A Good American (31 page)

I lost count of the number of times I listened to Frank brag about what he and Julie Tippet had done in the back of that car. Teddy, of course, poured scorn on Frank’s story, disputing every detail. He desperately did not want any of it to be true.

Just as with everything else, chasing after girls became a matter of intense competition between the twins, but they soon realized that the female of the species represented an adversary far more potent than each other. Sometimes at night they put their competitive instincts to one side, and a spirit of cautious cooperation would descend as they compared notes and swapped advice.

They would usually still be discussing the manifold mysteries of the female when I got home after another night’s typing at the diner. As I listened to them talk, I thought about Mrs. Fitch. My brothers were discussing girls, but I had made love to a real woman, who was passionate, sensuous, and experienced. Quality, not quantity, I told myself—that was the important thing. As a tactic, it worked pretty well, until the late spring of 1958. Then everything began to go wrong.

THIRTY-SIX

One afternoon, a few weeks before the twins were due to graduate, Frank barreled into the kitchen. I had just arrived home after a long shift and was making a sandwich. Teddy sat at the table, idly flicking through the
Optimist
and yawning loudly.

“Teddy, Teddy, Ted,” panted Frank. “You won’t believe it.” He pulled out a chair and sat down. “This afternoon. Holy smokes. The most incredible thing.” He paused for a beat. “Mrs. Fitch.”

My world imploded messily in on itself.

Teddy put down the newspaper. “What about her?”

“After my singing lesson. In the music room. Unbelievable.”

I stood by the refrigerator, frozen in horror. “What happened?” I croaked.

Frank didn’t need any more prompting. “We were about finished with my lesson, and she beckons me over. ‘Franklin,’ she says, ‘there’s something I need you to do for me.’ Then she takes my hand and sticks it up her skirt, just like that.”

Teddy sat quite still. “No she didn’t,” he said after a moment.

“It’s true.”

I said nothing, too appalled to speak.

“Anyway, there I am, touching her, you know, and she starts to moan.”

“No she didn’t,” said Teddy, a pink flush now creeping up his neck.

“Oh, but Ted, I’m afraid she did.”

“And I suppose then the two of you went at it over the piano stool,” said Teddy scornfully.

Frank nodded, closing his eyes. “It was incredible. She’s got these amazing big brown nipples.”

A hiss of inarticulate indignation escaped me. Frank had seen Mrs. Fitch’s tits!

Fear and doubt clouded Teddy’s eyes. “You’re a lying son of a bitch,” he said.

“I suppose her husband can’t satisfy her much,” mused Frank. “Perhaps his cock is as tiny as the rest of him.”

“Shut up,” said Teddy.

Frank sniggered. “Dwarf-cock.”

Teddy shot out of his chair. “I said shut up!” he yelled.

The look on Frank’s face was one of pure delight. “Why, Theodore,” he drawled, “I do believe you might be jealous.”

Teddy was done talking. He lunged across the table and smacked Frank across the face. Moments later the two of them were rolling around on the kitchen floor, trading blows. I left them to it, and walked out into the yard. My sandwich was dry and tasteless in my mouth as I negotiated the wreckage of my shattered illusions. I had built up substantial emotional equity in my encounter with Mrs. Fitch, but now it was hard to avoid the conclusion that she probably hadn’t been in love with me, after all; she’d just been horny for some young flesh. She wanted a properly proportioned penis after all that dwarf-cock.

For the next few days Teddy moped around in a miserable funk, until one afternoon—the afternoon of his own singing lesson—he bounced into the kitchen, all grins. The moment I saw his face, I knew what had happened. His eyes were shining in dazzled triumph. It seemed that Mrs. Fitch had used the same lines and gestures that she had used with me and Frank. I found this lack of variety a little insulting. I began to wonder whether she actually derived any pleasure out of these carbon-copy seductions, or if she was simply collecting youthful scalps with the needy but joyless monotony with which a drunk pours the next shot of liquor down his throat.

Teddy didn’t care about any of that, though. He was jubilant. Frank was surprisingly magnanimous about it. The twins compared notes in awed tones, and a grudging parity was quickly achieved.

I, meanwhile, felt too stupid for words.

My disappointing discovery about Mrs. Fitch marked the start of what proved to be an eventful summer.

