The dogs announced his arrival.
Charlotte stared at him as he hobbled toward the front door. He knocked. She reached for the umbrella. He knocked again. The
Labs kept yelping. She paused in the entryway and whispered to herself,“For the last time, we’re not interested
in buying any land behind the new Fudruckers.” And then she said it again. “For the last time, we’re not
interested in buying any land behind the new Fudruckers.” Charlotte eased JoJo and Walrus into the laundry room, where
her dad used to drink, and closed the door.
Just as he did the last time, the old man knocked, very methodically, with his head. Two taps
with his forehead followed by exactly five seconds of silence, and then another two knocks. Was he timing this? Charlotte
thought to herself. Did the old man have some kind of very specific and very debilitating head knocking OCD? Charlotte took
a moment to feel sorry for him. Christ, she thought, a total weirdo with a head knocking OCD? She knew people who’d
been dealt bad hands. Her older brother, Chuck, for example, who had one of those lazy eyes that always pointed towards Ohio.
And, for an entire summer when he was thirteen, Chuck would belch involuntarily several times an hour, the condition so humiliating
that he spent the entire month of August locked in his room, playing Dungeons and Dragons alone, crying and burping on his
waterbed. But belching and a cross-eye was a royal flush compared to the hand Edison Lang had been dealt.
Charlotte reminded herself that the old man -- “Slingblade”
is what Chuck called him – had perhaps, according to Jolie Ipple, fifty years ago beaten to death a grain salesman’s
wife with a cross-country ski and a kettle. She wondered what it’d feel like to be beaten to death with a cross-country
ski and a kettle. She then briefly considered the worst ways to die and couldn’t come up with anything worse than being
beaten to death with a cross-country ski and a kettle. Charlotte couldn’t imagine anyone using both a cross-country
ski and a kettle to kill someone, least of all, she thought, Edison Lang: frail, eccentric and, at nearly ninety, completely
childlike and seemingly harmless. Jolie Ipple was always fucking with her but how could she totally, for sure know, right?
Knock,
knock. Five seconds. Knock, knock.
Charlotte gripped the umbrella tightly in her fist. There was never a good time for Edison
Lang to come calling but with the varsity wrestler upstairs in her bedroom this had to be the worst, she thought. The first
time Lang came around Charlotte thought it was kinda funny. She’d been in the kitchen watching Celebrities Get Slapped,
when she looked out into the backyard and saw an old man with his pants around his ankles, banging his forehead against the
door of the Nyborg shed. Seeing Edison Lang standing half-naked in the snow, she thought, was almost as funny as watching
and old tape of Jennifer Lopez in her prom dress getting slapped by some fat girl with a weave. The second and third time
Edison came to the front door wearing a trucker cap that said ‘Trippin’ and both times asked Mrs. Nyborg if she’d
be interested in purchasing a small parcel of land behind the new Fudruckers for “a reasonable sum” of three dollars.
When Charlotte’s mother declined, Edison threw up his hands, said he was “caving” and told her she could
have all of the land behind the new Fudruckers, stretching all the way back to the Cherry Creek Mall, in exchange for Chuck’s
ski-doo that Edison had seen sitting on some concrete blocks next to the garage. Charlotte’s mother didn’t point
out that the ski-doo cost something in the neighborhood of two thousand dollars, roughly two thousand dollars more than Edison’s
original offer. She instead produced a fake smile, took another hit of her menthol and said, “we’re not interested
in buying any land behind the new Fudruckers” while closing the door. Edison sat down on the Nyborg porch-swing and
defecated himself before falling asleep. Charlotte watched from the window as two cops, one of them her overweight, red-faced
Uncle Craig, eased the old man down the steps and into a New Castle cruiser. The next morning Charlotte’s mother made
her clean the remnants of Lang’s fecal matter from the swing while she sat in her bedroom smoking cigarettes and reading
Much Happier Without Him.Kid, let’s do this,” shouted the varsity wrestler, as he stood naked on the second floor
landing, doing his Travis Bickle impression and admiring his half-flaccid dork in the hallway mirror.
Knock, knock. Five seconds. Knock,
knock.
“Just one sec,” said Charlotte, as she looked through the peephole and saw a close-up of Lang’s wrinkled
forehead, in the middle of which was a pink imprint of the peephole. Charlotte thought that if Lang were to fill the
circle in with red ink he’d look like one of those Indian dudes who worked at The Libation Station, except older and
not as dark.
