Read an Excerpt
Celebrity
A Novel
By Thomas Thompson OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 1982 Thomas Thompson
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4331-1
CHAPTER 1
For seven straight days, rain tortured the heart of Texas. And when sun broke through the muck, clear and ripe on the third Friday of May 1950, it seemed both benediction and invocation. But it was only a tease, false hope. By midmorning the sun surrendered to fresh regiments of thunderheads and by noon the plains of north-central Texas were winter gray, sopping, and chilled. Beside the highways that fed Fort Worth, wildflowers fell, bluebonnets and Indian paintbrushes drooping like cheerleaders whose team had lost. The Trinity River surged out of its banks; the Brazos lowlands were becoming swamps of brown, sucking foam. The erupting hues of Texas spring washed away like makeup on a widow's face.
The rain was cussed by farmers, blessed by flu doctors and auto body shop owners, discussed by everybody, for there is nothing Texans relish talking about more. That the deluge was about to alter drastically the courses of several young and promising lives, no one knew this unpleasant Friday noon.
Kleber Cantrell took his anger out on his beast of burden, an elderly '38 De Soto, prewar hand-me-down from Father, a contraption uncanny in ability to reflect the owner's mood and world. Today the alternator was expiring, the last tire with tread was turning bald, assorted innards wheezing as it reached dry haven beneath the portico. There, nestled beside Kleber's home, the senile old tank gasped and died. The radio played on like fingernails growing on a cadaver and Kleber lingered a few moments, anxious to catch the noon news on WBAP. It soon became apparent that not much good was going on anywhere.
Harry Truman was whistle-stopping across the belly of America, leaping on and off cabooses, dedicating fruits from the pork barrel, draping Umatilla Indian blankets around his shoulders, scattering "hells" and "damns" like a farmer strewing rye, trying to convince a sorely unhappy electorate that under the sacred banner of the Democratic Party, the standard of living for 150 million Americans was sure to double — guaranteed double — within ten years. And as metaphoric companion to the storm clouds darkening the skies of Texas, a U.S. senator named Joe McCarthy was pissing on Harry's glory train, repeating a soon-to-be notorious accusation: "I have here in my hand a list of two hundred five names who are known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy in our State Department." Joe was starting to worry folks, seeing as how Russia had just announced the detonation of the first red atomic bomb.
All of this Kleber heard and noted, but, uncharacteristically, with but half an ear. The news for which he risked a dead battery came last: "Well, fellow swimmers," drawled the announcer in a voice that commenced like butter and soured quickly to clabber, "like the feller says, if you don't like the weather in Texas, just wait a durn minute. Today we got somethin' for everybody. We got a norther due in, yes I said norther, and yes this is the end of May; we got more rain — maybe another inch and a half; we got hail, we got reports of tornadoes up around Wichita Falls and west of Weatherford. The only good thing I can pass on is that it's not supposed to freeze. No need to put the baby tomato plants under the tarp. But by ten o'clock tonight it should be colder'n a gravedigger's handshake."
So what else is new, fretted Kleber as he stormed into the house where he had lived every single day of eighteen years.
"Well, shit," he swore, but not very loud. Even though no one else was in the house, his mother would somehow know if profanity was used. It was all too unfair. His epochal season — the final days of high school — was just about devastated by climatic caprice. Kleber aimed and threw imaginary darts against the kitchen wall. Class garden party? Rained out. Wham! Senior prom? At twenty prepaid bucks a couple? Disaster. Girls wading in with collapsed coiffures, gowns soaked to the calf, camellia corsages (three bucks a bloom and you had to buy two) dropping petals like molting turkeys. Wham! Wham! The way things were happening — or not happening — he would get about halfway through his valedictory address tomorrow night just as the roof of Will Rogers Auditorium collapsed. The best advice he could impart to the Class of '50 was how to build an ark.
Kleber peeled off his dripping red sweater and khaki trousers and threw them onto the mirror-waxed beige linoleum floor, an impulsive act that jarred the temper and tone of his mother's house. For a few edgy moments, he enjoyed the audacious feeling that came from standing in VeeJee Cantrell's kitchen clad only in his underwear. But he hurriedly found his bathrobe and regained the conformity of middle-class life in neutral gear.
He stared glumly out the window. The neighborhood hardly changed character under the assault of rain. Storm gray was as becoming as sunlight beige. This block of Cloverdale Avenue contained buff brick foursquare houses that were the aesthetic equals of orthopedic shoe boxes. Each had been constructed around 1928, the edge of the Depression. And each had waited obediently, like steadfast lovers, for the men to return from World War II. Here was the enclave of first-generation urban; most every parent on the block had been born on a farm somewhere and had come to the city in search of red silk and gold coins. Instead they found paycheck labor as insurance salesmen, vice-principals, gas station owners, civil servants, and plumbers. They married secretaries and shopgirls. They bred children, worshipped the Protestant God, paid taxes, and dared not ask for more. The residents of Cloverdale Avenue had reached their designated ceilings — one stories all — and settled for that. Kleber Cantrell could not wait to escape.
