Late in the Standoff Page 4

  Pat didn’t say much. “What’s Houston like?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Big. Dirty. Black water.”

  “Yeah.”

  We had until December. We used his crutches to poke beneath the rose bushes. Bacon was gone. I hadn’t seen him since the day the cops had come. That night he hadn’t shown up for his food; he couldn’t have gotten near the patio, anyway, through the debris of our fort.

  “Well, our battles may be over,” Pat said. “But we still have one important mission to complete.”

  I’d hoped he’d forgotten. The rhino was pointless now. Josh, we’d decided, wasn’t worth the fuss. That left Kiss-Kill.

  December loomed larger for Janey than for me. She clung to her friend; I never saw Michelle alone—a vexation and a relief. I could tell Pat I had no chance for attack. I didn’t have to worry about a second kiss. On the other hand, a second kiss … I squelched the thought. “Houston!” Janey whined. “Do you know what a hell it is?”

  The rest of the summer I spent reading football forecasts—and analyses of the presidential race, which I paid more attention to after Chicago (and because Eugene McCarthy’s face had remained kind throughout the troubled convention). The memory of Bucky had been swallowed by new events—by General Westmoreland and Buddy Reece, the Rebs’ new quarterback coach. Bronco Chevrolet ran ads praising the “New-Look Rebels.” The front pages contained war news, campaign updates, conjectures about Sheila.

  One day, with Pat’s taunts in my head—“I think you like her, and that’s why you won’t carry out your mission”—I filled a pink balloon from my mother’s garden hose. As I squatted by the roses I felt lonesome for Bacon. The balloon was soft and cool in my palm, as firm as I imagined the Bunnies’ breasts to be. Tears burned my eyes. A clanking above me. I looked up to see two workmen straddling the alley’s power poles. They wore helmets and belts with big metal tools. I wiped my eyes. “Hey! What are you doing?” I called. “Tightening up these connections,” one man said. His shirt hung limp with sweat. “Supposed to be a stormy autumn. We don’t want these wires falling on your house, now do we?” The rest of the afternoon I sat in my room, picturing that disaster. The room felt big, exposed. There was no place to hide. On my wall I’d tacked half of the moon map—all I could salvage from the fort. By the time men bounced through the Sea of Tranquillity, I’d be in Houston, hundreds of miles from Pat. From Michelle. Tears came again. The water balloon sat on my desk, eking drops onto the glossy smooth mahogany. I tied the knot tighter.

  I must have napped. Slamming car doors startled me. I walked to the window and saw the cops who’d wrecked Fort Trat escorting Mr. Wallace to a black-and-white cruiser. He was handcuffed. Sun bounced off his head as though it were a mirror. I ran to the front yard, where Mom and Dad stood on the lawn. Josh and his folks watched from their porch. Pat came bounding through the park, planting his crutches like stilts, step by steady step.

  The following day we learned from the Reporter-Telegram that Sheila’s body had been found in a crawl space in Mr. Wallace’s attic. The neighbors on his south side had noticed a funny smell. An investigation had revealed Mr. Wallace’s dark history, all the more shocking because of his years of exemplary service on the Midland police force and his church activities. It wasn’t clear how—or even if—he knew the girl beforehand. An early lead, kept from the press, had been the girl’s socks, buried beneath a holly bush in Mogford Park.

  “I’m going to miss Michelle, but I’m glad we’re moving now,” Janey said at breakfast, over the paper. I’d never seen her so pale. “It creeps me out, living here after this.”

  “Mom, what’s a ‘sexual predator’?” I asked, peering over Janey’s shoulder.

  “You ought to know,” Janey snapped. “Your grody old pinups …”

  I slapped her arm. “That’s enough,” Mom said. She’d not said a word to me about the magazines.

  We weren’t allowed to play outside. “No fair!” I shouted. “They got the guy!”

  “I don’t care,” Mom said. “When I think that, all this time, he was right next door … I don’t want you out of my sight.”

  First Pat, now Janey. Her remark had sealed it. If whatever I felt for Michelle—mixed up with Miss December—tied me even remotely to Mr. Wallace, I had to end it. Now.

