The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

Batman and Robin

Have an Altercation

Sanderson sees his father twice a week. On Wednesday evenings, after he closes the jewelry store his parents opened long ago, he drives the three miles to Crackerjack Manor and sees Pop there, usually in the common room. In his ‘suite,’ if Pop is having a bad day. On most Sundays, Sanderson takes him out to lunch. The facility where Pop is living out his final foggy years is actually called the Harvest Hills Special Care Unit, but to Sanderson, Crackerjack Manor seems more accurate.

Their time together isn’t actually so bad, and not just because Sanderson no longer has to change the old man’s bed when he pisses in it or get up in the middle of the night when Pop goes wandering around the house, calling for his wife to make him some scrambled eggs or telling Sanderson those damned Fredericks boys are out in the backyard, drinking and hollering at each other (Dory Sanderson has been dead for fifteen years and the three Fredericks boys, no longer boys, moved away long ago). There’s an old joke about Alzheimer’s: the good news is that you meet new people every day. Sanderson has discovered the real good news is that the script rarely changes. It means you almost never have to improvise.

Applebee’s, for instance. Although they have been having Sunday lunch at the same one for over three years now, Pop almost always says the same thing: ‘This isn’t so bad. We ought to come here again.’ He always has chopped steak, done medium rare, and when the bread pudding comes, he tells Sanderson that his wife’s bread pudding is better. Last year, the pudding was off the menu of the Applebee’s on Commerce Way, so Pop – after having Sanderson read the dessert choices to him four times and thinking it over for an endless two minutes – ordered the apple cobbler. When it came, Pop said that Dory served hers with heavy cream. Then he simply sat, staring out the window at the highway. The next time he made the same observation, but ate the cobbler right down to the china.

He can usually be counted on to remember Sanderson’s name and the relationship, but he sometimes calls Sanderson Reggie, the name of his older brother. Reggie died forty years ago. When Sanderson prepares to leave the ‘suite’ on Wednesdays – or, on Sundays, after he takes his father back to Crackerjack Manor – his father invariably thanks him, and promises that next time he will be feeling better.

In his young years – before meeting Dory Levin, who civilized him – Sanderson’s pop-to-be was a roughneck in the Texas oilfields, and sometimes he reverts to that man, who never dreamed he would one day become a successful jewelry merchant in San Antonio. On these occasions he is confined to his ‘suite.’ Once he turned his bed over and paid for his efforts with a broken wrist. When the orderly on duty – José, Pop’s favorite – asked why he did it, Pop said it was because that fucking Gunton wouldn’t turn down his radio. There is no Gunton, of course. Not now. Somewhere in the past, maybe. Probably.

Lately, Pop has displayed a kleptomaniacal streak. The orderlies, nurses, and doctors have found all sorts of things in his room: vases, plastic utensils from the dining hall, the TV controller from the common room. Once José discovered an El Producto cigar box, filled with various jigsaw puzzle pieces and eighty or ninety assorted playing cards, under Pop’s bed. Pop cannot tell anyone, including his son, why he takes these things, and usually denies that he has taken them at all. Once he told Sanderson that Gunderson was trying to get him in trouble.

‘Do you mean Gunton, Pop?’ Sanderson asked.

Pop waved a bony driftwood hand. ‘All that guy ever wanted was pussy. He was the original pussy hound from Pussyville.’

But the klepto phase seems to be passing – that’s what José says, anyway – and this Sunday his father is calm enough. It’s not one of his clear days, but not one of the really bad ones, either. It’s good enough for Applebee’s, and if they get through it without his father pissing himself, all will be well. He’s wearing continence pants, but of course there’s a smell. For this reason, Sanderson always gets them a corner table. That’s not a problem; they dine at two, and by then the after-church crowd is back home, watching baseball or football on TV.

‘Who are you?’ Pop asks in the car. It’s a bright day, but chilly. In his oversize sunglasses and wool topcoat, he looks quite a lot like Uncle Junior, that old gangster from The Sopranos.

‘I’m Dougie,’ Sanderson says. ‘Your son.’

‘I remember Dougie,’ Pop says, ‘but he died.’

