Late in the Standoff Read online

  John Tasuda spread his arms. “We need your help, Mr. Shaughnessy. You see for yourself, we’ll force change if we have to. We can’t go on like this.”

  A man sneezed in the street. Shifting rifles. Shuffling feet.

  Harry rubbed the back of his neck. “About all I can do is push for the case to be taken to federal court, so you’re not dealing with locals. It’s likely the judges there would be more impartial, more mindful of public opinion, especially in a civil rights case. Your friend Chewie might have a better chance at a fair trial.”

  “But the local authorities have been adamant—,” Tasuda began.

  “I’ll handle the local authorities.”

  “I’m not sure if that’s—”

  “Look, all you want’s a fair trial for the man, right?” Harry asked.

  Tasuda nodded slowly.

  “Can you convince your people?” Harry said.

  “Maybe. They’re getting cold and tired …”

  “Well then, you’d better get them the hell off the streets. You said it yourself. They’re not helping your cause.”

  They talked a while longer, trading timetables and possible arrangements. I took deeper and deeper breaths, watching guns in the gray light, studying angles and lines and the subtle shadings of clothes. The images swirled together, turning all the men into bright, brittle ornaments.

  Harry offered Tasuda a Chesterfield. They held the cigarettes away from me, so the smoke wouldn’t blow in my face.

  Harry coughed. “Where’d your grandmother hear me? Do you know?”

  “I think it was after a Golden Gloves tournament once, somewhere in the city.”

  “I remember that. Sure. Long time ago.”

  “My older brothers, they both boxed.”

  “Any good?”

  “Naw. But they were too big and dumb to fall down, so they usually won their fights.”

  Harry laughed. “I could use men like that on the House floor.”

  “So you’ll see Chewie through?”

  Harry promised, “I’ll do what I can.”

  Years, it’s taken me years to see how a good sketch leads a viewer’s eye from one figure to the next so the picture appears seamless. I mean, I’ve always understood this, but occasionally I’ve failed to see it. Some lessons, I guess, we need to keep learning. Sometimes we lose what we know.

  In 1921, on the eve of the Carpentier-Dempsey fight, Harry, just a kid then, clipped a cartoon from the Daily Oklahoman by an artist named Winsor McCay (I found it in Harry’s papers after he died). This was long before the great Herblock. Its caption read, “The Kind of Fighting That Pays,” and it featured three First World War vets, one missing a leg, another blind, and a third without his arms.

  The hobbled fellow spreads a paper on his lap. He says, “Listen to this! The fight is limited to twelve rounds. It may last only one minute or less. Carpentier is to get $200,000 and Dempsey $300,000. No matter who wins, or how long the fight lasts, they get theirs!”

  The blind man responds, “WOW! What do we get for our fighting? Ha-ha-ha! Ho-ho-ho! And a couple of he-he-hes!”

  The third adds, “We got ours! Yes, we did! We got ours, ha-ha! Thanks to an appreciative public!”

  A pair of crutches guides the viewer’s eye down the first man’s body to his stump. The head of the blind vet’s cane points to the third friend’s empty sleeves. Simple, smart. A perfectly orchestrated drawing.

  I often think that a man who tells stories and makes sketches for a living must still be a kid at heart, an idealist insisting on symmetry and balance, even when they’re hard to find.

  That is to say, I wanted Harry’s life to be one straight line.

  So did John Tasuda, that day in Jay.

  So did Harry, maybe, as he tried to negotiate the complexities of our culture.

  “I could use a soda,” he told me when we’d returned to the Olds. “How ‘bout you? Back to Dairy Queen?”

  “Sure.”

  “Got your breath again?”

  “I think so.” For good measure, I took a couple hits off my inhaler.

  Harry had exchanged a few words with the governor’s aide, who still looked confused. John Tasuda was addressing his people. They didn’t seem happy. They stayed in the street with their guns, but didn’t try to stop us when we pulled away.

  We were alone now on Route 66. The road, lined with pumpjacks, had long been bypassed by the interstate.

  “That was good,” I said after a while, pinching off a bite of Zorah’s cookie.

  “Proud of the old man now? One last time?”

