Killer Diller

by Clyde Edgerton

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Shuttled among orphanages and foster homes since he was 11, Wesley Benfield-newly converted-is trying to turn over a new leaf. But two things are keeping him from a straight-and-narrow kind of existence: lust for Phoebe and a National Steel Dobro bottleneck guitar. There's more than one way for an ungainly white boy to find a little soul, and Wesley strikes out on his own path of redemption.

Release date: September 29, 1996

Publisher: Algonquin Books

Print pages: 299

Sample

Vernon Jackson sits on the side of his bed in his white Jockey undershorts—which have mostly separated from their waistband. It’s six-thirty on a Monday morning in September.

Vernon is sixteen and small for his age. He has short, spikey black hair, and his pointed face looks so much like a possum’s that Vernon is sometimes called Possum. His elbows are together in his lap and he rocks back and forth.

He reaches for the wire-rimmed glasses on his bedside table, a large cardboard box with NAPA PARTS written on the side. He puts the glasses on slowly—they are too small—and looks through thumb prints for his T-shirt on the floor. He finds it, picks it up, turns it in his hands first one way then the other, then starts the sleeve opening over his head. It won’t go on —too tight. He looks down into the space inside the shirt, gets his bearings, turns the shirt around and pulls it over his head, the right way.

A wind-up alarm clock, on its back in a cooking pot out in the hall, will ring in about thirty seconds. Then after Vernon and his daddy, Holister, find something to eat, Vemon will follow Holister out to the Sunrise Auto Repair Shop in the side yard, and help out until the school bus comes.

Vernon is in Special Education.

The alarm goes off. Vernon hears his daddy’s feet hit the floor in the next room. The same thump as always.

The fact of Jules Vernon Jackson as a baby, tiny, wouldn’t grow, wouldn’t walk, wouldn’t talk—and his father’s sudden obsession with car engines—all this drove Vernon’s mother out West. Alone. Forever. So Holister raised Vernon by himself, mostly in the auto shop out back.

It worked like this: Holister would be bent over the front fender of a car, a drop light hanging from underneath the open hood. He would reach down into the engine, work for a few minutes, then stand, wipe his hands and arms with a dirty rag, look around, locate the baby on the floor, shift the drop light to another spot, and bend back to what he was doing.

The baby crawled around under car engines that hung from block and tackle and into turned-over boxes and barrels, black fingerprints usually on his diapers.

In the little hallway, Vernon stands on the grate over the furnace, finishes pulling up and hitching his overalls, and then studies the face on the clock in the pot.

In the kitchen, his father is sitting at the table, peeling a banana and watching the women do their morning exercises on Channel 9.

Vernon sits down, gets a banana out of the plastic fruit basket and starts peeling. “Why are the numbers on a clock in a circle?” he asks his daddy.

“Huh?”

“Why are the numbers on a clock—”

“I don’t know.” Holister keeps watching the women. “She’s new.”

“Seems like they just always put them in a circle. Everywhere you look there they are—in a circle. They ain’t ever sideways or in a line or nothing. Just in a circle.”

“That’s the way the pygmies did it, with sun dials, and it just stayed that way. God a-mighty, look at them muscles. She’s got too many muscles. That’s just getting sick.” A piece of banana hangs on Holister’s lip, then drops. He has a large round face. The hair that usually goes from just above his ear up over the top of his bald head hangs loose. “You want some bread?”

“No.”

Holister spreads mayonnaise on a piece of white bread, folds it, and puts half of it into his mouth.

Vernon drops his banana peel into the trash can, goes into the living room, shuts the door behind him, and sits in the gray metal fold-up chair at the upright piano. He stumbles through the new song that was playing for the women exercising. On the the second try he gets it right.

Whenever Vernon sits anywhere—here at this piano, or on the tree stump beside the ’61 Ford engine that has been there since ’76, or anywhere else—he always rocks back and forth.

Holister brushes bread crumbs off the table and onto the floor and pitches his banana peel into the trash can. Music is Vernon’s gift it looks like to Holister, and everything else about Vernon has been a theft, except his arguing, which sometimes comes with force, in great waves.