‘No, Pop, hunh-uh. Reggie died. He …’ Sanderson trails off, waiting to see if Pop will finish. Pop doesn’t. ‘It was an accident.’

‘Drunk, was he?’ Pop asks. This hurts, even after all the years. That’s the bad news about what his father has – he is capable of random cruelties that, while unmeant, can still sting like hell.

‘No,’ Sanderson said, ‘that was the kid who hit him. And then walked away with nothing but a couple of scratches.’

That kid will be in his fifties now, probably going silver at the temples. Sanderson hopes this grown version of the kid who killed his brother has scoliosis, he hopes the guy’s wife died of ovarian cancer, hopes he got mumps and went both blind and sterile, but he’s probably just fine. Managing a grocery store somewhere. Maybe even, God help them, managing an Applebee’s. Why not? He was sixteen. All water over the dam. Youthful indiscretion. The records would be sealed. And Reggie? Also sealed. Bones inside a suit under a headstone on Mission Hill. Some days Sanderson can’t even remember what he looked like.

‘Dougie and I used to play Batman and Robin,’ Pop says. ‘It was his favorite game.’

They stop for the light at the intersection of Commerce Way and Airline Road, where trouble will soon occur. Sanderson looks at his father and smiles. ‘Yeah, Pop, good! We even went out that way for Halloween one year, do you remember? I talked you into it. The Caped Crusader and the Boy Wonder.’

His pop looks out through the windshield of Sanderson’s Subaru, saying nothing. What is he thinking? Or has thought flattened to nothing but a carrier wave? Sanderson sometimes imagines the sound that flatline might make: mmmmmmmm. Like the old testpattern hum on TV, back before cable and satellite.

Sanderson puts his hand on one thin topcoated arm and gives it a friendly squeeze. ‘You were drunk on your ass and Mom was mad, but I had fun. That was my best Halloween.’

‘I never drank around my wife,’ Pop says.

No, Sanderson thinks as the light turns green. Not once she trained you out of it.

‘Want help with the menu, Pop?’

‘I can read,’ his father says. He no longer can, but it’s bright in their corner and he can look at the pictures even with his Uncle Junior gangsta sunglasses on. Besides, Sanderson knows what he will order.

When the waiter comes with their iced teas, Pop says he’ll have the chopped steak, medium rare. ‘I want it pink but not red,’ he says. ‘If it’s red, I’ll send it back.’

The waiter nods. ‘Your usual.’

Pop looks at him suspiciously.

‘Green beans or coleslaw?’

Pop snorts. ‘You kidding? All those beans were dead. You couldn’t sell costume jewelry that year, let alone the real stuff.’

‘He’ll have the slaw,’ Sanderson says. ‘And I’ll have—’

‘All those beans were dead!’ Pop says emphatically, and gives the waiter an imperious look that says, Do you dare challenge me?

The waiter, who has served them many times before, merely nods and says, ‘They were dead,’ before turning to Sanderson. ‘For you, sir?’

They eat. Pop refuses to take off his topcoat, so Sanderson asks for one of the plastic bibs and ties it around his father’s neck. Pop makes no objection to this, may not register it at all. Some of his slaw ends up on his pants, but the bib catches most of the mushroom gravy drips. As they are finishing, Pop informs the mostly empty room that he has to piss so bad he can taste it.

Sanderson accompanies him to the men’s room, and his father allows him to unzip his fly, but when Sanderson attempts to pull down the elasticized front of the continence pants, Pop slaps his hand away. ‘Never handle another man’s meat, Sunny Jim,’ he says, annoyed. ‘Don’t you know that?’

This prompts an ancient memory: Dougie Sanderson standing in front of the toilet with his shorts puddled around his feet and his father kneeling beside him, giving instruction. How old was he then? Three? Only two? Yes, maybe only two, but he doesn’t doubt the recollection; it’s like a fleck of bright glass seen at the side of the road, one so perfectly positioned it leaves an afterimage. ‘Unlimber, assume the position, fire when ready,’ he says.

Pop gives him a suspicious look, then breaks Sanderson’s heart with a grin. ‘I used to tell my boys that when I was getting them housebroke,’ he says. ‘Dory told me it was my job, and I did it, by God.’

