Chris Crutcher - Whale Talk

That kind of behavior is pretty hard to understand, though it’s been explained to me many times by my mother in regard to some domestic violence/abuse case she’s tried in court. Though she understands it, she doesn’t have a lot of time for it in anyone over three years old.

At any rate Rich Marshall is way past three years old. “I wanna see Aleeesha,” he slobbers at me.

I say, “Alicia’s not here, Rich.”

“I know she’s here. I gotta fin’ her; tell her I’m sorry. I fucked up. I love her, man. Where’s she at?”

“Go home, man.”

“No, man, she’s here. I know it. She’s here with my kid. I need to tell her I love her.”

“Heidi isn’t your kid, Rich. And Alicia’s not here. Maybe she’s with the twins. Find out in the morning and you can call.” I should know better than to argue with a drunk.

“I can’t call her in the morning; they got a fuckin’ no-contact order on me. I got to see her tonight.”

“If they have a no-contact order,” I say, “it’s for day and night.”

My efforts to keep this under control go up in smoke with the hardening behind his eyes. “You fuckin’ my wife?”

“Nope. I have a girlfriend.”

“Shit. You have a girlfriend.”

“Strange as it seems. I’m not sleeping with your wife, Rich.”

“She used to like your kind. Niggers or chinks or whatever.”

“That would make me a chigger.”

“Had little Heidi ’cause of one of you,” he says. He’s so drunk he doesn’t remember I already know this. He glazes over a bit, sneering, maybe picturing Heidi’s dad. “But she loves me now.” As an afterthought, “Chigger. Tha’s funny.”

I say, “Sounds like you won Alicia for sure. Aren’t you worried the cops will catch you here?”

“It’s fuckin’”-and he holds his watch to the porch light, squinting-“after midnight. How would the fuckin’ cops know I’m here?”

“Maybe because I called them when I heard you ring the doorbell.” It’s a lie, of course.

“You black asshole!” he yells. “You fuckin’ black bastard asshole! You are fuckin’ Aleeesha!”

He pulls up his T-shirt, exposing the butt of a pistol, but before he can even think of reaching for it, it is in my hand.

Rich stares at his belt, confused, as if the gun vanished into the hands of Merlin. He is embalmed . A whimper sounds behind me, and I glance around to see Heidi on the stairs, her raggedy, one-eyed stuffed otter in her hand.

“Nigger girl,” Rich says. “Come here to me. Where’s your momma?”

I move back, and she scurries to wrap her arm around my leg, staring silently at Rich as I holler for Dad, and light splashes across the floor as my parents’ bedroom door opens and he barrels toward us. I don’t care who you are; you could be Rich Marshall or Mike Tyson, but the sight of my old man coming at you out of the dark, bare chested with a baseball bat in his hand, is a daunting sight.

“This ain’t over,” Rich says. “Nobody fucks with my family.”

“Looks like it’s over for now,” I say, but he is already headed down the walk.

I give Dad the pistol, and Mom and I sit with Heidi while he calls the police. I expect her to be scared, but all she can say is she wishes my daddy had given old Rich a good whack with that bat. We decide we will call my father the Louisville Slugger from now on. Heidi thinks that’s pretty funny.

When we have her back in bed, I tell my parents Rich thinks I’m having sex with Alicia. “I barely even know her,” I tell them.

“That doesn’t matter,” Mom says. “Don’t fool with him. The last thing in the world you want is to be in Rich Marshall’s cast of characters. He’s a stalker, pure and simple, and stalkers believe what they want to believe. You don’t even want him thinking your name.”

“Too late for that. He uses it in vain every day at school.”

“Well, I’ll be on the phone at seven-thirty in the morning,” she says. “And if Rich Marshall spends one more hour in that school, they’d better have a hell of an attorney.”

“Cops will pick him up tonight,” Dad says. “We won’t have to worry about that for a while.”

I tell them I’m not afraid of him even a little bit. In fact I’d welcome the chance.

Mom puts her hand on my knee and grips it hard enough that I feel heat. “Listen to me, T. J. You might be stronger and quicker now, but men like Rich are relentless, and they’ll come after you in ways you can’t imagine. If he believes you’re taking something that belongs to him, he’s as dangerous as they come. I see men like him in court every day.”

I say I’m pretty familiar with the way Rich Marshall operates.

“You think you are, but this is completely different from him shooting that deer. That was just mean. When he’s in this spot, he’s desperate, which means he imagines things, like you sleeping with Alicia. When he talks like that, he isn’t telling you what he thinks, he’s telling you what he fears. One thing you want to know about Rich Marshall is this: In his mind, what he fears is his worst enemy. Anything that makes Rich Marshall feel weak will bring him at you like a devil. At that point, it isn’t about whether you can whip him, it’s about whether you see him coming.” She squeezes my knee again. “You listen to me, young man. If you’re wanting to try out your testosterone, try it out on someone else.”

Mom won’t let me go to bed until I promise to keep my testosterone under control.

I catch my dad working in the garage on one of the old bikes, an older BMW with a sidecar. That one belongs to him; I remember riding all over the country beside him when I was a little kid. We still go out on it sometimes, only now I drive as often as not. He always looks great in his old World War I army helmet, long brown hair flowing back, mirrored sunglasses and full beard hiding his face, riding beside me like I’m his chauffeur.

We talk while he works and I hand him tools, my one mechanical competence.

He says, “Guess I freaked you out a little in the bedroom that day.”

“A little.”

He breathes deep, sets down his wrench, and turns toward me. “I’m not proud of that, T. J.”

“I didn’t know it was still that bad.”

“Most of the time it’s not. Just once in a while, when I’m not paying attention. Usually when I start feeling too good.”

The next question, I’m almost afraid to ask. But we’re here, and we’re talking… “What do you tell yourself about that day?”

He laughs, a laugh that says you’ve just asked him something he’s asked himself a million times. “Different things,” he says. “In the old days I told myself I was a worthless scumbag; that no trucker fails to look under his truck before he takes off. I told myself there was no difference between negligence and an intentional act; the result’s the same.”

“That’s pretty rough.”

“Yeah. Another few months of that, and I’d have taken a fast motorcycle into a big tree.”

I wait for the rest.

“Now,” he says finally, “I’m a little kinder to myself most of the time. I tell myself I learned an important lesson the hard way: that the universe doesn’t make allowances for mental lapses or ignorance, but that maybe I’m a better man because I know that.”

I tell him he is a good man, but he isn’t looking for compliments and doesn’t respond.

“Before that day, if I’d read a newspaper article about a guy who ran over a baby out of negligence, I’d have cursed him for his stupidity and figured he deserved whatever came of it. I’m a lot more tolerant of things I used to despise, a lot slower to draw the line between good and bad. I look at a guy like Rich Marshall, for example. Thirty years ago I’d have hated his guts.”