  I lay on my bed, chewing my lip. When the girls passed through the hall I picked the balloon off my desk and hurled it as hard as I could. Janey screamed. Water splattered the carpet, the light fixture, the framed print next to the closet where Mom hid the presents Santa brought when we were little.

  Michelle trembled, her hands at her sides. Her training bra showed through her thin wet blouse. She looked at me, gasping. A current zizzled my skin. It came to a head behind my eyes, a swift, painful flash, as though I’d eaten a scoop of ice cream too fast.

  Janey’s screams brought Mom running. “Troy! What on earth’s gotten into you? Answer me!”

  I sat by the desk, avoiding Michelle’s eyes.

  “Get some towels and clean this mess right now. You’re confined to your room the rest of the day. Now apologize to Michelle and your sister. You hear me? Troy?”

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled.

  If Michelle had yelled or sneered it would have been okay. But she only stared at me, wide-eyed, hurt, shivering in her little slip of a bra. I knew, right then, I’d dream of her in Houston, and that made Houston a lousier prospect than ever.

  The towels were the same ones we’d lined the fort with. I ran them over the walls. From now on, I’d link their stiff, rough texture to our patio. Their dusty-detergent smell was the smell of Bucky, Pat, summer slipping into fall.

  In my room I moved my finger over my desktop, tracing invisible Snoopys. I looked out the window toward Mr. Wallace’s house. I imagined that Bacon had made his way to the attic and was hiding there, safe, though I knew this was impossible. I thought of Sheila as a doll, tucked away in our closet, a keepsake to give as a gift someday.

  The radio said fifteen American soldiers had died near Cu Chi. The Rebs’ coach claimed his boys were ready to give 110 percent this year. I turned to the torn moon, the lines of latitude and longitude. In the next room, above the clattering of the air conditioner, Janey’s voice sounded in laughter with Michelle’s—soaring, brief, and though rendered at my expense, more reassuring than anything I would encounter for many seasons to come.

  The Standoff

  On a swirling cold, late December morning in 1968, my grandfather Harry and I split light fog in a big, blue Oldsmobile Cutlass, twisting along Route 66 and various side roads, among small farms, bare-twigged meadows, and Civil War battlefields in the woods of eastern Oklahoma. Since the day before, we hadn’t spoken to each other except to get our plans straight.

  The governor had sent him to a little town called Jay, well out of his congressional district, to settle some nasty business. Before our disagreement I’d asked if I could come along. It was too late to back out now.

  The sky looked snowy but nothing fell. The gray light dulled the hills’ red soil. I stared, glumly, at the peeling Burma Shave signs by the side of the road. Harry switched on the radio. Static, quick as gunfire. Paul Harvey said John Steinbeck had died. We were quiet for several miles. Finally Harry, trying to be friendly again, asked, “Did you ever read The Grapes of Wrath?”

  “They made us read it last year, in eighth-grade English.” A wheeze scratched the back of my throat.

  “A lot of Sooners didn’t like the book when it first came out,” Harry said. “Thought it showed poor Okies in a bad light. Longing for the Pastures of Plenty and all. But I always felt it was a mighty fine novel. He knew the way it was.”

  “My teacher said he’s a traitor,” I said quietly: a humble little smart-ass.

  Harry frowned. “How’s that?”

  “Early on, he was on the workers’ side, right? Anti-capitalist, anti-war. Then he got rich. He supported all the killing.”

  “I see. We’re ba
ck to Vietnam, are we?”

  I didn’t answer.

  He lifted some weight off the gas pedal. “A wise fellow, a former governor, told me once, it takes a mature man to see the complexities of our culture, Pancho. To change his mind when he has to. I think Mr. Steinbeck must have been a very mature man.”

  Paul Harvey finished his newscast. Harry and I stared at the road. The Beatles came on. Their music no longer seemed upbeat or innocent to me the way it once had, and I didn’t enjoy it much anymore. The Fab Four looked old now. They’d grown mustaches and beards and, posing for the camera, didn’t smile as much as they used to. John Lennon had said they were bigger than Jesus, and a radio station in my hometown had sponsored a “Beatles Record Burning.” One of the DJs showed up in a KKK outfit and waved a wooden cross. I didn’t destroy my “gear” 45s, but I didn’t play them, either. Instead, I watched the TV news. Mayhem in Chicago. War wounds. Oh boy. The world seemed a punctured balloon, with all the joy leaking out.

