“Why should I be happy?” I said.
Cameron turned sideways, away from me. He seemed to be addressing the television. “You wanted to place our lives in upheaval and now you have. Your goals are met, but I promise you, the price will be heavy.”
“I never wanted to place your lives in upheaval.”
“Then why seduce Skip’s wife? Why drive Billy’s son to suicide? There can be no motivation other than harming us.”
“Skip’s wife seduced me.”
Skip doubled his fists and took a step toward me. “Katrina told us how you got her stinking drunk and had your way with her, then you blackmailed her into an affair.”
“She made me eat her in the sauna.”
Cameron turned to stare in my direction. “Your relationship with Gilia stops now.”
“I’m afraid so,” I said.
Billy suddenly let out a sob. “Why does Clark hate me?”
“Simple,” Cameron said. “This…person turned him against you.”
“I hope you’re happy,” Skip said. The evening had cut off his ability to vocalize bile.
I felt terrible about Clark and Gilia and everyone else who suffered because of my existence, but these men were persecuting me for events they had set in motion.
I said, “I’m not the only one to blame. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t raped Lydia in the first place.”
There was silence, then Billy said, “Raped?”
“Why can’t any of you take responsibility for your actions? I’m nothing but the product of this crime, you’re the cause.”
“Nobody raped your mother,” Cameron said.
“She was a slut,” Skip said.
“Bullshit. You got her drunk on vodka shot into oranges with a hypodermic needle, then the five of you raped her over and over and when you were done you stood in a circle and urinated on her body.”
Billy’s face was twisted in pain. His voice came in a choke. “That’s a lie.”
“My mother wouldn’t lie about something so important.” A Whitewater roar started in my ears. My mouth tasted of tin.
“Your mother was a slut,” Skip repeated.
“Babe Carnisek admitted you all raped her.”
Had he? I couldn’t remember if the word rape was used or not. Cameron was watching me like an owl on a mouse. When he spoke, his voice was deliberate. “Your mother gave us each some fudge and a tumbler of her daddy’s scotch. After we drank, she offered us two dollars apiece to have sex with her.”
“No.”
“We were sixteen- and seventeen-year-old boys. What did you expect us to do?”
“I don’t believe you.”
“We were all virgins,” Billy said.
Skip said, “I wasn’t.”
Billy went on. “We were all virgins and scared to death, but she insisted. I was so frightened I couldn’t get erect. She called me a ‘worm’ and made me give back the two dollars.”
This didn’t make sense. All the relationships of my life had been shaped by Lydia’s rape. “Why didn’t you tell me that when I came to your house?”
Billy looked down at his hands. “I couldn’t admit I’m a worm.”
“Your mother was a slut,” Skip said for the third time.
“Face it,” Cameron said. “You’ve been had.”
“I need to use the telephone.”
Didi answered on the eighth ring.
“What’s wrong?” she said.
“Is Babe home?”
“Whenever the phone rings at midnight, somebody’s died.”
“No one died, Mrs. Carnisek. This is Sam Callahan, I need to ask Babe a question.”
“He goes to sleep after the weather and sports.”
“Could you wake him up? It’s important.”
The phone was silent a long time. A short black man in a white uniform came down the hall, sliding a floor buffer from side to side in rhythm to music only he could hear over a pair of earphones. He was smoking a cigarette, but instead of using the sand ashtrays at either end of the hall, he let the ash get long until it fell from its own weight and was swept under the floor buffer. I concentrated on breathing.
“What?”
“I’m sorry to wake you, Babe, but I have to know what happened on Christmas Eve 1949.”
“Who is this?”
“Sam Callahan. I was at your house the Saturday before last during the Washington-Detroit game. You might be my father.”
“I remember.”
“I need to know what happened the night I was conceived.”
He hesitated a moment, then said, “A bunch of us screwed your mother.”
“I was hoping for details.”
“Let me think.” The black guy came close to the pay phone and I put a finger in my ear to cover the whish of his buffer.
“I was at Skip Prescott’s house listening to colored music on the record player,” Babe said, “and a friend of his sister telephoned and asked us to a party.”
“Yes.”
“Your mom was mad at her daddy about something, so she screwed us.”
I inhaled deeply. “Whose idea was it?”
“Was what?”
“Having sex. The five of you having sex with Lydia.”
“Hell, we were such young punks none of us even knew what hole to go in.”
“So the sex was her idea?”
“She paid us money to do her.”
Everything that had happened in my life up to that point suddenly became void. I closed my eyes to block the nausea and leaned my head against the wall next to the phone.
Babe’s voice was hesitant. “After you left the other day, I got to thinking, and I don’t believe I was quite honest while you were here.”
“You lied?”
“Didn’t lie so much as forgot the whole truth. You can ask Didi, that’s not like me.”
“What’s the truth?”
“I’m probably not your father after all.”
I didn’t say anything. I was beyond the ability to react.
“The truth is I squirted so quick I don’t think I ever got far enough in to make her pregnant.”
“Oh.”
“She cussed me out for messing on her belly.”
I walked all night. It must have been raining, but I don’t remember. I don’t remember feeling anything, inside or out. The police stopped me down by the interstate. I must have answered enough questions not to be taken in as a drunk, but I don’t see how.
Dawn found me lying on Atalanta Williams’ couch with my head in her lap, sobbing. Fingers ran through my hair. Her other hand rested on my shoulder.
She said, “I knew all along my Jake couldn’t have done what your mama said.”
Her bathrobe smelled like flowers. I could easily have stayed on that couch for years. Another day at home—waking up, looking out at the weather, deciding what to wear—was more than I could face. Going on was too much responsibility.
“I wish you were my mother,” I said.
Atalanta gave me a squeeze on the shoulder and said, “So do I.”
Part Two
WYOMING
1
Rule Number One of Being Sam Callahan: In times of torment, fly to Maurey. The evening after Halloween, All Souls’ Night itself, I landed in the Jackson Hole Airport during the first real snowstorm of the year. Because the flight attendant thought I was handicapped, she helped me down the airplane steps and across the runway to the terminal where Hank Elkrunner awaited. I did feel arthritic, especially in the knees and feet. The world looked the way I imagine it would if you’d just survived a plane crash where other people were killed. Objects appeared brand new; I couldn’t come up with the word that went along with the thing.