After breakfast, Holister is walking across the side yard toward the auto shop. At the back steps of the house, Vernon pulls an invisible car key from his pocket, opens an invisible car door, hops in, sticks the key in the ignition, says, “Crump up, baby, crump up,” and then with his back stooped, his legs chopping like pistons, he runs past his daddy on over to the auto shop. He drives himself to most places he goes. He’s in good physical shape, lean and hard as a new tire.

A little later, bending over a car fender, his morning plug of Picnic Twist tobacco in place in his cheek, Holister says, “Hand me a 7/16th, Vernon.”

“Huh?”

“Hand me a 7/16th. Hurry up. . . . That ain’t a 7/16th.”

“It looks like one.”

“Well, it ain’t one. Get a 7/16th.”

“It looks like one. That’s what it looks like, a 7/16th. I got eyes. I can see what looks like a 7/16th and what don’t look like a 7/16th. I was just using my eyes. What do you expect?” This is the arguing part. Vernon walks the few steps back over to the tool box. He walks like a duck.

People driving in the neighborhood sometimes see Vernon out beside a road somewhere, working on his invisible car, working on the engine, walking back to the trunk for a 7/16th, then back up to the engine, bending over, standing, shifting the drop light from one spot to another.

Anyway, when Mrs. Mclntyre, who teaches mentally handicapped students at Hansen County High School, was asked to pick one of her students to learn masonry over at Ballard University, for something called Project Promise, she picked Jules Vernon Jackson. She figured he was just the one.

Ballard University is a Baptist school. It is nestled on two hundred rolling acres not far from the Sunrise Auto Repair Shop in the piedmont town of Summerlin, North Carolina. On the wide, clean campus, giant oak trees provide early-fall shade for the lawns, brick sidewalks, classroom buildings, and boys’ and girls’ dorms. Here and there are sturdy, glass-fronted, locked wooden bulletin boards with short Bible scriptures carved along the top: IN THE BEGINNING GOD CREATED THE HEAVEN AND EARTH. LOVE THY NEIGHBOR AS THYSELF. ASK AND YE SHALL RECEIVE. There is a modern student store where textbooks, stationery, teddy bears and green-and-yellow Ballard coffee mugs are sold, and where the paperback books are checked by Mr. Burleson, the bookstore manager, for ugly words and un-Christian situations. This is where students and parents buy the green Ballard sweatshirts and the ball caps embroidered with the yellow Ballard bulldog.

The Ballard Bulldogs. Hark, hark, hark, to the bark, bark, bark of the Green and Gold. Go-o-o-o-o-o-o-o, Bulldogs.

At the same time Vernon Jackson is climbing into the Special Ed. school bus, Ted Sears, “The Father of the Ballard Family,” is seating himself at his long blond polished table in the President’s Meeting Room to review plans for Project Promise, the brainchild of Dr. Frances Fleming in the School of Social Work. The plans are spiral-bound in light blue. Ted is about to make notes on a fresh yellow legal pad with his $200 Parker ink pen.

Ballard’s president is a tall, well-groomed, fifty-six-year-old, clear-eyed, former fighter pilot whose major regret in life is that he never saw combat.

When students’ parents see Ted Sears enter a room—parents, some with only one Sunday suit and tie, red skin under starched white collars, thick hard hands, plain dresses and one Sunday pocketbook, black, held with both hands—when these parents see this man enter a room wearing one of his seven-hundred-dollar suits (or the sixty-dollar green school blazer with the little yellow bulldog on the pocket), they know they are in the presence of power. This man is a leader. He looks parents in the eye, he shakes those worn hands firmly, and he flashes that smile that his wife, Lorraine, worries about sometimes. When Ted sleepwalks, and Lorraine finds him off in the den, standing there in his blue pajamas with the little white ships, or the yellow ones with the little brown airplanes, or the solid blues, or the solid greens, when she finds him standing in the dark in the middle of the night, in the den by the bookcase full of leather-bound classics, asleep, that smile— visible in the light through the window from the bugzapper —is frozen onto his face. And he’s standing there with his hand extended. That smile on her husband when he’s standing asleep in the den with his hand extended makes her nervous.

