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  Years later I would realize that he still worked on his sex lesson. I said, “Yes sir.”

  “What’re you doing with that dictionary?” he asked me quietly. I shrugged. He leaned in closer and said, “I blacked out every word in there except for desperation. Go ahead. Turn to page 275. I keep waiting for Monetta to open the thing up. Maybe she already knows all the words inside.”

  I drank more from his cup, not thinking.

  MR. WHALEN KEPT a stepladder in his crawlspace, of course. I took a theater appreciation class in college my freshman year and learned three things: If there was a pistol on the set, it would be fired at the end of the first act; if there was a telephone on the bedside, it would ring, usually not on cue. I learned, too, that most drama majors were obnoxious and insecure, and that if they didn’t make it in a summer rep group they’d go off to law school, eventually get disenchanted should they have any sense whatsoever, then finally give it all up in order to farm berries, sing campfire songs spontaneously, and teach their children most of the euphemisms for female genitalia.

  So I wasn’t surprised or shocked when my sixth-grade teacher’s drunken husband said to me, “Let’s stand this aluminum ladder up right under the hole where I’m going to eventually build a spiral staircase.” He kicked it open, then tested the floor for balance. Ben Whalen held his index finger to his mouth for me to be quiet, then took his plastic cup of booze from me.

  Here’s the scariest segment out of the most freakish night in my life up until this time: Mr. Whalen offered no pantomime hand gestures á la high school ROTC members obsessed with semaphore. He looked at me once, didn’t smile, and we simultaneously climbed up both sides of the stepladder—he on the DO NOT USE FOR STEPS side, and me on the traditional silver treads—like Olympic-caliber synchronized swimmers, or champion ax men at a logging competition in the Pacific Northwest, or adjacent geysers at a national park. Ben Whalen put his plastic cup in his mouth, we placed our palms up to the makeshift hatch, and shoved hard so mightily and fast that not one Munson or Harrell child had time to react. Listen, these guys never exactly reacted quickly most days—thus all the bruises during baseball season—but you’d think that an eruption of floor below a cheap throw rug might cause four prone Harrells getting faux-screwed in the armpits by Noxzema-slathered Munsons to yelp, run, or fight before their discoverers underwent sensory-based deductions, which could only end, later on, in blackmail situations.

  “What the hell you boys doing?” Mr. Whalen yelled out, even before the circle of floor tipped over entirely against the useless bookcase. He emerged into his living space, took two or three determined steps, and flipped the light switch. By the time I came out of the hole all of my sleepover comrades rushed to find their pajama bottoms and hide both erections and tainted, compromised armpits. There would be talk of my being “born again,” within the next six months, and—like an iconic unseemly act performed in public by a celebrity—by the time I left Calloustown for good it seemed as though everyone aged twelve to forty had been present and witnessed the occasion. “What the hell you boys doing to each other?”

  Before anyone could answer—and I’ll admit that I started laughing uncontrollably, which is why I don’t play poker—our sixth-grade teacher flew into her own, now corrupted, den. She got that look on her face that meant “I’m calling your daddy,” and without raising her voice much said, “Get your clothes back on, boys.” She reached down to the floor, picked up her fouled jar of night cream, and said, “Where’d y’all get this?”

  Oddly, she looked straight at her husband. Did I mention that he never set down his plastic cup throughout the spooky entrance, or how a pint bottle peeped out of his left back pocket?

  “We was just playing a game,” one of the Munson boys said.

  I quit laughing long enough to say, “Playing Pin the Pecker on an Armpit,” and, perhaps affected by a jigger’s worth of good bourbon, lost my balance and fell back down the hole, half-sliding down the ladder’s stringers.

  You’d think that I’d’ve heard one of the adults say, “Uhoh” or “Are you okay?” I swear, though, between terra firma and the cement floor I heard my sixth-grade teacher say, “No wonder Sherman swerved from this wasteland.”

  I REGAINED CONSCIOUSNESS with my head against a dirt mound built for Matchbox car coasting. Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee stood beneath my eyes, and Jeb Stuart covered my upper lip. Ms. Whalen held the three in place, delicately. What would’ve been our little surprise treats sometime between the Finger Museum and the Stuffed Wild Animals petting zoo—Kool-Aid frozen in ice-cube trays, with plastic confederate soldiers frozen into them to be used as handles—now worked a secondary mission, namely to keep the swelling down from the tumble I took down Mr. Whalen’s imaginary ice hole/vagina.

