canyon fodder, chapter 4

Jefferson White inherited his father’s high cheekbones and his mother’s dark-blue eyes. The boy’s light-brown hair split the difference between his two parents, taking what was beautiful and handsome from each. But as a student at Dwyer Middle School, his nice looks remained hidden underneath his detachment from his peers, which was manifested in his tendency to stare off into the middle distance and remain sealed inside his imagination, where he kept company with cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, and the Man from Mars.

On brilliantly sunny afternoons, tempered by cool ocean breezes, the bell rang at school and Clara White picked up Jefferson out front in a turquoise and chrome Chevy Kingswood Wagon with fins. The domineering automobile moved slowly through sand-swept streets, past pastel colored bungalows and tanned pedestrians heading down to the beach for an afternoon in paradise. Jefferson sat on the passenger side next to Clara, who wore dark black sunglasses as she steered the car in a Valium induced stupor, alongside silver Ford Fairlanes, blue Continentals with suicide doors, red Studebakers with whitewall tires… Mother and son cruised down Main Street, past the Huntington Beach Post Office, Grogan’s Hardware Store, Len’s Barbershop, Alpha-Beta Grocery and, at the intersection of Main and PCH, Jack’s Surfboards. Jefferson didn’t mind that his mother’s questions never strayed much from the most rudimentary small talk: How was your day at school? Do you have a lot of homework? Did you get enough to eat for lunch?… The mundane predictability of their daily after-school back and forth gave Jefferson’s life at least a tiny semblance of stability and diverted attention from painful problems he wanted to avoid discussing, mostly because even then he understood that his mother lacked the capacity to deal with them.

Clara always parked just outside the White residence, painted light green with white trim framing the windows. Small houses and more recent two-story apartment structures dotted the palm-lined neighborhood. Shortly after evening arrived, the family’s second car, a dark blue El Dorado, would pull into the driveway, very much akin to the ominous winds preceding a violent electrical storm. Alone in his bedroom upstairs, Jefferson would brace himself for yet another drunken beating at the hands of his father.

Jefferson’s Uncle Ray, Clara’s brother, worked as a librarian at the San Diego Public Library. Raymond was tall and thin with deep brown eyes and a thick head of light-brown hair that he combed into a neat part. His gentle conversational style conveyed a wistful thoughtfulness and was by no means extravagantly effeminate. Even still, his subtly lisped speech, habitually quick gait, and the meticulousness with which he dressed in fitted shirts and slacks, left little doubt about his ‘secret’ life, at least among grown ups.

John White took cruel pleasure in prying the closet door open. “That brother of yours is some kinda sissy,” he would say to Clara. Liquor, of course, amplified the brazenness of John’s sadism. At his own wedding reception he got progressively soused and at one point he pulled Raymond aside. “Ray, now that you’re my brother-in-law and all,” John slurred, “I’m gonna have to insist that you start acting like a man.” He then slapped Raymond on the face – not all that hard, but hard enough to leave a little sting – and walked away.

Raymond loved his sister tenderly, and the thought of her living her life and starting a family with such a horrid man broke his heart. But he did not attempt to talk Clara out of the marriage, nor did he put up much resistance in the face of John’s continual stream of abusive remarks in the years that followed. Raymond sensed that a confrontation would be futile and dangerous, not only to himself but also to his sister. So he didn’t say or do much of anything, swallowing his anger and turning away each time. But then everything changed on a Saturday in 1962.

On a northbound drive that Saturday morning, en route to visiting a friend up in L.A., Raymond decided to make an impromptu visit to his sister’s house. He turned off the highway at Huntington Beach and pulled up in front of the White residence at 7th and Acacia. No car stood in the driveway, but the garage door remained open. Raymond received no answer when he rang the front door bell. He walked to the back of the garage and entered the house through the door he knew was kept unlocked next to the washer and dryer.

“Hello? Anyone home?”

