“Why did you tell me he was dead?”
“Long story.”
“And the mask?”
“If he took it off you’d understand.”
“He called me a negro.”
“He worked with black people.”
“He worked?”
“Yeah, until recently he was a janitor.”
“I heard he died in Alabama.”
“Who told you that?”
“Renee.”
His eyes widened. “Renee?”
“She said he was in a coma for two years.”
“Yeah.” He rubbed the back of his neck, then creaked back and forth in his chair, straining his neck up as if he were trying to swallow a nail. “From the beginning every last doctor said he wouldn’t live. After a year my father wanted to pull the plug. He finally got his wish.” Shelly cradled his head, appearing to weather a wave of migraine. “After they took him off life support everyone presumed he would die. But Donny lived. My mother took care of him. My father told everyone that Donny had died. It was just easier that way. When Donny got better, he got a job and moved into a little trailer not far from my folks.”
“I see.”
“You know he broke his skull in fifteen places. He can’t remember anything. He’s proof to me that there is no God.”
I looked up and Donny was standing in the hall.
“Hello, Donny Ray,” I said.
“Hello, negro,” he returned.
Shelly picked up the 78 copy of “Please Please Me” and held it to the light. His hands were shaking. “Never even saw one of these before. Where’d you find it?”
“Garage sale in Poway.”
“Helluva score. You want a beer?”
“No thanks. I gotta go. Dog’s in the car.”
“I’ll give you a call.”
28.KLIK in Canoga Park
SHELLY CALLED ME UP TWO DAYS LATER. “I GOTTA GO UP TO L. A. for an auction,” he said. “KLIK in Canoga Park went belly-up. You wanna come?”
“I don’t know, man.”
“It’s a public auction.”
“Yeah, I read about it.”
“Lots of dupes and promos, posters, autographed stuff, everything. Like a year’s worth of garage sales in one day.”
“Donny coming?”
“Yeah. Last time I left him alone he broke a Shirelles record and ate a whole chocolate cake.”
“Shirelles aren’t worth much,” I said.
“He gets kind of lonesome, too,” he said. “He’s used to my mom being around.”
“Does he know she’s gone?”
“He was at the funeral. But I don’t believe he remembers.”
“Does he remember you’re his brother?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Why does he call you Chuck?”
“You tell me, babe.”
“What does he like to talk about? What does he do?”
“He likes music. He’s a big Yankees fan. For a while he knew all the planets and the nearby stars and that kind of stuff. His hobby is buying life insurance. These hucksters come around, the door-to-door guys you still see in the South, and sell him wacky policies. He’s bought forty or fifty of them, one of them if he dies of melanoma before he’s forty-five pays out like three million.”
“Everyone should have a hobby,” I said. “Okay, I’ll go with you. Maybe we can catch half a card at Hollypark.”
“Del Mar’s opening in a week, believe it?”
“I haven’t looked at a Form in a month.”
“Me neither.”
“What’s happened to us?”
“Old age, I guess. I’ll pick you up at the Island in an hour.”
29.Boys Love Their Mothers
WE DROVE UP TO L. A. THREE ABREAST IN SHELLY’S SCORCHED Nissan. Donny was not wearing his mask. His head was an inflamed quilt of overlapping scars. He was hard to look at, but he looked exactly like what he was, a boy who had jumped thirty feet off a sea cliff face first into a bed of rocks. The disproportion of his features was centered around a lighting-white scar that ran from deep in the scalp all the way down to his chin. The facial halves were so poorly matched that the sightless eye sat a good inch below the good one. Several front teeth were missing and the remaining incisors curled downward giving him a vampirish aspect. His sparse hair was clumped into a peak like a mohawk. His thoughts peeped out, a scramble of mommy, mommy and will you love me tomorrow. Boys love their mothers, I thought. Too bad I never really had one.
From Del Mar the radio station in Canoga Park was eighty miles or so. We sat in silence, only the radio talking. Donny said finally, “My brain hurts.”
“Where’s your eye at, Donny?” asked Shelly.
“In my pocket.”
“Put it in.”
“I can’t see through it.”
“You need to wear it or you’ll lose it again.”
“It itches.”
“Put it in.”
Donny’s hand groped about in his pocket, but he didn’t withdraw the eye. Instead he turned the raw and vacant aperture upon me.
“How about those Yankees?” I said.
“Who?” said Donny.
“The New York Yankees.”
“Oh, them, yeah.”
“I think they’re in first place,” I said.
“Well, I’ll be dipped,” he said.
“Too bad they didn’t keep Chili Davis,” I said.
“Good Old Chili,” said Donny.
The traffic thickened briefly and Shelly downshifted. “That Beatles record is not a counterfeit,” he said.
“How much is it worth?”
“Four thousand, maybe more.”
“I think I’ll keep it.”
“I would too,” he said.
“So would I,” said Donny Ray.
30.Try a Little Tenderness
ONLY ABOUT FIFTY BIDDERS SHOWED UP FOR THE AUCTION IN a meeting hall at the old KLIK radio station in Canoga Park. The owner of KLIK, an oldies format overrun by time, wanted to liquidate immediately, so except for promotional records and a few autographed items, most of the inventory was being sold off in bulk. The owner had five other radio stations, every one moving to a more profitable pre-recorded format, with America falling asleep between the commercials.
I was bewildered by the patter of the auctioneer, square dancing had never been my forte, and since this was Shelly’s trip and I was not going to compete with him I sat back and watched. Shelly had his game face on and was picking up box after box for almost nothing. Though most of the bidders seem baffled by his enthusiasm, I knew he was racking up the score. Dinah Shore, even with Sinatra, was worth nothing until you pushed her across the golden
