Bruce Wagner - I'll Let You Go

Sling Blade muttered, “There they are, there they are,” and the Mauck slowed, edging to the shoulder. “Stay in there, stay in there, you dumb fuck.”

Toulouse wondered who he was talking about; maybe his father was stepping from the disabled car. Maybe his father would be struck down by a drunk or a Caltrans truck and that would be the end of it.

He opened the door of the cabinet and listened a moment to the voices beneath the drone of speeding traffic. Hunching over, he crept out to peer through the tinted window. A tow was attaching itself to the Town Car while Sling Blade and a suited man spoke; the boy assumed he was his father’s chauffeur. That was when he saw Marcus Weiner heading for the Mauck.

He panicked and ran back to the closet. Fate now dictated that his bravado was no more; he whispered imprecations and prayed he wouldn’t sob or soil his pants. He could hear Sling Blade helping with the door, and the carriage was rocked by the weight of entry. What if out of sheer curiosity his father opened the closet and found him hiding there? Toulouse knew little about the man’s disease: maybe schizophrenics didn’t like jack-in-the-box surprises and reacted violently, even bloodily. Hadn’t the man recently been fingered for homicide? He never heard details … maybe he’d been released on a technicality and was guilty after all — that would be a fitting end to the saga of Toulouse Trotter’s poignant search: torn to shreds à la Hannibal by his mentally deranged dad! Lucy would have to run a fresh proposal by Mr. Hookstratten. Might not be appropriate for the kiddies.

Marcus lowered himself in the captain’s chair with a grunt. It seemed the man in the suit would be staying behind with Triple-A. “We’ll be fine,” he heard Sling Blade call out, to which the man responded, “Oh, they know I’m not going ahead with y’all — no one has a problem with that.” The Mauck shook again as the caretaker entered through the passenger side and pulled the door down after him. He opened the fridge and got an Evian for Marcus, who thanked him.

Toulouse sat cross-legged in the darkness. If he never saw his father face-to-face, at least he’d had this proximity, at once horrifying and intimate. He could hear the rider’s breath, and even a few low farts. Occasionally, Sling Blade made small talk or inquired if his passenger wished to hear music. Toulouse wondered where they were going. His plan was to escape as soon as they reached their destination, but that might be difficult if it was a secure area — say, an airport runway. They’d probably get gas or stretch their legs soon enough … but why would they? Onboard facilities were more than adequate, and Sling Blade had most likely received instructions discouraging pit stops.

The big man began to hum, and Toulouse was swamped by embarrassment and self-loathing. His grandfather was right; he was selfish. How could he have let Edward manipulate him into this absurd, potentially cruel enterprise? Hiding in the closet like an a-hole! Incredibly, he had just been told of the mind-blowing ties between the girl — his beloved — and the father he had staked everything to find … Amaryllis, whom this mysterious being had nurtured (according to Edward), would never have stooped so low; Dad raised her with more dignity than that. But here he was, the putative son, quailing in the media cabinet. For shame! He would have to have a “sit-down” with Grandpa Lou. He would tell him he had decided it was unnecessary to meet the gentleman who had sired him — and that all he wished was for Mr. Weiner to stabilize and move on to some measure of happiness; that initiating the search had been a terrible experiment in egotism which had caused irreparable harm to his mother in the process. He would hereafter devote his life to good works. During their study of religion at Four Winds, the students learned of a monastery in the heart of Hollywood filled with cloistered Benedictine nuns. Perhaps there was an equivalent place for boys. He would live a life of seclusion as penance for his tomfoolery, and in time, after demonstrating proper maturity, might oversee a vast trust established by the Trotter Family Foundation to help those afflicted by mental illness — and homeless children, too. He could administer the moneys without ever leaving the confines of his austere spiritual haven.

Having achieved a near-beatific state during his musings, Toulouse managed to remain calm upon realizing that the MSV had glided off the freeway and was downshifting toward what felt like an end point. Not five minutes later, his feelings were borne out.

The Mauck came to rest. He waited a few minutes after the men had left before emerging from the closet. He moved slowly through the cabin and could smell the not unpleasant, musky imprint of his father; he shivered again with shame.

He crept outside and looked around. They were in some kind of urban park, on a gently sloping grassy hill. At the crest of that hill was a building with a tall smokestack. He saw the figures of Sling Blade and his father sitting on a bench, waiting. Toulouse left the parking area and walked down to the street. There was a graffiti’d sign at the entry — CREMATORIUM — and now he could see that a cemetery abutted the place he’d just been. It stretched for blocks. The surrounding neighborhood looked bleak and dangerous. He had left his StarTAC at Stradella; he would need to find a pay phone to call the cousins, to make Eulogio pick him up. Instead, he retraced his footsteps until he was again beside the MSV.

“Jesus, what are you doing?”

Sling Blade, who had just emerged from the Mauck with two bottles of Evian, barreled toward him.

“It was just a joke! I didn’t mean to …”

“But how did you—”

“I hid in the closet!” he said nervously. “We were just messing around, Blade — it was just a joke! I was going to come out, but you pulled away …”

“A joke! Just a joke that’s gonna get me fired!”

“It’s OK . I’ll take a cab —”

“The hell you will,” said the caretaker, forcefully grabbing his arm. “You come with me!”

“No!—”

“That’s all I need! You getting a drive-by . Now, come on!”

“But what do we say? What do we tell him —”

Sling Blade scratched his head; the boy’s overweening concern about an alibi for the sake of “the heavyset fellow” never even registered. “We’ll just say that — that you’re my nephew .” He cringed at the inadequacy of it all. “Oh shit . God damnit , Toulouse! Why’d you do this stupid thing? We’ll just say you’re my nephew, OK? No! — Dot’s nephew! You’re Dot’s nephew — Dot’s my boss. We’ll say she lives around here, OK? You knew where I was gonna be and came around to say hello. Or no! You saw me — like a coincidence. He won’t ask any questions; he’s a little disturbed. When we’re finished here, I’ll take the 10 and drop you near the Getty. And if you tell your grandfather—”

There was little chance that he would.

Toulouse followed him into the chimney-building like one condemned. “What is this place?”

“It’s where they burn up bodies.”

When they reached Mr. Weiner, he was talking to a man who held a shoe box filled with human remains under his arm. The shoe-box man took in Toulouse with vague disapproval, but the boy wouldn’t meet his eye — or anyone else’s. Marcus never gave his son a glance.

Because of this obliviousness, and because Sling Blade’s scowls gradually subsided, Toulouse had the opportunity to scrutinize the burly character now standing at a lectern skimming a ledger of the dead and holding what looked to be a prayerbook in his hand. How handsome his father was, he thought — already much thinner than the day he saw him at the Bel-Air, and with a powerful magnetism about him, though his eyes were red and his face swollen and ruddy from weeping. His suit was finely cut yet capacious as a tent. He looked wise and kind and fierce, too; he was no one to tangle with, yet that’s all the boy wanted to do.