“What the fuck are you doing down there, Nyborg?” The varsity wrestler didn’t know anything
about Edison Lang and, even if he had, wouldn’t have given him any more thought than he’d given the pepperoni
flavored Hot Pocket he’d eaten, in two hurried bites, earlier that afternoon. The varsity wrestler, after all, hadn’t
come to the Nyborg home to ward off old men with an umbrella or entertain offers to buy land behind the new Fudruckers. “Nyborg,
get back up here already”, the varsity wrestler shouted.The few times the varsity wrestler had said anything to her,
usually as he and his buddies passed by in the hallway, he’d only called her Kid or Nyborg, never Charlotte. She told
herself that both Kid and Nyborg were pet names that conveyed his deep but unspoken affection for her, and never considered
the truth, which was that the varsity wrestler didn’t even know her first name and simply knew her as Chuck Nyborg’s
plump little sister.
Knock, knock. Five seconds. Knock, knock.
“Coming,” she shouted back, then turned her attention back to the peephole, the umbrella
still clenched tightly in her fist. Charlotte couldn’t call the police, couldn’t have her fat ass Uncle Craig
come out and then have to explain the presence of the varsity wrestler. Craig would for sure tell Charlotte’s mother
about the varsity wrestler. Then Charlotte would then have to endure, yet again, the story of how her mother, when she was
fifteen, got pregnant by an ROTC drum major and, after the adoption, spent the next four years working nights at the Wonderburger,
paying off the delivery bill. To make her point, Charlotte’s mother would drive her out to the Wonderburger and, from
the parking lot, make her look at all the losers who worked there. “This is what sex gets you, young lady,” she’d
say, crushing out another cigarette into the ashtray. “Six bucks an hour and a magic fries hat.” She’d then
open the glove compartment, grab a fistful of Wonderdollars and ease confidently to the drive through window, reminding the
failure inside that she was the girlfriend of Dick Bowling, a silent partner and half owner of the franchise, then wait for
the unimpressed worker to treat her with the respect the girlfriend of a partial Wonderburger owner deserved, never disclosing
it’d been almost two years since Dick Bowling had left her for a junior college Chili’s hostess.
Knock, knock. Five seconds. Knock, knock.
“For the last time we’re not interested in buying any
land behind the new Fudruckers!” Charlotte shouted through the door. The knocking stopped. “Nyborg, are
we gonna fuck or not?” called the varsity wrestler, in a tone that was both bullying and indifferent. Charlotte, wearing
only a football jersey and panties, assessed herself in the entryway mirror, wondered if her thin black hair would look better
short, regretted the chile cheese fries she’d eaten that afternoon at the Whip Dip and confirmed, yet again, that her
feet had gotten fat.
It
was at the Whip Dip that the varsity wrestler had approached her, wearing a tank top, soaked in wrestler sweat, asking to
borrow fifty cents. Charlotte nervously fished the pockets of her shorts for change, came up empty and then tentatively explained
the bet she’d made Jolie Ipple and offered to split her take with the varsity wrestler. The varsity wrestler agreed
to the arrangement, figuring he could squeeze in the encounter before he and Tim Dicker went off to smash mailboxes. Charlotte
then found herself on the back seat of the varsity wrestler’s moped, on the side of which was a sticker that said Bite
This in the shape of teeth, the two of them riding in silence from the Whip Dip back to the Nyborg home. All she now remembered
from the ride was that the varsity wrestler smelled much like her long absent dad, who lived up in South Bend and made his
living installing above-the-ground pools and fake brick patios.
“Who’s at the goddamn door, Nyborg?” queried the varsity wrestler, trying to discern
how much longer his Nyborg banging would have to wait and whether or not he’d be able, by seven o’clock, to stop
back home, sneak a fifth of Beam, grab his aluminum softball bat, and meet that pussy Tim Dicker underneath the water tower.
