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Ed Sullivan
Show.
The smell of his aftershave was just the same.
At the top he said, "Step on me if I'm getting too personal, Denny, but Leigh's
not going with Arnie anymore, is she."
"No, Dad."
"Is she going with you? "
"I… well, I don't really know. I guess not."
"Not
yet,
you mean."
"Well—yeah, I guess so." I was starting to feel uncomfortable, and it must
have showed, but he pushed on anyway.
"Would it be fair to say that maybe she broke it off with Arnie because he
wasn't the same person anymore?"
"Yes. I think that would be fair to say."
"Does he know about you and Leigh?"
"Dad, there's nothing to know at least, not yet. He cleared his throat, seemed
to consider, and then said nothing. I let go of him and worked at getting my
crutches under me. I worked a little harder at it than I had to, maybe.
"I'll give you a little gratuitous advice," my father said finally. "Don't let him
know what's between you and her—and never mind the protestations that
there isn't anything. You're trying to help him some way, aren't you?"
"I don't know if there's anything either Leigh or I can do for Arnie, Dad."
"I've seen him two or three times," my father said.
"You have?" I said, startled. "Where?"
My father shrugged. "On the street. Downtown. You know. Libertyville"s-not
that big, Dennis. He "
"He what?"
"Hardly seemed to recognize me. And he looks older. Now that his face has
cleared, he looks much older. I used to think he took after his father, but now
—" He broke off suddenly. "Dennis, has it occurred to you that Arnie may be
having some sort of nervous breakdown."
"Yes," I said, and only wished I could have told him that there were other
possibilities. Worse ones. Possibilities that would have made my old man
wonder if I was the one having a nervous breakdown.
"You be careful," he said, and although he didn't mention what had happened
to Will Darnell, I suddenly felt strongly that he was thinking of it. "You be
careful, Dennis."
Leigh called me on the telephone the next day and said her father was being
called away to Los Angeles on year-end business and had proposed, on the
spur of the moment, that they all go along with him and get away from the
cold and the snow.
"My mother was crazy about the idea, and I just couldn't think of any
plausible reason to say no," she said. "It's only ten days, and school doesn't
start again until January 8th." "It sounds great," I said. "Have fun out there."
"You think I should go?"
"If you don't, you ought to have your head examined."
"Dennis?"
"What?"
Her voice dropped a little. "You'll be careful won't you? I… well, I've been
thinking about you a lot lately."
She hung up then, leaving me feeling surprised and warm—but the guilt
remained, fading a little now, maybe, but still there. My father had asked me
if I was trying to help Arnie. Was I? Or was I maybe only snooping into a
part of his life which he had expressly marked off-limits… and stealing his
girl in the process? And what exactly
would
Arnie do or say if he found out?
My head ached with questions, and I thought that maybe it was just as well
that Leigh was going away for a while.
As she herself had said about our folks, it seemed safer.
On Friday the 29th, the last business day of the old year, I called the
Libertyville American Legion Post and asked for the secretary. I got his
name, Richard McCandless, from the building's janitor, who also found a
telephone number to go with it. The number turned out to be that of David
Emerson's, Libertyville's "good" furniture store. I was told to wait a moment
and then McCandless came on, a deep, gravelly voice that sounded a tough
sixty—as if maybe Patton and the owner of this voice had fought their way
across Germany to Berlin shoulder to shoulder, possibly biting enemy bullets
out of the air with their teeth as they went.
"McCandless," he said.
"Mr McCandless, my name is Dennis Guilder. Last August you put on a
military-style funeral for a fellow named Roland LeBay—"
"Was he a friend of yours?"
"No, only a bare acquaintance, but—"
"Then I don't have to spare your feelings none, McCandless said, gravel
rattling in his throat. He sounded like Andy Devine crossed with Broderick
Crawford. "LeBay was nothing but a pure-d sandy-craw sonofabitch, and if
I'd had my way, the Legion wouldn't have had a thing to do with planting him.
He quit the organization back in 1970. If he hadn't quit, we would have fired
him. That man was the most contentious bastard that every lived."
"Was he?"
"You bet he was. He'd pick an argument with you, then up it to a fight if he
could. You couldn't play poker with the sonofabitch, and you sure couldn't
drink with him. You couldn't keep up with him, for one thing, and he'd get
mean for another. Not that he had to go far to get to mean. What a crazy
bastard he was, you should pardon my fran-sayse. Who are you, boy?"
For an insane moment I thought of quoting Emily Dickinson at him: I'm
nobody! Who are you?
"A friend of mine bought a car from LeBay just before he died—"
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