I’m writing my
memoirs.
I know. Who do I think I am? I am not famous. Nor do I know famous people. And I’ve made absolutely no impact on science
or history or anything else that matters.
But I’ve not let that get in my way.
Here is an excerpt from a
draft of Albion and New Augusta (Confessions of a Midlist Writer) about
my first, somewhat lonely days at Indiana University. I had found three other freshmen who knew how
to play the card game, euchre. Having
that in common, the four of us formed a tenuous friendship. And that’s how we passed
the time, even though studying would have been a better investment. Of this new group of friends, one stood out.
I
spent a lot of time with Pete, the smart but cynical one. He was
heavyset. He wore glasses. He
always wore a white, short-sleeved shirt, unbuttoned at the neck, and
dark pants. Always. He was adamant about having nothing around his
neck. During the coldest winter days, he wouldn't wear a scarf.
He was
moody, brooding, an avid reader and there wasn’t an easy read in his stack of
books. When we met he was reading Nietzsche, about whom he seemed
obsessed. I wasn’t nearly as well read; but I had devoured plays,
especially the "modern" ones, beginning with Shaw and continuing to
contemporary British playwrights. The other two in the Euchre group had
no such interests. Neither did my roommate. These were the people in my world. I don't
believe Pete's social world was any larger. So Pete and I spent time together.
I looked
forward to it. I was more comfortable in matters of the mind as opposed
to matters of the heart. I was comfortable with concepts rather than
details. In fact, intellectual matters
were preferable given my most recent experience in matters of lovers and
family. And like Pete and his Nietzschean mindset, I had no love for the church-going
masses. Right and wrong existed for me, but were notions outside of
religion. And if there was disagreement between Pete and I, we could
disagree without a lot of Biblical baggage.
Authority took a back seat to logic.
In other
matters Pete was explosive. He had his personal passion when it came to
cards and pool. A couple of times, when he lost at Euchre, he kicked over
the table. He locked himself in his room once and did not come out for
days. I saw that as sulking not depression. On the other hand it was
interesting drama in what had otherwise had become a boring routine. One day
he lost a game of pool and snapped the pool cue. It wasn’t so much that
he lost; it was to whom he lost. I was the whom. Not only were these
domains over which he was master, I was just learning the game. I’ll have
to admit that I took some pleasure in surprising him with the notion that luck
was sometimes victorious over talent and discipline. He hated the idea of
"luck." It has to do with
randomness rather than order.
Despite the
flaws, I thought Pete was one of the most formidable and memorable people I had
ever met. That was true until I met his father. I don't remember why I went
to Pete's house, but one day, up from Bloomington and back in Indianapolis, I
visited Pete at his place. Maybe school was out. I’m not sure.
Pete's house
was in another one of those housing developments in the city with street after
street of mostly two- or three-bedroom frame homes. Each had small front and
back lawns. His home, like those of his neighbors, was modest but well
built. If I remember correctly the home was set back, up on a small
incline. It had a smooth asphalt driveway, on which was parked a big black
two-door Cadillac with black walls and a red light on the roof.
Inside, the
rooms were small and seemed even smaller because the furniture was huge. One
had to angle through oversized chairs, a mammoth sofa, and a grand piano, not
to mention a sweet but overweight Boxer. It was as if Botero was the set
designer. Pete’s dad, a doctor, was a deputy
coroner for the city. He was huge and round as well, twice the size of
Pete and three times as scary. His hair was closely cropped, he wore a .38, and
he smoked a cigar. Rather, he chewed it.
The three of
us had a little lunch. Pete couldn’t have gotten any smaller. He —
all hunched into himself — looked as if he expected the ceiling to come
tumbling down at any moment. He seemed nervous and frightened as his father
talked about his work as coroner and as a kind of volunteer physician to the
down and out. As we ate, Pete’s father provided lurid descriptions of
prostitutes and the debilitating diseases they were likely to acquire. At
one point, the doctor held up a small carrot stick, using it to show the size
of a boy’s penis that he had been describing in a story. After finishing
his sentence, he bit off the tip of the carrot with, I thought, a bit too much
exuberance.
This struck
me as hilarious. I started laughing, which seemed to further distress Pete. In
moments, perhaps realizing what he had done or maybe, fully aware of his
purpose and surprised by its effect, the doctor started laughing himself.
He laughed so hard, he turned pink. He lit his dead cigar and invited me
to dinner the following Friday.
He would
show some family slides, he said, as if this gesture was in response to my
questions about his growing up in New York.
When the
evening of the dinner came, I was shocked at the way that not only the doctor
talked to his wife, berating her, yelling at her in the kitchen, calling her
stupid, and worse. No one came to her rescue. I wanted to say something,
but I was sitting next to King Kong. When dinner was over, the slide
projector was set up. There may have been a few photos of the family's earlier
days in New York, but the bulk of the show was made up of autopsy slides —
graphic, bloody slides of various human organs, sliced and diced, and in
various stages in preparation for examination.
I kept a
poker face. I don’t know where or how I learned it, or why I thought it
was necessary; but I was determined not to show fear or shock. Another skill I
had learned was to go off to some other place in my mind until the
unpleasantness had passed. It was a mechanism I would cultivate. But
during the time at the doctor’s house all I really wanted to do was get the
hell out of there.
I couldn’t
imagine what life was like for Pete and the others in the household.
 |
| A lurid torture/murder case that still shocks the city |
I
had no idea what life was like for the deputy coroner. I didn’t know at the
time, for example, that he had been the examiner on the scene when Sylvia
Likens’ tortured body was found in an Eastside home. She had been cut and
burned over many days. She died of brain hemorrhage, shock and malnutrition.
The facts of the story — the chief actor in this horrid drama punished
the victim on moral grounds — were so tragic, that the drama was made into
films, novels and plays. The Likens case may have been the most gruesome
the doctor had to deal with, but his practice exposed him to the most heinous
acts on a regular basis. He, like police and firefighters, witness the
saddest, unluckiest and most depraved moments in human existence. He saw
and knew things too impolite for the general public, but perhaps not too
impolite for his family. How much of this he brought home, I’d have to estimate
from the entertainment after dinner, probably was more than most families
needed to know.
I was content to get back to the university in Bloomington. I had
been cast in a Noel Coward play. Much good can be said about the importance of
trivializing existence.