Freddy and I may have stayed rooted in our town after we finished school, but the twins had long been contemplating a future beyond the Caitlin County line. A year earlier, without telling anyone, Frank had applied for a place at Duke University, and had been accepted. I believe that every day during the intervening months my brother had thought about the eight hundred miles that he would shortly be putting between himself and the rest of us. He already had his eyes on a place at law school, three years down the road. His plan of escape was simple: run early, run fast, and run far.

Teddy’s strategy, characteristically, was a little more prosaic. He had applied for a place at the University of Missouri. Still, from either school the rest of the world would inevitably heave into view, and I knew that they would soon be lost to us.

The summer of 1958, then, had an elegiac quality about it. We were all aware that a chapter was drawing to a close. For one thing, there would be no more singing. The prospect filled me with dread. I was still bewitched by the harmonies we made together. Those perfect chords still offered a means of escape from the tedium of everyday life, and I was not yet ready for silence. I increased my literary efforts, writing longer and longer into the night. Soon those dreams would be the only ones I could turn to.

It was a long, hot summer that year. Whenever we could, the four of us spent time by the river. Our favorite place to swim was where the old pier used to stand. After Magnus Kellerman’s death, the town council declared the structure a hazard, and voted to remove it. To save money, they cut down its wooden legs rather than remove them completely. The tops of the poles sat six inches below the surface of the water, invisible from the riverbank beneath the rippling crosscurrents. We liked to dive off the shorn-off struts into the cool water.

Of course, Freddy and I had our jobs, which limited our swimming time, but Frank and Teddy spent hours soaking up the sun’s rays even at the height of the long, humid days, when most people preferred to retreat indoors to escape the heat. After swimming, they would dry off by standing on one of the pier’s hidden poles. They basked in the sun’s warm embrace while their ankles remained in the water, keeping them cool.

But even such simple pleasures would not last the whole summer. In June, Morrie’s condition began to deteriorate rapidly. Freddy went over to visit him each evening after Jette had gone to bed, and the two of them talked long into the night. They both knew that time was running out. Freddy often fell asleep on the sofa, and would wake up just in time to get home to make Jette’s breakfast and then appear, yawning, at the funeral home.

Just as Freddy had feared, Morrie’s heart had not expanded at the same preposterous rate as the rest of him. It could no longer cope with the strain of keeping his huge body alive. There was simply too much of him.

One warm evening in July Freddy fell asleep, holding his friend’s hand. When he woke before dawn the next morning, he felt the cool stiffness in Morrie’s giant fingers. He gently rested his friend’s hand on his still chest, and went upstairs to knock on Mr. and Mrs. Knuckles’s bedroom door.

Despite all the time we had had to prepare ourselves, the news of Morrie’s death shocked us all. The completeness of his absence—after all that excess of flesh and bones, suddenly nothing—left us numb with grief. Only Freddy, it seemed, was able to function properly. He submerged his sorrow beneath a sea of professional rectitude, and took care of everything. That morning the body was removed to the funeral parlor. (It had to be transported in a truck. The Niedermeyer hearse was too small.) By lunchtime Freddy had called a coffin manufacturer in St. Louis to order the outsized receptacle that would be needed for the burial. Morrie and Freddy, it transpired, had been planning the funeral arrangements for some time. My brother had promised to give his friend exactly the farewell he wanted. That project, maudlin though it was, gave him the focus he needed to remain composed while the rest of us fell apart. By nightfall the service was booked, the hymns chosen, the announcement sent to the
Optimist
. Pallbearers had been contacted. The coffin was so huge that twelve men were needed to carry it. The twins and I were among those Morrie had chosen for the task. We could not have been more proud.

Teddy took the news the hardest of anyone. He had quietly adored Morrie, but he had cloaked his hero worship in a fog of willful ignorance. He had managed to convince himself that one day Morrie would get better. It had been a triumph of frightened obstinacy—at least until Freddy came home and told us that his friend was dead. Suddenly there was nowhere for Teddy to hide from the truth. He retreated to the old oak tree at the top of the bluff and waited for his tears to stop. Teddy was not a boy much given to thoughtful introspection, but his comfortable existence had suddenly been tipped headlong into squalling, savage uncertainty. Morrie Knuckles was dead, and my brother’s casual assumption of his own invincibility, his blithe belief that everything would always turn out fine in the end, had been smashed into oblivion. As he hid in the tree, Teddy began to reevaluate everything he knew. Before long his tears were not for Morrie, but for himself. For the first time in his life, doubt and self-pity crowded in, obscuring the golden future that he had always taken for granted. What, he began to wonder, did Fate have in store for
him
?

