In Persuasion Nation (22 page)

"O.K., tough guy," Cyndi said to Giff, and stomped off,
ringing the tree ornaments.

I can see Giff's wheels turning. Or trying to. He's not the
brightest. I once watched him spend ten minutes trying to make a copy
on a copier in the Outer Hall which was unplugged and ready for
Disposal.

"Wait, are you saying you guys did this?" he says.

Rimney says Giff has a wife, Giff has a baby—would a transfer
to the Dirksen be of interest? Maybe Giff's aware that he, Rimney,
knows somebody who knows somebody?

"Oh, my gosh, you guys did do it," Giff says.

He lets the shovel fall and walks toward the woods, as if so shocked
he has to seek relief in the beauty of nature. Out in the woods are
three crushed toilets. Every tenth bush or so has a red tag on it, I
have no idea why.

"All's I can say is wow," Giff says.

"They're dead, man," Rimney says. "What do you care?"

"Yes, but who was it shaped these fellows?" says Giff.
"You? Me? Look, I'm going to speak frank. I think I see what's
going on here. Both you guys took recent hard hits. One had a wife
with a stroke, the other a great tragic loss of their parents. So you
got confused, made a bad call. But He redeemeth, if only we open our
hearts. Know how I know? It happened to me. I also took a hard hit
this year. Because guess what? In terms of my wife? I'm just going to
say it. Our baby is not my baby. Cyndi had a slipup with this friend
of ours, Kyle. I found out just before Christmas, which was why I was
such a fart at our party. That put me in a total funk—we were
like match and gas. I was so mad there was a darkness upon me. Poor
thing had bruises all up her arms, due to I started pinching her. In
her sleep, or sometimes I would get so mad and just come up quick and
do it. Then, January tenth, I'd had enough, and I prayed, I said,
‘Lord, I am way too small, please take me up into You, I don't
want to do this anymore.' And He did it. I dropped as if shot. And
when I woke? My heart was changed. All glory goes to Him. I mean, it
was a literal release in my chest. All my hate about the baby was
gone and all of a sudden Andy was just my son for real."

"Nice story," says Rimney.

"It's not a story. It happened to me for real in my life,"
says Giff. "Point is? I had it in me to grow. We all do! I'm not
all good, but there's a good part of me. My fire may be tiny, but
it's a fire just the same. See what I mean? Same like you. Do you
know that good part? Have you met it, that part of you that is all
about Truth, that is called, in how we would say it, your
Christ-portion? My Christ-portion knew that pinching was wrong. How
does your Christ-portion feel about this sneaky burial thingy? I mean
honestly. In a perfect world, is that what you would have chose to
do?"

This catches me a little off guard.

"Is this where I go into a seizure and you heal me by stroking
my dick?" Rimney says.

Giff blinks at this, turns to me.

"Think these things up in your heart," he says softly.
"Treasure them around. See what it is. Then be in touch, come to
our church, if you want. I am hopeful that you will come to your
Truth."

Suddenly my eyes tear up.

And I don't even know why.

"This is about my wife, jackass," says Rimney.

"Do what's right, come what may," Giff says. "That's
what it says on all our softball sweatshirts, and I believe it. And
on the back? 'Say no thanks to Mr. Mere Expedience.' Good words for
you, friend."

Rimney's big. Once when mad he smacked the overhang on the way to
Vending and there's still a handprint up there. Once he picked up one
end of the photocopier so Mrs. Gregg could find her earring, and a
call came in and he had this big long conversation with Benefits
while still holding up the copier.

"Cross me on this, you'll regret it," he says.

"Get thee behind me," says Giff.

So, a little tense.

My phone rings. Ms. Durrell again. She's got a small vocal outraged
group coming at four to eat her alive. Where the hell am I? Those
dioxin books? Had something to do with a donkey, Donkey Dioxin, Who
Got the Job Done? Or it was possibly an ape or possum or some such
shit? She remembers a scene at the end with some grateful villagers,
where the ape/possum/donkey/whatever gave the kids a ride, and also
the thing came with a CD?

"Go," Rimney says. "Elliot and I will work this out."

By the time I get the books out of Storage and over to Environmental
it's after five.

