Based on a True Story Read online

  “You see the bottom of it. That’s the man’s chin and then his mouth is wide open.” And then I saw it. And we played this game for two days, and we saw alligators and pickles and trees and every sort of thing, all of them white and still and living in the cold and limitless sky.

  In the middle of the second day we heard the cries of seals. The boy jumped up, then coughed an awful rattle of a cough and fell back down. We were all pretty well frozen, and I looked over at Adam Eget, whose tears had become ice halfway down his cheeks. Edward McClintock pulled the boat up and threw out a rope and then took a hammer and smashed a spike into the three-foot-thick ice and anchored us to the berg. The ice had snow on top, so it wasn’t slippery, and up ahead we could see men and hear their gunshots. “Damn punks from St. John’s with their pistols. That’s not how you kill a seal.” He took a rucksack from the boat and pulled out a crude ancient weapon. It had a wooden handle and a curved blade at one end. It looked like a cross between a scythe and a bayonet. “This is a hakapik, son. The baby harp, she has a skull as thin as a shadow, and it takes just one blow to fell her. But your strike must find the forehead. Then her eyes will open and be glassy. When you touch the eyes, if they don’t move, the beast is dead. Do you follow?”

  “Yes, sir,” the boy said, and smiled broadly, but then he coughed that awful, empty cough.

  We had about one hundred yards between the seal and us, but they were some of the longest yards I’ve ever traversed. I had to carry the boy toward the seal. There was a wind and it howled like a hammer and I could no longer hear the whimpers of Adam Eget, who slipped and fell every few feet. I hadn’t walked for the last two days, and my legs weren’t working properly. It was as if I had to learn it new, like a foal, and on snow and ice. I knew I couldn’t fall, for the sake of the boy, so I walked slow, stopped to put the boy down and rest every few minutes, and then I began walking again.

  We’d only walked about fifty yards when a great weariness settled on me and I didn’t think I could go farther. Suddenly all I wanted to do was sleep. But Edward McClintock had warned me that the cold will trick a man and that sleep that sweetly beckons is not really sleep at all but the deeper thing. So I forced my eyes wide and looked ahead, where I saw Edward McClintock, about thirty yards beyond us, standing still as a rabbit. He turned and fastened his malamute eyes on me, and his voice was clock-steady as the frozen words came from his cracked lips: “Baby harp.”

  Knowing the creature was only some fifty yards from where I stood gave me the strength to continue. I put the boy down gently, like a kitten, and Edward McClintock handed him the hakapik.

  “Are you sure you can swing it, son, or should I help?” he asked, but the boy was already on his way and soon he was standing above the baby seal. We watched, the three of us, while the boy mustered all his strength to swing the hakapik high in the air, then downward and fast, and the seal’s thin skull exploded and a spray of blood fell around and upon the boy. The boy swung again and again until he was awash with a delight of blood and he was a figure of bright red with the everlasting white behind him. It was as if the creature’s very life had somehow leaped into the boy. And the three of us were silent in the witness of this wicked miracle. The boy danced about energetically, singing, while Edward McClintock skinned the seal. Then we returned, and the day was as cold as iron. None of us spoke but for the boy, who chatted gaily and sang. When I gave him his pills, he laughed and threw them into the North Atlantic Ocean.

  I made it back to Rockefeller Center at 11:15 P.M. and raced backstage. The rundown was on the wall. Beside ANSWERING MACHINE SKETCH it read: CUT AFTER DRESS. I went to my dressing room, locked the door, and cried.

  No one but the four of us ever knew of the journey. The boy made a complete recovery and was written up in several medical journals. Everyone agreed that his survival defied worldly explanation. The boy attained a small measure of fame and was even invited to Gracie Mansion, where he met the mayor himself. It was barely reported, a year later, when, while crossing Fifth Avenue, he was struck by a New York City bus and killed instantly.

  I cannot find Norm’s essence. It is a problem I’ve never encountered as a ghost, and I need to truly become him to finish the book. It has always been my great gift, the ability to find a person’s essence. But Norm evades me. It must be because I hate him with such intensity. That simply cannot continue.

