Eureka (9 page)

He suddenly remembered one of them.

It was silly and stupid, but it made him laugh out loud, something he had not done in a very long time.

It had been so long, in fact, that he couldn’t even remember the last time.

IT WAS NOT
a sudden, spontaneous decision to turn west. He essentially made it on Thursday afternoon, on the ride from the Cottonwood Valley Cemetery after Pete Wetmore was laid to rest. Otis was in the fourth car in the funeral motorcade to and from the cemetery, well behind and away from the mortuary limos with June and the rest of the Wetmore family and close friends.

June Wetmore’s anger had kept Otis far from her and everything having to do with the death of her husband. The eulogy at the funeral was given by a man who had grown up with Pete in Colorado. He spoke mostly of Pete as a kid, as a hardworking, smart, fun person who wanted to play in the Count Basie band.
Two of the eight pallbearers were from KCF&C but they were Jack Thayer, the chairman of the board, and Leonard LaCrosse, the vice president of actuarial affairs.

Otis, anonymously through Thayer, had made the suggestion that they might want to have a trumpet solo played at the funeral service. Otis sat with Sally in the back row of the church during the service. There was no trumpet solo, only the choir of the First Methodist Church singing regular funeral hymns.

Sally did her best to comfort Otis about June Wetmore’s reaction toward him. So did Bob Gidney. They had obviously talked about it. Both said it was an understandable lashing-out. Bob said suicide of a loved one, particularly a spouse, can be inexplicable, but it can also overwhelm the survivor with debilitating waves of guilt. Why didn’t I see it coming? Why didn’t I do more to prevent it? It was my fault, it was my fault. If only I had been a better wife—or husband or son or daughter or friend— he/she would be alive today. Having another villain to share the blame helps ease the guilt.

“You are that villain on two counts, probably,” said Bob. “First, for the way you treated Pete; second, for not reacting to Pete’s leaving that meeting and your building that day. It will pass with time—but it will take time.”

Otis doubted it would ever pass, that there would ever be enough time.

But he had also tried very hard to believe he was not the real villain, no matter what he did or didn’t do. Otis knew about the trumpet, about something that had happened to Pete Wetmore many years ago. Yes, yes—Otis wished like hell that he had not treated Pete Wetmore like shit and that he had figured it was important to keep Pete in the office that fateful day. But that didn’t make Otis Pete’s killer.

Those lips had killed him.

On the other hand, aren’t there one helluva lot of frustrated trumpet players and Johnny Mercers and opera singers and novelists and brain surgeons and pro quarterbacks and Bill Gateses who don’t kill themselves? Don’t they do other things to compensate, to make life work for them? Sally, for instance. She put aside her actress dreams to be a good wife and mother.

FRIDAY AFTERNOON, LATE
, Otis walked from his office two blocks over to his bank and withdrew five thousand dollars in cash from his savings account. Otis was on the board of the bank, and the president, Nick Merriam, asked no questions. Otis Halstead wanted some cash, Otis Halstead got some cash—two inch-and-a-half stacks of fifties and hundreds, each held snugly and neatly by a large tan rubber band. Both knew, without having to confirm or comment, that nobody would have to be told about Otis’s money, which he walked out with in a small black canvas valise he’d brought from his office.

Saturday morning, while Sally went out to run some errands, Otis placed that valise in the bottom of the spacious rear storage compartment of the Cushman. On top of the money, he stuck Jockey shorts and skivvy shirts, a pair of khaki pants, two long-sleeved shirts, a Windbreaker, gloves, a pair of heavy walking shoes, and a Dopp kit with a safety razor, toothbrush, and other basic toiletries. On top, he placed his box of BBs, maps of Kansas and the western states, and the toy fire engine.

His plan to leave on Sunday was all due to Sharon and the possibilities and his stupid thoughts and fantasies about her. He convinced himself that there was an outside chance—a one-in-a-million chance, for sure, but a chance nevertheless—that she might, on impulse, go with him. Why not delay things twenty-four hours and see for sure?