He unleashes a torrent, and most of it actually goes into the urinal. The smell is sour and sugary. Diabetes. But what does that matter? Sometimes Sanderson thinks the sooner the better.

Back at their table, still wearing the bib, Pop renders his verdict. ‘This place isn’t so bad. We ought to come here again.’

‘How about some dessert, Pop?’

Pop considers the idea, gazing out the window, mouth hanging open. Or is it only the carrier wave? No, not this time. ‘Why not? I have room.’

They both order the apple cobbler. Pop regards the scoop of vanilla on top with his eyebrows pulled together into a thicket. ‘My wife used to serve this with heavy cream. Her name was Dory. Short for Doreen. Like on The Mickey Mouse Club. Hi-there, ho-there, hey-there, you’re as welcome as can be.’

‘I know, Pop. Eat up.’

‘Are you Dougie?’

‘Yup.’

‘Really? Not pulling my leg?’

‘No, Pop, I’m Dougie.’

His father holds up a dripping spoonful of ice cream and apples. ‘We did, didn’t we?’

‘Did what?’

‘Went out trick-and-treating as Batman and Robin.’

Sanderson laughs, surprised. ‘We sure did! Ma said I was born foolish but you had no excuse. And Reggie wouldn’t come near us. He was disgusted by the whole thing.’

‘I was drunk,’ Pop says, then begins eating his dessert. When he finishes, he belches, points out the window, and says, ‘Look at those birds. What are they again?’

Sanderson looks. The birds are clustered on a Dumpster in the parking lot. Several more are on the fence behind it. ‘Those’re crows, Pop.’

‘Christ, I know that,’ Pop says. ‘Crows never bothered us back then. We had a pellet gun. Now listen.’ He leans forward, all business. ‘Have we been here before?’

Sanderson briefly considers the metaphysical possibilities inherent in this question, then says, ‘Yes. We come here most Sundays.’

‘Well, it’s a good place. But I think we ought to go back. I’m tired. I want that other thing now.’

‘A nap.’

‘That other thing,’ Pop says, giving him that imperious look.

Sanderson motions for the check, and while he’s paying it at the register, Pop sails on with his hands tucked deep in his coat pockets. Sanderson grabs his change in a hurry and has to run to catch the door before Pop can wander out into the parking lot, or even into the busy four lanes of Commerce Way.

‘That was a good night,’ Pop says as Sanderson buckles his seatbelt.

‘What night was that?’

‘Halloween, you dummy. You were eight, so it was nineteen fifty-nine. You were born in ’fifty-one.’

Sanderson looks at his father, amazed, but the old man is staring straight ahead at the traffic. Sanderson closes the passenger door, goes around the hood of his Subaru, gets in behind the wheel. They say nothing for two or three blocks, and Sanderson assumes his father has forgotten the whole thing, but he hasn’t.

‘When we got to the Foresters’ house at the bottom of the hill – you remember the hill, don’t you?’

‘Church Street Hill, sure.’

‘Right! Norma Forester opened the door, and to you she says – before you could – she says, “Trick or treat?” Then she looks at me and says, “Trick or drink?”’ Pop makes a rusty-hinge sound that Sanderson hasn’t heard in a year or more. He even slaps his thigh. ‘Trick or drink! What a card! You remember that, don’t you?’

Sanderson tries, but comes up empty. All he remembers is how happy he was to have his dad with him, even though Dad’s Batman costume – put together on the fly – was pretty lame. Gray pajamas, the bat emblem drawn on the front with Magic Marker. The cape cut out of an old bedsheet. The Batman utility belt was a leather belt in which his father had stuck an assortment of screwdrivers and chisels – even an adjustable wrench – from the toolbox in the garage. The mask was a moth-eaten balaclava that Pop rolled up to the nose so his mouth showed. Standing in front of the hallway mirror before going out, he pulled the top of the mask up on the sides, plucking at it to make ears, but they wouldn’t stay.

‘She offered me a bottle of Shiner’s,’ Pop says. Now they’re nine blocks up Commerce Way and approaching the intersection at Airline Road.

