After Visiting Friends (18 page)

Assistant Editor . . . . . . . . . . Doris Stevens

News Editor . . . . . . . . . . Donna Carter

Sports Editor . . . . . . . . . . Bob Jones

Features . . . . . . . . . . Nancy Hubert

Reporters . . . . . . . . . . Alta Shepherd, Enid Miller, Marla Sutton, Lillian Brehm

The front-page headlines:

JUNIORS HONOR SENIORS

A piece by Bob Hainey about the spring dances: “The gaily bedecked North Ward auditorium
was the scene of the banquet which featured an enchanting ‘Stardust’ theme. The equally
thrilling spring prom was regally garbed in a ‘Showboat’ surrounding. And Skippy Anderson’s
orchestra provided a melodious show of its own.”

EIGHTEEN MHS STUDENTS FARE WELL AT FINE ARTS

A report on a music and speech competition at the University of Nebraska.

BISON SALUTES JR. BISON

A brief, unbylined thank-you to the incoming staff.

TYSON SUFFERS HEART ATTACK AT CAMBRIDGE HOME

News of Mr. Noel Tyson, biology and American government teacher. He hopes to come
back to give out report cards and to attend the senior convocation.

HAINEY WINS SCHOLARSHIP

Also unbylined. “Bob Hainey, MHS senior, is the recipient of a $450 scholarship to
the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill., according
to an announcement made last week by Carl Kuehnert, scholarship secretary at Northwestern.

“Hainey attended the annual high school institute held on Northwestern’s campus last
summer. He was judged the best feature writer at the session and was awarded a scholarship
at the time. This award was based upon scholarship, citizenship and participation
in extra-curricular activities. Hainey will use the grant to study radio news writing
and reporting.”

The rest of the front page carries column fillers—aphorisms as well as what passes
for wit in 1950s Nebraska:

Q: Do you know the difference between a sewing machine and a kiss?

A: One sews seams nice and one seems so nice.

I turn the page.

PROGRAM OF THE SIXTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL

COMMENCEMENT

OF

THE McCOOK

SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL

TUESDAY, MAY 20, 1952

MCCOOK CITY AUDITORIUM

8:00 P.M.

There is an announcement of the speaker: Richard W. Hainey riding in on the Burlington
Zephyr from his job at the
Chicago Tribune
.

Other features include the
SENIOR WILLS
, news about the next year’s group of cheerleaders (the Red Peppers), as well as about
the new class officers. There also are the results of the
POPULARITY CONTEST
, including:
BEST DANCER
(Bob Hainey);
MOST STUDIOUS
(Bob Hainey);
MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED
(Bob Hainey);
MOST
POLITE
(Bob Hainey);
BEST DRESSER
(Bob Hainey).

The last story is headlined
SENIOR CLASS PROPHECY
:

The morning sunlight seemed more golden than usual that day in 1975 when I stepped
from the Burlington Zephyr onto the station platform. Here I was, Bob Hainey, foreign
correspondent for the New York TIMES. The only thing foreign about my job was my attitude
toward work. Finally, in an effort to get rid of me, my editor assigned me to cover
the commencement address at my old alma mater, MHS.

My father works in the name of every one of his classmates, seeing them in careers
from janitor at the local train station (Merit Bell) to secretary of agriculture (Stew
Karrer). He ends with:

After a few hours in the old haunts, I decided that even though I was wrong on many
counts when I wrote the class prophecy years ago, I still found that everyone was
happy and a big success in his own right. I realized that the belief that I had cherished
years before had come true. Nothing but the best had been accomplished by the grads
of ’52.

I close the paper. It happily returns to its fold, its creases. The muscle memory
of old newsprint.

From the other side of the cinder block, I hear my nephew.

“Dad?”

“Yes.”

“Are you asleep?”

“Yes.”

I put
The Bison
on my nightstand.

Lights out.

SECOND-STORY WORK

Icarus.

