Honeymooners A Cautionary Tale (42 page)

2

Ralph ran to his room and
began throwing his clothes, which Lindsay had kindly laundered for
him, into Alice Ann’s old yellow getaway suitcase. Alice Ann
strolled into the room and sat down on the edge of the bed. —I
thought I had thrown that old suitcase out, she said, and lit a
cigarette. She sat there smoking and watching Ralph scurry around
the room, trying to recall all the places he had hidden items
purloined from Jim: books, pens, pencils, typing paper, cans of
Campbell’s soup, tins of sardines, two more tubes of toothpaste for
his collection.

If he pulled out right then,
Ralph speculated aloud, and drove lickety-split and nonstop, he
figured he could make Reno by midnight, which was safely across
the California state line. And then it would be a clear straight
shot south to old Mexico. Or maybe Canada would be the best bet.
What he needed to know was which border would be the easiest to
cross. Why had those fainthearted draft dodgers fled to Canada
instead of old Mexico is what he wanted to know.

Ralph, Alice Ann said, and
stubbed out her cigarette, only to light another. —You’re not going
anywhere. We are in this together, both our marriage and the
criminal matter. We have had this date with the music from the
beginning, Ralph, and we are going to simply face up to it
finally.

Sure, Ralph said, that’s
easy for you to say. You’re not the one who’s going to get their
brains buggered out.

You aren’t going to jail,
Ralph. I’ve sold the house. In all honesty I planned upon selling
the house, which was bought with my inheritance, if you recall, out
from under you and pocketing the proceeds to finance a new life for
the kids and me. But I’ve changed my mind. Your worthless
attorney-of-record informed me that if restitution is made to the
state for the funds you stole by fraud and malice aforethought, and
if you throw yourself upon the mercy of the court, you’ll get off
with a white-collar criminal slap on the wrist. Probation and maybe
some community service.

What sort of community
service? You mean things like road work?

What does it matter? The
important thing here, Ralph, is that I’m coming to your rescue
again. And, Ralph, I am going to ask you for only one thing in
return.

What one thing?

You must give me my just
due. Ralph, in any success you may have in the future, you must not
forget what I’ve done for you. You must not forget the hopes and
dreams we have shared. Over the long course, Ralph, everything but
hope lets you go. Then even that, I suppose, finally loosens its
grip. Ralph, why hasn’t there ever been enough of anything in all
the long years we’ve shared together? But we have had some
sweetness and light in our lives, haven’t we? Ralph? Haven’t
we?

I guess.

You once swore you would
love only me forever, Ralph. You once gave me a ring and asked for
me to come along with you in your life’s journey. You told me I
could trust you forever. Things to that effect. You once quoted me
something, Ralph. You quoted somebody who said, The world is the
world, and it writes no histories that end in love. Do you remember
that?

Not really.

Well, anyway, happy
birthday, you son-of-a-bitch. Let’s just get this over with, Alice
Ann said, and she walked over to Ralph and began to beat on his
chest and shoulders with her clenched fists, which Ralph let her
do, not even grabbing her wrists or flinching away, until her arms
grew weary. And then Ralph had simply stood there, his arms hanging
at his sides, as Alice Ann sunk onto her knees in front of him and
unzipped his trousers.

3

Jim enlisted the aid of Max
Carver, a mutual friend of his and Ralph’s who was this big, burly,
red-neck, rhinestone Commie from Texas, to help drag Ralph down the
stairs early the next morning and then shove him into the backseat,
where they lodged Ralph between them, so that Ralph could not leap
from the moving vehicle or make a frantic grab for the wheel as
Alice Ann drove, and they set out through the foggy morning south
for San Jose and the Superior Court Building for Ralph to face the
music.

Ralph alternately whined and
mumbled incoherently. What, Ralph? Jim said. What? When he was a
little kid, Ralph mumbled, a little, rambunctious boy true, but not
evil, his mom had hooked him up into one of those barbaric
kiddie-harness affairs, and she had fastened it to a clothesline
out in the back yard, where she had left Ralph to spend most of his
formative years, a little, lonely fat boy, trotting a trench
beneath that clothesline, up and back, up and back, until he was
exhausted sometimes with all that effort of running nowhere with
all his heart. But by the time that trench was waist-high, Ralph
had felt a fierce pride in it, that wonderful hole that held the
perfect shape of his determined escape to nowhere but deeper. Well,
Jim said, Momma tried.

Ashen, shaking, his
trembling legs buckling at every other step, his heart beating
visibly beneath his shirt, Ralph still found the strength to
resist, and he had to be manhandled into the courthouse by his
snickering buddies. Ralph’s oily attorney-of- record took one look
at Ralph and strongly recommended again that Ralph simply plead
guilty and throw himself upon the mercy of the court. When it
became apparent from his opening comments the avenger-asshole of
an assistant district attorney had his flinty heart set upon making
a white-collar-criminal example out of Ralph, Alice Ann insisted
upon taking the stand in a last-ditch effort to save Ralph’s
bacon.

