Norman Partridge - The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

But you didn’t know who I was.

I didn’t know either. That’s why I dug Dad up. I wanted to find out.

I wrote the book. It was my idea. Cassady: a Life on the Edge. After I sold it, the publisher brought in a pro to rewrite it, a guy who’d ghosted books for several bulimic actresses, a gay running back, and a hamster that spent four years in the White House — in a cage, not in the oval office. The ghost spent a week with me, and I didn’t shut up the whole time. I learned more about myself in that week than I’ve learned in thirty-five years of living. Even now, I think of the ghost’s quiet questions, questions that had always been in my head but had never escaped, and my tongue gets dry.

The ghost tried to interview my sister, but Jo wouldn’t have anything to do with him. Anyway, he rewrote the book. Just a few minor adjustments. Punched up the prose. Punched up the title. That’s publishing talk. Changed the title to Killer Cassady.

As it turned out, I didn’t write what was in that book, but it all came out of my mouth. I’ll admit that. And even with everything down in black and white, it came out of my mouth over and over. I toured twenty cities in fourteen days, and my mouth was dry in every one. Then I spent a week under the lights with the syndicated television mud-slingers. And everywhere I ran in those three weeks— lips flapping, sucking air and trying not to sweat as much as I tried to smile — my dead father rode me piggyback.

The book tour climaxed on the day before Father’s Day. That was the publisher’s plan — as if people were really going to chose a book like mine as the ideal gift for dad. I took my last round of questions in a Chicago studio. Sitting there with a guy who wore too much Jovan Musk and a gaggle of housewives who seemed fascinated and repulsed in equal parts.

Mr. Jovan Musk worked up to it, lobbing a volley of soft questions my way. And then he asked me, “Do you think your father exploited the fact that he was a convicted murderer to further his career?”

I didn’t even blink. I took it just the way Dad would have in one of his movies. I answered in a solid, studied whisper, equal portions of sorrow and shame in my voice.

And then Mr. Jovan Musk hit me with the follow-up question, the one that surprised me.

I took that question Dad’s way, too.

The next time I saw him, on television that afternoon as I passed through O’Hare, the talk show host was wearing a couple of Popsicle sticks on his nose. The sticks were held in place by a generous smattering of gummy white tape. He looked kind of like Lon Chaney, Junior as the Mummy.

And then I got off of a plane in Reno and it was all over. Or it should have been. I drove to Lake Tahoe, stopping only for gas and a quick bite. I had to use folding money because my credit card had expired while I was on tour. That’s the great thing about expense accounts. Live on one long enough and you lose track of your own money.

I awoke the next morning in the A-frame cabin I’ve owned for ten years, only to find the red light on my answering machine flashing wildly. I hit the play button and listened to the first three messages. Two local TV shows and a radio call-in show in Sacramento, all wanting me to keep on talking.

I cut the messages short. It was Father’s Day, but somehow I didn’t want anything to do with my father. Three weeks carrying him on my back, a year digging him up while I wrote the book. I didn’t even want to look in the mirror, because I didn’t want to see his eyes staring back at me.

So I climbed out of bed and went downstairs.

And my father was sitting there on my couch, watching me, his hard little eyes peering over a copy of Killer Cassady.

His pouting lips twisted into that signature grin that always spelled trouble in his films. Wounded, hateful, proud — all at the same time.

“At least you spelled my name right,” he said, rising from the couch. He straightened his jacket — very shiny sharkskin, the color of a hammerhead — and loosened his skinny black tie, and the way he moved he might as well have said I’m ready to get down to business.

I hadn’t said a word, but my throat was dry. I didn’t know what to say, but my mouth came open.

And then I realized that his voice was all wrong.

“Who are you?” I asked.

He dropped the book as if he’d suddenly discovered that he was holding a poisonous snake. He grinned. “Sorry to give you a scare. I couldn’t resist it. I’m not I ghost. I’m your brother.” I didn’t say anything, so he kept on. ‘Yeah. It kind of surprises me, too, reading this book. I mean, you’ve done a lot of research. I don’t know how you could have missed me.”

I fished around for something to say. “Dad never mentioned — ”

“Damn right, he didn’t. Christ, would you go around rubbing your kid’s nose in your dirty laundry?” He laughed high and nutty, more like Richard Widmark than Dad. “But maybe the old man told you that kind of stuff. Maybe he bragged about the little actress he knocked up in ’58. Maybe you just forgot to put that in the book. If that’s the deal, it’s a shame, because you make the dirty stuff sing. Like that part where Dad kills your mother’s boyfriend? Smashes the little Frenchman’s head against the kitchen counter until the tiles crack? Man, I felt like I was there.” He cracked his knuckles. “Man, I could almost taste it.”

“I did a lot of research,” I said. “Court transcripts. Crime scene photos. Things people hadn’t taken time to examine.”

“Yeah. Sure. I get that.” He glanced at the book. “But you’re in there, too. I mean, I’m a slow reader. I’m only a hundred pages or so into it. But the old man has already smacked you around a good dozen times. That part where he puts on the gloves and says he’s going to teach you how to box? That was brutal. And Dad did throw a mean left hook. Remember the way he took out that pretty boy in Wrong Turn ?” He stopped, looked at me kind of funny. “Amazing how you’ve still got that cute little nose after the beatings the old man dished out.”

“Look,” I said, knowing I had to change direction. “What do you want?”

He didn’t answer. In the bedroom, the phone rang. We listened as the answering machine picked up, heard the tinny voice of a producer leaving an eager message. The producer had been after me for weeks, following my book tour trail. He wanted to remake Dad’s best-remembered movie, Wrong Turn , and he wanted me to star.

When the producer finished, the man who claimed to be my half-brother pointed a thumb in the direction of the phone. “I guess I just want in on the action. I mean, we’re family. We ought to look out for each other. Maybe you don’t want to make that movie. Maybe you could put in a good word for me. You got the book out of Dad. It seems like I should be due for something.”

I stood on the stairs, and my hands became fists, and I couldn’t stop shaking. He was pressing my buttons, just dancing over them lightly, pressing just hard enough. The way people used to press Dad’s buttons in the movies, bip bip bip, time after time until he finally smiled his little smile and exploded.

The way they pressed Dad’s buttons in Wrong Turn.

“I think you’d better go,” I said.

He was smirking, staring at my fists as if they were no more dangerous than feather dusters. He cracked his knuckles again. Thick ridges of scar tissue the color of spoiled meat seemed to swell before my eyes. “You’d better slow down.” He rubbed his nose, which was flatter than Dad’s, mocking me, and for the first time I noticed the net of bone-colored scars under his thinning eyebrows. “See, I’ve followed in the old man’s footsteps, too. Oh, I haven’t been in front of any cameras, unless you count cameras that shoot mug shots. I haven’t made any dog food commercials, like you have. I’ve followed the other path. I’ve bashed heads against kitchen counters. But just like you, I haven’t quite lived up to the old man’s example. You haven’t made a movie; I haven’t cracked any tile.”