  “That was good,” I said again. A hawk-shadow blackened the fields.

  Harry reached for the radio. “—bless America, and our fine new president,” someone said. “And a very Merry Christmas to you all.”

  Oh boy.

  “We’ll grab some dinner at Adair’s?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then let’s go home.”

  “Yeah, let’s go home.”

  Out the window, I waved at the ghosts of the Joads.

  Cotton Flat Road

  1

  Bren and I were last-minute shopping at the Westgate Mall, looking for bath towels to give to our mother for Christmas, when a slender, professional-looking woman in a light blue pantsuit approached Bren, tugged her sleeve, and declared, “Land’s sakes, sugar! How long has it been? You’re looking good!”

  Bren and I are white, middle class, in our early forties now, children of a petroleum geologist and a stay-at-home mom. This woman was black and, beyond first appearances, not so professional-looking, after all. Three missing teeth, a drooping right eye, a touch of red dye in her hair.

  Bren blushed, a dappled rust color. “Hi,” she said.

  “What is it—four, five years? What you hear from Bobby?”

  “Nothing,” Bren said, backing away a little beneath a sequined BATH NEEDS sign.

  I hovered near a shower curtain display, ready to slip away or step up to meet the lady, however Bren wanted to play it.

  “He never was one to stay put. I tried to warn you, didn’t I?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, happy holidays, sugar. Good to see you.”

  “You, too.”

  The woman sway-hipped down the aisle.

  “An old acquaintance,” Bren told me. “I couldn’t remember her name, or I would have introduced you.” Her fingers shook.

  “Feeling a dip?” I asked. About five years ago she’d been diagnosed with diabetes and wasn’t, as far as I could tell, taking care of herself.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Let’s grab these towels and get out of here, okay?”

  “Sure. You’ll find me some armor back home?” Her three-year-old, Tommy, liked to wrestle. “He inherited your competitive streak,” Bren had warned me, last week, on the phone. Since I’d arrived he had already given me two shin bruises. My mother was always black and blue. She babysat Tommy every day while Bren’s husband, Chip, a financial adviser, called on his clients and Bren did—what? I gathered she stayed in bed much of the time, curtains drawn, suffering back pains, migraines, fatigue. Our trip to the mall—and meeting the woman—had done her in.

  The towels’ peach color summoned the red in my sister’s hair, which was mostly brown now. As a cashier rang up the sale, I was struck by Bren’s beauty. Until this minute, I’d only seen her exhaustion. With our shopping done, she looked relaxed—carefree, even, the way she had as a teenager.

  I drifted across the aisle into Home Entertainment—EVERYTHING 25% OFF! From beside a pre-viewed video rack—Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Empire Strikes Back, The Rocky Horror Picture Show—I watched Bren. Twenty-five years ago she had been a rabid Rocky Horror fan. She was one of those kids who frequented midnight screenings each week, who mouthed the actors’ lines in the theater. One Christmas I came home from college (she was a high school junior then), and she dragged me to a twelve o’clock show. In the projector’s dazzling blue strobe she
sang and danced in the aisle. She wore fishnet stockings and platform shoes.

  After the movie she offered me a joint and hinted that she could scare me up me some acid if I wanted it. I understood she was trying to impress me. I knew, too, that she wanted my approval, but I was the mature college boy, newly steeped in foreign films, and I dismissed the dope, the drag scene, the horror show. Bren’s antics plagued my parents—they disagreed on whether to ground her or wait until she outgrew what Dad called “her crazy hippie phase,” and they bickered all the time. I was pissed at her for making my homecomings tense. I told her Rocky Horror was the stupidest thing I’d ever seen. She cried, her mascara as runny as cheap green salsa.

  Many times over the years I’d wished I could take back my words, had told her how much it pleased me to watch her dancing with her friends. I’d wished I’d seen how much trouble she was in.

  Now, I thought of buying the video for her but she’d probably think I was mocking her. At Christmas I was always dropping back into town, judging her. I know that’s how she felt, and Mom didn’t help.

