Dad’s name hasn’t hurt me, though. There are still plenty of people who remember it. It’s funny — people forget directors and writers and producers, but get your face up there on the screen and you’ll be remembered for a long time, even if your claim to fame is portraying a long string of heavies and sad-eyed losers in poverty row quickies. I’ve made more than a few dollars by being the son of a movie star, even if Dad was a star in a lesser constellation.
Then again, most people remember Dad for the things he did when there weren’t any cameras in sight. That’s what puts the old shine in their eyes.
Tom Cassady — my old man. Me — Tom Cassady, Junior. I guess Dad wasn’t the most inventive guy in the world. He actually had a dog named Rover.
But Dad did leave me the name and all the baggage that goes with it. That, and his face. Hard little eyes and pouting lips on a face that is otherwise completely boyish, even when I skip shaving for a day or two. Give Kurt Russell a bad attitude and you’ve got me. I don’t have Dad’s signature broken nose, of course — remember, I use my head. And I doubt that I’ll ever acquire the puffy, dissipated look he had after he got out of prison, the look that made him a primo heavy in his second run at Hollywood, because I don’t drink much.
But like I said, I’ve made some money with Dad’s face. It’s a handsome face, and I take care of what’s under it. I pump iron, keep my tan just a shade this side of narcissistic, get my hair styled every other week and my back waxed at the same interval. You’ve probably seen me on TV. Lathering my manly chest with Irish Spring. Whipping a bottle of Sharpshooter barbecue sauce from a holster while I wear a squint that would have pleased Sergio Leone. Big hands with manicured nails dishing Happy Chow for some generic Rover. You’ve probably seen me, or at least significant portions of my anatomy.
But you didn’t know who I was.
I didn’t know either. That’s why I dug Dad up. I wanted to find out.
I wrote the book. It was my idea. Cassady: a Life on the Edge. After I sold it, the publisher brought in a pro to rewrite it, a guy who’d ghosted books for several bulimic actresses, a gay running back, and a hamster that spent four years in the White House — in a cage, not in the oval office. The ghost spent a week with me, and I didn’t shut up the whole time. I learned more about myself in that week than I’ve learned in thirty-five years of living. Even now, I think of the ghost’s quiet questions, questions that had always been in my head but had never escaped, and my tongue gets dry.
The ghost tried to interview my sister, but Jo wouldn’t have anything to do with him. Anyway, he rewrote the book. Just a few minor adjustments. Punched up the prose. Punched up the title. That’s publishing talk. Changed the title to Killer Cassady.
As it turned out, I didn’t write what was in that book, but it all came out of my mouth. I’ll admit that. And even with everything down in black and white, it came out of my mouth over and over. I toured twenty cities in fourteen days, and my mouth was dry in every one. Then I spent a week under the lights with the syndicated television mud-slingers. And everywhere I ran in those three weeks— lips flapping, sucking air and trying not to sweat as much as I tried to smile — my dead father rode me piggyback.
The book tour climaxed on the day before Father’s Day. That was the publisher’s plan — as if people were really going to chose a book like mine as the ideal gift for dad. I took my last round of questions in a Chicago studio. Sitting there with a guy who wore too much Jovan Musk and a gaggle of housewives who seemed fascinated and repulsed in equal parts.
Mr. Jovan Musk worked up to it, lobbing a volley of soft questions my way. And then he asked me, “Do you think your father exploited the fact that he was a convicted murderer to further his career?”
I didn’t even blink. I took it just the way Dad would have in one of his movies. I answered in a solid, studied whisper, equal portions of sorrow and shame in my voice.
And then Mr. Jovan Musk hit me with the follow-up question, the one that surprised me.
I took that question Dad’s way, too.
The next time I saw him, on television that afternoon as I passed through O’Hare, the talk show host was wearing a couple of Popsicle sticks on his nose. The sticks were held in place by a generous smattering of gummy white tape. He looked kind of like Lon Chaney, Junior as the Mummy.
And then I got off of a plane in Reno and it was all over. Or it should have been. I drove to Lake Tahoe, stopping only for gas and a quick bite. I had to use folding money because my credit card had expired while I was on tour. That’s the great thing about expense accounts. Live on one long enough and you lose track of your own money.
I awoke the next morning in the A-frame cabin I’ve owned for ten years, only to find the red light on my answering machine flashing wildly. I hit the play button and listened to the first three messages. Two local TV shows and a radio call-in show in Sacramento, all wanting me to keep on talking.
I cut the messages short. It was Father’s Day, but somehow I didn’t want anything to do with my father. Three weeks carrying him on my back, a year digging him up while I wrote the book. I didn’t even want to look in the mirror, because I didn’t want to see his eyes staring back at me.
So I climbed out of bed and went downstairs.
And my father was sitting there on my couch, watching me, his hard little eyes peering over a copy of Killer Cassady.
His pouting lips twisted into that signature grin that always spelled trouble in his films. Wounded, hateful, proud — all at the same time.
“At least you spelled my name right,” he said, rising from the couch. He straightened his jacket — very shiny sharkskin, the color of a hammerhead — and loosened his skinny black tie, and the way he moved he might as well have said I’m ready to get down to business.
I hadn’t said a word, but my throat was dry. I didn’t know what to say, but my mouth came open.
And then I realized that his voice was all wrong.
“Who are you?” I asked.
He dropped the book as if he’d suddenly discovered that he was holding a poisonous snake. He grinned. “Sorry to give you a scare. I couldn’t resist it. I’m not I ghost. I’m your brother.” I didn’t say anything, so he kept on. ‘Yeah. It kind of surprises me, too, reading this book. I mean, you’ve done a lot of research. I don’t know how you could have missed me.”
I fished around for something to say. “Dad never mentioned — ”
“Damn right, he didn’t. Christ, would you go around rubbing your kid’s nose in your dirty laundry?” He laughed high and nutty, more like Richard Widmark than Dad. “But maybe the old man told you that kind of stuff. Maybe he bragged about the little actress he knocked up in ’58. Maybe you just forgot to put that in the book. If that’s the deal, it’s a shame, because you make the dirty stuff sing. Like that part where Dad kills your mother’s boyfriend? Smashes the little Frenchman’s head against the kitchen counter until the tiles crack? Man, I felt like I was there.” He cracked his knuckles. “Man, I could almost taste it.”
“I did a lot of research,” I said. “Court transcripts. Crime scene photos. Things people hadn’t taken time to examine.”