God's Pocket - Pete Dexter (39 page)

Watson, Nicklaus, Palmer. He picked up the phone,
watching the crowd and the golfers head back to the fifteenth hole to
begin a sudden-death playoff.

"T. D. Davis," he said. T. D. always
answered his own phone, he kept a listed number in the phone book.

It was Brookie Sutherland. "T. D., I just got
into the office," he said.

“
Fine."

"Yessir. Anyway, I got in and Shellburn's column
was in my mailbox, like when Billy Deebol's on vacation—you know,
Shellburn won't use the VDTs himself . . ."

“
I know."

"Well, I was going to keyboard the column, and
then I happened to notice what it was about, and I thought you'd want
to know."

T. D. Davis said, "Dead mummers . . ."

"Wel1, no," Brookie Sutherland said. "It's
about somebody getting killed in South Philadelphia, and then it
libels the paper. You want me to read part of it?"

The television station had gone to commercial while
Tommy Watson and the Japanese were headed back to the fifteenth. “The
paper can't libel the paper," T. D. said.

Brookie Sutherland began to read. "Someone gave
the New Journalists their VDT machines, someone brought them to
Philadelphia, someone gave them the space in this newspaper to write.
Someone armed them and turned them loose, and the victims pile up
quietly all over Philadelphia, and in the forgotten editions of this
newspaper.”

He read the part about the readers being guinea pigs
and not having enough balls to come down to the paper and choke
somebody, too. When he'd finished, the line was quiet. T. D. Davis
had the feeling that Sutherland missing text.

Back on television, the Japanese and Tom Watson had
arrived at the fifteenth tee. The hole was a dogleg left, and the
approach to the green was over a peanut-shaped pond the color of
paper money. Watson played first, since the Japanese had bogeyed the
last hole. He used a three wood and drove the ball 250 yards straight
out into the bend of the fairway.

"I guess you better," T. D. said.

While Brookie Sutherland read the column, the
Japanese hooked his drive into the trees on the left, punched out
with a seven iron, and then dropped his ball into the middle of the
peanut-shaped pond, trying to make up for the stroke he lost in the
trees. Watson had stood with his caddie in the middle of the fairway
and watched it happen. The thing T. D. liked about caddies was that
they knew they were caddies, and even if they thought they were as
good as Tom Watson, there was always that sixty-pound bag to haul
around to remind them what they were.

On the phone, Brookie Sutherland was at the part
about the guinea pigs again. On the television, the camera was back
in close on the Japanese golfer's face. He looked like—oh, like he
might have just lost the feeling in his legs. "Keith," one,
of the announcers said, "I think his face tells the whole
story."

T. D. Davis studied the look. Shock and loss, the
misunderstanding the Japanese golfer had had about where he lit into
things. Davis studied him until it almost could have been Richard
Shellburn.

Brookie Sutherland was finished. "What do you
want me to do?" he said.

T. D. didn't let his
feeling into his voice. "What you're supposed to do," he
said. "Keyboard it for Monday's paper." And then, before
Brookie Sutherland could thank him for his time or . offer to mow the
lawn or suck his dick, T. D. Davis hung up.

* * *

Monday morning T. D. came into the office at exactly
eight-thirty. He said good morning to Brookie Sutherland and Gertruda
and then went into his office and read the column for himself.

The papers hit the street forty-five minutes later,
and by eleven o'clock the city was screaming like the delivery trucks
were out running over pet dogs. People didn't like Richard, Shellburn
calling them dirty-faced and ignorant. There were about twenty calls
from the Pocket, maybe thirty others from places like it. T. D. could
hear the tone of their voices shade when they realized who they'd got
on the phone.

He told them all the same thing, that he didn't tell
Richard Shellburn what to write. A woman said, "Doesn't anybody
look it over before you go ahead and put it in?" and he'd said,
“Just for spelling. Richard Shellburn is the most-loved columnist
in this town, and we like to think it was his own judgment got him
there."

A man from God's Pocket said, “Well, if he wasn't
over here gettin' in Leon's mother's pants all the time, he might of
noticed everybody here ain't dirty."

T. D. had Gertruda keep track of the calls, and when
it hit thirty he had her try to call Shellburn. Gertruda said she'd
let the phone ring five minutes. "Then call Billy Deebol,"
he said.

"Have Billy run over
there and wake him up."

* * *

Billy knocked on the door just as the noon news
started.

Shellburn had been out of bed long enough to collect
his newspaper and find a cold beer in the refrigerator. He'd moved
the typewriter off the table for room to read the paper and had just
settled down to it when he heard the taps on the door. "Richard?
It's Billy .... "

Shellburn got up and slid the bolts in the door, and
Billy was standing there in his suit and a new haircut, apologizing
for knocking on his door. "You want to come in?" he said.

Billy shook his head. "I only got a minute,"
he said. "T. D. is trying to get ahold of you."

"I disconnected the phone," Shellburn said.

"I can tell T. D. you weren't here if you want
me to. They're pissing through the phones at the office. I think they
had thirty calls the first hour.”

Shellburn said, "Anybody come down there to
strangle T. D. yet?"

Billy shook his head. "I don't think they're
pissed at him. At least not from what he said. From what he said,
it's you." Shellburn stopped smiling. "That's what he told
me .... "

Shellburn closed his eyes and tried to see if that
could be true. "What for? I'm the one on their side."

"I thought you'd took the day off," Billy
said, "when there wasn't a column in my mailbox." Shellburn
could see he was holding back.

"We've been friends a long time," Shellburn
said.

Billy nodded. "All right. I can see how maybe
they might of taken it wrong today. I mean, they might of missed the
point."