I clock out, race home through our wincing little town. Some drunks
outside the Twit are heaving slushballs up at the laughing neon Twit.
Blockbuster has a new program of identifying all videos as either
Artsy or Regular. Two beautiful girls in heels struggle down to the
banks of the Ottowattamie, holding each other up. Why are they going
down there? It's dusk and that part of the river's just mud and an
old barge.

I wish I could ask them but I don't have time. When I'm late Mom and
Dad race around shouting, "Where? Where? Where?" It always
ends in this bitter mutual crying. It's just one of their things.
Like when it rains, they go up to the ceiling and lie there facing
up. Like when feeling affectionate, they run full speed toward each
other and pass through, moaning/laughing.

The night of the Latvians I was out with Cleo from Vehicles. We went
parking, watched some visiting Warthogs practice their night-firing.
Things heated up. She had a room on the side of a house, wobbly
wooden stairs leading up. Did I call, say I'd be late, say I might
not be back at all? No, I did not. Next morning I came home, found
the house taped off. For the body locations, the cops didn't use
chalk. There was just a piece of loose-leaf on the stairs labelled
"Deceased Female" and one on the kitchen floor labelled
"Deceased Male."

I tell myself, If I'd been home, I'd be dead, too. The Latvians had
guns. They came in quick, on crack, so whacked out they forgot to
even steal anything.

Still. Mom's sciatica was acting up. She'd just had two teeth pulled.
At the end, on the steps, on her back, she kept calling my name, as
in, Where is he? Did they get him too? Next day, on the landing, I
found the little cotton swab the dentist had left in her mouth.

So
if they want me home right after work I'm home right after work.

They're
standing at the kitchen window, looking out at the old ballbearing
plant. All my childhood, discarded imperfect ball bearings rolled
down the hill into our yard. When the plant closed, a lathe came
sliding down, like a foot a day, until it hit an oak.

"Snowing like a mother," Dad says.

"Pretty, but we can't go out," says Mom.

"Too old, I guess," Dad says sadly.

"Or something," says Mom.

I set three places. They spend the whole dinner, as usual, trying to
pick up their forks. Afterward they crowd under the floor lamp, the
best part of their night. When they stand in direct heat, it doesn't
make them warmer, just makes them vividly remember their childhoods.

"Smell of melted caramel," Mom says.

"The way I felt first time I seen a Dodger uniform in color,"
says Dad.

Dad asks me to turn up the dimmer. I do, and the info starts coming
too fast for grammar.

"Working with beets purple hands Mother finds that funny,"
says Mom.

"Noting my boner against ticking car, Mr. Klemm gives look of
you-are-rubbing-your-boner, mixed sense of shame/pride, rained so
hard flooded gutters, rat wound up in the dog bowl," says Dad.

They step out of the light, shake it off.

"He's always talking about boners," says Mom.

"Having a boner is a great privilege," says Dad.

"You had your share," says Mom.

"I should say so," says Dad. "And will continue to, I
hope, until the day I die."

Having said "die," Dad blinks. Whenever we see a murder on
TV, they cover their eyes. Whenever a car backfires, I have to coax
them out from under the couch. Once a bird died on the sill and they
spent the entire day in the pantry.

"Until the day you die," Mom says, as if trying to figure
out what the words mean.

Before they can ask any questions, I go outside and shovel.

From all over town comes the sound of snowplows, the scraping plus
the beeping they do when reversing. The moon's up, full, with halo.
My phone rings in my parka pocket.

"We have a situation," Rimney says. "Can you step
outside?"

"I am outside," I say.

"Oh, there you are," he says.

The special van's coming slowly up the street.

"New plan," he says, still on the phone, parking now.
"What's done is done. We can save the Dirksen or lose it.
Minimize the damage or maximize."

He gets out, leads me around to the sliding door.

You didn't, I think. You did not dig those poor guys up again. Does
he think Historical is stupid? Does he think Historical, getting a
report of mummies, finding only a recently filled hole, is going to
think, Oh, Giff, very funny, you crack us up?

"Not the mummies," I say.

"I wish," he says, and throws open the door.

Lying there is Giff, fingers clenched like he's trying to cling to a
ledge, poor pink glasses hanging off one ear.

