Bruce Wagner - I'll Let You Go

“Very good!” shouted Edward.

“What are you saying?” asked Toulouse.

“What I am saying is … that your father —and this is going to come as a bit of a shock — your father befriended Amaryllis on skid row. He took care of her: you know, brought her food, looked after her and so forth.”

“That is bullshit!”

“But here’s the shocker. Maybe you’d better sit down …”

“Tell me!” said the apoplectic boy. “You better fucking tell me now !”

“Edward, tell us—”

“And you better not be bullshitting!”

“Well … you see, it was Amaryllis’s mother who Marcus was accused of murdering. That’s why he was in jail.”

Lucy gasped and was so overcome that she lay on the floor to steady herself. Toulouse fought the impulse to knock down his cousin, and was glad he didn’t, for the consequences would have been dire.

“But who — who told you this?” snapped Toulouse, like a lawyer on the losing side. He’d gone white as Edward’s veil.

“I wish I could say I deduced it myself, but I can’t. It was Mother who spilled the beans, during a bath — that’s when her guard’s down. She tells me everything during a bath.”

Toulouse began to gibber. “I can’t — I can’t believe — murdering her mother … my father! — fed her? looked after? you mean to say she was actually friends with—” He went on like that, much as a sensitive piece of equipment that had been dropped on its head.

“It’s karma,” said Edward, sounding like his aunt. (The whole world sounded more like Trinnie every day.) “What goes around comes around.”

What came around just then was Sling Blade, preceded by a rap at the door. Due to complicated dynastic interweavings, the caretaker had a knack for popping up when family members least expected; yet precisely because of such ubiquity, his presence was never puzzled over. Sling Blade informed that he had come to borrow the MSV as per their grandfather’s hasty request. Edward was outraged, or pretended as much — before a sixth sense that “intrigue” was afoot won out.

“And why ,” said the cousin, having a bit of sport, “would Grandpa Lou be suddenly inclined to joyride in the Mauck?”

“It’s not for your grandpa,” he answered, one-upping.

“Really!” said Edward, like a Roman toying with a slave boy. “Then who is it for? Is it for you , Blade?” They’d somehow stopped calling him by the full appellation, for the groundless fear he might take offense.

“That fellow in Santa Barbara.”

Eureka! Edward winked at Toulouse, who had not by a long shot recovered from the blow delivered only minutes before.

“Which fellow?” asked the boy.

“You know who he’s talking about,” said the cousin snidely.

The caretaker became circumspect. “I’m going to stay out of everybody’s business.”

“Well then, why does he need the Mauck?” asked Toulouse.

“Town Car broke down on the freeway somewhere.”

“He’s driving himself ?” asked the astonished Lucy.

“I didn’t say that. Car broke down over in the Valley. Gonna go pick him up.”

Sling Blade was unaware of the blood ties between Toulouse and the agreeable “fellow” he occasionally ferried from one place to another. (He never thought to ask his employer about the big man; that was his way.) Mr. Trotter didn’t wish Marcus to know about the boy — not yet — so had kept the cognoscenti to a minimum. That way, there’d be less chance of a slipup. He had already issued a rather stern warning to the Weiners, but was concerned that Harry and Ruth would inadvertently kvell about their grandson to Marcus before he was psychologically prepared to “deal.”

Sling Blade asked if he might use the rest room, and was pointed the way.

When he disappeared, an agitated Edward lifted his gauzy mask. “Toulouse, this is it . This is fate! You’ve got to get in the Mauck!” Lucy and Toulouse gaped at him. “I’m telling you — go! Hide in the Mauck! You want to see your father, don’t you?”

“But—” stammered Toulouse, “hide where ?”

“In the media cabinet! It’s totally empty — they’re swapping out the components. Take my sister if you’re so scared. There’s room for both of you!”

“Oh my God …” hissed Lucy, like air rushing from a tire.

“I can’t—” said Toulouse.

“Then you’ll never see him! And you’ll always remember this day! You’re the one who found him, OK? And they’re doing what they always do — conducting business on their time and at their convenience. It’s your right , don’t you get it? What if he runs away again? You don’t think that could happen? What will you say then?”

“Come on, Toulouse, let’s hide in the closet!”

“But what if he—”

Edward shook his head dismissively. “Aw, he’s chickenshit .”

“Why don’t you just go fuck yourself, Edward?”

He had never spoken like that to his cousin, and the goad quickly replaced the veil, not out of effrontery but rather to conceal a classic if malformed Cheshire grin.

In mere sweaty minutes, Lucy and Toulouse stood still as hostages upon the plush carpet and chopped wiring-conduit remains of the Mauck media center bowels. The plucky scamp took the opportunity to stick her tongue down his throat; he was about to push her away when suddenly she started.

“Oh my God, I left my pad! Be right back!”

She bolted from the truck just as Sling Blade entered the garage, lifting the gull wing to clamber in. In a blur of moments, he had switched on the engine, secured the passenger door and backed out into the circular drive.

Toulouse would tell him it was only a prank — after they passed through the gate, he’d reveal himself, then have Sling Blade drive him home. (He only hoped the caretaker wouldn’t be so startled by his presence that he’d swerve into something.) But how would he live it down to his cousin? He would have to say Sling Blade heard him cough and that’s how he was discovered. Or maybe that he’d gotten an electric shock from one of the exposed wires and had cried out …

Sling Blade turned on the radio and began to sing the way people do when they’re alone. Being a stowaway was more fun than he’d thought; he was glad Lucy had left. He could smell her on his upper lip, and wiped a residue of saliva away with his cuff. His driver bantered with the guards as the Stradella delivery gate was raised, and then they were on the open road, winding toward the West Gate.

Toulouse thought of the immigrant boy he had once read about, hiding in the wheel well of a jet to escape his country, and for some reason that made him think of the trip to Easter Island — he could see Edward in the AirBuggy, stalwartly motoring among great stone moai. The impossible revelation of a “street” bond between his father and Amaryllis brought to mind the dinner they had all shared at Trader Vic’s … His thoughts continued willy-nilly: on their way to Cedars, Lucy was in the midst of telling him his father was still alive — then he tasted pomegranate jelly, and blood in his mouth too, unleashed by the fist of the Four Winds bully. He winced at the sight of his mother weeping in bed, fearful to meet the man whose absence had governed her aborted life.

By the time he emerged from his reveries, Sling Blade had already steered the Mauck onto the 405, past the hulking hillside clinic of the Getty (where Amaryllis had communed with gilt-edged saints, and devils too), and joined the artery of the eastbound Ventura. He would go the distance now; there was nothing to fear. He would not be a cowering Trinnie … hadn’t he been watered by his grandfather’s blood? They had all seen his dad, every single one: Burnham and Uncle Dodd and Sling Blade, even the Monasterios — was he, Toulouse Trotter, the very son , less than them? He stewed in the cabinet, raging at Grandpa Lou for so elegantly bamboozling him. Your father’s not ready , he said … as if anyone ever was. As if anyone in this whole fucked-up scenario could be. When the old man accused him of being selfish — just as the detective had! they were a coven, conspiring together! — it had caught the boy off guard. Wily, clever old man! Now he’d had enough. Edward was right; fate dictated the moment. It was his time and his right, and he would lay claim.