  I woke up and said, “What day is it?” like that, like I always had done in the past after getting knocked out.

  My teacher shushed me and said, “You’re a different kind of Calloustowner, Luke.”

  Upstairs, though I didn’t know it at the time, all the Munson and Harrell boys had been locked up inside the Fresh Meat on Wheels refrigeration truck in order to keep them out of the way and unable to call their parents. Somehow, if I knew the parents of Calloustown, the entire Noxzema incident would be interpreted as the Whalens’ fault. She’d get released from her teaching duties, and every Harrell and Munson would go back to eating non-fresh meat bought from a grocery store chain’s amateur butcher.

  “I called his parents but didn’t get an answer,” Ben Whalen said to his wife.

  I sat up and said, “I like the ambulance best,” referring to the Lomas Ambulance #14 Matchbox car that Mr. Whalen—during playtime—had backed beside a #57 fire truck, both of which were in front of a #13 Dodge wrecker, which seemed to be aiding the grenade-throwing army man who had just wrecked his #73 Mercury station wagon.

  “You don’t need an ambulance,” Ms. Whalen said. “By the time an ambulance gets here you’ll have healed these bumps and grown new ones.” She took Jeb Stuart off my lip and put him in her own mouth. “You’re okay, comparatively.”

  I said, “I think my parents drove down to Columbia to see a movie, that’s where they are.” I got up and said, “I’m okay.”

  Mr. Whalen didn’t offer me another sip of George Dickel. He said, “I got a good mind to leave them boys in the truck for the rest of the night. We got any Pine-Sol? I need to go scour down the den from whatever emissions those boys made up there.”

  My teacher leaned in to look at my pupils. I thought she wanted to kiss, but she said, “What’s the capital of Florida?”

  Immediately I said, “Miami.”

  “He’s all right,” Ms. Whalen said, and her husband nodded.

  We walked out the crawlspace door. When we passed Mr. Whalen’s work truck he banged on the panels hard a few times. Inside the house my teacher put on some rubber gloves and covered the hole in the floor, then the rug, then scooted a table over the hole. She told me to try my parents again, I think just to see if I could remember the number. My mother answered on the first ring. She said she and my father had decided against going to a movie, that they’d been there all night, that the phone hadn’t rung. I told her she needed to come get me, and when she asked why I didn’t say, “Because I know anatomy,” or “I don’t fit in,” or “There’s a chance I’ll turn to alcoholism if I stay here much longer,” or, “My teacher doesn’t know state capitals.” I said, “I hit my head when we were playing freeze tag.”

  Ms. Whalen took the receiver from me, finally, and said to my mother, “Luke was It,” among some other things. Again, in retrospect, I think she might’ve been speaking metaphorically.

  So I missed another ceremonial burning of the Calloustown Courthouse. I heard later that Mr. Whalen’s minibus didn’t start up the next morning and that he had to drive my classmates around in the back of his work truck. Those idiots said they were surrounded by hanging meat for the entire day, by carcasses meant to be bo
ught by their kin. I shrugged a lot over the next six years and lied back at them. I told them my father let me take dates out on his cherry picker once a year to see our hometown fake burn, and it worked in regards to getting girlfriends amorous. When, finally, I told my parents the truth about that one night I had with the Whalens, my father made a point to order a gigantic box of sausage, though he only cooked the patties and set them out for crows to eat, then fly around our hometown fouling windshields and rooftops. My father believed that a modern-day Sherman might act likewise.

  LICKERS

  THE MAN SAID HE FOUND HIS DOG ON THE FRONT PORCH one November, right before Thanksgiving. He said it was the truth, and that if he wanted to tell lies he’d’ve said Christmas, or Easter, or one of the other healing holidays. It caught me off guard, certainly, understand. While he went into a description of his dog’s capabilities I stood there sockless at my front door trying to capture “healing holidays.” Ash Wednesday, maybe? Independence Day probably made people feel better, especially recent immigrants. What about Valentine’s Day? Me, I always felt ultimately worthless and destroyed on Valentine’s Day—not healed in any human conception. I couldn’t pay attention right off. The dog appeared to be part shepherd, part beagle, part Lab. Nothing special. She had long black and brown hair, flopped ears, legs a little too short for her body. The dog made decent eye contact, panted, and let her fat tongue loll out long to one side or the other.

