Authors: David Zimmerman
Butthole Gibbs vanished.
The story of what happened got bent so far backwards that it broke in half. Mom claims she never told any real lies, but she sure as hell didn’t tell them the truth either. The truth was too messy. “Justice,” she told me over and over, “was done. Ain’t that enough?” Hayes got blamed for stealing the pills. The police found a copy of the hospital pharmacy key in his borrowed car. Mom let him take the blame. I still don’t know the whole truth about her part in the stolen batch of pills, but I have my theories. Hayes wasn’t smart enough to do much of it on his own—that I know to be true. The police told the story as a drug deal gone wrong. Hayes chose to meet the buyers at his ex-girlfriend’s (Mom insisted on this, and a reluctant me backed her up) house. Mom claimed no knowledge of his arranging a drug deal that night, which was true only in the barest sense.
Poor Mr. Cannon burned up too, although the coroner said he’d bled to death long before. One of those assholes had dragged him back into his house and left him there to die.
When Logan’s body was found, the police jumped to the conclusion he was part of the drug gang. He’d already gone AWOL and was known to be suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. They always spelled it with capital letters like that in the paper. I tried more than once to tell them different, but no one listened to me. Everyone thought I’d cracked up under the strain of what happened, and my mom helped spread this idea. She knew this business about Logan wasn’t true, but she kept her mouth shut. Whenever I tried to talk to
her about it, she’d say one of two things: “The dead are beyond caring about their reputations” (I expect this applied to Hayes as well) or, “Don’t kick a dead dog, Lynn, it might just be sleeping.”
The last I saw of Logan Loy was a cardboard box. His father came to recover the cremated remains. A nurse told me he was in the building. I watched his father leave the hospital with the box. He came up out of the basement, where the morgue is located, and walked it out to his car. It wasn’t much bigger than a medium-sized suitcase. The parking lot was right below my window on the second floor. A woman waited for him in the front seat. She looked far too young to be his wife. Logan’s father looked nothing like him—a bald man with a thick circle of padding around his waist, hunched-over shoulders, and a slow trudge of a walk. He put the box in the backseat, and then he did an odd thing. The man walked away. Slowly. He stopped behind three pine trees and covered his face with his hands. I guess he didn’t want the woman to see. I hoped that Logan Loy saw, wherever he was. His father cared enough to cover his face with his hands. I cried so hard I didn’t see him leave. Once I’d wiped my eyes, the car had gone.
Dani came and visited every day. She brought a question on her face each time, but I never answered it. She knew something wasn’t right. Logan, after all, had been partly her idea. But for once, she let it lie. At school, she told me, I was a celebrity. Dani brought back news releases from the hospital to my adoring fans. I remained famous for about a week after I returned to school. My stitches made me a high school superstar. Wayne Keegan signed my cast. But after that week was over, most people forgot. Or moved on. There was a big bonfire pep rally and we beat Statesboro High 7–0 in football. A very big deal in our town. This was the first team to do it in a decade. The news was enough to crowd out what had happened at our house that night. That’s the kind of town it was. But believe me, I wasn’t sorry to see it go. Dani kept a little
distance after I got out of the hospital. And even more after my celebrity ended.
The strangest news she brought was about the Angry Eyeball. Two nights after my house burned down, her father heard something outside and found poor, pimply Wynn hunched over by the window to Dani’s room with his pants around his ankles. Mr. Dunham dropped his shotgun, pulled off his belt and beat the living crap out of Wynn. His parents tried to sue Dani’s parents, but Dani brought out the e-mails and Wynn admitted everything. He said he’d tried his best to be her friend and all she gave him back was cruelty and spite. Dani smiled when she told me this. Wynn’s family settled it with the Dunhams out of court. Wynn wasn’t allowed to be within a hundred yards of Dani, which must of been hard, considering the fact they were neighbors, and the following week he transferred to Christian Day School in Garden City. Dani never told her parents the whole story about The Game, which was probably just as well. In the end, there were really only three people playing, and if it hadn’t of been for Wynn’s sloppy peeping skills, he would of won The Game hands down. He had Dani running scared. Dani stopped playing The Game while I was in the hospital, and the day I was discharged, she calmly informed me The Game was officially over. She wasn’t playing anymore. When I asked her if her quitting had to do with the Angry Eyeball e-mails and this whole sorry business with Wynn, she said, “No, it was getting old anyway.” And so the night my house burned down, The Game died too. Dani and me stayed friends, but only just. I stopped spending the night at her house. And then later, she teamed up with a new girl from Macon named Sally Fraser.