  This will be the last book I ever ghostwrite, and I need it to be a fine book. You see, I have a secret, a splendid secret that has kept me going for many years. All the time I have been writing the lives of peripheral celebrities, I have been writing something else as well.

  It is a novel. The tale of a brilliant painter, a master of surreal involution, whose work goes unrecognized by the New York art scene, and so our hero must make his living as a house painter. He becomes known as an excellent house painter, and he makes a fine living from his pedestrian work and nothing from his brash genius.

  One day the great artist is commissioned to paint a house. The owner of the house will be gone for a month, and this gives the artist a notion. He decides he will use the house as his canvas. And so begins my novel, The House Painter.

  And I have finally completed it. In front of me, on my desk, lies the manuscript for The House Painter, beside the half-finished Based on a True Story. Like gold beside sand.

  26

  TINY WHITE COFFIN

  “It sure was tragic what happened to that boy, Norm,” Adam Eget says, with a weighty expression that brings everything back to me like it was yesterday.

  —

  The boy had turned ten years old only a few days before the accident, and now he lay in Strickland’s Funeral Home, in a tiny white coffin. When all the strangers had finished looking at him and sadly shaking their heads so that all present knew their feelings on the matter, his mother was left alone in the room with the tiny white coffin. Alone but for me.

  I lingered behind, unseen, while the funeral director shooed the others into a room with a sad-faced pastor, who was preparing to speak. The mother stood and looked down into the tiny white coffin. Her posture, which had been rigid all morning, went slack at the shoulders and neck. Her hands remained clasped tightly in front of her.

  The boy was wearing a navy-blue suit with a white shirt and a tie, but he still did not look like a man. I stayed quiet in the shadows so as not to disturb the moment.

  After a time had passed, the funeral director opened the door and quietly let the mother know that her time was up. As she turned to leave, she looked one last time into the tiny white coffin, and then she did a strange thing, a thing I will never forget. She straightened the knot on the boy’s tie and looked to make sure it was right. I took in a fast, jagged gulp of air and slunk into the next room before she noticed me.

  There were cookies and an urn of coffee on a table in the other room. The cookies were awful. None of the cookies contained jelly in the middle, which are widely considered the best funeral home cookies. There were only dry shortbreads left. The coffee was black and there was no cream or milk, just packets of white-yellow powder. When I poured the powder into the Styrofoam cup of black, bitter coffee, it just sat in a pile on the top. When I mixed the powder in with a black plastic stick, the coffee turned gray like dishwater. It got me pretty steamed, and I’m sure the rest of the people who had gathered felt the same way.

  We all went into the adjoining room and took our seats. The tiny white coffin had been placed in the front of the room and the sad-faced pastor was standing beside it. The sad-faced pastor told us how the boy had not been an ordinary boy. He had been very special. He had been a brother and a son and a grandson and even a great-grandson. I looked over and saw them sitting there, the young and the old and the older and the oldest. The sad-faced pastor told us that some things were very mysterious but that there was a meaning behind everything, even something as tragic as this. He then asked if anyone had anything they would like to say, and people came up one at a time to spea
k about the boy.

  I decided to go up and speak too, since I had experience in public speaking. Of course, I wasn’t about to do my stand-up. That would be ridiculous.

  I pulled out the piece of paper with a speech I’d prepared, and then, when I was about to read it, I suddenly changed my mind. “Folks, I have in my hand here a speech I wrote that’s full of big fancy words. But I’m not gonna read it.” And I crumpled up my speech and threw it to the floor with contempt. “You don’t want to hear a bunch of fancy words, many of them so fancy you wouldn’t even understand them. Instead, I will speak from the heart. I have never done such a thing before, but I hear it can be quite effective.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, bereaved relatives, youngsters who have lost a brother or a sister or a friend, the guy in the sad-faced-pastor costume, the lady sitting beside him—I figure it’s his wife—and finally, of course, the guy hanging around at the door wearing a Carolina Panthers jacket who is clearly in the wrong room but has the grace to hang in here till the end: I thank you all for coming.

