Блейк Крауч - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, No. 5. Whole No. 813, May 2009

“What good could possibly come from that nonsense?” Donny’s father asked.

Donny didn’t care that only days before his father had taken the few records he had ordered from a shop in Atlanta and burned them all in an oil drum out back. He didn’t care that his father was planning to lead a Stamp Out The Beatles campaign in Lake Claire in response to a Datebook magazine story in which John Lennon said The Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ.

“No one, you hear me, no one’s bigger than Jesus,” Don Senior preached.

Donny didn’t care that his father had ordered him to have his hair cut before he returned from a sales trip to Atlanta on Friday, because on Thursday a strange, pretty woman with dark hair who knew The Beatles said she liked his haircut, and that was enough for him.

Don Palmer, Senior, had disliked The Beatles from the moment he first saw them on television. He sat behind his son and wondered aloud what sort of baloney Donny watched.

“What do they call that racket?”

“They’re from England,” Donny answered, not taking his eyes from the television. Don Senior, lead salesman at Quality Stone Supply, alderman, usher at Mt. Zion Baptist Church, and a man who thought no music finer than a Roger Williams number, believed English fellows in tight, shiny suits like monkeys on show, their hair cut long and dandyish like Dr. Tweedy’s boy, who had the body of a man and the mind of an idiot, were surely a temporary foolishness. It was possible, he conceded, the English hooligans were worse even than the crude black singers he’d seen shaking and shrieking under a giant tent out by the fairgrounds last summer, the many and varied voices of the devil inhabiting the bodies of a hundred Negroes so they too shook like the possessed. As The Beatles grew in popularity, and Don heard more of them in his own house and around town, he liked them less — the screech of electric guitars and the hypnotizing effect the longhairs had on his mollycoddle son.

“I’ve had enough of this noise,” Don finally told his son. “How am I supposed to rid Lake Claire of this garbage when my own son’s parading around town looking more like a girl than a boy?”

Don watched his son’s head bob back and forth like a jack-in-the-box freshly popped, inches from the television. Donny’s hair hung in his eyes, fell below his ears, and curled at the back. Such a susceptible nature behind those weak blue eyes. Donny had the soft features of Dale’s father, a yielding man who had surrendered easily to a death of something Don could never remember: infection, pneumonia, obstruction. Don had tried to interest his son in those summer activities he knew and loved so well: baseball, and with the Braves so close by in Atlanta; Hemingway’s Nick Adams stories; and the rewards of youth ministry. But God had provided him with a different son: a girlish, gawking boy, who bobbed his head back and forth to the clatter of electric guitars. Preacher Avery suggested to Don that God wanted him to love his son no matter the differences, this was a new generation of kids, and that was all right. But Don recalled his relationship with his own father, a man who expected a son to carry on the traditions of his elders. Was this not the way families worked? Despite his irritation with Donny, Don tried to understand his son’s passions, but he also knew that as his father it was his responsibility to intervene when he felt the boy was being misled. Certainly this infatuation with a boy band was temporary, just like the electric guitars they played. And even as he searched his heart for the love he knew Christ encouraged, he could not remove the image of his bob-bobbing son.

“He looks like a bird ,” he told Dale, hardly a sympathetic ear when it came to his concerns about her only son. Watching Donny bounce before him, Don was embarrassed, though he tried not to be, and he wanted to smack his son’s bob-bobbing head, which he did, his hand like a snake striking and faster than he could stop it, as if his hand had shot out from somewhere behind him, someone else’s hand, someone else’s girlish boy fueling his rage with half-witted dancing about. Just as quickly, he pulled his hand back with the snap of regret. Surely God encouraged his lessons in obedience and modesty but what good did it do to hit the boy? His son just looked so wayward, moving in front of the TV as if under a spell, not turning to look at his father when he was addressed and finally struck.

“Donny, are you ignoring me? If all this music does is encourage disrespect, then I think you’ll understand when I turn it off,” Don said.

“No sir,” Donny answered without turning around, his shoulders tensed in anticipation of what might come next. “I don’t mean any disrespect. It’s just I don’t want to miss this.”

“Well, look at me when I’m talking to you.”

When his son turned to face him in silence, Don intended to tell him it was about time he had his hair cut, too, feeling his hand rise at his side, ready to strike again. But the boy’s watery eyes, barely visible beneath his bangs, left Don despairing of his defiant son. He felt cheated by the boy’s refusal to acknowledge him or the slap across the back of his head. His mother’s son. Dale’s babying of the boy had been a sore point between them since he was born — hadn’t his own father’s sense of discipline better prepared Don for the realities of life? Don felt weakened by the stranger before him, at odds with and abandoned by a wife gone soft.

“I don’t want to hear any more in this house. You hear?” Don said.

“You can’t...” Donny turned to his father.

“Sure I can,” Don said. “As your father, it’s my responsibility to keep this sort of Godless trash out of our home. You think I burned your records for the fun of it? I didn’t like it anymore than you did, but sometimes a father has to do unpleasant things in the hopes his children will grow up decent.”

“But Dad...”

“Starting... right... now .” Don reached over his pouting son’s shoulder and switched off the television with as much fuss as the little knob allowed. “And come Friday,” he said, “you’re going to cut your hair. When I get back from Atlanta, I want to see your hair cut, you hear. If your mother won’t take you, I will. And you better believe it will be a haircut fit for a boy.”

Don returned to his chair and his newspaper, relaxing with the satisfaction that he had finally put a stop to his son’s disrespect. But Donny turned back to the dark television in silence, his head resuming its aggravating bounce as if the music still played. Not for the first time, Don silenced his rage with thoughts of Mary Hooks: daydreams of her mouth as she chewed slowly at the caramels he bought her settled him in a state of impatient pleasure, each sensation of her driving his desire for another.

When Don first realized his feelings for the supply clerk who processed his sales orders, he was surprised by how hungry he was, by how much pleasure he found when he finally let himself go to her bed. He must have been famished, he reckoned. Surely God would recognize his need for the affections of a woman, even if she wasn’t his wife. It was not something he could talk about with Preacher Avery, not like he did about Donny. He reasoned the guilt he suffered upon leaving her house, the very stealth of his entry and exit, was God’s punishment enough. And each night he prayed for forgiveness and guidance. What was he supposed to do? He loved the girl, loved every inch of her. Don loved Dale too, but he could not recall ever feeling as high as he did when he was with Mary — a sky-scraping sensation of matchless joy. There was life in that girl. In weaker moments, Don actually let himself imagine a time and place, in another city, another state, where he and Mary might finally be joined under God’s eyes.