He walked through the kitchen and into the living room. John's war medal stood on the mantle piece in a purple velvet display case, along with several framed photos: A portrait of John looking solemn in military fatigues; a picture of John and Clara on their wedding night, each wearing saccharine smiles; and a photo of Jefferson at five years old, flanked by his parents and already possessing his unmistakably dreamy grin, one that placed his thoughts in another galaxy, where shooting stars stream across the sky every night but never lose their power to inspire wonder… Raymond wanted to see his nephew more often during those early years, but doing so would have meant dealing with John on a regular basis, which was something Raymond felt he could not tolerate. He sighed sadly in front of the photos, and then heard a faint noise from upstairs.

“Hello?” he called out. “Clara?” He walked slowly up the stairs. The dull thudding sounds became louder.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

“Hello? Anyone home? It’s me, Raymond.” At the top of the stairs, he heard a muffled plea.


“Help.” Boom. Boom. Boom.

The sound came from John and Clara’s bedroom. Raymond walked through the bedroom door.

"Hello?"

“I'm locked in here.”

Boom. Boom. Boom.

Raymond walked cautiously toward the closet door.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

“Who’s in there?”

“It’s me, Jefferson.”

Raymond unlocked the door and opened it. He gasped and covered his mouth with his hand. Jefferson sat in the corner of the closet, his pants and t-shirt ripped from some kind of struggle. A puffy black welt stood out under the twelve-year-old's eye, dried blood was caked under his nose, and a large gash had opened on his forehead.

Once Raymond got past the initial shock, he questioned Jefferson about what had happened as he cleaned and dressed the boy's cuts and bruises in the bathroom. At first the boy was cagey. He gauged his comfort level with Raymond, whom he didn’t know very well, and tested Raymond’s intelligence and the genuineness of his interest. Jefferson told his uncle that he had locked himself in the closet and attempted to break free, seriously injuring himself.

Raymond’s quiet incredulity contained an empathy that made Jefferson feel safe and in the company of a confidant. Raymond smiled warmly as he gently applied a cold wash cloth to the gash on Jefferson’s forehead, and the two of them chuckled softly at the absurdity of Jefferson’s fabrication.

“Come come now, Jefferson,” Raymond said. “You can tell me. It’s quite all right.”

Then there was a momentary pause before Jefferson told his uncle the story in an eerily matter-of-fact tone.

“I was watchin’ Mr. Ed on T.V.,” Jefferson said. “Wilbur couldn’t make Ed talk to the policeman. I was laughin’ my head off.”

Raymond wanted to get to the crux of the matter quickly, but he forced himself not to rush the boy.

“I didn’t know my dad was watchin’, too,” Jefferson continued. “Mom was out shopping, and I thought my dad was golfin’ or something. But he was standing right behind me. I was on the couch. I wouldn’t laugh if I knew he was there.”

Raymond’s heart pounded as he listened to the story, but he was careful not to make the boy feel self-conscious, putting up a relaxed facade as he rinsed off a nasty looking cut on the side of Jefferson’s eye.

“My dad gets real mad when I laugh,” Jefferson said. “I don’t know why, but he does. So he hears me crackin’ up and he surprises me from behind. He says, ‘what’s so funny about a talking horse?’ He was real mad.”

“Your father became angry with you because you were laughing at a television program?” Raymond asked.

“Yeah.”

Raymond put the washcloth down on the sink, sat on the side wall of the bathtub, and couldn’t help now but give Jefferson a morose frown. “Go ahead,” he said. “What happened next?”

“He pulls me up off the couch by my t-shirt,” Jefferson said. “He says, ‘what’s so funny, you dimwit? What’s so funny?’ He’s yellin’ it. Then he slaps me three times, real hard. He throws me—“

“All right, Jefferson,” Raymond said abruptly, holding his hand up out in front of him. “That’s enough.” He looked down at the checkered bathroom floor and massaged his eyelids between the thumb and index finger of his left hand. “How did you end up in the closet?”