On the kitchen table, a basket of pale yellow apples contained a note for Kleber. His mother's orderly script gave a moment-by-moment itinerary:
Noon: Monnig's to buy graduation presents.
1 p.m. Harris Hospital — Visit Aunt Lula (Worse, spreading they say)
2 p.m. Church — Alto Section Practice
3 p.m. Ike-for-President Petition Meeting (I've got 114 signatures!)
4 p.m. Safeway (Hope 4 dzn. hot dogs enuf)
5 p.m. Latest — Home (Potato salad in icebox. Don't forget to hang up cap and gown on closet door to smooth wrinkles. Mack called twice. T.J. once.
Love, Your Mother)
One thing about Ma, thought Kleber, she never lets a body speculate about her march through the hours. Life With Mother was as itemized as a restaurant check. He wondered once if eighteen years and nine months prior, VeeJee jotted down: "9:20 p.m. Conceive Child, 9:30 p.m. Knit Booties." Presumably, thirty years hence, she would squeeze into her schedule: "3:35 p.m. Perish."
At least every other day, VeeJee sermonized on the gift of time, delivering a living legacy to her only child that robbed him of leisure, "Time is precious," the mother liked to cry. "Just before I say my prayers at night, I make a mental list of everything I accomplished that day. If there is one idle gap, I am ashamed. And if I have not learned something new, then I have wasted my brain and God's most blessed resource — time." Kleber would go through life unable to take a nap or a vacation without feeling guilty.
VeeJee's crowded agendas were eclectic. Already in less than half of 1950, she had mastered rose pruning, first aid with special honors in snakebite and cardiac resuscitation, and was well into the memorization of Proverbs. All of them. Moreover, she was eagerly learning about Communism, having discovered through the West Side Women's Current Affairs Circle that Joseph Stalin was not the rakish grandpa who linked hands with FDR and Churchill and promised not to munch any neighbor's boundaries. VeeJee was now persuaded that the Soviets were preparing to invade Texas. Two weeks earlier, she wrote a Hollywood studio in protestation of a planned film about Hiawatha. Conservative thought held that the Indian peacemaker was a Marxist hero. She even took down the framed print of two fluttering doves above gnarled hands in prayer. For years the picture had hung in the guest bedroom. "Doves are Red now, sad to say," she announced, with fervor that would rewrite Noah's Flood if permitted.
As per custom, VeeJee had prepared two perfect bologna sandwiches and chilled two Dr. Peppers for Kleber (nutrition had not yet caught her attention). Having once estimated for an arithmetic class that he had eaten enough bologna sandwiches to circle the globe, Kleber was well into a second voyage. He ate hurriedly, knowing that the telephone would soon be ringing. On the third bite it did, but he waited until the seventh ring before answering. He did not want people to think he was eager for social summons. People in control were people who appeared busy. When he picked up the receiver, he breathed heavily, as if interrupted from something urgent.
"It's me, Mr. Wonderful," said Mack from across the street, his deep, gut-bucket voice gloomy as the hour. "What are we gonna do?"
"I dunno," replied Kleber. "Buy umbrella stock?"
"I just hung up with T.J. and he says the ball's in your court. You're the big deal class president, Eagle Scout, and sorriest football player who ever put a helmet on backward."
Kleber snorted something about Neanderthals. "Why do I take this abuse from people whose thinking process rarely rises above Doak Walker's rushing average? You're as funny as Martha Higby." Reference was made to the history teacher who, if not demented, dwelled in the neurotic vicinity. Higby was given to expressing agony at student ineptitude by yanking down the wall map of Texas and hiding behind San Antonio.
Kleber fell silent to think. At the other end of the line, fifty feet across Cloverdale, in another orthopedic shoe box, Mack Crawford waited, picturing his best friend chewing on the dilemma. No good to push. He well knew that Kleber might spend five minutes deciding to go left or right at the fork of a hiking trail. Such delays were irritating, but Mack tolerated them, as did T. J. Luther, the third member of the triad, as did anybody who sought commerce — social, business, or emotional — with Kleber Cantrell. The son of VeeJee rowed a steady boat.
Lightning rent the early afternoon with grimmest thunder as attendant. Ruefully, Kleber peered out the window at the day condemned. No glimmer of celestial pardon. "What's the consensus?" asked Kleber.
"That nobody's gonna turn up at the lake in this shit." Mack paused for mutual wallowing in the unfairness of it all. Then he quickly shifted gears, his wont, making it difficult to track his conversational path. "Hey, did you hear what Ted Williams did last night? He got PO'd at the fans in Boston and he stepped outta the batter's box and — now get this — he gave 'em quote an obscene gesture end quote. That means the finger! Ted Williams flipped off the whole world! The paper said they may fire him. Ted Williams!"