As it happened, at that very moment Fate was slowly making its way toward Tillman’s Wood, wheezing up the steep hill behind our house.

THIRTY-SEVEN

It was a hot day. Exhausted by his tears, Teddy finally fell asleep in the tree, where he dreamed of his own funeral. In his dream the church was empty save for a single mourner, who stood alone in a faraway pew, sobbing into a handkerchief.

A cool breeze caressed him awake. As he opened his eyes, he realized that he could still hear the quiet weeping that he had heard in his dream. It was coming from the bottom of the oak tree. Teddy leaned forward and looked down through the leaves.

Rankin Fitch was sitting on the ground next to his tiny bicycle, fingering the barrel of a pistol. Long, awful sobs escaped him. He was dressed for court, spruced up in one of his tiny three-piece suits. My brother stared down at him as unholy terror clawed at his throat. He knew at once what this meant: Rankin Fitch had discovered what Teddy and Mrs. Fitch had done in the music room, and now he was here for revenge. The two of them were alone on top of the hill. Nobody would hear the gunshot.

Teddy remained frozen in fear as he listened to the weeping coming from beneath him. Rankin Fitch’s tears grew more sinister with each miserable sob. My brother began to panic. There was no escape. He shut his eyes tight and began to pray.
Get me out of this, Lord
, he breathed,
and I’m yours
.
I’ll be a pilgrim, a priest, whatever. I’ll go to Africa and be a missionary. Just don’t let me die today. Don’t let that crazy midget son of a bitch shoot me
.

The next thing Teddy heard was a loud
click
, followed by a howl of anguish. He cautiously peered down. Rankin Fitch was shaking the gun in fury. Then he put the barrel against the side of his head, closed his eyes, and pulled the trigger.

Another click.

The dwarf wasn’t going to kill Teddy. He was trying to kill himself. My brother slumped back against the tree trunk, giddy with relief. There was another click, followed by more cursing. Teddy risked another look. Rankin Fitch was getting back onto his bike, shaking his head in disgust. Teddy watched as he pedaled out of sight.

It was a moment before he realized that the little attorney had headed off in the wrong direction.

Teddy slithered down the tree as quickly as he could. He reached the ground just in time to see Rankin Fitch, shoulders hunched forward and feet pedaling furiously, propel himself and his bicycle over the edge of the cliff. A terrible, mournful cry floated across the still summer air.

As he hurtled into nothingness, Rankin Fitch called out his wife’s name.

W
hen the dwarf’s broken body was discovered floating in the Missouri River, it was the most exciting thing to happen in Beatrice in years. The rumormongers fell on the suicide like a pack of starving wolves. It became apparent that I was not the only one who had regarded Rankin Fitch with dread suspicion. His strange death was all the license people needed to give full vent to their jaundiced opinions about him. Amid all the whispering in the days that followed, not one syllable of sympathy was uttered. People were too busy speculating about what had made him do it.

Teddy knew, though. He wandered about with a haunted look on his face. He could still hear the dead man’s final cry as he had pedaled off the bluff, and was nearly paralyzed by guilt.

We now had two funerals to prepare for. They were scheduled for the same day. Morrie’s was to take place in the morning, Rankin Fitch’s in the afternoon.

The twins and I arrived at First Christian Church early for Morrie’s service. Freddy was already there with the Knuckles family. When he saw us, he pointed toward the room at the back of the church that Reverend Gresham used as an office. We pushed open the door and peered inside.

The two coffins lay side by side beneath the window. Morrie’s was the size of a small car, all gleaming teak and polished gold handles. Rankin Fitch, in contrast, had fitted nicely into one of the inexpensive coffins for children that Niedermeyer’s offered. Lying in the shadow of Morrie’s enormous custom-made marvel, his coffin looked like a miniature, morbid plaything.

