Copyright 1991 Aya Katz
FROM THE CORRESPONDENCE OF MICKEY SMITH
Dear Jonny,
I wish you would come home. Things are getting awful hot here, and I just know it would be better if you came back to keep the peace. Daddy and David are at each other's throats ...well, mostly Daddy is at David's throat. And I wouldn't mind it so much, except that I think it's beginning to affect our marriage. I mean, I've got to stand up for David with Daddy and for Daddy with David and it's driving me nuts.
All right, besides which, I think maybe David's been sniffing around some other woman, I haven't quite made out who. Now, don't go pooh-poohing me, I've been around and I know it's perfectly natural and all that. I mean he wouldn't be a man if he didn't. But with everything else that's going on, I just can't get a handle on it.
Please come home, okay? I mean it's not like you'd be giving up anything. You told me yourself how much you hate law school and how you're only doing it for Daddy. So what's the point? Daddy needs you right here. You were always the one who kept the peace. Always the good little boy. You could get Daddy's mind off David, and keep an eye on David in the process. I'd be ever so grateful. Do Mickey a favor.
Last night was one for the records. David was pretty quiet himself, because I had been trying to get him to tell me where he'd been that afternoon, seeing as how he wasn't in Court and he wasn't in his office and I just couldn't run him down anywhere. Three whole missing hours! Well, he just played it cool, but anyway that made us late for dinner with Daddy. Abner was there, too, see, and I'm not sure that it helped.
We got through dinner okay, you know, David even got a bit talkative and all and he was telling us about one of his cases. Some drunk, see, who had managed to kick the habit, by taking up dope. Abner laughed. But Daddy got real grim and he said, "Now, Dave, you know I don't need to hear about that off the bench."
The rest of the evening was just dishes clattering and glasses jingling, because Daddy was getting real morose, you know how he gets sometimes. So after dinner I said: "Why don't you play something for us, David?"
David gave me this funny look. "I thought you didn't want me to make a spectacle of myself."
"Not in public. And not with those bawdy songs you sing. But you can play something for the family, provided it's decent."
David gave me a lopsided smile. "Why, thank you, Mickey," he said, "for your kind permission." But he wasn't mad. He got out the guitar and started to tune it. "What shall I play?" he asked.
Nobody else said anything, so I said: "Play 'Red River Valley.' Daddy loves that song. Don't you, Daddy?"
Daddy didn't say anything, he just took his gun off the mantle and started cleaning it with those little white cleaning patches, and he kept removing the bullets and placing them in the ashtray by his armchair, and then putting them back in again. Abner just watched him.
So David started singing, and I listened and Abner listened and Daddy fiddled with his gun, and then bam, right out of the blue Daddy just kind of pulled the gun out and aimed sort of at the top of David's head and paused and shot and David just kind of sat there staring at him. The bullet went into the wall right above David's head.
Daddy got up, all sober like. "Sorry," he said. "I didn't know it was loaded." Only it didn't sound like he was sorry.
"Well," Abner said, "when an audience starts shooting at you, you know you need to work on your act."
David just left. I mean he didn't say anything. He went out the door and he drove away, leaving me stranded there. I tried to talk to Daddy, but he said he was tired and went to bed. So Abner took me home. "I guess you could say he's had fair warning," Abner said. I don't know what the devil he was talking about.
When I got home, David wasn't there. Don't know where he spent the night.
So, you see, Jonny, it really is bad. And if anybody can fix it, that would be you. Drop out --you want to anyway-- and come home where you belong. We need you.
Yours, XXX,
Mickey
All of Vacuum County was available free of charge on the net for over fifteen years before it was published as a paperback. Even so, very few people read it, because very few could find it. Watch this video to see why.