Callisto (7 page)

“Uhuh.”

“Then I'm asking you to consider very carefully this whole business.”

I had a picture flash into my mind right then, and this is the picture – Dean has gone and fallen in the hole in the yard while he's still dizzy from the whack on the head he got. He went all dizzy out the back door and fell into the hole, which is the reason he's not sat at the table right now talking with Chet about all this crap. Why didn't I think of this before? Dean needed assistance right now because he hit his head again when he fell in the hole, I bet.

“Excuse me . . .”

I got up and hurried through the house to the back door and went outside. Over to the hole. The hole is empty. Okay then, big relief he isn't there like I thought. Only where is he? Back into the house and up the stairs. Dean is lying on his bed like I left him this morning, exactly the same. I went over and poked him on the shoulder, and the way he didn't wake up or grunt or anything made me know the truth, which I did not want to believe, so I bent low and listened close to his mouth to that awful sound of nothing at all. Dean was dead, had most likely died after I left and been laying there all day waiting for me to come back and discover him no longer among the living.

Jesus Christ! What was I going to do now? I walked in circles around the room. I kept flinging my arms out and back, out and back, don't ask me why, and bobbing my body up and down, I think, it's hard to remember this part, what I was doing and what I was thinking as the full impact of this bad consequence of my actions with the baseball bat rose up to hit me from yesterday.

I don't know how long I walked in circles before I remembered Chet downstairs waiting for answers from poor dead Dean, who at least had died a Christian still without
changing over to being a Muslim person, so if it's true what they say about the soul going to heaven then he went there instead of wherever Muslim folk go to, which I have heard has got virgin girls there, a whole bunch for every man. So maybe he would have wanted to go there instead, but it's too late now, he's gone and died a Christian. Been
murdered
like a Christian I would have said if I wanted to look at it clear and plain, which I did not, I wanted it all to go away and never have happened, every part of it from the time my Chevy died on me till right now.

I heard Chet's chair scrape on the kitchen floor. He couldn't come up here, couldn't see Dean lying there with no breath of life inside him. Murdered. Chet couldn't see that, so I went down the stairs real slow, gathering my thoughts as they say, but it was a very small bunch of thinking, mainly just one thing – I couldn't back away from being Dean now. I hadn't told any lies as such, but from here on in it was all lying even if I didn't say another word, that's what I was thinking.

I saw him standing in front of the grandaddy clock in the hall. “That's a fine old piece,” he said, his face up close against the dial to see the scrollwork clear. “How long has it been in the family?”

“Oh, around fifty or eighty years, I guess.”

Lie number one. It had started. Everything in my entire life would be different now that I had a Dark Secret to hide. It must have been affecting my mind, the sudden shock etcetera, because I had this picture of me murdering Chet and burying him in the hole in the yard, which made not one bit of sense seeing as he never knew about the Secret, so what threat is he to me? None at all, so I did not follow through and
murder Chet. I wanted him gone, though, and fast, before he sees there's something changed about me, like there's a sign hung around my neck that says
Murderer
or maybe something crazy in my eyes that he'll see.

“Is everything all right, Dean?”

“Yup, no problem.”

“The way you rushed out, I thought maybe there's something wrong.”

“Nah, no way.”

“Well, how about we get back to discussing the matter that brought me here?”

“Okay.”

We stared at each other for a little while, then Chet says, “Should we go back to the kitchen, or would you be more comfortable in the living room?”

“I don't care, whichever.”

We went and sat on the sofa together, which was a mistake. I should've sat in the armchair so he's not so close. I knew sooner or later he's going to reach out and touch my arm all fatherly and concerned for my soul, and I didn't want that, I wanted him gone gone gone.

“Now, Dean,” he says, “I want you to tell me honest and true what's on your mind with regard to this crisis in your life. I suspect there's a whole separate agenda going on here that has got nothing to do with choosing another religion on a . . . what you might call a philosophical basis. I suspect, and Bob does too, that your dereliction of duty to the faith you were raised in has got its basis in something purely emotional. Might that be the case here, Dean, do you think? Maybe some personal problem? Are relationships an issue with you at this
time, Dean? Women trouble, you know. Any difficulties in that area you'd care to discuss?”

“Hell no.”

His face hardened a little when I said that, like I said Fuck or something. The religious kind like Chet are very easy offended about shit like that, so I would have to watch my tongue and be polite. “I don't have a girlfriend right now, so that's not a problem,” I said, wanting to be cooperating with him.

“Nobody at all? You're a well setup young man, Dean, so I'm surprised to learn there are no romantic entanglements in your life. There have been girlfriends in the past, am I assuming correctly about that?”

“Oh sure, I'm not gay or anything.”

“That's good to hear. Homosexuality is an abomination, as I'm sure you've been taught. I'm going to be direct here, maybe downright intrusive, and I make no apology for it.” He kind of gathered himself up and looked me directly in the eye. “Dean,” he says, “what ails you, boy?”

It was a good question, and one that I asked myself more than once. I mean, there has to be something to account for the fact that I don't feel like I fit in anywhere. What guy six-three is going to get respect by saying he still feels like a little boy? No guy, that's who. So I said nothing. The conversation was over.

“Dean?”

“Uhuh?”

“Do you have anything to say to me?”

“This conversation is over.”

He looked troubled, even a little bit annoyed. “What do you mean by that?”

“I have to take a shower. I stink.”