Otherwise, he would go through life wondering:
What if I had gone back to the creek and she was there and she had come with me on the scooter? I’ll never know if I don’t try.

He thought of it even in the what-if context of Pete and his trumpet.

He somehow knew that he would have to take off his Chiefs football helmet. She would see him as he really was, a bald old man with a mustache. It was absolutely stupid to think that a beautiful young woman would, just like that, pick up and leave with any man she had spent only twenty minutes with, much less an ugly old one.

But she
had
returned to Farnsworth Creek. And she
was
listening to the LBJ tapes, as he had suggested. Then she saw the real him, and that was that.

At least he came and did it. It was no surprise that she said no thanks to going west with him. She wasn’t crazy. But now, as his Cushman Pacemaker putt-putted along Meridian Avenue toward old U.S. Highway 56, he was at least free forever from having to think of one particular what-if in his fifty-nine years of life.

Soon to be sixty.

And he remembered another of his states ditties.

OTIS DIDN’T NEED
to be told by Russ Tonganoxie or anyone else to stay off the interstates if he ran away from home on his Cushman.

Once he was out of the Eureka city limits and immediate suburbs, it was perfect, exactly as he’d imagined it would be here on
old U.S. 56. There was only a handful of vehicles on the road, most of them old cars and pickups moving ever so slowly. The road itself was so underutilized and ignored that there were tufts of grass growing up between the cracks in places. The few people who passed or saw him as he putt-putted by smiled and waved. They apparently didn’t seem to think it was particularly odd to see, on this old road, a man in a Kansas City Chiefs helmet poking along on an ancient Cushman motor scooter with a BB gun strapped to its side.

The highway, paralleling some of what had been the original Santa Fe Trail, was once part of a major network of east-west highways that cars, trucks, and buses used to traverse the United States. After the coming of the interstate across central Kansas, 56 no longer bore an official number or designation of any kind, and only the counties and towns it passed through provided maintenance and acknowledgment of its existence. Rand McNally and other makers of Kansas maps had years ago downgraded it from a solid red line to a tiny blue line.

All at once Otis was struck by being alone out on this road. Completely alone. There was nobody riding in a car with him, sitting across a desk or office or room from him, sleeping in the same bed with him, walking down a street or through a shopping mall or hotel lobby with him. Alone. /
Otis Hahtead, am alone
, he thought.
There’s not even a voice from a radio or a television or a telephone. It’s just me and this motor scooter and this old highway and wherever and whoever and whatever lie ahead. Have I ever been this alone?

Then it started raining.

First just a few large drops came down, but the sky turned darker, and he could see that heavier rain was up ahead of him, right where he was going. Bad weather was not something Otis had considered very seriously. The scooter had a plastic windscreen,
but it was neither large nor strong enough to keep the wet off his face or clothes. The Windbreaker he had packed wouldn’t be any help at all. There was not even any point in getting it out.

The rain whipped right through the opening in the helmet into his eyes and nose and mouth. Soon water was splashing up on him from the roadway, too. He wondered how the little motor on the forty-year-old Cushman putt-putting along under him might do when it was wet.

He began to look for a place to pull over. But the road provided few of the standard places to find refuge in a downpour. There were no brightly lit Mobil or Texaco minimarts, no McDonald’s or Wendy’s or other fast-food restaurants, no sparkling new Comfort Inns or Days Inns along this roadside. The only eating places were those where slowness and grease still reigned, and there were no motels of any kind or quality, only decaying skeletons of those made up of a tiny office and a string of even smaller wooden cabins.

The other problem was that it was Sunday. Out on the interstate, everything was open all the time, but back down here on old U.S. 56, Sunday was still viewed as a day off.

Otis felt the scooter falter. And he heard the motor miss. The poor little old thing was drowning out. He shoved the handlebar throttle forward. He heard and felt sputtering from down below.

And then it went silent. The motor had stopped running. He turned the handlebars to the right and let the scooter coast as best as it could through puddles onto what appeared to be a large driveway. Somewhere at the end—twenty or so yards away—was a structure of some kind. He saw a light on. Was it a store? A house? Through the rain and the darkened sky, he could not tell for sure.