Your Honor, sir, Alice Ann
said to the judge, a white-haired man who looked like God, let me
say first of all that I am prepared to write the court a check on
the spot to cover all fines and to make full restitution for the
monies my husband in his drunken stupor falsely received from the
state. Let me say also that my husband, Mr. Crawford, has two
wonderful children at home, who need and love him very much, in
spite of all the pain and hardship and general humiliation he has
caused them over the years. Please don’t let those wonderful
children go through this incarnation with the onus of having a
jailbird for a father, I beseech you. Let me say also, sir, that my
husband intends to join AA tomorrow, and I will drive him
personally to and from meetings. Your Honor, sir, I am not up here
to praise my husband, for I am not that foolish, but simply to
attempt to save his bacon. I have always believed, sir, that what
good one possesses was enough to merit one’s salvation. In spite of
all the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, sir, there is some
good in my husband, Mr. Crawford. Things I will have to relate to
you, sir, are very painful for me. Mr. Crawford would probably
prefer I bite my tongue. But no matter how painful, I cannot bite
my tongue. To talk about the tragic events of Mr. Crawford’s and my
marriage is very painful, how from the beginning we have
overexisted, how on too many sad occasions we have been so
foolishly operatic in our behavior. Your Honor, I never lie to
myself or to others in my heart, so, sir, let me assure you from my
heart that the pathetic person you see sitting before you, Mr.
Crawford, my husband, is not simply the man who, in order to save a
few dollars on dog food, was capable of purloining his children’s
puppy, their beloved pet, and driving it to a distant neighborhood,
where he tossed the poor thing out to fend for itself. Yes, he was
capable of that, and did it, and he was also capable of using such
a despicable act as a source of inspiration for a story, and I
might add one of his very best stories. Sir, there will always be
those rare individuals who must stare into the darkness of
themselves in order to really see for us all. My husband, Mr.
Crawford, is one of those damned yet blessed individuals who must
both suffer and soar because of the gift of that burden. Because of
that burden Mr. Crawford drinks like a fish, and lives about half
the time in some parallel world of story. It is because of this
that my husband has a diminished capacity to recognize and act
upon notions of right and wrong in the real world. What happened to
him ... no, what has happened to us both, is that we reached that
point where the fiction of our lives began to feed on itself. Sir,
I would like to offer the fiction of our lives into evidence as
exhibit A for the defense, Alice Ann said, and she held up a copy
of Ralph’s book of stories for all to see.

And, Your Honor, I would
like to swear an oath on the lives revealed in this book, Alice Ann
said, and placed her right hand upon Ralph’s book, I would like to
swear an oath that Mr. Crawford has been rehabilitated by this
book and he is full of remorse for the horrific events of his life
that he drew upon in order to write this book. He is sick at heart
also about all that he has stolen from others for the sake of these
stories. I, for instance, Your Honor, am a person who has been
living for the record all her adult life. It is not easy, let me
assure you, sir, always living for the record. Living for posterity
is no picnic, sir. As you may discover after today yourself, Your
Honor. For today, sir, you are living for the record according to
Ralph. For my husband, even in his stunted state of mind, is
playing with these proceedings somewhere deep in his twisted
imagination just as he would play a hooked fish into his boat,
reeling it into his own sick reality. My husband, Your Honor, will
fry us all for dinner if we are not careful. Finally, sir, I would
ask you to look closely into that man’s sorry face. Is not his
bitter grief, and his shame, yes, that too, are they not apparent
and proof enough? Sir, please just look carefully at that pathetic
shell of the man who was once Ralph Crawford. Mr. Crawford is
clearly not a pretty picture. He needs your compassion and
understanding, not punishment. Your Honor, with the court’s kind
permission, I would like to enter Mr. Crawford’s wretched personal
appearance into evidence for the defense.

Lucky Old Dog

1

Ralph sat in a chair pulled
away from the kitchen table, chainsmoking, sipping a glass of what
he swore was pure orange juice, glancing back and forth between the
cartoons on the television set on the kitchen counter and Jim, who
was at the stove churning hash browns about in his favorite heavy
cast-iron skillet. Lindsay was moving about the kitchen attempting
to make a dent in the previous night’s damage, closing open
drawers, dumping the dead soldiers and empty Chinese-food cartons
and pizza boxes and overflowing ashtrays into a big plastic
bag.

I don’t see how anybody
could drink vodka this early in the morning, Jim said over his
shoulder.

Hey, Ralph said, I told you
already, this is pure OJ. Call it a will of iron, but I, for one,
never take a drink before 11 a.m.

You bet, Jim
said.

I once met a fellow whose
drink of choice was Listerine, Ralph said. He was coming down off
Scotch. That poor devil still got drunk as a skunk, but he had the
freshest breath.

Jim stepped over to the
table and picked up the glass in front of Ralph and drank it
down.

Hey, there! Ralph said. —No
fair!

Jim took a nearly empty
bottle of vodka from inside a kitchen cabinet. He waved it at
Ralph, then drank it down straight and smacked his lips.

Hey, Ralph said, and looked
back at the cartoon chases flickering across the television
screen, what am I supposed to do when 11 a.m. rolls
around?

There’s a bottle of
Listerine in the bathroom, Jim said, as he began breaking eggs into
a blue bowl. —Fix yourself a fucken screw-gargle.

Alice Ann swept into the
room. She was already dressed and made up for the day. She sat down
at the kitchen table and lit a cigarette, which she pointed at
Lindsay’s Bloody Mary. —That looks like what the doctor
ordered.

I’ll stir you one up in a
jiffy, Lindsay said, and took an unopened bottle of vodka from
beneath the sink. —You look nice. I’m still dragging around in my
ratty old robe.

You’re the hostess with the
mostest, Alice Ann said. —I’ve got to get down there and get the
kids settled in with Ralph’s mom. Then I have at least a half-dozen
rental houses to look at and see about storage and
movers.

Me too, please, Ralph said
to Lindsay.

Before 11 a.m.? Jim said,
then said to Alice Ann, How do you like your eggs?

Scrambled, but I have to
run.

Oh, I’ll make an exception
this morning to be sociable, Ralph said. —Hey, old Jim, how’s that
grub coming, anyway? If I had a horse, I’d eat the nag whole. Alice
Ann, do you happen to have any of those little LifeSavers handy?
Those little fruity babies you always carry around in your
purse.

Nope, I don’t think I
do.

But you always have some in
your purse. I could really go for one of those little cherry
LifeSavers right now. Or an orange one. I like those green ones,
too.