Dog on the Cross (5 page)

This is what Jansen thought. Evening after evening he drove to his bar, out Highway 9 with the air conditioner running and the windows rolled down, past the First Pentecostal: the small church he'd
grown up in, left at the age of sixteen and never returned. He thought that the church had added to this viewing of himself as a dramatic figure. It was something for Jansen to measure himself against, a means of adopting a position from outside and surveying his soul.

The church was in revival that summer: all the cars in neat rows on the white gravel, the stray family running behind schedule, the sign facing the highway. He remembered revivals quite vividly, the weeklong (sometimes monthlong) meetings wherein the parishioners would rededicate their lives to holiness. Evangelists with handkerchiefs and polyester suits would preach of fire and death, the book of Revelation, the judgments reserved for those who abused their bodies with cigarettes and alcohol, promiscuity and drugs, television, liberal politics, homosexuality, makeup, rock and roll—all liars and whoremongers, thieves and murderers, sinners and backslidden Christians caught up at the last day and cast into a lake of fire.

As a boy, the fear of such a place was on him. He hit adolescence, felt a desire denounced from the very pulpit, and the fear swelled, ruled his existence as a palpable force. He became a teenager, left the church, professed atheism, and the fear was on him stronger than ever. In the dead of night, Jansen pictured scenes more vibrant than even the preachers could create: regions of pit and ash, time's livid flames
extending into days unmarked by torment. He rolled on his bed, confessed sins enacted and imagined, awakened in the morning to grainy dawn and a love he could seldom understand.

But it was also this love that in his first years of college anchored him, kept him from returning to his faith out of simple fear. As long as there was Wisnat, this physical entity walking about, he could push away thoughts of fantastic and eternal torture. He could focus entirely on his roommate, justify his yearnings with the one Christlike emotion agreed on by all denominations, charismatic or otherwise.

Now, as an adult of almost thirty, Jansen no longer feared Hell, no longer lay awake constructing mentally its antechambers and dungeons. But whenever he was quiet, whenever there was neither light nor sound to distract him, the residue of past threats would present itself as a nagging anxiety—the sense that something was not right, something somewhere unfixably and permanently wrong. And while Wisnat contributed to such feelings, he also, by his mere presence, allayed them. Even the desire Jansen felt for his friend had become something on which the bartender could depend. He could not afford to lose him.

This, more than anything else, was how Jansen in the years to come would justify putting the pills in Megan's drinks. He knew it was not right—every nerve in him screamed against it—but what choice
did he have? What was he to do when the man with whom he was in love asked of him a favor—one that, after all, was probably harmless, probably, thought Jansen, would not even produce its intended effect. At worst, Wisnat would not get what he was seeking and things would return to the way they'd been. At best, this would be Wisnat's final conquest, the beginning of what Jansen had imagined since he was a boy of ten.

D
AYS OF AVOIDING
his housemate, immersing himself in dictionaries, copying passages from the
OED.
Nights of tending bar, monitoring Wisnat, making Megan her off–White Russians. He tracks the origin of words like
perfidy.
Grinds, between spoons, pill after pill.

Weeks of such activity bled together. Jansen watched each evening for the drug to take effect, saw nothing but a rash on the woman's cheeks. Though he had hoped for Wisnat's quick success, Jansen soon grew so troubled that he immediately wished the entire business done. At first, he feared the pills might be Rohypnol, known in the media as the date-rape drug. But Rohypnol, Jansen learned, had an immediate effect, and whatever he was giving this woman didn't seem to be working at all, unless the goal was merely to chap her face. Perhaps, he figured, Wisnat had purchased some kind of aphrodisiac, answered an ad in the back of
Rolling
Stone.
Having flirted with similar ideas himself, Jansen knew that, whatever their promises, these pills were worthless.

He had begun to grow accustomed to Megan. For the first time, the bartender could entertain the possibilities of having a woman as a friend. It was obvious that she had developed a minor crush—
perfectly innocent,
thought Jansen,
completely natural.
It was also clear to him that even if Wisnat had permitted, he could hardly have returned her feelings. While he enjoyed speaking with her—thought her amusing and sincere—sexually, his reactions were of indifference. And, as if sensitive to his response, the woman, it seemed to Jansen, began to withdraw.