Sons. Sons are roped to fathers. Fathers? Well . . . Are we sure they’re tied to sons?
Sons need fathers. Fathers?

Sons take years from fathers.

Honest fathers know this. Picture an hourglass. Two globes. One filled, the other
empty. Now, in your mind, turn it over. The top of the globe, the father. The grains
of sand, his years. The bottom of the globe? That’s the son. See the years slipping
away from the father. Filling up the son? Fathers flow into sons.

Think of Icarus.

A father and son exist on an island. At some point, the father longs to escape. The
son? He doesn’t want to be left behind. Abandoned. And fathers? They always have plans.
But sons should remember that the plans of their fathers often have holes. A father
is no shield for a son.

#  #  #

After McCook, I decide I need to start at the beginning of the end: that night. And
I need to start with the paper trail—his autopsy report. I call the Office of the
Medical Examiner of Cook County to request a copy of my father’s file. A woman named
Miss Crenshaw tells me she’ll look into it and I should call back in a few days.

But Miss Crenshaw never again answers her phone. One day, she leaves me a message
asking where to send my documents. I call back. A man answers and I give him my address.
But days go by and no envelope. I call over and over. Nothing. No answer. Six or seven
weeks go by. Finally, Miss Crenshaw answers. The thing is, she could not sound sweeter.
Her voice has a touch of the South. She giggles. She says she doesn’t have the records
yet and she’s sorry she hadn’t called but “my supervisor don’t let us do no long distance
and he don’t let us answer the phone. So, it’s hard to get hold of me.”

Yes, Miss Crenshaw, it is.

But here I am with her on the phone, and I say, “Miss Crenshaw, I’m going to be in
Chicago next Wednesday. Can we make a date to pull the records?”

“Well, okay,” she says. “Why don’t you come around nine, child, ’kay?”

#

The Chicago medical examiner’s office is a hulk of concrete on the Near West Side.
In the ’60s, this neighborhood was a swath of arson-ravaged slums. Redevelopment was
supposed to come through the morgue. In the morgue, people saw new life. To this day,
most Chicagoans still swear, “Long as I’m living, I won’t set foot in that part of
town.” Once they are dead, the city sees that they do. The building’s
official name is the Robert J. Stein Institute of Forensic Medicine. Stein was Chicago’s
first medical examiner. First time I learned about M.E.’s was thanks to Jack Klugman:
Quincy M.E
. Friday nights on NBC. I was twelve. Loved that opener: Quincy standing before a
shrouded corpse. A row of LAPD recruits at attention behind him. “Gentlemen,” Quincy
says, “you are about to enter the most fascinating sphere of police work. The world
of forensic medicine.” And like an illusionist snapping his cape back to reveal a
sawed-in-half assistant, Quincy drops the shroud. One cadet retches. Another, his
knees knock out from under him and he sinks out of the frame.
Quincy
—death as an identity. A calling.

“We interrupt Quincy to bring you a special, live report from News5.”

Christmas break, 1978. I’m a freshman in high school. Night after night, Robert Stein
emerges from 8213 West Summerdale Avenue—a postwar bungalow only a few blocks from
our house. Night after night, all of Chicago waits for this man. In the street in
front of the house, reporters and cops smoke and stomp the cold out of their shoes.
Police cars and paddy wagons, their blue Mars lights forever circling, clog the narrow
street.

For more than a month, it’s like this. The small man emerging to tell Chicago what
he’d seen that day beneath John Wayne Gacy’s house. He has a thin mustache and glasses
with thick lenses, and when he talks, his breath turns to frost in the night’s bitter
cold. That’s what the weathermen always say in Chicago. Bitter cold. All through Christmas
break and beyond—one dead boy after another. Thirty-three in all. Every day, a new
boy’s photograph in the newspaper. The boys, my age. I see myself in them. Boys looking
for more. Looking to escape. To join the world of men. So a guy offers you a job.
It’s construction. A chance to work with your hands. He says he needs some work done
at his house. He shows you the crawl space, his flashlight shining into the black
notch. See? he says as you kick your leg over the concrete wall and scuttle in, bumping
your head on the rough underside of the kitchen floorboards.