I didn’t have a house to come home to. Just a pile of ash. I can’t say I missed it all that much, but it was my home. The only thing I ever heard my mom complain about was the loss of her bottled
boat collection. While I was in the hospital, she moved in with Dr. Drose. So that’s where I went when they gave me my discharge papers and set me loose. It wasn’t so bad. I had my own room with my own TV and cable connection and my own bathroom. Dr. Drose never raised his voice. Or his hand. But I sometimes caught him giving me odd what-the-hell looks. That’s about as much as I could ask from any of my mom’s men. It lasted through Christmas and then we found a place in Savannah. Mom got a job at St. Joseph’s Hospital. I got a new school. None of this touched me. Nothing much would for a long time after.
One thing kept me up at night. Or I should say, one thing made me keep a steak knife beneath my pillow, gasp at shadows, and jerk awake at tiny sounds. Butthole Gibbs disappeared. No one made mention of him. Not the police, not the papers, not Travis or Burns. He just disappeared. I never once even saw his face after I dragged myself out of the house. He was just a voice whispering about magic beans. A shadow-puppet monster. And when I walked down the street or through the mall or across the azalea-choked Savannah squares, he was every tall man I saw. I stopped asking my mom all those other questions. Down in the dark-red, mushy part of my heart, I knew the answer to all but one. I made sure to ask my mom at least once a week.
“What,” I would ask her, “about Butthole?”
She never had a good enough answer to suit me.
Four and a half months had passed since Logan died. I thought maybe I’d put some of this terrible shit behind me. A new house, a new school, a new town. I began to think maybe, just maybe, a fresh start was possible. And then I went to the doctor. After the fire, Dr. Drose told me it was a perfectly natural response to serious trauma. I shouldn’t worry about it. My mom told me to enjoy it while it lasted. My new doctor, Dr. Patel, told me something different.
“You’re pregnant,” she said.
I
t was October and I was five years old. I woke up with this idea. It was like an egg I dreamed in my sleep. Perfect and whole and waiting for me when I opened my eyes. I would hide today. I knew a place my parents would never find me. I would go there and I would hide, and when they were having their breakfast, I would pop out and surprise them. There was a huge package of paper towels under the kitchen sink. It was exactly my size and very, very soft. The sky outside was the color of iced tea. Everyone was asleep. I crawled in and shut the door. It smelled like soap and chemicals. I don’t know what happened, but I must of fallen back asleep. When I woke up, I couldn’t hear anyone. I crawled out. No one was there. I went to my parents’ bedroom and no one was there either. This was my old house with an upstairs and a downstairs. No one was anywhere. The doors were locked and dead-bolted. I was stuck inside. Sometimes, as I waited, I thought they had gotten angry and left me forever, and sometimes I thought they had died. I lay down on my back on the polished wooden floor in the front hall and closed my eyes and waited to die myself. I wished out loud I would die. Over and over. I’ve asked my mom about it and she says it never happened, but I remember it clearly. I remember it as clearly as anything that has ever happened to me. And sometimes I feel that way still.
The initial inspiration for this novel was a tiny single-paragraph story in the Nation section of the
New York Times
I read sometime around 2001 and no longer have, so, first of all, thank you anonymous
New York Times
reporter. Because I fiddled and drafted and fiddled with this book over the course of a decade, there have been numerous readers and helpful advisors, so please forgive me in advance if I leave any of you out. My heart- and head-felt thanks goes to: Avi Neurohr, for that great, tough read; Nancy Dessomes; Matthew Miller; Dr. Joseph Thomas; Patty Pace; Carol Houke-Smith; David Starnes; Dennis Thompson; Imad Rahman; Tamara Guiardo; Jack Gantos; Bronwen Hruska; Juliette Grames; the inimitable Aileen Lujo; Justin Hargett; my beloved, brilliant, and extraordinarily patient editor Mark Doten; Steve Pett; Deb Marquart; Val Helmund; Dennis Thompson; the ever remarkable Scott Yarbrough; Charlie Kostelnick; Ben Percy, all of my other helpful and friendly colleagues at Iowa State University; my sisters Amy, Karen, Beth, and Lisa, and sisters-in-law Ann Marie and Gina Marie, from whom I stole girlishness shamelessly; my brother Patrick Zimmerman for his superb reading skills and continual encouragement; my large and boisterous family-at-large, from Amalfitanos to Zimmermans and all the marriage-made surnames in between; and of course, Tina, child whisperer, Confederate-in-arms, and delight of my life.