  “I was proud to have known this boy and I was proud that his last wish in life was to see me do a sketch on the Saturday Night Live program. Although I cannot say I was all that surprised. I’m a very good sketch player. But this is not about me. I really shouldn’t be making it about me, but this is the first time I have ever spoken from the heart, so I beg your indulgence. I feel this speech will really start to get good very soon.”

  But it didn’t. And I realized something during the next twenty minutes as my speech moved from one inane anecdote to another, none of them having to do with the boy. What I realized then was that some guys are very good at speaking from the heart and some guys just are not. Doesn’t mean one guy’s better than the other, just different. So I was honest with the people.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I apologize for this speech. For the last five or six minutes I’ve been telling you about Gordie Howe, and I think we all know what an awful, awful mistake me speaking from the heart was. So, if I may ask your help, let’s try to find that speech with the big, fancy words that I threw away some minutes ago. It’s got to be around here somewhere.”

  “Here it is,” a sweet old lady near the front said. “I read it and thought it was very good. Especially the part about how we can learn more from the children than they can learn from us.”

  “Oh, excellent. I’m glad you liked that part, because it’s the surprise ending. So that’s shot. I guess I’ll have to just read it without the surprise ending. And there appears to be coffee spilled all over it.”

  “Oh, yes,” the sweet old lady said. “I spilled coffee all over the darned thing.”

  “Okay, well, I can’t make out any of the big fancy words now at all, but it’s nobody’s fault. I mean, in all fairness, part of it is my fault for crumpling it up and tossing it away so cavalierly. You know, I think ‘cavalierly’ may have been one of the big fancy words in my speech. Also, it’s partly the sweet old lady’s fault for spilling so much coffee on the paper that not a single word can be made out. But we’re not here to place blame.

  “I will say this about the young boy in the tiny white coffin. Despite the doctor’s dire predictions, the boy was too tough, resolute, and courageous to let something as small as a deadly disease defeat him. No, the boy was made of stronger stuff than that and it took much more to defeat him. It took a three-ton municipal bus moving at forty miles per hour and driven by one Cecil Richard Anderson to defeat this boy.”

  I heard the deepest of sobs and looked down to see a man wearing some sort of bus driver’s uniform being held up by two women.

  “If you cry, sir, then cry with envy and not pity. For the boy is in the clouds and he is one with the clouds. It is we who are left who are reminded on this unacceptable day that life is swift and yet we are blind to its mighty splendor, which can be found in the simplest of things. Things like a walk in the park, a conversation with a good friend, a deep rich coffee leavened with half cream and half milk and served in a sturdy mug—one with some heft—and, with it, a delicious cookie that’s white and has red jelly in the middle. Thank you for listening, and, due to the solemnity of the occasion, I would ask you to hold your applause.”

  From there, we all went to the graveyard. The day was bright and clean and the cool autumn air filled my lungs and made me feel healthy. A time passed and then the hearse showed up. The pallbearers were all big men and they carried the tiny white coffin as if it was very heavy, although it could not have weighed more than eighty or ninety pounds.

  There was a small hole in the ground and some dirt beside it. We stood in a circle and the sad-faced pastor said some things in Latin and then we formed a line. The sun was directly overhead and made the tiny white coffin ever so bright, and I took a handful of dirt and flung it down on top. Then it was the next guy’s turn.

  Afterward, I walked back alone down a long blacktop road, and it was cold, and in the sky there were white clouds, and they all looked like white clouds and nothing else.

  27

  LEAVING LAS VEGAS

  Gabe walks into the hotel room. He is much less surprised by my presence than Adam, and much less overcome by emotion as well. “Chickened out, huh, Norm? That’ll cost me a pretty penny. I don’t blame you, though.”

  “He didn’t chicken out, Gabe. He’s only alive by mistake.”