“There,” the man says. “See? No, farther. I’m too big to fit in there, but you’re
perfect. Your old man must be proud to have you around the house. The hole you’re
digging’s really gonna help me. Yeah, it’s drainage. I got problems. Things keep backing
up. Hey, take your shirt off if you’re getting hot. I can wash it. Your jeans, too.
Your mom’d probably kill you if you came home like this. You know, while we’re waiting
for ’em to dry, how ’bout a beer? That’s what men do after working together. You’re
a man, ain’t ya? Drink up. What? These? Handcuffs. See that? Mmmph. Don’t struggle.
Jesus, now you did it. I told you not to struggle.”

They always wait until night to bring the bodies out. All that long winter, dead boys
in black bags borne from the basement. Cops ferry them down the driveway, eyes scanning
for black ice. Klieg lights from TV cameras cast the men into spidery shadows on the
front yard’s crushed-down snow. And when the police get to the paddy wagon, they raise
their loads high overhead, offering them up to the men in the truck. The loads, unsteady.
Shapeless. Like men passing up duffel bags stuffed with dirty laundry.

From my basement, I watch it all. Night after night. My brother and I, wrapped in
our grandmother’s afghan. And I think, I know these boys.

#

Now here I am. Sitting in the waiting room of the Robert J. Stein Institute of Forensic
Medicine. A legacy—a building—built on bodies. His portrait looks down at me.

Out the window, two men in thin black trench coats huddle at the driver’s door of
a silver hearse. A cop stands behind them, looking over their shoulders. The two men
in black have unbent a coat hanger and are taking turns sticking it in the gap between
the door frame and the window. Exhaust seeps from the hearse’s rusty tailpipe.

Two men enter the lobby. One is about my age. The other is maybe in his sixties. They
walk up to the receptionist. She sits
behind Plexiglas, has a small hole cut in it. The younger man presses a piece of paper
to the Plexiglas. The woman in the box tells him to wait near the metal door. They
sit next to me. A few minutes later a woman emerges carrying a clipboard and a large
manila envelope, the size they put X-rays in. The woman tells the man to hold out
his hands, and when he does, she turns the envelope upside down. Into the man’s palms
fall a small stud earring, a driver’s license, some money, and a key.

The envelope lady says, “Are these your son’s personal effects?”

“A Honda key,” the older man says, and he looks at the younger man.

The younger man keeps looking at his palms, at the objects. “Yes, ma’am,” he says,
“they are.”

“Sir, I’m going to need you to fill out this form verifying these are the effects
of your son. When you’re finished, let that woman know.”

She points to the lady behind the Plexiglas, the woman with the hole, and hands him
the clipboard. There’s a long rubber band attached to that silver clip piece, and
a pen hangs off it, like a stick man caught in a jungle vine trap, dangling from a
tree. There are small boxes on the form for each letter of the dead person’s name.
The father of the dead boy starts to write his son’s name. He gets three boxes in,
then stops. His hand is shaking. He looks to the older man beside him, and says, “Dad,
can you do this for me?”

#

I walk to the woman behind the Plexiglas. Next to her box, a sign taped to the wall:
CLEAN HANDS SAVE LIVES.

Before I can say anything, she asks, “Are you on TV?”

“A few times. For work.”

“What kind of work?”

“I work at
GQ
.”

“I knew I seen you. Look at you! All full of life. You should be
a preacher of something, telling people how to pull it all together. Lord, why you
in this place?”

I tell her I’m here for Miss Crenshaw, and she says, “Okay, but
why
you here?”

And I don’t know why—maybe it’s because she’s a stranger, maybe because it might well
be a Plexiglas confessional—but I tell her the whole story. And I tell her how I’m
scared of what I may find, because I fear hurting my mother and brother. I fear losing
their love.