Without commitment, Kleber grunted. He had little interest in baseball, the closest major- league team being in faraway St. Louis, his own athletic talents confined to daydreaming in the seldom trafficked regions of sandlot right field. His favorite position was left out. What did intrigue him, modestly, about Ted Williams was the covetous feeling that a man could play a child's game, make a quarter of a million a year, and have every public utterance and gesture committed to type and ink.
Enough of Ted. The problem of the moment was more compelling. Kleber considered it from all sides. The evening's plan, long in the making, was for a dozen of the couples that counted to congregate on the shore of Fort Worth's major lake, cook hot dogs, consume large quantities of Pearl beer (provided the cantankerous old crank who ran the county-line liquor store went for T.J.'s doctored ID), listen to Nat (King) Cole records, and just ... be together. It was not an official class function, only an assemblage of crowned heads, perverse in its snobbism — and delicious in adolescent torment. Tomorrow night everybody could come to the grad night blast at the Casino, the ramshackle old dance pavilion large enough for re-enactment of Civil War battles. Everyone would cheer over the unshackling of public school chains that had been in place a dozen years. Everyone would weep. Everyone would try and revel until dawn, as that was the expected rite of passage. But on this eve, only a few, the skimming of the cream, the fraction possessed of power or beauty or both, would be entitled to the memory of an elitist communion.
"Okay," decreed Kleber, "I say let's wait until five o'clock and watch the weather. If it's still raining then, maybe we can move it to Lisa's house."
Mack moaned. Lisa Ann Candleman, beloved of Kleber, was the daughter of a preacher. Social events in her home had all the gaiety of Mack's aunt's musicales. But he did not disagree: Kleber's word was always taken. "Yeah," he muttered. "But it won't be the same."
"It might be better," suggested Kleber, "I gotta hang up. That lady from the paper's coming over to do the interview."
"Oh, yeah," remembered Mack. "I still don't see why they're wastin' time on you." The tease was gentle. "Seems like they'd rather write up the Best All-Around Athlete or the Most Handsome Senior Boy, both of whom are one and the same."
"Quite wisely," said Kleber, "the reporter chose the Boy Most Likely to Succeed. A minor victory for intelligence."
"Time will tell," countered Mack, ringing off with envy not altogether hidden.
Her name was Laurie and she was such a pretty thing. She was too thin, and in sixteen years her body had not yet developed curves anywhere near generous, but her hair was uncut and gleamed blue black, and her eyes were the shade of dusk's last streak of violet. She was a night bird of a child — quick, nervous, hidden. Not many people valued Laurie's shadowy beauty because not many people knew she existed. Trouble was, Laurie never lived anywhere very long — a move a month was not uncommon — for Laurie's mother was always one jump ahead of a bounced check or an unpaid bill. Once the child boarded a Trailways bus to ride from Beaumont to Longview and informed her mother, "Ilove this house." Currently, mother and daughter resided in an abandoned trailer precariously balanced on cement blocks that squatted like jackrabbits on dirt ruts that wandered off a farm-to-market road that itself was a rarely traveled offshoot from the state highway linking Fort Worth and Weatherford.
Laurie had in fact only been to Weatherford once, a country town but five some odd miles from the trailer and noted for producing both watermelons that grow to a hundred pounds and the musical star Mary Martin. But isolation did not trouble Laurie, no more than the trailer's lack of electricity or plumbing, no more than the absence of her father. Whoever he was, he had been gone for years, God knew where, the crossbar hotel, more'n likely. All Laurie knew of him was a blurry snapshot, an unfocused man standing beside a pickup truck that was filled with chicken coops. He had heavy arm muscles and a pack of Luckies wrapped inside the sleeve of his tee shirt. He wore a straw cowboy hat and squinted somberly. His name was "sorry bastard," at least that was all Laurie's mother, SuBeth Killman, ever referred to him by. Hard times had fallen on SuBeth Killman. During the war, she prospererd modestly roaming Texas's many military bases and "entertaining our soldier boys." Now, five years later, her hair was bleached stiff as broom straw and her breasts were less like "Attention!" and more like "Parade Rest." Regularly SuBeth thrilled her daughter with plans for a new marriage, but the altar was elusive. In the spring of 1950, SuBeth found work uncapping beer for truckers at a roadhouse-grocery somewhere near the Tarrant County line and fed Laurie with pilfered cans of pork'n beans and box macaroni. Sometimes she brought home a customer — potentially a husband! — and on these important occasions, Laurie was expected to scoot. Her exit was not so much required because home was tiny and contained but one swaybacked daybed. The peril was that when Mama and beau began to party, the very real possibility existed that the home might rock off its cement blocks from overweight and sink into a sea of oozing red mud.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Celebrity by Thomas Thompson. Copyright © 1982 Thomas Thompson. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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