  Gabe looks relieved. “You won’t get any more credit in Vegas, Norm. You’re done until you pay off at least one hotel. The good news is these are businessmen. They aren’t going to harm you; they’ll be patient. But when they turn the debt over to collection agencies, those boys can make your life hell. And eventually you might be facing prison time. But you can cut a deal with the casinos and get on a monthly payment plan. These are reasonable men. They don’t expect all the money back. They just want as much as they can get.”

  “Gabe, no disrespect, but I don’t give a good Goddamn about all that. I’m looking to own a ranch in Montana, to be a god among men. I’ve been thinking, and I beat the Devil once; I can beat some Vegas debt collectors. Hey, you wouldn’t happen to have any more Dilaudid on you, would you?”

  Gabe just looks at me.

  “Like every man who’s ever lived, Gabe, I spent my life searching for happiness. And after I’d lost it all and after I’d lain down in a bed and let go of my life, I arose from that bed and I envisioned happiness, real happiness. It involves living deep in Montana. It’ll be expensive, and I know I’m in debt, but I can win the money. I know I can. I just need someone to stake me.”

  “How much?”

  “I need a million dollars. I can win enough with that to pay off my debts and live a good and happy life.”

  “There’s only one man who can help you with that problem. He used to be a bookie out of Galveston, but now he lives in a palace that overlooks the Salton Sea and he loans people money. Any amount of money.”

  I can’t believe what I’m hearing. I’ve heard the stories about the fat man with the artificial hair for years, just like everybody else, but they always seemed like myths. And I know all about the Salton Sea. It is a geographic wonder, a real-life lake shimmering in the middle of the desert. And that’s something even Las Vegas doesn’t have. It was what was supposed to bring in tourists from everywhere, promising water and desert in the very same place. They began building resorts where guests could fish and water-ski and gamble and golf. At the time it seemed like a no-brainer and the investors flooded in, but in the end it was a bust and everyone left. But was it possible that one man stayed? A man with a mansion on the barren Salton Sea who lent out huge sums of money, but if anyone dared not repay him he exacted the ultimate price? It’s true the fat man with the artificial hair had disappeared from Texas at about the same time that the men with money flocked to the Salton Sea. Was it possible he’d stayed behind, that he still believed? And now here was Gabe telling me it was true. “Gabe you’re not telling me you believe the fat man with the artificial hair actually exist
s, are you?”

  “Oh, he’s real, all right. I know a guy who used to be a dealer at the Bellagio, and now he makes a thousand a day standing near the fat man with the artificial hair and holding a machine gun.”

  “If you say he’s real, Gabe, then that’s good enough for me. I’ll go and find this man and I’ll make my second deal with the Devil. Get the Challenger, Adam Eget. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  When we are alone, Gabe gives me a serious look. “Keep your wits about you with the fat man with the artificial hair. If you offend him, he’ll kill you and throw you into the sea. Where you’re going now, there is no law. Someone will be guarding the mansion. In order to gain entry you must say, ‘I am a desperate man, here to ask a favor.’ ”

  “I’ll remember that, Gabe, and I’ll be careful.”

  Minutes later Adam Eget and I are moving so fast it feels like the Challenger is rolling down the steepest hill. I open the window and put my head out, with my mouth wide open, and my tongue licks up the wind. I am as happy as a dog.

  “Adam Eget, we have very little money and it has to last until we reach the Salton Sea.”

  “Don’t worry about it. If we need money, that’s what liquor stores are for.”

  “No, that’s not what they’re for, Adam Eget. They’re for selling liquor.”

  “No can do. One day at a time. Right?”

  “Yeah, whatever. I’ll need your gun.”

  Adam Eget looks hurt and I understand. I’ve never taken a man’s gun from him, but Gabe had warned me about the dangerous place we are driving to, and I don’t want Adam Eget deciding he’s a man all of a sudden. He hands it over.

  The Challenger screeches to a stop.

  “Look, Norm, this has been fun, but please let me go home now. I miss the Comedy Store. I miss Pauly; I miss my job and being a boss. I’ve been thinking, and I did everything you asked of me when you told me about the plan at Whiskey Pete’s.”