He dismounted and pushed the scooter on toward the light. The rain was still coming down, but there was no wind, so it was falling straight down. And it hadn’t picked up in intensity. A couple of blessings.

The building seemed to be some type of combo—part rundown white frame house on the left, part shop made of gray concrete blocks on the right.

Then Otis saw in hand-painted red lettering over a large garage door on the front of the shop:
CHURCH KEY CHARLIE BLUE’S FACTORY—NO CREDIT CARDS.

Otis, still pushing the scooter, continued toward the light. He knocked on the only door, which was barely above ground level, and waited.

Nothing happened. He thought he heard something inside— voices and shouting—a television set or a radio. Somebody was listening to or watching something in there.

Otis banged on the door again, this time much harder.

In a few seconds, the door swung open, and there stood one very large, very scary man.

“Who and what are you?” said the man after a quick, harsh glance at Otis, who was also almost blown away by the smell of beer coming from the man’s mouth. His words were spoken in what, to Otis’s Kansas ear, sounded like pure Oklahoma-Texas hillbilly.

He was a giant, a real-life giant, who clearly needed a shave, a haircut, and a bath. Otis figured him to be at least six-four and to weigh at least three hundred pounds. His hair was a barnyard blond, and it was long and uncombed and unclean. He was dressed only in a pair of filthy tent-sized work pants that, sometime in their life, may have been khaki-colored. His bare chest was huge and hairy and, like his arms and hands, smeared here and there with dark blotches that resembled
grease and dirt. Otis could only guess his age. Forty? Forty-five?

“My scooter’s motor drowned out,” said Otis. He began to shiver, and he honestly didn’t know if it was out of fear or being wet.

The man shook his head in disgust and said, “I’m closed—it’s Sunday, for chrissake. The Raiders are on against the Steelers.”

Otis, the rain still falling on him, stood to one side and shoved his Pacemaker in front of the door.

“That’s a goddamn old thing—my cousin had one,” said the man. “No wonder it quit on ya.”

Now what?
thought Otis.

Said the man, “Well, ‘least you got wheels. I got no wheels of no kind—no car, no truck, no bike, no roller skates, no red wagon, no nothing.”

With his huge right hand, he reached out, grabbed the scooter by the handlebars, and jerked it inside the house as if it were a flyweight running back. To Otis, he said, “Get your butt in here before you drown out, too.”

Otis, his mind racing with uncertainty and anxiety, got his butt in there and then stood with his motor scooter, both of them dripping water on the man’s floor.

But the guy didn’t seem to notice or mind. He said, “The Raiders are about to score—less than a minute to the half. Find yourself a place to squat.”

Otis looked around for such a place. It wasn’t going to be easy.

“And take off that goddamn Chiefs helmet!” the man yelled back at Otis. “I hate the goddamn Chiefs!”

Otis took off his helmet and cradled it under his right arm. He discovered that the top of his head was about all there was on him that was dry. So there was finally some good news: Official NFL Kansas City Chiefs helmets don’t leak.

As he walked around, Otis spotted another official NFL helmet. It was the familiar silver and blue of the Dallas Cowboys, and it was sitting on the floor against the far wall with what looked like a few small silver and gold trophies.

The house, if that was what it really was, was basically one square twenty-by-twenty room. There were a few open doors going off in various directions, presumably to closets or a bathroom, but what Otis saw was an unmade double bed in one corner; a couch and an easy chair in another corner, where the man was sitting in front of his television; a table and chairs, a refrigerator, a hot plate, and a sink in another. The fourth corner was filled with stacks of newspapers and magazines, framed photographs and posters. There were no rugs on the unpainted wood floor.

The place had a strange, out-of-place, unidentifiable, but nice smell—almost sweet.

“Throw it out of bounds!” the man yelled at the television. Around his feet were various sports sections of newspapers and at least a dozen empty beer bottles and cans.

The “less than a minute to the half was in football time. Including time-outs with commercials, it was almost three minutes before the man came back to Otis and his scooter, both still dripping inside the front door.”