‘Did you take it?’ Pop is on a roll. Sanderson would love for it to continue all the way back to Crackerjack Manor.

‘Sure did.’ He falls silent. As Commerce Way approaches the intersection, the two lanes become three. The one on the far left is a turn lane. The lights for straight-ahead traffic are red, but the one handling traffic in the left-turn lane is showing a green arrow. ‘That gal had tits like pillows. She was the best loving I ever had.’

Yes, they hurt you. Sanderson knows this not just from his own experience but from talking to others who have relatives in the Manor. Mostly they don’t mean to, but they do. What memories remain to them are all in a jumble – like the pilfered puzzle pieces José found in the cigar box under Pop’s bed – and there’s no governor on them, no way of separating stuff that’s okay to talk about from the stuff that isn’t. Sanderson has never had a reason to think his father was anything but faithful to his wife for the entire forty-some years of their marriage, but isn’t that an assumption all grown children make, if their parents’ marriage was serene and collegial?

He takes his eyes off the road to look at his father, and that is why there is an accident instead of one of the near misses that happen all the time on busy roads like Commerce Way. Even so, it’s not a terribly serious one, and though Sanderson knows his attention wandered from the road for a second or two, he also knows it still wasn’t his fault.

One of those built-up pickup trucks with the oversize tires and the roof-lights on the cab swerves into his lane, wanting to get all the way left in time to turn before the green arrow goes out. There’s no taillight blinker; this Sanderson notes just as the left front of his Subaru collides with the rear of the pickup truck. He and his father are both thrown forward into their locked seatbelts, and a ridge suddenly heaves up in the middle of his Subaru’s previously smooth hood, but the airbags don’t deploy. There’s a brisk tinkle of glass.

‘Asshole!’ Sanderson cries. ‘Jesus!’ Then he makes a mistake. He pushes the button that unrolls his window, sticks out his arm, and wags his middle finger at the truck. Later he will think he only did it because Pop was in the car with him, and Pop was on a roll.

Pop. Sanderson turns to him. ‘You okay?’

‘What happened?’ Pop says. ‘Why’d we quit?’

He’s confused but otherwise fine. A good thing he was wearing his seatbelt, although God knows it’s hard to forget them these days. The cars won’t let you. Drive fifty feet without putting one on and they begin screaming with indignation. Sanderson leans over Pop’s lap, thumbs open the glove compartment, gets out his registration and insurance card. When he straightens up again, the door of the pickup truck is standing open and the driver is walking toward him, taking absolutely no notice of the cars that honk and swerve to get around the latest fender-bender. There isn’t as much traffic as there would be on a weekday, but Sanderson doesn’t count this as a blessing, because he’s looking at the approaching driver and thinking, I could be in trouble here.

He knows this guy. Not personally, but he’s a south Texas staple. He’s wearing jeans and a tee-shirt with the sleeves ripped off at the shoulders. Not cut, ripped, so that errant strings dangle against the tanned slabs of muscle on his upper arms. The jeans are hanging off his hipbones so the brand name of his underwear shows. A chain runs from one beltless loop of his jeans to his back pocket, where there will no doubt be a big leather wallet, possibly embossed with the logo of a heavy metal band. Lots of ink on his arms and hands, even crawling up his neck. This is the kind of guy, when Sanderson sees him on the sidewalk outside his jewelry shop via closed-circuit TV, who causes him to push the button that locks the door. Right now he would like to push the button that locks his car door, but of course he can’t do that. He should never have flipped the guy the bird, and he even had time to rethink his options, because he had to roll down the window in order to do it. But it’s too late now.

Sanderson opens the door and gets out, ready to be placating, to apologize for what he shouldn’t need to apologize for – it was the guy who cut across, for God’s sake. But here is something else, something that makes little quills of dismay prickle the skin of his forearms and the back of his neck, which is sweating now that he’s out of the AC. The guy’s tattoos are crude, straggling things: chains around the biceps, thorns circling the forearms, a dagger on one wrist with a drop of blood hanging from the tip of the blade. No skin shop did those. That’s jailhouse ink. Tat Man is at least six-two in his boots, and at least two hundred pounds. Maybe two twenty. Sanderson is five-nine and weighs a hundred and sixty.