  Bren turned, clutching the sack with the towels. I’d replaced the video on the rack. She didn’t see it. Her skin was no longer flushed. She was as snowy as our mother’s bathroom carpet: a faintly faltering, well-to-do woman who knew her way around the mall. Did any touches remain of the lively, rebellious teenager? She had fought Mom all her life, but now she lived down the block from my folks, ate with them every evening while her husband worked late, counted on Mom for babysitting. Was that the rebellion now—staying in bed all day, leaving her kid with Grandma? Or had she given up the fight?

  In the parking lot, cars milled around the bottlenecked exits. Santa, wearing limp brown cowboy boots and chewing a plastic straw, rattled a tinny bell in front of JCPenney. He aggravated my headache. Not only was I jet-lagged and jangled by the crowds, I was no longer used to West Texas sunlight. Even in late afternoon it turned the sky into white-hot flame. I had lived in the Pacific Northwest for eighteen years now. The mild days there had made me soft. My temples pounded, and I squinted against the three o’clock dazzle. As Bren maneuvered around shoppers, I lowered my gaze to focus on the snapshot of Tommy she had taped to the dash. It had curled in the heat, next to the chipped Chevy logo. Tommy wore a Shell Oil cap and appeared to be asking a question.

  Bren braked hard, narrowly missing the pickup in front of us.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “A bit shaken.”

  To my right, a blue pantsuit pushed a shopping cart full of cat food. Bren noticed the woman, too. It wasn’t the lady who’d stopped us before, but Bren had gone pale. “Tell you what,” I said. “Why don’t we wait till this rush clears? You want to step into TGI Fridays?” I pointed to the mall’s north end. “Have a drink, relax a little. We’ve still got a couple of hours until dinner.” Mom was baking a turkey at home while looking after Tommy.

  Bren wheeled us, groaning with the effort, into a parking slot. We locked the bath stuff in the trunk. At Fridays, she ordered a margarita with plenty of salt and a big basket of fries. She caught me looking at her. “My blood sugar’s fine,” she said. “Don’t worry.”

  I ordered a salad and a glass of red wine.

  When the food came she ran a fry through a catsup pond on her plate. “It’s funny, this place. The night I decided to answer that personals ad—Chip’s, you know?—I was sitting right here.”

  “I never figured you as a ‘personals’ gal. I’m still amazed by that.”

  “Hey, it’s worked out.”

  “Yes yes, I’m happy for you both.” We toasted. She licked the salt from her glass.

  “So …” I let a few seconds pass. “How are things?”

  “What did Mom tell you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “She told you I wasn’t carrying my weight, didn’t she? I sleep all day. Right?”

  “Bren, I was only asking—”

  “It’s just that, ever since Tommy was born, I’ve had these awful back pains, and I’m so damn tired. No one takes me seriously, not even my doctor, because the oh-so-lovely thrill of motherhood is supposed to blow away my ‘minor’ complaints. Tell you the truth.” She gulped half her drink. “I’m not thrilled to be a mother. Tommy wasn’t exactly planned. You knew that, didn’t you?”

  “I’ve always wondered, given your age … and your health.” I watched her face. Could we go down this road? We ought to be able to speak frankly with each other, I thought. We’re adults. But for years my every shot at candor with Bren had veered into acrimony. In the past, I’d resented her for putting me in the position of chastising her, advising more caution, lecturing her to straighten out her life. My criticism had become habitual, and now she’d stopped confiding in me. Of her last five years I knew only the broad outlines: lost jobs, diabetes, the personals. I was buried, working fourteenhour days in a film lab in Portland, and surprisingly, she seemed to have found equilibrium with Chip, though he was not the type of guy I would have picked for her.

  She played with her fries. “I’m too old to be chasing a kid around the house, I’ll tell you that.”

  “He’s wonderful.”

  “Yes. He deserves a better mom.”

  “You’re fine with him, Bren.”

  “I swear, though, it takes everything—”

  “I think that’s the job. So what are you telling me, you’re not happy?” I tried a charmer’s smile.

  “Do I seem happy?”

  “You look run-down, to be honest.”

  “Yeah, well …”

  “That woman. In the store,” I said. “Who was she? Who’s Bobby?”