  “… nah-nah-nah …”

  I reached over and turned the music off.

  We stopped at a Dairy Queen just off the highway and ate onion rings. Dead rose bushes twitched in the breeze, tapping the mustard-streaked window by our booth.

  “So you’re disappointed in me, is that it?” Harry said, wiping his fingers with a napkin.

  I didn’t know what to tell him. His anger, yesterday, was new to me. “I guess I don’t understand you. All the stories you’ve told me

  … your resistance over the years …” I faltered.

  “Like what?” he asked.

  “Like opposing the draft,” I said.

  “But I registered, didn’t I? Right after the Lusitania. You need to listen harder, Pancho. I followed the law. Everything I did—everything I’ve ever done—has been legal and proper. That’s the point of my stories.” He sipped his coffee. “You remind me of my dad, the Last of the Okie Reds. He wanted revolution and he wanted it now. Well, that’s not the way things work in this country, believe me. I’m mature enough to know that now. It’s not realistic.”

  “All right,” I said. “But you don’t really support this war, do you?”

  He lit a Chesterfield and coughed. Behind him, a woman in orange stretch pants ordered fries for her two fat kids. “I’m a Democrat,” he said softly. “Lyndon Johnson was a Democrat. It would be unseemly of me, as a representative of the people, to criticize my president.”

  “But now that Tricky Dick’s in charge—”

  He picked up a cracked plastic spoon and batted away my remarks. “You’ve got to be realistic.” He looked to me vastly tired, a man who’d suffered for years, bearing lost causes all his life. A spent fighter who’d found it easier just to give in.

  The woman herded her kids out the door. “Because I say so!” she snapped. The people have spoken! “Now get in the car!”

  If I was a young ideologue, it was Harry’s own damn fault. As a child, I was as familiar with the Oklahoma House of Representatives as I was with swimming pools and merry-go-rounds. Along with Mother Goose I’d been spoon-fed Mother Jones. Before I could read I was spelling out “Come Hear Harry Shaughnessy, The Boy Orator,” copying into my coloring books fat letters from Harry’s old campaign posters. My first real drawings were sketches of his face, from pictures on old socialist fliers he’d shown me, brittle, yellowed, crumbling in my hands.

  When the Socialist Party died in Oklahoma, in the patriotic fervor of the First World War, he’d become a liberal Democrat (against his father’s still-militant wishes), running for local offices in Cotton County, just north of the Red River in the southwest part of the state. Finally, in the late fifties, he’d been elected to the House.

  Whenever the legislature was in session, he stayed in the Huckins Hotel in downtown OK City. Sometimes my family drove up from Texas to see him. I’d sit in his room with a stack of hotel stationery, copying the latest Herblock cartoons. Harry saved them for me from the Daily Oklahoman. Herblock’s Nixon had caterpillar eyebrows and a slim, spiked schnoz. Pure Evil. I was delighted.

  Or from one of Harry’s books I’d trace Bill Mauldin’s weary GIs, Willie and Joe; or Pogo (“We have met the enemy and he is us”). From the time I could form a reasonably straight line, I wanted to be a cartoonist.

  For hours I entertained myself sketching. In ’62—’63, when I was seven, Harry brought me often to the House chamber. He knew I was fascinated by the surroundings, that I thrilled to his speeches. Normally, visitors weren’t allowed on the floor, especially during a vote, but I was just a kid, easy to overlook. It pleased Harry to have his little namesake there. I scribbled it all down.

  One afternoon, I sat in the heat, in Harry’s leather chair, watching the edges of my drawing paper curl. Harry stood in the aisle jawing with a couple of other reps. They all wore light gray suits and—at least in my memory—ties the bright morning-blue of the Oklahoma flag. In the air, a faint smell of sweat and aftershave.

  The chamber was a rectangle with a green carpet and cream-colored walls. Black, high-backed chairs bumped small wooden desks topped with silver mikes. Up front, a tote board, tallying votes, flashed green and red lights behind the House Speaker’s helm. From the walls, electric globes cast peach-colored circles across the room’s bottom half; the top, an open gallery for newspaper reporters, swam in a cool fluorescent bath.