‘Look, I’m sorry I flipped you the bird,’ Sanderson says. ‘Heat of the moment. But you changed lanes without—’

‘Look what you did to my truck!’ Tat Man says. ‘I ain’t had it but three months!’

‘We need to exchange insurance information.’ They also need a cop. Sanderson looks around for one and sees only rubberneckers, slowing down to assess the damage and then speeding up again.

‘You think I got insurance when I can barely make the payments on that bitch?’

You have to have insurance, Sanderson thinks, it’s the law. Only a guy like this doesn’t think he has to have anything. The rubber testicles hanging under his license plate are the final proof.

‘Why the fuck didn’t you let me in, asshole?’

‘There was no time,’ Sanderson said. ‘You cut across, you never blinked—’

‘I blinked!’

‘Then how come it isn’t on?’ Sanderson points.

‘Because you knocked out my fucking taillight, nummy! How am I supposed to tell my girlfriend about this? She fronted the fucking down payment! And get that fucking shit out of my face.’

He strikes the insurance card and registration, which Sanderson is still holding out, from Sanderson’s hand. Sanderson looks down at them, stunned. His papers are lying on the road.

‘I’m going,’ Tat Man says. ‘I’ll fix my damage, you fix yours. That’s how it’s going to work.’

The damage to the Subaru is far worse than the damage to the absurdly oversize pickup, probably fifteen hundred or two thousand more, but that isn’t what makes Sanderson speak up. It isn’t being afraid the lug will get away clean, either – all Sanderson has to do is write down the number of the plate above those hanging rubber testes. It isn’t even the heat, which is whopping. It’s the thought of his gorked-out father sitting there in the passenger seat, not knowing what’s happening, needing a nap. They should be halfway back to Crackerjack Manor by now, but no. No. Because this happy asshole had to cut across traffic. Just had to scoot under that green arrow before it went out, or the world would grow dark and the winds of judgment would blow.

‘That’s not how it’s going to work,’ Sanderson says. ‘It was your fault. You cut in front of me without signaling. I didn’t have time to stop. I want to see your registration, and I want to see your driver’s license.’

‘Fuck your mother,’ the big man says, and punches Sanderson in the stomach. Sanderson bends over, expelling all the air in his lungs in a great whoosh. He should have known better than to provoke the driver of the pickup truck, he did know better, one look at those amateur tats and anyone would have known better, but he still went ahead because he didn’t believe this would happen in broad daylight, at the intersection of Commerce Way and Airline Road. He belongs to the Jaycees. He hasn’t been punched since the third grade, when the argument was over baseball cards.

‘That there’s my registration,’ Tat Man says. Big streams of sweat are running down the sides of his face. ‘I hope you like it. As for my driver’s license, I don’t have one, okay? Fuckin don’t. I’m gonna be in a lot of trouble, and it’s all your fuckin fault because you were jerkin off instead of looking where you were goin. Fuckin ringmeat!’

Then Tat Man loses it completely. Maybe it’s the accident, maybe it’s the heat, maybe it’s Sanderson’s insistence on looking at documents Tat Man doesn’t have. It might even be the sound of his own voice. Sanderson has heard the phrase he lost it many times, but realizes he has never taken in its full meaning until now. Tat Man is his teacher, and he’s a good teacher. He laces both of his hands together, making a double fist. Sanderson has just time enough to see there are blue eyes on Tat Man’s knuckles before he’s hit in the side of the face with a sledgehammer that drives him back against the newly distressed right side of his car. He slides along it, feeling a prong of metal tear his shirt and the skin beneath. Blood spills down his side, hot as fever. Then his knees buckle and he lands on the road. He stares down at his hands, not believing they are his hands. His right cheek is hot and seems to be rising like bread dough. His right eye is watering.