Shellburn went back over to the table and picked up
the paper and began to read the column out loud. Billy stopped him
when he called them Dirty-faced. "That right there," he
said. "And the part about not understanding their religion ....
"

He dropped the paper on the table. "Nobody
understands their religion,". he said, "that was the
point." Then he remembered Billy had six kids, and saw that he
should have explained it. You couldn't do that later, after it was in
the paper. "How many calls?"

Billy shrugged. "Thirty or forty," he said.

“
And nobody's pissed at him?"

"Just for lettin' you write it."

Shellburn noticed that Billy was standing in the
doorway. "C'mon in," he said. “It's all right."

It was the first time Billy had ever been inside. He
sat down in the chair and looked at the table, not wanting to seem
nosy.

"You want a beer?"

"All right."

Shellburn got two beers out of the refrigerator, gave
one to Billy and then sat down on the mattress, holding one in each
hand. "You know what I was talking about, don't you?"

"Yes," he said.

Shellburn said, "It was about people. Good
people and bad people."

"Maybe you shouldn't of called them
Dirty-faced," Billy said. "That might of been where the
misunderstanding was."

"It's a compliment," Shellburn said. "They
work for a living, they get dirty."

"That's dirty hands," Billy said.
"Dirty-faced is you don't take a bath." Shellburn thought
that over. Billy sipped at his beer and looked at the table.

"You been over there yet?" Shellburn said.
"The Pocket?"

Billy shook his head. "I've been going over
Judge Kalquist's trial records," he said. "I thought maybe
I could get that finished this week."

"The patterns," Shellburn said, "that's
what we're looking for, the patterns."

"The patterns aren't clean-cut," Billy
said. "Not to nail his ass with .... "

Shellburn didn't seem to be listening. "It's
never clean, is it?" he said.

"The little stories are clean," Billy said.
"Dead-dog stories, the bums at Christmas . . ."

"No matter what you do," Shellburn said,
"you never get to the bottom. No matter how deep you go. How
long we been working on Kalquist, three weeks'?"

Billy nodded, not pointing out that he was the one
who'd been doing the work. "Three or four," he said.

"And after all that time, going through trial
transcripts and sentences, we don't have anything but patterns."

Billy Deebol was getting more uncomfortable by the
minute. "I'm not sure we got a clean pattern, Richard," he
said.

"Dead dogs," Shellburn said. "The
reason dead dogs are clean is because they can't tell you you're
wrong. Same way with the bums." Billy noticed Shellburn was a
minute or two behind the conversation, but sometimes he got like
that. "If you could talk to a dead dog, you think he'd tell you
he was devoted and cute and that's it? If you got down to it, what it
was like to be a dog, it might turn out that he deserved to get run
over." He shook his head. "There's nothing clean, Billy.
Nobody ever told the whole truth yet."

Billy sipped his beer. "You want me to tell T.
D. you weren't home?" he said.

K Shellburn nodded. "Yeah, I'll get to him later
this afternoon. And keep after Kalquist, will you, Billy? All we need
is the pattern."

Billy finished his beer and stood up. The room
smelled stale and old, and in a way he hated to leave Shellburn there
alone. In another way, it was what Shellburn wanted. "I'll tell
him you weren't home," he said.

“
You and I've been friends a long time,"
Shellburn said. Billy Deebol blushed. This time he'd said it for no
reason except to say it. "We got to keep looking for something
clean." Billy headed for the door.

"You still want me to go down to God's Pocket?"

"Maybe you better," Shellburn said. "Down
to the Hollywood and buy a couple of rounds."
He
stood up, unsure of his balance, and found his pants on the floor.
"Here, you need some, Z money?"

"No, I got money."

Shellburn dropped the pants back on the floor. "Yeah,
just do that, and I'll take care of everything," he said. "In
the end, it won't mean anything. In two weeks, it'll be forgotten.
You want a beer to take with you?"

Billy, Deebol took the beer and left. Shellburn
locked the door behind him, got another beer for himself and sat down
on the mattress near the phone and thought about looking for
something clean. He plugged in the phone and called her number, but
nobody answered. He let it ring fifteen times, then he disconnected
his phone again.

There was a six-pack left
in the refrigerator. When that was gone, he'd call T. D. and then get
back to thinking about something clean. "

* * *

It turned out there were two six-packs in the
refrigerator. Shellburn sat on the mattress and drank them. He'd been
drunk when he'd gone to bed and half—drunk when he woke up, and
somewhere around the fifth beer, he knew he was drunk again. He felt
cheated. There was no building up to it, no thinking, no irony, no
visions of people he had known. Suddenly, he was just drunk.

He put seven beers on top of that and then went back
to sleep. When he woke up again, Channel 6 Action News had just
plugged in for the evening report, anchorman Jim Garner was looking
at him in that fatherly way he had, draining the day of its stories.
Shellburn had been told that in the world of television, the people
who read news were called talent. He wasn't sure he believed that,
but he hoped it was true.

He remembered T. D. then, and that he had to see him.
He shaved and took a long, hot shower. He couldn't make up his mind.
One minute Jeanie was gone forever, the next minute he had her living
with him in Maryland. One minute he'd beat the New Journalists, the
next minute they'd beat him. He had Kalquist, and he didn't. He felt
like he was the only one left, he felt like he spoke for millions. He
did wish he had another beer, though. He was sure of that.

He put on a coat and a tie and after-shave lotion,
spent fifteen minutes finding the car, and then drove right to the
newspaper.

When Shellburn came in, Billy Deebol was in T. D.'s
office, sitting in a chair that T. D. had moved off the Oriental
carpet, holding a handkerchief full of ice against his mouth. There
was a splash of blood down the front of his shirt that crossed his
tie and ended at the end of his sleeve. The sleeve was ripped from
the cuff to the shoulder. T. D. was sipping a cup of tea.