“Well, of course, you've been hard at work all day. Mrs Wayne has always been proud of the way you made an effort with the lawnmowing after she bought you the truck and the mowers. No question about that, you've been a credit to her, working hard that way —”

“And you have to go.”

That made his face go hard but he tried not to show it. We looked at each other while nothing happened, then he got up and I did too, relieved that he's leaving so I could sit down and think my way through this real bad situation that sprung up out of nowhere. But he didn't head for the front door like I wanted, which started making me mad. He had to get out of there because there was no room in the house for nobody except me and the dead man upstairs, who being dead occupied more space than his living body had. Being a murder victim makes you ten times bigger than you were and a hundred times more of a problem. I had got a giant upstairs and Chet had to go.

“Dean, maybe I approached you the wrong way. I was expecting to find Mrs Wayne here. This has not gone the way I intended and I blame myself for that. I can see you need to be alone and clean up after an honest day's work, and I'm going now, but I'll ask this of you, Dean – don't say to me that I can't come back at least one more time to chat with you about the consequences of your choice.”

“Okay.”

I said that to shut him up and move him along in the direction of the door. If he stayed there one more minute I swear I would've blabbed the whole truth to him and most likely burst out in tears or something creepy and little-boyish.

At the door he stops and puts out his mitt. “This is the hand of a friend, Dean. I know you don't think so right now, but it's an absolute fact. Everybody in this world needs friends, and next to Jesus I want you to think of me as your greatest friend. That may sound presumptuous, but it's true, Dean, and that's the thought I want to leave you with today. Thank you for your hospitality.”

He pumped my hand one or two times and then he's out the door and crossing the porch to the steps. I watched him through the screen while he got in his Cadillac and drove away. Pretty soon the sound of the car and the dust his tires kicked up have all gone away and I'm on my own again, except for Dean upstairs. I should have gone back up there but was too cowardly to face him again. I tried telling myself that Dean was a very fucked-up person and I had solved all his problems, but that didn't sound right at all and was just a lame excuse for the guiltiness I felt crowding inside me.

I couldn't think straight anymore. I wanted a drink to smooth away the thorns growing inside my skull. So I got in the truck and drove away to town. Halfway there I remembered I forgot to lock the front door, or even close it behind me. That's how rattled I was about everything.

I knew there was a store called Freedom Liquor in the shopping strip nearest to Dean's side of town, so that's where I went, only when I got there what do I see but Chet's beige Cadillac parked next to the Fancy-Free Boutique. He's got a cell phone up to his face and he's gabbing into it. He didn't see me and I didn't want him to, so I drove around the other side of the strip to the parking lot there and went into Freedom Liquor by the back door. I come out again a few
minutes later with two flagons of Captain Morgan and a six-pack of Coors. Then me and the Captain went home to discuss the situation man to man.

I
laid it out for myself plain and clear. Dean was dead and could not be brung back. I did it even if it was accidental and partly his own fault. I had to get on over to Manhattan to enlist but my car was dead as Dean. Aunt Bree was due home sometime soon, and Chet would be back for more sermonizing. I had a bunch of Dean's money, but I figured I could call it mine because I'm the one that pushed those mowers around. And Dean was already starting to smell bad.

The Captain and me made a plan, and this is it – I would use Dean's truck to tow my Monte Carlo away from his place and dump it somewhere and remove the license plates and Vehicle Identity Number from the dash so it can't be traced to me, not that anyone would bother anyway with an old junker like that. I would take Dean's truck back and park it in the barn like before, then write a note and leave it on the front door for Chet saying I will stay Christian after all and thank
you for stopping by. Then I would walk away from Dean's place and hitchhike into Callisto to get the bus to Manhattan, and my problems would be over. I liked the plan because it was simple. It was a shame about the terrible shock Aunt Bree would get when she come home and found Dean stinking the place out, but there was nothing I could do about that.

And there was still the big mystery of why Dean went and dug that hole in the yard. Looking for answers to that, I went through his dresser and found some books about Muslims,
Under the Banner of the Prophet
and
Sword of Islam
, and a Koran with a green leather cover with fancy gold patterns on it, so it was true what Aunt Bree had wrote to Preacher Bob about, Dean really was going to be a convertible. I shook my head over that, but it was none of my business what religion he wanted to be, so I put those books back where I found them.

It was way into the night by then, and after all that drinking and no meal after working all day I was real hungry. The fridge had been ate out pretty good so I went downstairs to the basement for another one of those good TV dinners we had the first night. I had trouble finding the light switch but it's on the side of the staircase and I went on down. There was plenty of junk down there, typical basement crap, and over in the corner there's a good-sized freezer, the kind with the lift-up top. Inside it was crammed with TV dinners and bags of vegetables and pizzas etcetera, a real good selection to choose from, so I started digging in, lifting aside pizza boxes and frozen peas to see what's underneath, and that's when I saw the hair.

I thought maybe Dean or more likely Aunt Bree had a wig or hairpiece they kept in the freezer so the moths can't get to it, but nobody has a gray wig like that, they have a dark wig to
hide gray hair if it's a woman that owns it. I took hold of it to lift it up for examining but it wouldn't come, because it's attached there, I thought, maybe froze to something else, so I yanked a little harder but it still wouldn't come, so I lifted aside some packets of baby corn and saw the reason for it. The wig was attached to a head, which means it wasn't a wig at all, it's real hair. Somehow that drove me over to the other side of the basement, then I found my manhood and went back for another look.