Tommy's Novel, Part 3

Tommy's Novel, Part 3

Part 3, written in November.

It's not really a chapter, but we'll just call this one, Chapter 3:



I’ll spare you the most of the gory details of buying myself a suit. A visit to Raymond’s Clothing Store for the Amazingly Big and Colossally Tall sounds exciting, but on the whole, a visit to a Big and Tall man’s shop on a Saturday morning makes me feel like I’ve had my application excitedly accepted to a traveling carnival freak show, like I’ve already passed the interview without saying a word.

I left thanking God for small favors: I’d found a black sportcoat on the rack and a pair of slacks that fit well enough without a.) having to wander too far up the expanse of fat guy’s pants, and b.) having to deal with Raymond, who was himself worth his weight in two of me, and who had the daunting inability to observe the boundaries of personal space. Today, Raymond had been busy with a mother and a pair of monstrous boys from the next town over, neither of them below 6'7" on the height scale, and both looking like they’d probably downed half a pig and a couple dozen eggs for breakfast, and had it leave them feeling peckish.

So, I’d made my way in, gotten my suit, paid Raymond’s (remarkably tiny) wife for my clothes, and as I left the establishment, I thought about gathering the villagers, the torches and farm implements to chase the two monstrous boys now trying on blue jeans from the town. I wound my way back into the street, squinting into the sunlight, I turned left out of the door and immediately spooted a barrel-chested figure leaning against the passenger door of my truck.

“Hello, my old friend,” Teddy said to me.

“Teddy.” I hadn’t seen Teddy in months. “Where’ve you been?”

“I decided that my last bit of advice to you had created something of a....”he spun his finger in a circular motion, searching for the word....

“Rift?”

“Precisely....Do I owe you an apology?”

You know, I never blamed Teddy. I hadn’t thought that out loud. There were a lot of things I wanted to lay blame to, but I realized that I’d never consciously or unconsciously blamed Teddy.

“I never blamed you, Teddy.”

“No?”

“I’d have asked her sooner or later. All other things being equal, I suppose knowing is better than not knowing.”

Teddy only nodded.

I motioned for him to move off the passenger door so I could unlock it. As I hung the suit on the hook behind the seat.

“Besides, it’s not like you’re privy to any sort of information on the future unfolding of events, is it?”

“No,” Teddy said. “You’d think so, in my position, but no.”

“I thought so at one time, but I believe you now.”

“How much money did you lose when I told you to bet on the Cubs? You never said.”

“Enough,” I said. “I don’t know what hurt worse, losing a fiancé or having the Cubs lose in the playoffs like that.”

Teddy winced.

“The money never bothered you, did it?”

I put the seat back, and asked if Teddy was riding or walking.

He accepted a ride.

“Eating baloney sandwiches and Ramen noodles so I could afford Christmas presents bothered me,” I said, walking around toward the driver’s side.

“I’ve never eaten Ramen noodles,” Teddy noted.

“You’re a charmed man leading a charmed life.”

“Buying a suit of clothes?” Teddy asked when I got myself situated behind the wheel. He was changing the subject. Teddy was a man’s man, and he wasn’t much on sharing his emotions, but I could tell he hadn’t taken my statement that he wasn’t responsible hadn’t really taken him from that notion. He felt guilty, and he had it written all over him.

I looked at the suit.

“Got a funeral to go to.”

“Really?” he asked, his interest legitimately piqued.

“Yeah,” I said. “Lyndon Waverly’s nephew came by the house this morning and told me that Lyndon had passed on a couple days back.”

“Really?” he said again. He seemed surprised.

“Yep. Now that I think about it, if anybody should have known, you should have.”

Teddy looked away out the passenger window as the storefronts slowly made their way past my truck, quietly annoyed in spite of his previous guilt. “Do you honestly think I don’t have anything better to do than look down on this hillbilly town to see who’s recently deceased?”

“I don’t know how you spend your spare time. Aside from bothering me.”

“How?”

“Mostly by showing up completely unannounced after....”

“How did Lyndon die?”

“Does that have bearing on whether you know when?”

“I tire of the inquisition.”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I was so surprised at being asked to be a pallbearer that I didn’t think to ask how he died.”

Teddy nodded.

“I figure it was old age.”

“How old was he?”

“Don’t know,” I said. “I looked in all this week’s papers for an obituary, but never saw one. He was ancient, though. Had to be. I mean, he was old back when I was a kid.”

Teddy ran a hand across his face, straightened his mustache as he soaked the news in.

“I hadn’t realized you were that close,” he said.

“Neither had I. You could have knocked me over with a feather when his nephew asked me. Said Lyndon had asked for me by name. Specifically.”

Teddy remained silent.

We drove in silence through Trainersville’s three or four blocks of downtown, mostly empty, as the municipal business of the week limits itself politely to the five business days around these parts.

Teddy and I hadn’t seen each other in a while. It was a day for reunions, I reckoned. Still, despite our lack of contact, we were falling into the familiar cadence of an old friendship. And even though we’d only been talking for a couple minutes, I knew that the news of Lyndon’s death seemed to be troubling him a little more than it probably should have.

“You really didn’t know?”

“No,” he said.

“Should you have?”

“In honesty, I feel troubled at not having known. I’m not sure why, though.”

“Teddy, you’re a busy man.”

“Yeah,” he said, not entirely convinced.

It had been a busy couple of hours, and maybe that accounts for it, but that was really the first time I started to get an uneasy feeling about all this.

“How’s Alice?” I asked, hoping to change the subject. He usually fell all over himself to talk about Alice.

“Fight with Edith,” he said, disinterested. In the same breath: “Have you thought about calling the newspaper? Isn’t Mark working down there?”

“Mark doesn’t write the obituaries...”

“But he’d know the person who does, correct? Perhaps a mistake was made, an omission of sorts.”