I take a step back, trip on the curb, sit in a drift.

"We took a walk, things got out of hand," he says. "Shit,
shit, shit. I tried to reason with him, but he started giving me all
his Christian crap. Something snapped, honestly. It just got away
from me. You've probably had that happen?"

"You killed him?" I say.

"An unfortunate thing transpired, after which he died, yes,"
Rimney says.

Thrown in there with Giff is a big rock, partly wrapped in bloody
paper towels.

I ask did he call the police. He says if he planned on calling the
police, would he have thrown Giff in back of the freaking van? He
says we've got to think pragmatic. He did it, he fucked up, he knows
that. He'll be paying for it the rest of his life, but no way is Val
paying for it. If he goes to jail, what happens to Val? A state home?
No, no, no, he says. Dead is dead, he can't change that. Why kill Val
as well?

"What do we do with this guy?" he says. "Think,
think."

"We?" I say. "You."

"Oh God, oh shit," he says. "I can't believe I killed
somebody. Me, I did it. Jesus, wow. O.K. O.K."

Snow's blowing in over Giff, melting on his glasses, clumping up
between his pants and bare leg.

"You know Val, you like Val, right?" Rimney says.

I do like Val. I remember her at Mom and Dad's funeral, in her
wheelchair. She had Rimney lift one of her hands to my arm, did this
sad little pat pat pat.

"Because here's the thing," Rimney says. "Dirksen-wise?
You're all set. I submitted my rec. It's in the system. Right? Why
not take it? Prosper, get a little something for yourself, find a
wife, make some babies. The world's shit on you enough, right? You
did not do this, I did. I shouldn't have come here. How about pretend
I didn't?"

I stand up, start to do a Moral Benefit Eval, then think, No, no way,
do not even think about doing that stupid shit now.

The bandage on Giff's underchin flips up, showing his shaving scar.

"Because who was he?" says Rimney. "Who was he really?
Was he worth a Val? Was he even a person? He, to me, was just a
dumb-idea factory. That's it."

Poor Giff, I think. Poor Giff's wife, poor Giff's baby.

Poor Val.

Poor everybody.

"Don't fuck me on this," Rimney says. "Are you going
to fuck me on this? You are, aren't you? Fine. Fine, then."

He turns away, slams the van door shut, emits this weird little
throat-sound, like he can't live with what he's done and would like
to end it all, only can't, because ending it all would make him even
more of a shit.

"I feel I'm in a nightmare," he says.

Then he crashes the Giff-rock into my head. I can't believe it. Down
I go. He swung so hard he's sitting down too. For a second we both
sit there, like playing cards or something. I push off against his
face, crawl across the yard, get inside, bolt the door.

"I don't like that," says Dad, all frantic. "I did not
like seeing that."

"People should not," Mom says. "That is not a proper
way."

When terrified, they do this thing where they flicker from Point A to
Point B with no interim movement. Mom's in the foyer, then in the
kitchen, then at the top of the stairs.

"You better get to the hospital," Dad says.

"Take this poor kid with you," Mom says.

"He just suddenly showed up," Dad says.

Somebody's on the couch. It takes me a second to recognize him.

Giff.

Or something like Giff: fish-pale, naked, bloody dent in his head,
squinting, holding his glasses in one hand.

"Whoa," he says. "Is this ever not how I expected it
would be like."

"What what would be like?" says Dad.

"Death and all?" he says.

Dad flickers on and off: smiling in his chair, running in place,
kneeling near the magazine rack.

"You ain't dead, pal, you're just naked," says Dad.

"Naked, plus somebody blammed you in the head," says Mom.

"Do they not know?" Giff says.

I give him a look, like, Please don't. We're just enjoying a little
extra time. I'm listening to their childhood stories, playing records
from their courtship days, staring at them when they're not looking,
telling them how good they were with me and Jean, how safe we always
felt.

"Don't you love them?" Giff says.

I remember them outside the funeral home the day we buried Jean, Mom
holding Dad up, Dad trying to sit on a hydrant, wearing his lapel
button, his lapel photo-button of little smiling Jean.

"Then better tell them," Giff says. "Before it's too
late. Because watch."

He stands, kind of shaky, hobbles over, breathes in my face.