  Young aides in freshly pressed shirts rushed here and there ferrying telephones with long, twisted cords. They’d connect the phones to a desk; a legislator would holler instructions into the receiver, then the aides would collect the cords and sprint to another desk.

  Harry leaned near me as I sketched all this. He jotted several names on a piece of notepaper and handed it to one of his partners. “We might have some influence with these knuckleheads,” he said. “I’ve already run our road bill by them, but it wouldn’t hurt if you paid them one more visit before the vote.” The man nodded. “No deals,” Harry warned him. “We’re not in the horse-trading business. Not on this one. Either we have their support or we don’t.”

  In the warm chamber light his gray hair looked silky. He sat by me. With a nicotined finger he tapped my drawing pad. “That’s very good,” he said. “Did you just do that?”

  “Yessir. What’s a horse-trading business?”

  “You know that road north of Walters, that muddy mess out by Harlan Egbert’s farm?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’m trying to get the state to pave it. That way, whenever I take you swimming out there, the car won’t get stuck. Won’t that be nice?”

  Years later, searching through his papers, I learned that Standard Oil Company, which he’d cursed in rallies as a young socialist, had lobbied him to sponsor a road bill so it could get easier access to the natural gas deposits in Egbert’s fields.

  Harry stood, shaking hands with men who passed in the aisle, waving at others across the room, mouthing, “Fight for me!”

  Finally, the Speaker called the vote. Someone proposed an amendment to the bill. “Son of a bitch,” Harry muttered. “They’ll drain its juice.”

  Even today, I can’t say for sure what happened next, but I know Harry crushed the motion without uttering a word. People turned to him. He danced like a featherweight. Winks, hand-gibes, nods. Later, when the tote board flashed and clattered and came up mostly green, I understood that Harry had finessed his way to victory.

  “I want to know who managed that bill!” A rangy man with thick black eyebrows approached him. “I hear Harry Shaughnessy managed that bill.” He bent to me. “Are you Harry Shaughnessy?” he asked.

  “Yessir,” I said. For I was.

  “Well Harry, you’re one fine floor manager.”

  “Thank you.”

  “A pretty good artist, too, I see.”

  Harry told me, “Harry, say hello to Governor Edmonson.” I could tell he felt pleased with himself, and I was pleased for him. He was an important man: the governor had sought him out. As his namesake, as a p
rivileged visitor to the people’s chamber, I thought, I must be important too.

  Now, six years later, a new governor, Dewey Bartlett, had called on him to resolve an “Indian problem.” Recently an article had appeared in Time magazine saying that Oklahoma’s blacks had no political clout and that the state’s Indians were disorganized and ignored. Since then, Governor Bartlett had moved quickly, whenever he could, to erase the racist image Time had painted of him. Though Bartlett was a Republican, Harry defended his efforts to assist minority employment. “He’s established the Full Employment Commission, whose primary purpose is to loan money to Mexicans, blacks, and Indians for job training,” Harry said in speeches statewide. “He’s created the Oklahoma Indian Affairs Commission, and he’s appointed the state’s first black judge. What more can he do?”

  The only thing I knew about Bartlett was that his campaign slogans were “Bring Back Our Okies!” and “Help an Okie!” and that his supporters all wore Okie pins on their shirts. He wanted to change the Okie image, from that of a poor dirt farmer like Tom Joad to that of a small industrialist, like a rubber tire manufacturer or a clothing supplier. He was probably glad Steinbeck had died.

  After leaving the Dairy Queen, Harry and I passed through post oak and the twisted spikes of Arkansas yucca, heading north through Henryetta, Okmulgee, and Taft, a predominantly black town, on our way to Jay. There, a dispute had flared between local officials and a loose band of Cherokees, Kiowas, and Creeks, who were upset about the arrest and prosecution of a young Cherokee for hunting deer out of season. The young man had argued that the land belonged to his people. State laws didn’t apply to him; he followed the will of his tribe. The debate, Harry explained to me, had escalated into shouting matches on the streets and in the courts.