Next comes a kick to his wounded side, just above the beltline. Sanderson’s head hits the right front hubcap of his Subaru and bounces off. He tries to crawl out from under Tat Man’s shadow. Tat Man is yelling at him, but Sanderson can’t make out any words; it’s just wah-wah-wah, the sound adults make when they’re talking to the kids in the animated Peanuts cartoons. He wants to tell Tat Man okay, okay, you say tomato and I say tomahto, let’s call the whole thing off. He wants to say no harm and no foul (although he feels he has been fouled quite badly), you go your way and I’ll go mine, happy trails to you, see you tomorrow, Mouseketeers. Only he can’t catch his breath. He thinks he’s going to have a heart attack, may be having one already. He wants to raise his head – if he’s going to die he would like to do it looking at something more interesting than the surface of Commerce Way and the front of his own wounded car – but he can’t seem to do it. His neck has become a noodle.

There’s another kick, this time in the high meat of his left thigh. Then Tat Man gives a guttural cry, and red drops begin to splash the composition surface of the roadway. Sanderson at first thinks it’s his nose – or maybe his lips, from the double-handed blow to his face – but then more warmth splashes the back of his neck. It’s like a tropical rain shower. He crawls a little farther, past the hood of his car, then manages to turn over and sit. He looks up, squinting against the dazzle of the sky, and sees Pop standing beside Tat Man. Tat Man is bent over like a man suffering serious stomach cramps. He is also groping at the side of his neck, which has sprouted a piece of wood.

At first Sanderson can’t understand what has happened, but then he gets it. The piece of wood is the handle of a knife, one he’s seen before. He sees it almost every week. You don’t need a steak knife to cut the kind of chopped meat Pop always has at their Sunday lunches, a fork does the trick very nicely, but they bring you a knife, anyway. It’s all part of Applebee’s service. Pop may no longer remember which son comes to visit him, or that his wife is dead, he probably no longer even remembers his middle name, but it seems he hasn’t lost all the clever ruthlessness that enabled him to rise from a no-college oilfields roughneck to an upper-middle-class jewelry merchant in San Antonio.

He got me to look at the birds, Sanderson thinks. The crows on the Dumpster. That’s when he took the knife.

Tat Man has lost interest in the man sitting in the road, and never casts a single glance at the older man standing beside him. Tat Man has begun coughing. A fine red spray comes from his mouth each time he does it. One hand is on the knife in his neck, trying to pull it out. Blood pours down the side of his tee-shirt and splatters his jeans. He begins walking toward the intersection of Commerce and Airline (where all traffic has stopped), still bent over and still coughing. With his free hand he gives a jaunty little wave: Hi, Ma!

Sanderson gets to his feet. His legs are trembling, but they hold him. He can hear sirens approaching. Sure, now the cops come. Now that it’s all over.

Sanderson puts an arm around his father’s shoulders. ‘You all right, Pop?’

‘That man was beating on you,’ Pop says matter-of-factly. ‘Who is he?’

‘I don’t know.’ Tears are coursing down Sanderson’s cheeks. He wipes them away.

Tat Man falls on his knees. He has stopped coughing. Now he’s making a low growling sound. Most people hang back, but a couple of brave souls go to him, wanting to help. Sanderson thinks Tat Man is probably beyond it, but more power to them.

‘Did we eat yet, Reggie?’

‘Yeah, Pop, we did. And I’m Dougie.’

‘Reggie’s dead. Didn’t you tell me that?’

‘Yeah, Pop.’

‘That man was beating on you.’ His father’s face twists into the face of a child who is horribly tired and needs to go to bed. ‘I’ve got a headache. Let’s blow this pop stand. I want to lie down.’

‘We have to wait for the cops.’

‘Why? What cops? Who is that guy?’

Sanderson smells shit. His father has just dropped a load.

‘Let’s get you in the car, Pop.’

His father lets Sanderson lead him around the Subaru’s crumpled snout. Pop says, ‘That was some Halloween, wasn’t it?’

‘Yeah, Pop, it was.’ He helps the eighty-three-year-old Caped Crusader into the car and closes the door to keep the cool in. The first city police car is pulling up, and they’ll want to see some ID. The sixty-one-year-old Boy Wonder, hands pressed to his aching side, shuffles back to the driver’s side to pick it up off the street.

For John Irving