters. And truth be told, I guess I really was going to put them into Daddy's pocket.

But then I saw his face, still singing that . . . stupid
Cabaret
song, and I just instantly realized how wrong this whole thing was. And that if being a son meant having to have my balls felt by Doug Delanor, then I would rather be on my own. And that's when the rage hit me. For the second time in my life, I was overwhelmed by the idea of destroying human life.

So with those quarters clutched tightly in my left hand I instinctively drilled him as hard as I could. Hit him right in the solar plexus, and I heard all the wind leave his body, and I saw him double over, and saw that his head was now at about the same height as mine. And then I threw another punch, even harder than the first—a punch that caught the child-molesting prick in his left eye. Immediately I felt his glasses shatter, and then I heard screams of unparalleled anguish. He brought his hands up to his face and I saw red running through his fingers.

To tell you the truth, I was surprised he was still erect. And by erect, I mean still standing, as I'm pretty sure that whatever sexual sensation he had been feeling had been replaced by the rather unique sensation of glass sticking out of his eyeball.

I wasn't satisfied. I wanted to see him fall. I picked up the sack of quarters with my left hand and spun to my right in two tight circles, as if I were Olympic hero Bruce Jenner throwing the discus in Montreal. As I swung, I was vaguely aware of Mrs. Delanor opening the door to my room, just in time to see me catch her bleeding, screeching husband in the right temple with about sixty dollars' worth of quarters.

Mr. Delanor went down. Went down and stayed down, and with the exception of his left foot, which twitched involuntarily for a few seconds, he didn't move at all.

Mrs. Delanor called 911 and then returned to my room, the room that had once belonged to her son Wilson. She didn't yell at me or even cry. She just sat expressionless as she looked at her unconscious husband, a husband with a piece of glass embedded in one eye.

She never gave me away. Even as the paramedics were loading her husband into the ambulance, she maintained that she had no idea what had happened.

When the last car had left, I heard a knock at my door.

“Come in,” I said, wanting to see her but dreading the hurt that I knew her eyes would carry.

She looked worse than I'd feared.

She sat down on my bed, my mattress barely registering her body weight.

Slowly, with great trepidation and pain, she spoke.

“Andrew?”

“Yes ma'am?”

“Please tell me what happened.”

I felt my stomach rise into my voice box as I fought off tears. After several moments, I managed to speak, but just barely. “Um, Mrs. Delanor, I don't think I can.”

“Andrew, my husband hasn't touched me in a very long time, not since before Wilson left us.” A tear left her eye and traveled a long lazy route over her cheek and down her throat. “In a few years, you might know what that means . . . but what I want to say is that . . . whatever happened in here, I don't think it was your fault.”

I took a deep breath and tried to talk. Failed. Took another breath and tried again.

“Mrs. Delanor, I can't.”

“Please Andrew, please.”

“But Mrs. Delanor, I promised.”

“Andrew, I want you to . . . I need you to tell me.”

“But if I tell, he said I can't be in his club.”

“His club,” she said, suddenly incensed. “Tell me about his club.”

“I can't.”

“Please Andrew, I need you to help me. If my husband is in a bad club, then I need to know.”

“But it's not a bad club, Mrs. Delanor, it's a good club, where they dress up like ghosts with white pointy hats.”

“Are you sure about this club, Andrew, are you absolutely sure?”

“Yes ma'am.”

“Andrew?”

She took hold of my hand, squeezed it hard. Harder than I would have imagined she could. I longed for her gentle fingertips on my face. Longed to hear her three magic words again. But I had the sinking feeling that any words I had to offer would only hurt her.

“Andrew,” she repeated. “Are you sure? If you're telling the truth I need to know. Are you sure, Andrew?”

“Yes ma'am.”

“Can you prove it?”

I wanted to call her Mom again, I really did. But instead I trembled in fear and put my head down, ready, finally, to give in to my urge to cry. To just open up the floodgates and let it all come flowing out. Then I felt her fingertips on my face. And her voice. Pleading softly. Saying, “Help me . . . please.”

I told her everything I knew. About the quarters and the fondling and the secrets, and the trapdoor in the floorboards underneath the rug underneath the bed.

She nodded her head throughout it all, and then slowly got up from my bed. As she opened my door to leave I found myself blurting out her name.

She turned and tried to smile. She tried to look happy but failed miserably.

“I love you, Mrs. Delanor,” I said.

She said nothing but walked to my bed. Took hold of my hand and raised it to her cheek. Let me feel a tear that was in midstream. And then she was gone.

I heard her struggle with the bed, knew the effort had to be great for someone so weak and thin. For a few minutes, maybe five, I heard nothing, and then a single blast echoed throughout the immaculate house. The unmistakable sound of a gunshot.

I walked slowly, very slowly, to her room, thinking, I guess, that I could delay the inevitable.

I saw her lifeless body slumped over the robe of Doug Delanor's secret club, her skull oozing blood onto his stupid pointed hat.

Snapshots were strewn about the robe. Photos of a young boy in poses that no young boy should be in. For a moment, I thought the photos were of me. But they weren't. Just a child who looked like me.

November 6, 1985 / Morning

“Wake up, wake the hell up!”

The demand woke me from a beautiful dream, one that played off the theme of the wonderful talk I'd shared with Terri that cleared the air and put us back on track as a couple.

“Damn it, wake up!” my dad yelled again, and I looked up to see him waving some papers in my face like a madman.

He yelled, “What is this?!” and as my eyes adjusted to the glow of the morning sun that streamed through my window, I could see that he held in his clenched hands my paper for history.

“What is this?!” he repeated.

My mind drew a blank as I reached for the obvious and said, “Um, my history report?”