Morrie’s service was predictably well attended, the pews overflowing with family and friends. Mr. and Mrs. Knuckles sat in the front pew with Ellie, who looked more beautiful than ever in her grief. Freddy sat next to her. Reverend Gresham led the congregation in an opening prayer. Then Freddy got to his feet and walked slowly toward the altar.

My brother did not say much, but his words held a universe.

“Morrie Knuckles was the best friend anyone could wish for,” he said. “He was sweet, and he was kind, and now he’s gone.” Mr. and Mrs. Knuckles propped each other up, their eyes closed. “What do
you say about a boy who died so very young?” asked Freddy. “I don’t know. But I wish with all my heart he hadn’t gotten sick. I wish he hadn’t died.”

I glanced across at the front pew. Ellie was crying, her mascara gently running toward those heavenly cheekbones.

“We all knew this day would come,” Freddy continued. “Morrie always told me that he wanted this service to be a celebration. He thought that he’d had a good life, a full life, and he was grateful for it.” My brother looked down at his shoes. “I’ll be honest with you, I’m kind of mad at him about that. Because I don’t feel like celebrating right now. He was my friend and I loved him, and it’s all so damned unfair. But then I guess it doesn’t much matter what I think.” He nodded at us. “Morrie always loved this tune,” said Freddy, as the twins and I joined him in front of the enormous coffin. “This is what he wanted sung at his service. So we’re going to sing it, whether we really want to or not.”

We belted out the song’s chorus with gusto, although none of us believed a word of it.

You got to ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive

Eliminate the negative

Latch on to the affirmative

Don’t mess with mister in-between!

When we finished, the church was completely silent. Then Mr. Knuckles stood up, raised his hands toward us, and began to clap. After a moment, his wife stood up next to him and joined in. Then the pew behind got to their feet, too. Within moments, everyone in the place was standing and applauding. A huge, pulsing crescendo of love and regret rolled like thunder toward the front of the church. The noise was astounding. If Morrie wanted a celebration rather than mourning, then that was what the assembled company would give him. They clapped and they hollered and some even stamped their feet, a sustained tribute to the huge, gentle boy who had touched so many with his kindness.

Freddy stood there and listened, a small, sad smile on his face.

T
he afternoon service was a more subdued affair. I eyed Rankin Fitch’s coffin as it sat in front of the altar. It occurred to me that the dead man would not have cared about the size of his coffin. He
knew
it was going to be small. It was only the rest of us who were forever being surprised by how tiny he was.

And finally I understood. The fact that Rankin Fitch was a dwarf was not, in the end, his story. He was a man who had cycled off the edge of a cliff.
That
was his story.

Suddenly I was staggered by what he had done. I could not imagine the depths of his misery—a misery so bleak and absolute that it had kept his legs going, against all natural instincts, propelling him on toward his death.

After Reverend Gresham’s sermon, we performed “Abide with Me.” As we sang, I devoutly hoped that Rankin Fitch wouldn’t be abiding with me. I had been terrified of him while he’d been alive, but the prospect of being haunted by his vengeful ghost was even worse. Teddy had told me, owl-eyed, about the dead man’s final cry, his wife’s name on his lips as he fell through the air. Now both of us were wondering if we might be to blame.

As it turned out, we were not alone. In addition to the local legal crowd, there was a different constituency of mourner skulking at the back of the church. Still in their suits and ties from the earlier service, most of the town’s young males had returned, all with the same guilt-pinched expression on their faces. All eyes were fixed on the grieving widow, who sat alone in the front row. Once again I found myself having to reappraise the extent of Mrs. Fitch’s extracurricular activities. By then I had reconciled myself to the fact that our union in the music room was not the rhapsodic episode I had once supposed it to be, but looking at the massed ranks at the back of the church, I was astonished by how extraordinarily
comprehensive
Mrs. Fitch appeared to have been. Jocks from the football team sat next to bespectacled members of the after-school math club. A whole generation of Beatrice males had come to offer apology and seek forgiveness for their sins.

If Margaret Fitch was aware of the parade of her sexual conquests in the pews behind her, she gave no sign of it. She remained dignified and calm throughout the service, and seemed quite unperturbed by the peculiar circumstances of her husband’s death. Widowhood suited her, I thought. She looked absolutely sensational in black.