After the beep he said, "Hi, it's me. I'm in Lincoln. It's
snowing. Remember the casserole you were going to take over
to my mother. She'll be expecting it. And she asked for the
Red Ball coupons. I know you think she's crazy on that
subject, but humor her, O.K.? She's old. Tell Carlene Daddy
says hi." He paused, then for the first time in about five
years added, "I love you."
He hung up, thought about another cigarette_-no worries
about lung cancer, not now__and decided against it. He put
the notebook, open to the last page, beside the telephone.
He picked up the gun and rolled out the cylinder. Fully
loaded. He snapped the cylinder back in with a flick of his
wrist, then slipped the short barrel into his mouth. It
tasted of oil and metal. He thought, Here I SIT, about to
COOL it, my plan to EAT a fuckin'BOOL-it. He grinned around
the barrel. That was terrible. He never would have written
that down in his book
Then another thought occurred to him and he put the gun back
in its trench on the pillow, drew the phone to him again,
and once more dialed home. He waited for his voice to recite
the useless cell_phone number, then said, "Me again. Don't
forget Rambo's appointment at the vet day after tomorrow,
O.K.? Also the sea_jerky strips at night. They really do
help his hips. Bye."
He hung up and raised the gun again. Before he could put the
barrel in his mouth, his eye fell on the notebook. He
frowned and put the gun down. The book was open to the last
four entries. The first thing anyone responding to the shot
would see would be his dead body, sprawled across the bed
closest to the bathroom, his head hanging down and bleeding
on the nubbly green rug. The second thing, however, would be
the Spiral notebook, open to the final written page.
Alfie imagined some cop, some Nebraska state trooper who
would never be written about on any bathroom wall due to
the disciplines of scansion, reading those final entries,
perhaps turning the battered old notebook toward him
with the tip of his own pen. He would read the first
three entries__"Trojan Gum," "Poopie doopie," "Save Russian
Jews"-_and dismiss them as insanity. He would read the last
line, "All that you love will be carried away," and decide
that the dead guy had regained a little rationality at the
end, just enough to write a halfway sensible suicide note.
Alfie didn't like the idea of people thinking he was
crazy (further examination of the book, which contained
such information as "Medgar Evers is alive and well in
Disneyland," would only confirm that impression). He was not
crazy, and the things he had written here over the years
weren't crazy, either. He was convinced of it. And if he was
wrong, if these were the rantings of lunatics, they needed
to be examined even more closely. That thing about don't
look up here, you're pissing on your shoes, for instance,
was that humor? Or a growl of rage?
He considered using the john to get rid of the notebook,
then shook his head. He'd end up on his knees with his
shirtsleeves rolled back, fishing around in there, trying to
get the damn thing back out. While the fan rattled and the
fluorescent buzzed. And although immersion might blur some
of the ink, it wouldn't blur all of it. Not enough. Besides,
the notebook had been with him so long, riding in his pocket
across so many flat and empty Midwest miles. He hated the
idea of just flushing it away.
The last page, then? Surely one page, balled up, would go
down. But that would leave the rest for them (there was
always a them) to discover, all that clear evidence of an
unsound mind. They'd say, "Lucky he didn't decide to visit a
schoolyard with an AK_47. Take a bunch of little kids with
him." And it would follow Maura like a tin can tied to a
dog's tail. "Did you hear about her husband?" they'd ask
each other in the supermarket. "Killed himself in a motel.
Left a book full of crazy stuff. Lucky he didn't kill her."
Well, he could afford to be a little hard about that. Maura
was an adult, after all. Carlene, on the other hand ...
Carlene was ...
Alfie looked at his watch. At her j.-v. basketball game,
that's where Carlene was right now. Her teammates would say
most of the same things the supermarket ladies would say,
only within earshot and accompanied by those chilling
seventh-grade giggles. Eyes full of glee and horror. Was
that fair? No, of course not, but there was nothing fair
about what had happened to him, either. Sometimes when you
were cruising along the highway, you saw big curls of
rubber that had unwound from the recap tires some of the
independent truckers used. That was what he felt like now:
thrown tread. The pills made it worse. They cleared your
mind just enough for you to see what a colossal jam you were
in.
"But I'm not crazy," he said. "That doesn't make me crazy."
No. Crazy might actually be better.