  “If you’d like to see some snapshots, I got them. And official documentation,” the man said. “I have witnesses and phone numbers.”

  This was a Saturday morning. I’d lived in Gruel for a good year, trying to fit in. No one seemed anxious to make my acquaintance. The woman I bought bread from down at Gruel Bakery one time said, “You should try my special bread with Jesus crust,” and two locals trying to perform trick shots down at Roughhouse Billiards once said thanks when I picked up their errant cue ball. But that was about it.

  “I got a picture of a guy who says he zipped his pants up funny on his testicles. Oh, it cut him to pieces. Personally I think he had something else happen to him, like maybe he tried to cross a bob-wire fence one night drunk and cut himself something awful. But that’s neither here or otherwise. What matters is I got a picture of his things sliced, and a other of good old Pam licking the sore, and then a other of it healed.” He lowered his head and said quietly, “I don’t show that picture to the women, by the way.”

  The man had an old-fashioned army knapsack with him that he pulled off his right shoulder. His hair stood up wild and funny gray on his head, wiry. He dug in and started pulling out three-by-fives. I said, “Your dog’s named Pam? Pam?”

  “This is Pam. Say hey, Pam.”

  Pam sat down and stuck out her right paw. I waved, and looked out in the front yard to see if some kind of hidden camera posse stood nearby, like on one of those TV shows. I bent down and shook Pam’s paw. “Good dog. Sorry I don’t have any kind of sore,” I said.

  “Here’s a picture of a boil, before and after,” the man said. He handed me Polaroids of a giant neck pimple and then of smooth skin. I didn’t say, “Anyone could take a picture of a giant dermatological abrasion, and then another of someone else’s smooth skin.” I said, “Huh. How about that.”

  “Here’s some more.” He handed over photographs of cuts, scrapes, possible leprosy, oozing sores of one variety or another. Then he had the supposed cured areas in vivid color. He said, “Five dollars. You can’t beat that. Try going down to a doctor in Forty-Five. It’s thirty-five dollars just to walk into the door. And then you got drugs, salves, and ointments to pay for later. Try going to the Graywood Memorial Emergency Room. You ever noticed how if you turn GMER around it comes out GERM? There’s a reason for that.”

  He wore a T-shirt that read MIRACLES HAPPEN, but no picture of Jesus underneath the statement. I sat down on my steps and pet the dog. I said, “What do you do, travel from town to town, healing people with Pam here? That’s kind of cool. Someone should make a documentary.”

  “It don’t matter none my name,” the man said out of nowhere. He stood stiff, and had a look on him mostly captured by Confederate soldiers posed brave and defiant. “Let’s just say my name’s Seth. If I were a real doctor I’d have me a Seth-a-scope, you know what I’m talking?”

  I didn’t. If I were a doctor named Seth I’d probably try to pick up women by saying, “You want a little of the Seth-a-scope,” like an idiot, poking my groin back and forth.

  I stuck out my hand and said, “I’m Curt.” It’s the first time I’d had the opportunity to introduce myself since moving to Gruel, I thought. “I’m Curt.” My parents might as well have named me Angry or Short-Tempered.

  Seth shook my hand and Pam the healing dog stuck out her paw, all reflexes.

  “You trying to tell me, Curt, that you ain’t got a bruise, some joint pain, a blister, skin rash? Pam the healing dog can fix it all. Hey, I tell you what—you look honest enough—I can have her lick your needs, and then I’ll come back the next day for the five dollars. I’ll come back tomorrow. All’s I’m asking is that you be honest with me.”

  Please understand that I’m not a sick man, physically or mentally, but for some reason I thought about this: What if I had some bad and persistent hemorrhoids? Would this Seth fellow allow his dog to lick a man’s butt? I said, “Not a twinge, as far as I’m concerned. Hell, I’ll give you five dollars if you’re hurting for money, man.”