  She ordered a second margarita. “With more salt this time—shower that sucker.” She tapped her fingers on the table. Beatle-y muzak dribbled from a speaker above a potted fern. Someone had stuffed a chili-soaked napkin into the fern’s fat leaves.

  “Come on, Bren. Do you have a secret life, or what?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes?”

  “I did.” She flattened her palms on the table. “Though it wasn’t secret for long. Mom and Dad didn’t tell you this?”

  “What? The drugs and stuff?”

  “Oh, that was eons ago.” In the early eighties, she’d spent half a semester in Austin, then come home to Midland after dropping too much acid. Since then, the jobs: waitressing, temping, clerking for oil companies. What else? She seemed to have quit the hard stuff, though I guessed she still smoked now and then. She clung to Mom and Dad, dumping her laundry there, dropping in for meals.

  Me, I’d been saved by foreign films, or that’s what I told myself. College in the big city—Fort Worth, home of some of the country’s biggest stockyards (I never knew there were so many animals on the planet), skyscrapers, freeways. I got a glimpse of the world beyond Midland and never looked back.

  I lived off campus near a second-run theater that sponsored Kurosawa Weekends, Fellini Fests, Bergman Marathons. I got hooked—an even bigger world, beyond the Lone Star State—and sophomore year declared myself a cinema studies major. A classmate told me the Northwest was one the country’s most “progressive film regions.” As soon as I graduated, I headed for the Cascade Mountains and drifted into lab work, a boring but well-paid routine. I developed safety films for state highway commissions, medical documentaries, trailers for zoos (it turns out, animal life is pretty damn narrow, after all).

  Over the years, whenever I phoned home, Bren was usually at my parents’ house, even after she’d married.

  “Didn’t you ever wonder how Chip and I got together so quickly?” she asked me now. “Why I’d even look in the personals—you’re right, I’m not the type.”

  “I assumed, when your health crashed, you wanted—”

  “That was part of it, sure. But believe me, I was running from a whole lot of crap.”

  “I’m listening, Bren.”

  “Okay,” she said. “All right.”

  I ordered another glass of merlot and polis
hed off her fries. As she talked, I watched the restaurant crowd—families, mostly. Everyone seemed at ease. Straightforward. Simple.

  I wasn’t prepared for what she had to tell me. When she finished, I asked, hushed, “So. Are you saying you don’t love Chip? It was a rebound thing?”

  “I was on the rebound. But no. I do love him. I really do. I’m lucky he’s so patient with me.” I was relieved, but disappointed too. Chip was a far-right Republican, a gun nut, an abortion foe, a Bush family supporter—not the sort of guy Bren would have put up with a few years ago and not the type I could tolerate now, though he was sweet to her and appeared to be a good father. “And I love Tommy, too,” she said. “I’m just wiped out all the time. My back and the migraines really do knock me on my ass. I couldn’t manage without Mom, though I know what’s on her mind whenever I drop him off …”

  “Oh, she loves being Grandma.”

  “Sure. If I didn’t bring him over, she’d throw a fit. But now she gets the satisfaction of seeing him and thinking of me, ‘I knew you were going to screw things up. Didn’t I tell you? Why couldn’t you have been more like your brother?’”

  “Bren—”

  “Anyway. I miss my old life sometimes.”

  I didn’t know what to say. We settled the bill and walked back to the car. Bren pulled her blood sugar kit from her purse, pricked a finger with a needle, and tested the blood. “Little high. You’re probably right. I should have watched what I ordered. You know, there’s sugar in French fries. They put sugar in everything. It’s killing us.”

  The parking lot was a little less jammed than before. Bren squeezed into the traffic stream. “Have you seen W.’s childhood home?” she said. “It’s near where we used to live.”

  “Probably. I don’t remember it.”

  “Chip’s on the board for restoring it—they want to turn it into a presidential center or something, with papers and computers and things. A historic plaque. You want to see it?”

  “No, that’s okay.”

  “I’ll swing you by.”

  “Mom’s waiting.”

  “It’ll only take a minute.”

  Stalling so she won’t have to deal with her son. No no, I’m being too hard on her, I thought. We’re finally spending a pleasant day together, talking openly for the first time in years. I’m happy to prolong the afternoon and she is too.