From his notes on the yellow pad, Ted plans to compose a letter to the Summerlin Chamber of Commerce, explaining the college’s relationship to BOTA House, the halfway house. He will do this before there are any complaints. He himself hadn’t been too sure about Dr. Fleming’s plan at first, this Project Promise, but Ted’s twin brother, Ned—Ballard’s provost— encouraged him to go forward with the idea. Federal money was available, and the school by golly should not refuse federal money if that money could be used to spread the Gospel. Even so, it was a hard decision—this halfway house business —because it involved, even though indirectly, known criminals, black criminals in some cases. However, Ted’s difficulty in giving the go-ahead was greatly diminished when the university attorneys determined that the college was not legally liable for any actions committed by halfway house residents —as long as no Ballard employees worked at BOTA House.

Mysteria, Ted’s secretary, brings in his seven forty-five cup of coffee and sets it on his personalized leather coaster from Henderson Cadillac.

Ted is musing. He takes a sip of coffee. “Thank you, Mysteria,” he says. He stands up from his long table and walks to his long, low window and looks across campus, across University Boulevard, at BOTA House. Dr. Fleming has promised that this Project Promise will bring national attention.

Ted looks farther down the street from BOTA House to the Nutrition House, the diet house he established five years ago when Ballard introduced a master’s degree in Diet and Nutrition. A lab school of sorts for the faculty and graduate students, and now, a nationally known Christian diet center.

There, in the Nutrition House, on a bench in the exercise room, sits Phoebe Trent, weighing two hundred and thirty-one pounds, about. She is dressed in shiny white tights, khaki Bermuda shorts, and a dark green sweatshirt. She has thick red hair, freckles, and very bright blue eyes. She’s sitting up straight, getting her breath, after tying one shoe. This is ridiculous, she thinks.

Phoebe wishes she had some of those tennis shoes with Velcro straps like her kindergarten students wear.

Other people in the exercise room are holding their hands high over their heads. Some are walking around, bending at the waist. That terribly fat man on the bench across the room looks like he might be unable to stand. The aerobics instructor, a graduate student at Ballard, is putting a cassette in the recorder. “Stretch time,” she says.

At BOTA House, the message printed neatly on the blackboard nailed to the housemother’s door is: IT’S NICE TO BE IMPORTANT, BUT IT’S MORE IMPORTANT TO BE NICE. Mrs. White is a former Ballard dorm-mother. Now working for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, she’s making three times her old salary.

Upstairs in his room, the front corner room, Wesley Benfield is making up his narrow single bed. His roommate, Ben, has already left for his job at the Texaco.

Wesley takes one last swipe at his tan-and-red blanket, to smooth it, then looks around for something to Xerox. He picks up last Sunday’s church bulletin, locks the door behind him, and walks down the old wide, wooden stairs past the weekly message. He signs out in the sign-out book—the rule is, out after eight A.M., in before six P.M., and with special permission, before nine, depending on demerits. He walks out onto the big porch, with its six rocking chairs, and down the street toward Copy-Op, the duplicating place. He takes long strides, slinging his head back every once in a while to throw his long blond hair out of his eyes.

Wesley has a plan—a way to meet a woman. Maybe a student. Maybe not. At twenty-four, he’s not too old for students —all the way down to freshmen. As he walks he sings snatches from a blues song he’s been writing.

What do I do, Lord Jesus,
with the women in my dreams?
Some are dressed, some are not dressed,
da-da, da-da, it seems.
Da-da, da-da, da-da, da-da.
Ah, the women in my dreams.

Dear Lord, help me on this plan to, to meet somebody I might spend my life with, and be happy with, and have children with, to have fruit and multiply with. Guide and direct my steps. Help me to do what is right, oh God. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

The Copy-Op is just off campus, on the corner of University Drive and General MacArthur. Inside, Wesley fishes several sheets of paper from a trash can and then stands behind a chest-high counter which cordons off three do-it-yourself copy machines.

Wesley has done this a few times before. He can usually count on somebody stopping at his station, thinking he is a Copy-Op employee. He can usually work up a little conversation. His plan is to meet a beautiful girl needing his help. One thing will lead to another.