"My dad made me go in there. He locked the door and told me I could think about how stupid I am for a while. Thing is, I was happy to go in there ‘cause at least he couldn’t hit me. Then I heard him go off in his car, and I wanted to get out.”

Jefferson changed into new clothes, and then sat with Raymond in the kitchen sipping ice tea. Clara’s house keys jingled from the front entrance to the house. She walked down the hall and into the kitchen. Raymond detected her blunted senses right away.

“Hi mom,” Jefferson said.


“Raymond,” Clara said dizzily, seemingly not hearing her son. “What’re you…here?” She placed the groceries down on the kitchen counter and removed her sunglasses, revealing glassed-over blue eyes. “I’ll fix you something to eat. Want a sandwich?”

“Thank you, Clara. I’m not hungry.”

Clara removed her royal blue suit jacket and matching silk scarf. She stumbled a bit as she went to hang the jacket in a closet just outside the kitchen, but she looked well-put-together in a blue skirt and ivory-colored, semi-diaphanous shirt with a gold-colored broach.

“Jefferson,” she said, “you’ve got tape on your forehead. And nose."

Jefferson looked awkwardly towards his uncle, unsure of himself.

“Can I have a word with you?” Raymond asked Clara. “Jefferson, why don’t you go watch television. He can bring his drink into the living room, right?” Jefferson obediently left the kitchen. Then Raymond lowered his voice but spoke with urgent indignation. “Clara, what in the name of heaven is happening in this house?”

“What? Nothing. What is it?”

Her head tottered clumsily on her neck, and her eyes remained closed for several seconds each time she blinked. Raymond stared at her, shaking his head.

“You’re at those pills again. I thought we agreed there'd be no more of that."

“I…I didn’t take any pills—“

“Clara! Don't speak to me like I’m some kind of fool. It’s insulting. You can barely stand up straight. You can’t even speak properly.”

Even through her hazy perceptions, Clara sensed the pointlessness of evasion. But she tried all the same, moving about the kitchen with a false look of preoccupation on her face as she opened and closed cabinets for no reason.

“Don’t you care about your son?” Raymond said plaintively after a few moments of the charade. “I stopped in here, just to say hello, and just by chance, Clara, I find your son locked in the closet and beaten senseless.”

“Raymond, don’t—“

“This is insanity!”

Unable to keep contained any longer, Clara involuntarily dropped two cans of Campbell’s soup on the floor before she was able to put them in the pantry. She covered her face with her hands as her shoulders heaved up and down against the rhythm of quiet sobs.

“Clara,” Raymond said, softening his voice. “Clara, I’m sorry.” He approached her and put his hands gently on her shoulders. “It’s just unsettling.. You can imagine how I… But I shouldn’t--.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Clara whimpered. “John gets so angry. So drunk. He doesn't mean anything by it. He's under a lot of pressure at work.”

Raymond looked down at her sternly: “That’s no excuse for any of this, Clara."

“So what do you suggest, Raymond?” An angry edge now competing with her hopelessness. “What can I do?”

“Leave him, Clara. You’ve got to take Jefferson and leave him.”

“You don’t understand.”

"Did you see Jefferson's bruises? Did you? I'm sure it's not the first time, either. I’ve seen those bruises on you too, Clara. I’m more observant than you think."

"You don't understand."

“No, I do understand. I see the situation quite clearly. You’ll get a divorce. There's no other way.”

“Ray, do you know what John would do if—“

“I’ll be there to protect you, Clara.”

“No! You don't know what you're dealing with. He’ll kill you.”


Fearing that John would return home at any moment, Clara insisted Raymond leave the house. The desperately beseeching expression on her face overpowered her sedation and left him with no choice but to go. As he drove back to the highway, passing a dark blue El Dorado coming from the other direction on 7th Street, he felt a visceral heaviness in his stomach. Clara’s drug induced paralysis filled him with anger and sadness. Her words – the half-hearted denials, the flimsy rationalizations – reverberated nightmarishly in Raymond’s ears. He wiped tears from his eyes and then something terrible occurred to him, against which he could muster no contravening evidence: Clara was beyond saving.