  Seth said, “I got pictures of Pam’s work on sprained ankles. Tendonitis. This one old boy over in Forty-Five had a nervous tic she licked away, though it can’t be documented very well on photographic paper. I needed to get me one them cameras with a fast shutter speed, so maybe the before picture would come out a blur what from the tic. Pam will lick away about anything, except hemorrhoids. I draw the line there. I won’t let her lick some stranger’s ass, excuse my language.”

  Can he read minds? I thought. “Okay. Now that you mention it. I was just trying you out, seeing how persistent you were. A long time ago I was a distance runner. This was maybe twenty-five years ago. Right into my freshman year in college. Anyway, I ran and ran, and I’m starting to think that the cartilage in my knees is pretty much worn away. Especially on wet fall days, my knees ache and throb.”

  “I’ve seen it before,” Seth said. Pam the dog pricked up her ears. “Roll up your pants leg, son. Ready yourself for a miracle.”

  I HAVE TO admit that Pam’s healing session was more than pleasant. Not that I’ve ever spent money on a massage therapist of any kind, but I imagined that my experience with the dog was similar in a “non-deep tissue” kind of way. That dog licked and licked for a good hour. Seth walked around my front yard smoking cigarettes. I pet Pam’s head and said things like, “You a good girl, aren’t you?” Every once in a while she pulled back her lips and kneaded my knees for fleas in that way that only dogs can maneuver.

  I said to Seth, “How can y’all live off five bucks a session? There’s no way.”

  He said, “Well, it’s five bucks for fifteen minutes, officially. I guess I should’ve mentioned that. Technically, you owe twenty dollars. But it’s up to you. So far, Pam ain’t had to take no more than fifteen minutes to heal a wound, you know.”

  I kind of felt the way I did when I first said, “Oh, hell, yeah—go ahead and give me some cable TV,” not knowing that every little religious station added on at Charter Communications’ whim would cost me more monthly. I said, “Yeah, you probably should’ve said something about that.”

  “But it don’t matter. It’s up to you. Tomorrow I’ll come by, and you’ll be honest, and you’ll tell me whether or not your knees feel better. And then you’ll either pay me what Pam deserves or you won’t.”

  I stood up and rolled my pants legs down. I looked at the dog and said, “Thanks.” To Seth I said, “It’s been a known fact for years that a dog licking an open wound makes it heal quicker. I mean, when I was growing up and had a scab, my dog Dooley�
�d lick it.”

  Seth lit another cigarette. He looked out toward the Gruel skyline, which meant the back sides of four one-story brick buildings. “That’s true, Curt. But I’ve had Pam’s salivary glands tested. And I have documentation right here,” he patted his wallet, “that states her spit—for some unknown reason—contains higher levels of stearic acid, sodium borate, allantoin, and methyl paraben. The doctor up at Duke who conducted all the tests said she also has a way of secreting acetaminophen that he’d never seen before. Oh, Pam’s a medical mystery.”

  I’m no idiot. I understood that it didn’t take much for a man like Seth to memorize the ingredients of any burn cream, plus an extra-strength headache powder. I thought to myself, In a way that’s my job, in a way. I said, “Well. Whatever. I’d like to talk to that Duke boy. He might’ve gone to too many basketball games.”

  “Here you go,” Seth said. “Goddamn it. It’s true most people I run into haven’t even heard of medical research, man. I’m glad to talk to someone who’s been around. What’re you doing in Gruel, of all places?”

  I didn’t go into how my wife left me for another man—a high school guidance fucking counselor she worked with up in Greenville where she taught social studies to tenth graders who couldn’t pass the class in seventh, eighth, or ninth. I didn’t say how I threw a goddamn dart hoping to hit Montana or Maine, that I’d made a promise to myself to go wherever it landed, and how the stupid thing landed only fifty miles south. I didn’t say how there weren’t many places in America where you could buy an antebellum house in need of slight repair for ten thousand dollars. I didn’t say, “Fuck, if my dart had landed in the Bermuda Triangle I would’ve moved there.” I said to Seth, “I could live anywhere. I work as a freelance indexer.”

  Pam sniffed my crotch. I tried not to view this as a sign.

  “A freelance indexer. That has something to do with fingers?”