Charlotte was unsure as to whether or not the varsity wrestler was
familiar with the accusation -- perhaps true, perhaps urban legend -- that Edison Lang had beaten to death a grain salesman’s
wife with a cross-country ski and a kettle. She totally knew he hadn’t heard it from Jolie Ipple because Jolie for sure
didn’t talk to any seniors, especially ones on the varsity wrestling team. In any case, she was sure she should not
disclose Lang’s presence on the Nyborg porch, opening up the possibility that the varsity wrestler might come barreling
down the entryway stairs, pent up with all kinds of off-season wrestler rage, perhaps a pair of brass knuckles molded into
his fist, eager to beat some ass; thereby dramatically decreasing the odds she would have sex with him and, unless something
unforeseen were to happen between now and midnight, turn sixteen without yet having sex with a senior and lose her one hundred
dollar bet with the person in New Castle she alternately admired and despised most, her best friend and sometimes nemesis
Jolie Ipple>
“It’s the delivery guy from
Fudruckers,” shouted Charlotte, saying the first thing that popped into her head. “Fudruckers don’t deliver,”
replied the varsity wrestler, in such an authoritative, Fudruckers expert kind of way, that Charlotte quickly determined it
would be unwise to challenge the assertion. “That’s what I told him,” she lied. “Fudruckers doesn’t
deliver.” “Maybe he’s from Wonderburger,” suggested the varsity wrestler. “Those Wonderburger
motherfuckers are the kinds of dumbasses who might forget where they work.” The varsity wrestler then dropped
down on the carpeted hallway floor and, facing the full length mirror, starting doing push-ups.
The knocking started again. Knock,
knock. Five seconds, Knock –
Charlotte assumed that the varsity wrestler, like everyone else in New Castle, couldn’t get enough of
Wonderburger. She therefore also assumed that if he believed there were a couple of Wonderburgers or Magic Fries just outside
the Nyborg front door, whether by mistake or not, he could very well come downstairs to investigate the matter. If was for
this reason that Charlotte felt she had little choice but to confront Lang and convince him to leave the premises quickly
and quietly, without destroying the already stalled sexual momentum she’d left upstairs. With his in mind, Charlotte
partially opened the heavy oak door, revealing Edison Lang; bent forward, apparently in mid-knock, wearing an oversized black
wool suit, pressed white oxford shirt, brown dress shoes and, if it weren’t for his Trippin’ hat, looking relatively
dapper, albeit warmly dressed, in the punishing, cloudless Indiana heat.
“Good afternoon, young lady. I am Edison Lang,”
he grandly said while bowing and removing his Trippin’ hat. “Look,” whispered Charlotte, still holding the
umbrella, hiding her half-dressed, chubby little body behind the door and hoping the varsity wrestler was out of earshot.
“We’re not interested in buying any land behind the new Fudruckers.”
Lang smiled warmly and nodded.
“I understand,” he said. “The purpose of my visit today is not commercial but, well, how shall I put it?
Quite frankly, it’s personal,”
Despite Lang’s disarming smile and courtly demeanor, Charlotte was totally creeped out and
started to close the door. “Will you just leave,” she said quietly, then glanced over her shoulder, up towards
the second floor landing.
“I don’t mean to frighten you,” said Lang as he pulled a black envelope from his breast pocket. “I
am an old man who has no business being here right now. But please allow me to leave this,” he said, handing Charlotte
the envelope through the door. “It’s for you.” Charlotte said nothing and took the envelope, flattered
by the octogenarian’s attention, thankful the Lang ordeal was coming to a close, grateful she could turn her attention
back to the varsity wrestler, but also tempted to swing the door all the way open and reveal her bare legs. “Good
day,” said Edison Lang with a semi-bow. And then he positioned the Trippin’ hat on his head, turned slowly, navigated
his lanky frame down the porch steps and walked away, down the gravel Nyborg driveway.
“Or maybe he’s from Burger Bit” called the varsity wrestler. “Great
fucking Mango burgers at Burger Bit.” “I dunno,” said Charlotte, almost to herself, as she watched
Lang amble away. “He had the wrong house, I guess.” “If it’s Wonderburger get us some magic
fries,” he commanded. “I’m fucking hungry.”
Charlotte closed the entryway door, at first leaning against it, then sliding down
to a sitting position, crossing her pale, plump legs in front of her and opening the black envelope. She’d seen the
same kind of envelope on sale at Cornbergs, the failing bric-a-brac and card store where her mother worked when she wasn’t
prodding Charlotte onto the bathroom scale or out on the patio in her bathrobe, setting fire to pictures of her father. Charlotte
tore into the envelope and pulled out what looked to be a letter, written in elegant cursive handwriting on a piece of beige
parchment.She mouthed the words as she read. When she was finished she let the letter fall from her limp hand to the floor.
The varsity wrestler said something but Charlotte didn’t hear him. the dogs began to bark from behind the laundry room
door. Charlotte sat there listening to their barking, thinking to herself that it sounded like music.