But Jefferson… Jefferson was still young enough, unformed enough, to be rescued. Instead of continuing on up to L.A., Raymond drove back to his apartment in the Pacific Beach section of San Diego, his head awash with ideas in the process of formation. Behind the wheel of his car, Raymond shook his head to himself as the image of the boy, beaten and battered, appeared in his mind's eye and blended with the white line running down the middle of the highway.

Raymond fixed himself a small nip of sherry in his apartment on the second floor of a Mediterranean-style building, two blocks from the beach. He paced from the brightly toned kitchen, warm and alive in yellow and white, to the dark, lugubrious dining and living room area. If he reported John to the police, they would likely look no further than the surface appearances and simply see a husband, a wife, and their son, living in a normal suburban home. If on the off chance the authorities were to make inquiries into John’s behavior, Clara and Jefferson’s safety would be further compromised. So what then? Kidnap the boy? Kidnap his sister’s child? No. Too many things could go wrong. No ready-made answer presented itself. And yet, Raymond felt a powerful compulsion pushing him forward towards a course of action he could not yet recognize.
He walked back and forth, from one side of the neat and nondescript living room to the other, between the brown cloth couch and the television. He picked up a leather-bound copy of The Leopard off a small table in the corner of the room and opened it to the bookmark, about three-quarters of the way through the novel. Just as quickly, he closed the book, put it down, walked into the bathroom, and turned on the light. His gaunt face stared back at him from the mirror, and he neatened his hair using a thin black comb he kept in a drawer under the sink. In the bedroom, he raised the window shade and looked out at the ocean, two palm-lined blocks in the distance. Dusk approached with its golden-orange luster, coasting back of a warm, whispery breeze. Champagne-like waves washed ashore in all their mysterious splendor. Peering down at the boardwalk, Raymond spotted a young man and woman walking arm-in arm. Ah, to be normal. If only…





Jefferson’s plight presented Raymond with a chance to feed paternal longings that would otherwise remain starved. And there was something different about Jefferson. His calm in the face of crisis; the adaptive emotional void into which the horrors of his daily life seemed to disappear. The boy possessed a strange intuitive quality, something appealing but not fully defined at this point…

Raymond retraced his steps down the short hallway in his apartment, back into the living room, through the dining area, and into the kitchen. Then the idea came to him, though it was only an impulse, not yet fully informed by a coherent line of reasoning. He pulled a telephone book out from the kitchen drawer.

Michael’s Music Shoppe was open for a few hours on Sundays. The bells attached to the front door of the store jingled Raymond's arrival, but only a black cat and a German Shepherd seemed to be minding the store, and they were both fast asleep on the dingy brown carpet. Age-old dust filled Raymond’s nose and he sneezed as daintily as he could, blowing his nose into a hanky that he produced from the inside pocket of his suit coat. The shop was musty and poorly lit. Musical instruments lined the dirty walls – a tenor saxophone, $8; a clarinet, $6; a viola, $12; a xylophone, $5; a guitar, $10, including the case…

“Ain’t Misbehavin’” began to chime from a piano in a distant corner of the shop. The cat awoke and hopped up on the counter, using the cash register as a brace to help her stretch her back. The dog remained conked out on the floor. Raymond wandered through a dark aisle of sheet music, and then another aisle of accessories – pics, reeds, sticks, strings… The music came from a second, smaller room in the back of the shop. Raymond poked his head through the door and saw a little bald man seated at an upright piano against the wall, dressed with casual elegance in a blue shirt and grey waistcoat. The man’s eyes were closed in concentration, and his grey trousers moved up and down as he tapped his feet on the ground in rhythm to the music he played. Sensing another presence in the room, he opened his eyes, and when he saw Raymond standing in the doorway, he abruptly stopped playing.

“Oh, hi there,” the man said in a high, elfin voice. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Hello,” Raymond said. “You play very well.”

“Oh, jeez. How can I help ‘ya?”