“And what is it on?” The voice was still intense, but had lowered considerably in volume and had taken on an attorney's courtroom tone.

“It's on the Emancipation Proclamation, Dad.”

“Oh the Emancipation Proclamation,” he said, as if I'd just been caught in a lie upon cross-examination. “And what exactly did you refer to this proclamation as?”

“I'm not sure, Dad.”

“Well let me clear it up for you, Andy. You called it, uh let me see, there, there it is, you called it the most important document in the annals of American history, didn't you?”

“Yeah, I guess,” I said in a most puzzled voice.

“And?” my dad asked.

All of a sudden I thought I caught his drift, and although my dad's wake-up procedure and sudden interest in American history had caught me off guard, I adjusted quickly and said, “Well yeah, Dad, it is.” It's funny, because for all my dad's shortcomings as a human being, which were monumental, I hadn't really considered him a bigot, his comment about the “no-good Jap bastards” notwithstanding. Maybe, however, he didn't think Lincoln's idea had been a good one. I decided to act.

I sat up in my bed and spoke with authority. “Dad, I'm sorry if you disagree, but even more than the Declaration of Independence, even more than the Constitution, I think that the Proclamation—”

“Shut up!”

“But Dad?”

“But Dad nothing, I told you to shut up!”

I heeded his demand, said nothing, and stared.

“Most important document in the annals of American history?” he said, sarcasm dripping all over his words.

I said nothing.

“The annals?” he said.

Said nothing still.

“This document,” he said, “doesn't belong in history's
annals,
Andy, you know that?” I didn't reply. “No,” he continued, “this document belongs in its
anals,
because it is a stinking, steaming piece of crap.”

“It is?” I asked, and I realized that my voice had taken on the exact same inquisitive, innocent tone that I'd used during our last talk about the anal area.

My father then laughed and said, “Yeah it is,” and for the next few minutes I listened with great interest as my father became a teacher, his philosophy debatable, but his integrity beyond reproach.

“Andy, what was the proclamation's main purpose?”

“To free the slaves, right?”

“No, just some of them, kid.”

“Well which ones were those?”

“The ones he had no legal right to free, Andy. You see, the proclamation wasn't a moral issue, it was a political one, dressed up in morality. He only freed the ones in the South, the ones who were part of a country that didn't take orders from the US of A. Are you with me?”

I nodded I was.

“They were Confederate slaves he freed, Andy, which meant what?”

“Um, that none of them actually went free?”

“Not a one. But what about the slaves in the Union? The Kentucky slaves, Maryland, Delaware, did they all go free?”

“Probably not.”

“You're damn right they didn't, Andy, you're damn right they didn't.”

“What should he have done, you know, Lincoln, about the slaves?”

“He should have grown some balls and just let them all go. Each godforsaken southern state. They've been weighing us down for the last hundred and twenty years, Andy. He should've just let them go.”

I thought of this new Tietam Brown I'd just met, the one who had reared his head in between naked push-ups and perfecting the art of the deal. I liked him but he worried me, and he brought with him a tension that hung like a curtain between us.

Finally, after a minute of silence, I said, “So what should I do?”

“Do about what?”

“About my report?”

“Throw it in the garbage.”

“But it's due by today.”

“Just throw it out.”

“But I'll have to—”

“Andy, take that report, just throw it out, lay back down and get your rest, and I'll take care of everything, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Now throw out your report.”

“I will.”

“Now.” A demand, but a gentle one, and like a nice Jonestown boy with a cup of Kool-Aid, I wadded up my papers and, without a thought to the consequences, tossed them away.

“Good boy,” he said, and with a pat on my shoulder, he was out of the room, leaving me nearly drunk with the buzz of his words. He was weird, but he cared. What more could I want?

Then I snapped out of it, the reality of my predicament bringing me to like a fresh cup of hot joe.

What was I going to do? Tell Mr. Hanrahan that my father wouldn't let me bring my paper to class because the Emancipation Proclamation belonged up history's ass? I thought about Russell Peterson, the black boy from class, and how he would feel about my dad's thoughts. Who would Russell Peterson have found more offensive, Hanrahan or my dad? I wouldn't know, for although I washed dishes with Peterson and we talked all the time, our level of intimacy started and stopped with the Buffalo Bills. If you lived in Conestoga, you had to make a choice. The Giants, the Jets, or the Buffalo Bills. But all of those teams, and sometimes breathing itself, took a distant backseat to the town's undying love of its Conestoga Togas (yeah that really was their name) and their loyalty to their fearless leader, Coach Hanrahan.

A fearless leader who would eat me for lunch when I showed up for seventh period without my report.

Then in a twinkling, I heard on the roof the prancing and pawing of eight little hooves.

That's what went through my mind, although it's not quite right. But the sound of Tietam Brown on a typewriter, clicking away on those keys as if he were a pro, was as altogether happy and surprising as a visit from St. Nicholas.

Click, click, click, click for a good hour or so, and then while I ate cornflakes, my father came down and placed his work on the table, gave me a slap on the back, and said, “Well, what do you think?”

I pushed the cornflakes aside and picked up his work, and as I read through the words, I could hardly believe that this was the same guy who had spoken of “bald-headed champions.” This guy was a scholar, who in just over an hour had poured forth a well-reasoned argument, complete with footnotes and quotes, that, while stopping short of painting Abraham Lincoln as a full-fledged racist, certainly cast a shadow of doubt on his long-heralded character.

For a moment, I just looked at him, then started to laugh and said, “Dad, this is great,” and made my way out the door, but returned immediately to ask one brief editorial question. “Dad?”

“Yes, Andy.” His face beamed with pride. A true father with a son.

“Can I really call Abraham Lincoln a cocksucker?”