She continued, regardless, to frequent the Gusher. For weeks, she was faithful as ever. But the insecurities Megan had confessed seemed gradually to deepen, her confidence to steadily deflate. The bartender supposed this was a function of his refusing to promote her advances, but then he knew differently. Megan had developed the look of one wrestling with something, her expression going from shock, to frustration, to distress. He had seen the same progression in Wisnat when the man began losing his hair.

It was not worth it, Jansen finally concluded; it simply wasn't right. He had poured the entire bottle of pills down the sink when she abruptly quit coming.

Jansen did not have time to question her disappearance, for immediately his attention was focused on Wisnat. From the time the pills began going into Megan's drinks, Wisnat's unease had been apparent. He sat, no longer passive, beneath the dartboard, bouncing his knees, drinking bourbon, staring expectantly at the woman, his eyebrows slanting more solemnly that ever. She'd seemed not to notice him, this man leaning forward in his chair as if toward a film whose climax had arrived. Jansen had looked at Wisnat, incapable of comprehending his strategy. Why didn't he try and talk to her? For what, wondered Jansen, was he waiting?

When Megan quit coming to the bar, Wisnat's anxiety seemed to double. Unable now to study the woman, he sat at the counter observing the door, checking his watch, asking the bartender once more about the odds of her coming in. Jansen claimed not to know. He was disgusted with Wisnat, disgusted with himself. He despised the situation thoroughly, the part he'd played in it. Most of all he hated that after the fiasco was at an end, his emotions compelled him to reassure a man who was by all accounts a criminal.

There were nights when Wisnat would sit and stare at the entrance, and nights when he would interrogate Jansen, and nights when both men would begin drinking and be forced to have a cab conduct them home. Nights of narrowly averted arguments
and migraine headaches and silences that would last for hours at a stretch. And finally there was the night (the beginning in Perser of Derrick Days, the town's annual celebration of its oil boom) when Jansen emerged from the storeroom into a packed house and saw that Megan had returned, that she was sitting, not in her usual spot, but as far from the counter as possible, by herself at a shadowed table; and walking toward her he saw for the first time that she was wearing makeup, and not just a light foundation or brush of rouge but a heavy covering agent intended to hide the most serious blemishes; and when he came closer, when the crowd parted and the light from the
MILLER GENUINE
sign illumined her face, Jansen saw, at long last, the effects of Wisnat's pills, saw on this woman's face, where the makeup was thickest, the shadow cast on her upper lip, not by her nose or the various objects depending from the walls (neon signs and lamps, the rack holding eleven damaged cues) but rather by a blond and slightly velveteen mustache.

T
HERE WAS BARELY
room to stand and the noise was deafening, customers lined for much of the night, around the counter, obscure gestures signaling their choices of drink. Derrick Days was a popular event, known among the residents of towns throughout central Oklahoma. For years the Gusher
had figured as one of its most prominent attractions. As soon as the first hint of summer dusk descended, people drove out in search of alcohol. They came in from firework shows, from the community center, from Parson's Field where the tractor pull was held. Their cars choked the parking lot, contending, in spectacle, with the revival not a mile down the road.

All that evening Jim Peters had been taunting the young man Jansen hired to help him on busier occasions, a red-haired college student by the name of Sparks. Peters took it as an affront that there should be someone of Sparks's age who had aspirations toward higher ed, and the drunker he became the more stabbing were his insults.

“What you need to go to college for anyway?” he was asking Sparks. “Cain't you already count?”

Wade, from a few stools over, ejected a snort. “Maybe he wants to be president.”

“Shit,” Peters told him, “he don't need college for that.”

Sparks continued wiping at the counter. “You guys are real comedians,” he said.

“Well, I'm glad you think so,” Peters responded. Reaching across the counter, he put an enormous hand into Sparks's hair, mussed it.

Sparks retreated, realigned, with his fingers, the part. “Quit it,” he warned.

Jansen, not wanting to deal with a brawl, asked
Sparks to help him pull several cases of vodka from the back. The two of them walked toward the storeroom, the bartender cautioning the young man about getting into a scuffle with the larger and more aggressive veteran.

Emerging, Jansen carried a box of liquor toward the counter and noticed Megan at her table. He'd started toward her across the bar—skirting tables, dodging clusters of drunks—reached a certain point, and then, stopping in midstep, registered with horror, the mustache, the results of the barber's enterprise. It flooded in on him, the entirety of Wisnat's plan. For several moments, he did not breathe.