“I’d like to buy a guitar for my nephew. The one up front on the wall looks just right.”

“Let’s have a looksee.”

Raymond followed the little man back through the aisles to the front of the shop.

“Yes indeed,” the little man said, fetching a small stepladder from behind the counter and then climbing it in order to reach the guitar on the wall. “This is a nice one. I bought it from an old jazz player, Len Valentine. Shame about old Lenny. Down on his luck.” He grabbed the guitar off the wall. The dog on the floor awoke and let out a few friendly barks. Raymond didn’t care for dogs and turned away. From atop the step ladder, the little man held the guitar and played a few quick scales on it. “Did you say the guitar is for your nephew?” he asked.

“Yes. A present.”

“I see. How old is he?”

“He’s twelve.”

“Oh. Well, see, this here is a very good instrument, but I think the action will be a little high for such a young ‘fella, 'specially if he's just gettin' started.”


"The action?”

“That just means it’ll be harder for him to press the strings. Wait here.” The little man disappeared momentarily down an aisle and returned with a second guitar. “This one here’ll be much easier on the boy’s fingers,” he said. The guitar was a handsome looking Epiphone with pearl colored tuning knobs. “I can sell this one to ‘ya for $8, with the case included.”

“I’ll take it,” Raymond said.

"That was easy. I need more customers like you, mister.” The little man chuckled and Raymond briefly smiled. “So the boy really likes music, huh?”

“I’m not sure just yet. He needs a hobby, something to keep him out of trouble.”

“Well, music is good for makin’ you forget your troubles. That’s what I always say.”

Raymond paid for the guitar and carried it out the door and into the blinding San Diego sunlight. He walked to Island Avenue, where his car was parked, but before driving home he ducked briefly into a second-hand book shop just across the street from the old Horton Grand Hotel.
Clara was at the pharmacy and John was on the golf course when Raymond returned to their house in his two-door, red Plymouth Belvedere, later that day. Jefferson still wore a band aid on his forehead and medical tape on his nose when he answered the door, and in the time since Raymond last saw him the day before, the boy developed two shiners, giving him a frighteningly ghoulish look. He smiled when he saw his uncle standing at the door.

“Hi Uncle Ray!”

“How are you today, Jefferson?”

“I’m OK. I’m bored. Mom told me to stay home.” “Really. Well I have some things for you in my car.”

“For me?”

“Come. I’ll show you.”

Out in the driveway, Raymond opened the trunk to his car and pulled out the guitar case.

“A guitar!” Jefferson said joyfully. “Neato. But I don’t know how to play the guitar.”

“Of course you don’t. Not yet. But you can learn. And then you’ll never be bored.”

“Neato.”

Jefferson laid the guitar case on the ground and opened it. The guitar’s hollow body, shaded somewhere between orange and brown, was sleek and pristine. The copper strings shimmered against the guitar's brown neck in the sunlight. Jefferson took the instrument out of its case and gave it a few strums. Then he flashed a loving grin at his uncle. Raymond reached back into the trunk and pulled out two books.

“Are those for me too, Uncle Ray?”

“Yes, Jefferson.”

Raymond handed Jefferson a manual titled, The Guitar Made Easy: Learn to Play in Two Weeks.

“Thanks!”

"And I think you’ll enjoy reading this, too,” Raymond said, handing Jefferson the other book.
Jefferson read the cover of the book out loud. “A Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger. What’s it about?”

“It’s about a lot of things, but it tells the story of a boy, just a few years older than you. I think you'll like him."

For the next three weeks, Raymond's attempts to get in touch with Clara and Jefferson were thwarted. Clara either sounded drugged or seemed preoccupied and hurried on the phone, in which case she would rush Raymond off the line, telling him she was too busy to speak. When John answered the phone, he invariably sounded drunk and ill-tempered, his hostility making the word 'hello' sound like 'what do you want?', and then when he heard Raymond's voice on the other end of the line, his irritation would rise to the level of outright belligerence, and he would simply say, "Clara's not here" or "Clara can't come to the phone", before hanging up. One time, John meant to hang up on Raymond, but in his clumsy, drunken agitation he left the receiver off the hook. Through the telephone, Raymond heard another set of footsteps enter the room on the other end, and then he heard Clara's voice, faintly. "Who was that on the telephone?"

