Randy White - Dead Silence

Will had looked at the gun but didn’t answer.

“Hear me? I said, ‘Ready.’ ”

Will was still staring at the revolver, seeing the fake-pearl handle, the chrome flaking on the cylinder-a piece of junk.

“Jesus-frogs, you deaf, too?”

“I heard what you said: You’re ready.”

“Goddamn right I’m ready. I’m overdue ready!” Guttersen squared his shoulders and tilted his left temple toward Will. “All righty.. .” He took another deep, slow breath. “Here we go-and keep your damn eyes open! You owe me that. You’re about to come into some money.”

Standing in the basement of what the Lutheran Grandparents Program had assigned as his foster home, Will had then experienced an abrupt change of aspect, a camera-on-the-ceiling view that often occurred when something unusually shitty or dangerous happened in his life-a phenomenon he had experienced too many times.

Will stood there, a head taller than the big Norwegian in his wheelchair, seeing the room from above. A darkness tinted the space, a hopelessness that smelled of brittle paper and ironing.

Through the tinted air, he could see the old man, sitting with his head bowed, waiting to die, and the pool table, a SCHMIDT BEER neon sign over the bar, a jar of pickled eggs, bottles of booze in a row, a MINNESOTA TWINS pennant, photos on the wall of what looked like wrestlers, a JOE FOR EMPEROR sticker and two cowboy hats on a deer-horn rack-big, felt bullshit hats no wrangler would ever wear. One hat black, the other white.

Will had zoomed in and was examining himself, standing like a dope, holding the stainless-steel revolver, which was brighter, bigger than everything else in the room except for an old floor-model radio that Will’s ears had stopped hearing until that moment, possibly because a commercial break had just ended and the announcer now was on the subject of guns. He was saying, “… scientists have built a giant electromagnet in the Rocky Mountains. When they hit the switch, all the handguns in America will be sucked from holsters, bedrooms, locked closets-you name it. Guns’ll bust through walls, knock holes in roofs, that’s how strong the magnet is…”

Will’s eyes descended from the ceiling as he listened. After a minute or two, he was on the floor again, right back beside the wheelchair, when the old man said, “Jesus Christ, you waiting for me to die of old age? Pull the freakin’ trigger!”

Will said, “I was listening to the guy on the radio.”

“Well, stop listening and start shooting, goddamn it. I’m starting to lose the mood.”

“That thing about the giant magnet, is it bullshit?”

“Huh?”

“What the guy said about pulling guns through walls.”

The man looked up, irritated. “It’s a radio show, for chrissake! What’s a matter? You afraid that magnet’s gonna rip your damn arm off when that gun flies out the window?”

When Will asked, “Could it?,” the man snorted, getting mad now, and saying, “How stupid are they making kids these days? Damn half-breed, you must have the IQ of a Twinkie.”

Will said, “Hey!,” and pulled the hammer back. “Don’t talk to me that way. I’ve got a damn gun in my hand.”

The old man snapped, “Well, you sure could’ve fooled the hell out of me. Maybe you’d do better with a bow and arrow.”

“Knock it off. I mean it.”

“Let’s hope you do. My wife’s probably under the dryer by now.”

The old man had looked at Will, seeing the revolver, hammer back, and thought for a moment. He muttered something, then he squared his shoulders again, turned his temple toward Will and focused on the old photos of wrestlers on the wall.

“Do it!” he said. “Or I’m calling the cops.” Then tried to piss off Will, adding, “You being Ethiopian, maybe we should melt the freakin’ gun down and make a freakin’ spear out of it. A weapon not so complicated.”

Will ignored the comment because he knew what the man was doing. He looked at the radio instead. Now the radio guy was saying, “… So here’s how we use this giant magnet. We send fancy metal belts to every sportswriter who thinks Bert should not be in the Hall of Fame. Engraved belts, like presents, get it? When scientists hit the magnet’s switch- Whammo! -a hundred sportswriters are suddenly airborne, flying toward Denver without a plane.”

Will had noticed the old man’s chest moving like he was laughing. The joke was kinda funny. But then Will realized the man was crying again. Geezus, it was embarrassing. A grown man crying, Will had never seen it before. Well… that wasn’t true. On the Rez, some of the older Skins occasionally bawled when they got drunk, but it was mad-crying because they were walled in by their lives, dead broke, with snot-nosed kids who would never amount to nothing.

That wasn’t the sound Will was hearing now, this hopeless weeping without bottom, a despair that had the scent of crumbling paper.

Uncocking the gun, Will went to the radio and turned the volume louder. He wasn’t going to shoot the guy, so the only thing he could think of to say was, “Who the hell is Bert? Why don’t sportswriters like him?”

The old man pretended to cough into his hand. On the bar was a towel. He took his time getting the towel, then coughed a few more times and blew his nose, keeping his back to the boy.

“You ever get tired of asking questions? Jesus Christ, you oughta be stealing encyclopedias instead of hard-earned jewelry and stuff.”

Will repeated the question, feeling the air in the room changing, the invisible gray tint clearing, and he thought, Good.

The old man said, “Bert Blyleven. Bert pitched for the Twins when they won the World Series.” Then he held up an index finger, as if there was something too important to miss, but it was really to give himself more time to stop bawling as he listened to the radio guy saying:

“… Blyleven’s got almost four thousand strikeouts, plus two World Series rings. As if that’s not enough to earn the Dutchman a place in Cooperstown, Bert had nearly three hundred career wins, too, despite playing for underpaid teams.” Being funny, the radio announcer added, “Take it easy, Twinkie lovers, I don’t want you to choke on your Grain Belts-I am not referring to our Twins, of course.”

It was another minute before Will said, “I never heard of the guy.”

The man who only later would introduce himself as Otto Guttersen spun his wheelchair, oblivious to the tinted air flowing through Will’s brain. Like smoke, it drifted upward, the space changing from gray-blue to pearl, as Guttersen said, “You gotta be shittin’ me.”

Will said, “ ’ Bout what?”

“You never heard of Bert Blyleven? He’s only one of the greatest pitchers of all time, which most sportswriters know. But there’re still a few dingleberries out there who won’t vote him into the Hall of Fame. Didn’t you just hear what Joe said?”

Joe, Will would also soon learn, was Joe Soucheray, the host of Garage Logic, a local guy who even Will had to admit was pretty funny for being an old Casper from Minnesota.

Will began to relax a little when Guttersen said, “You don’t follow baseball? Maybe Indian chiefs don’t allow TV on the reservation. Or is it because of the Great White Father?”

Usually, Rez jokes didn’t bother Will. The Skins said a lot worse than that, but they were Skins, not some racist old cripple from the Land of a Thousand Lakes.

Will told the old man, “Screw you, I ride rodeo,” and knew it was okay because the man didn’t say anything as he placed the gun on the counter.

“Screw me?” The man snorted and sniffed. “Screw you, kid.”

“Screw you!”

“Screw you.”

Then Will had to listen to him say, “Every kid in the world should know something about baseball. Hell, stealing bases would come natural to someone with your experience.”