Abruptly, a stranger at a nearby table gave a tug on Jansen's sleeve. “I think your buddy's in trouble,” said his voice. Glancing behind him, shaken from his thoughts, Jansen saw that a case of vodka lay broken on the floor. There was a large commotion and then a ring of men, two figures struggling in its center. Between a pair of upraised and riotous arms, Jansen watched Peters twirl Sparks and twist him into a half nelson.

“Come on,” the man was saying, veins articulating along the insides of his arms, “give us a hug.”

“Yeah,” said Wade, “give him a hug.”

The bartender rushed over, helped loosen Peters's grip, asked the man to let Sparks go. Peters went gradually slack and then released his captive altogether.
Jansen conducted him swiftly from the ring, cries of disappointment general in the room.

“Aw,” begged Peters, “don't take my little Sparkie away.”

Shaking his head, Jansen brought Sparks behind the counter, tried to calm him. The boy slung a towel spectacularly at the bar, cast Peters an indignant look. “Fat fuck,” he said, under his breath.

Jansen glanced quickly toward Megan's table, noticing that Wisnat—the man had been invisible up till then; the bartender was not even aware of his attendance—was standing there talking to her. Megan was nodding.

“What's that?” said Peters, interrupting Jansen's attempts to project his hearing. He rose, again, to his feet, swayed back and forth. “What'd you say?”

Sparks stood for a moment. Jansen tried to draw him back to the storeroom, but the boy maneuvered out of the bartender's grip. From the corner of his eye he saw Wisnat pull back a chair, sit down next to Megan.

Sparks leaned over the bar, brought his face against Peters's. “Fat fucking fuck,” he slowly enunciated, spraying spit across the veteran's glasses.

Peters threw back his head and began laughing, Jansen exhaling in relief. Then Peters grabbed Sparks, drug him over the counter, and tossed him in the floor, wedging both knees in the young man's chest.

“Get off me,” came the muffled voice of Sparks. “The fuck off me.”

Peters unbuckled his belt and began to lower his pants. “This fat man's going to shit right in your skinny, little face,” he said.

It took four men to lift Peters off Sparks. When they seated him in his stool he sat there pointing at the boy, laughing. “You're a lucky son of a bitch,” he informed the bar. “I judged the chili cook-off this afternoon.”

Laughter. The mock screams of women.

Jansen, untucking the front of his shirt to mop at his face, asked Wade to call a cab. It arrived almost instantly, Peters asleep the moment he was crammed inside. When Jansen walked back into the bar and began searching around, he saw that Megan was gone. The barber as well.

Locating Sparks, he asked where he went.

“Where
who
went?” The boy was standing behind the counter with an icepack on his forehead, a look in his eyes of rage and relief.

“Wisnat,” repeated Jansen, “where is he?”

“Left,” Sparks told him, motioning to the rear exit. He sat the icepack on the bar and miniature streams of water ran toward its edge. “Went out the back with some bimbo.”

I
T WAS AFTER
two when the last of them stumbled out, lights from a dozen cars fanning, at
various angles, the bar's rear wall. Walking to the center of the room, Jansen collapsed into a chair. All of the windows facing the highway were smeared with fingerprints, and there was a word greased on the outside pane that he could not make out. He sat for some time, attempting to decipher it, feeling, of a sudden, as if he were going to be ill.

Rising, he began to busy himself with cleaning the room. There were crushed beer nuts strewn across the floor and ashtrays brimming with half-smoked cigarettes, matchbooks laid out in ominous patterns, arranged by an anonymous seer. On one of the tables someone had constructed a miniature castle out of straws and Michelob bottles. The bartender left this fortress intact, picked up the larger items and washed the dishes, swept the floors and wiped the countertop. He went behind the bar, ejected the register's tray, tallied the currency into careful stacks, zipped all of it into a First National bag. Glancing into the mirror, he saw a pair of lights strobe the roadside windows, come glaring up, cut to darkness. He heard a car door slam, the front door open. Tossing the bank bag beneath the counter, he turned. Wisnat stood before him, his face bled of the hopelessness and anxiety that had been so long engraved there, his brows not even reverting to their familiar, dissatisfied slope. There was a new expression on the man's face, one, it almost seemed, of contentment. He walked to where Jansen had been sitting and pulled back a chair.