"It was that sister of yours."

"Sister?"

"Yeah, Clara. Your sister Raymond. Goddamn nance, always callin' here.”

Failing to make contact on the telephone, Raymond tried going back to Huntington Beach in person. On his first trip, no one seemed to be home and the garage door was closed, though Raymond wondered if Jefferson might be trapped and bleeding in a closet somewhere inside, and he briefly entertained the possibility of jimmying the front door open. He waited around in his car outside the house for an hour but nobody returned home. A few days later, he drove back to the house and Clara's car stood in the driveway, but John's car was also parked in the open garage, and Raymond lost his nerve, quickly turning the car around and racing back towards the highway. On the drive back to San Diego, Raymond had an uncharacteristic temper tantrum, cursing his cowardice and continually smacking the steering wheel with his open hand in anger and shame. "Damn! Damn! Damn!"

Finally, Raymond arrived at his sister’s house at a time when only her car was parked out front. Up in his bedroom, Jefferson played scales on his guitar. When he looked through the window and saw Raymond’s car pull up in front of the house, he ran down the stairs, past Clara vacuuming the living room, and out the front door.

"Uncle Ray!” Jefferson yelled, throwing his arms up in the air and waving them excitedly.

“Hello Jefferson.”

“I can play scales, and chords, and even a song from the radio.”

They walked into the house. Clara turned off the vacuum cleaner and greeted her brother.

“How are you, Clara?”

“I wish you'd call first.”

“Clara, I've tried--"

Before Raymond could finish, Clara plopped down on a couch, took her face in her hands, and cried.

“Ma, don’t cry,” Jefferson said.

Clara whimpered through the tears. “Take Jefferson upstairs, Raymond. Please.”

Raymond stood over his sister for a moment and felt himself pulled from two sides. He could take Clara in his arms and tell her everything would be OK, which would be a lie, told for the purpose of calming and comforting her for now, or he could attend to Jefferson and help the boy begin to find a diversion from his disaster of a family. He glanced at Jefferson and saw the boy glancing expressionlessly at his mother, a broken woman. Clara waved Raymond away and Raymond put his hand on Jefferson’s shoulder. As Raymond and Jefferson walked upstairs, Raymond glanced back over his shoulder towards his sister, still sitting on the couch, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief.

"Look what I got at the library,“ Jefferson said when they entered his bedroom. He held up a copy of Salinger’s Nine Stories.

Remarkable! Raymond thought to himself. The boy seemed unmoved by what had just transpired downstairs. “Ah, yes,” Raymond said, fending off the temptation to talk to Jefferson questions about his mother. “So you like Catcher in the Rye.”

“Yeah. I already read it twice.”

“Twice! My goodness.”

“It’s one of those books you can’t put down, and you’re sad when it’s over ‘cause you just want it to go on forever. You know what I mean, Uncle Ray?”

Raymond simply smiled at Jefferson, pleased with the boy’s enthusiasm.

“I wish I had a friend like Holden Caulfield,” Jefferson added.

The boy and his uncle looked at each other in mutual recognition. Then Jefferson’s eyes darted around his room until he spotted what he was looking for leaning against the closet door. “I love my guitar,” he said as he grabbed the instrument and then sat down on his bed with it. He had practiced quite a bit and showed his uncle that he was able to play basic chord progressions. “And watch this Uncle Ray,” he said, starting to play a song. His tempo was a little uneven and too slow, but there was a look of nascent passion on his face as he sang the words.

I’m the type of guy, likes to roam around
Never in one place, I roam from town to town
When I find myself, fallin for some girl
I hop into that car ‘o mine, ride around the world
cause I’m a wanderer, a wanderer…