Let her come in, dear God. Let her come in.

A young woman comes in carrying a large sheet of poster paper. She walks right up to Wesley. “Can you-all do oversized stuff?”

Not bad, thinks Wesley. “Sure can. Just follow me over here to the oversized machine. The machine’s not oversized, you know. Well, it actually is oversized but it does the oversized stuff is why it’s called oversized. Here you go. Now what you do is—” Wesley has no idea. “Let’s see.” On and off button. “There you go. It’s on.”

“I got to do this map for twelve people in my geography class. I worked three weeks on it.”

“Yeah. Right. No problem.”

Large sheets of clean paper are on the floor under the machine.

“We just need to get one of these sheets right here,” says Wesley, “to go right in here, it looks like.”

“Have you ever operated this thing?”

“Oh yeah. All the time.” There seems to be a place to get the map started and a place to get the copy paper started and both of them will be pulled through at the same time, it looks like.

Wesley starts the blank paper in the far slot, the map in the near slot.

“I worked on that map for three weeks,” says the girl.

Wesley presses the COPY button. The sheets are being pulled into the machine. The machine stops and a red light starts blinking.

“Let’s see here,” says Wesley. “Let’s just open this door and see if we can’t—” He pulls a handle and the front of the machine opens on hinges. The inside is a mass of rods, little orange stickers, and metal and plastic plates. A piece of map is visible.

“Uh-hummm,” says Wesley.

“My map looks like it’s hung,” says the girl.

I need some fresh air, thinks Wesley. “I’ll tell you what you do,” he says to the girl. “You wait right here. I need to go out to my car and get a pair of pliers. I’ll be right back.” Next week, he thinks.

“Pliers?”

Wesley starts for the door.

Another young woman, a big one, with lots of thick red hair comes in. She must weigh close to three hundred pounds. She looks familiar, Wesley thinks. Oh yeah, right. The one from over at Nutrition House. He’s seen her—from a distance —walk past BOTA House when he was on the porch, and he noticed how big her boobs were. Stick way out there. But now right in front of him, close up: her face! She’s beautiful. Freckles, blue eyes, full lips. Those country freckles. She’s got that cornfield look, like she just walked in from a cornfield, wearing a straw hat, wanting to fall in love with somebody like him—some fairly tall, blond, kind of lanky, good-looking guy who knows his way in the world, but is also a Christian. Some guy who has been in trouble but is now back on track, or maybe really on track for the first time ever.

“Can we help you?” says Wesley.

“I need to duplicate some pages from this book.”

A Yankee or something, he thinks, and she’s probably in college, maybe a freshman.

“No problem. Which pages would you like done?”

“I’ve got them marked there. The ones with a paper clip and a piece of paper.”

“Okay, if you will just go over there and get that little black counter box, and bring it on back over here to me, I’ll fix you right up.”

“Thank you.”

“And ask them if they can help that girl over there with the oversized stuff.” Wesley steps toward the oversize machine and says to the girl waiting, “My buddy’s going to help you out. He’s the expert on repairs. I already had an appointment set up when you came in.” He moves back to his post behind the chest-high wall, looks at the new young woman over at the main desk. She sure is fat, he thinks, but maybe it’s just more big since her proportions are about right. Nothing is hanging anywhere. Everything looks pretty firm. Wesley imagines his hands on her bare skin, roaming all around all over the body of this great big old young woman, probably a virgin, his hands just sort of venturing around, finding a bunch of little bitty freckles like a bunch of stars up in the night sky there under one of her breasts where the skin is the whitest, following a little line of star-freckles right up to the sun—her nipple. Her nipples are probably bright pink, not dark brown or black, he thinks. He blinks, hard. Dear God, please forgive me. Help me free my mind of things that I’m not supposed to think about.

It’s weird that I should feel this way about some girl who’s fat, thinks Wesley. He’s been trying not to think about women and sex. Maybe what’s going on is that he’ll just be thinking about kind of weird and different women, unusual women, like this one—for awhile. Then, after that, no women, no fantasies. Maybe God is slowly changing the way he thinks about women. Kind of slowly getting him ou. . .