(Originally published in Fiction Warehouse; feature story of the week for Aug. 25 to Sept. 1, 2004).
During a Jerry Springer rerun, Colton Litchie dozed off to an ad for the complete crochet crafter--$29.99 plus shipping and handling--and dreamed up a business suit made from blue yarn doilies. Pure genius, he thought, waking to spilled beer soaking his crotch. He'd crochet the suit himself, loop that blue yarn round and round. If he hurried, he could even wear it on the day he finally told his son that he, Colton, was the kid's true father.
The inspiration thrilled Colton. Truth was, he'd never had his own inspiration before. So he sat there, drinking coffee past midnight and waiting tight eyed for the doily commercial to reappear. Then at four AM, television magic: an old woman in blue hair was there screwing doily after doily from a plastic crochet crafter. Colton grabbed the phone. "Fed Ex it," he told the charming operator.
* * *
When his friend Scott came by two days later, a pile of doilies sat beside Colton's recliner. Colton explained the doily suit's inspirational birth as Scott retrieved an already opened bottle of beer from the fridge.
"How long this beer been open?" Scott asked.
"Four days," Colton said.
Scott sipped the beer, then shrugged and drank. "Hell with it. Hell with doilies, too. You can't make clothes out of that stuff."
"Course you can. My grandma wore doily wraps all the time."
Scott scooped up a doily, slipped the neck of his beer bottle through the middle hole. "Shoulder wraps is one thing," he said. "But you wear a pair of doily pants and you'll add new meaning to a birthday suit." Scott let the bottleneck deflower the doily a few more times, then flipped it frisbee style to Colton.
"I'll figure something out," Colton said.
Scott sat down and flipped TV channels while Colton kept crocheting. They could do that--sit with nothing being said. It usually made for a good friendship.
Last year, during Colton's months-long fight with testicular cancer, Scott had stopped in and checked on him almost every evening. When Colton wound up in the hospital for several days, Scott stayed the whole time as the chemotherapy stretched Colton's veins and arteries in mysterious counterclockwise orbits. On the second night in the hospital, Colton began hallucinating and moving in and away from waking. That was when Scott grabbed his shoulders and said Colton needed to cheer up.
"I mean, hell, it ain't like you're the only one to ever go through this," Scott said. He then proceeded to tell Colton a story about legendary University of Alabama football coach Paul Bear Bryant:
Seems the Bear's star football player was in the hospital dying of testicular cancer. Forget the player's name--it only matters that when the great Bear Bryant walked into his room, the player started crying. Not at the all-American honors he'd never have. Not at the pro bowls, NFL first round draft and super bowl rings he'd never embrace.
Instead, the star player grabbed the Bear's arm and cried, "They cut them off, Coach. They cut them off." Then he died.
The Bear got so upset he cut football practice a half hour short that day. And from then on he prowled the locker room before every single game or practice, making sure his players always wore their protective cups.
After Scott told that story, Colton bobbled his head like a yo-yo on its unwinding string, failing to understand if the story had been a good or bad thing to hear as he felt nearer to death than ever before. Before he could decide, Scott grinned and leaned over the hospital bed, being careful to keep his big arms away from the IV drips and lines.
"I only told you that because you're an Auburn fan," Scott said, giving Colton a soft nuggie. Colton still didn't understand. "Don't you get what the story means?" Scott asked, his face whispering to Colton's eyes. "It means you're gonna make it. Only dick dumb 'Bama guys die from these cancers."
Colton wasn't sure if that was the real moral of that story, but he still coughed into spastic jerks thinking back on it.
Scott clicked the TV off. "You wanna come to the game tonight?" he asked. He meant his son's high school football team. "Donny and them are playing those rich Montgomery Academy shits."
"Naw. I'm going to work on my doilies."
Scott shook his head. "Those ain't doilies. Doilies are lace things on tables and TVs. What you're doing--crocheting with ugly acrylic yarn from Woolworth--that's granny squares."
"Don't matter to me."
Colton saw the look Scott gave him, but he didn't care. Sure, Scott was Colton's best friend and Donny's supposed father. But once he finished his doily suit, Colton would be telling Donny the truth.
* * *
Ten days later, as Colton neared completion of his doily pants, Scott called. "Colton," Scott said. "Barbara and I need your help."
Colton's chest flushed at Barbara's name. "I'm here for you," he whispered with a pervert-sounding voice. "What do you want me to do to her?"
"Just shut up and listen, okay?"
Scott said he would be out of town for two weeks with the National Guard. Barbara's parents were away, too.
"We want you to watch Donny on the 14th," Scott said. "One of Barbara's friends is throwing a bridesmaid party down in Mobile and Barbara can't go unless someone watches Donny."
"Can't she just leave Donny alone for a while. He's almost fifteen."
Scott laughed. "I hear you. But Donny's her baby and she don't trust him being alone. She said you'd be the perfect babysitter."
Colton was amazed at the incredible timing of everything. If he worked extra hard, his dolly suit would be ready for the first day in years in which he'd be alone with his son.
"You sure you cool with this?" Scott asked. "You and Barbara ain't talked in a while."
Yeah, Colton thought. We'll be cool.
* * *
Barbara had been the smartest person Colton'd ever known. Had been, he'd say to anyone who asked, because he didn't talk with her anymore. "No telling if the smarts are still there."
He doubted they were. Barbara had gotten married at seventeen, which in Colton's world lowered her I.Q. fifty points. Subtract another fifty for marrying Scott, even more for not returning Colton's phone calls, and he was sure Barbara must have gone submarine on whatever intelligence she had left.
The last time Colton had seen her was at their son's tenth birthday party. Least, Colton assumed it was their son's birthday party. He was certain about the birthday, certain on the date--all he couldn't know was if Donny really was his son. Barbara always claimed that Scott was the one who knocked her up at sixteen. The three of them had been friends back then, with Scott and Barbara technically dating and Colton just hanging around. But Colton had begun to lust after Barbara and one night she was pissed at Scott.
Enter Colton.
When Barbara found out she was pregnant six weeks later, she said the baby was Scott's. At the time, Colton felt relief. He never told Scott, had never fessed up to what he'd done. But now, fifteen years later, as he grew older and wondered what he'd become, he began to know with absolute certainty that the kid was his.
My balls getting cut off have nothing to do with this, he told himself.
* * *
A week after Scott went to guard drill, Colton's phone rang as he was taking a break from doilies by doing pushups. Colton had always been a skinny guy but he figured if Scott could bulk up by throwing boxes for UPS, then a little exercise might also do him some good. Besides, he wanted to look his best in the doily suit.
On the second ring, Colton glanced at the caller ID--"SCOTT EDGERS"--and panicked. He almost let the call go into voice mail. But then, she might not leave a message, and she definitely wouldn't pick up if he called back.
"Colton, what the hell are you doing?" Barbara asked.
"Doilies. Making lots of doilies."
That actually tripped Barbara to silence for a second.
"I mean, what are you up to, wanting to babysit Donny?"
"He's hardly a baby anymore."
Barbara sighed. "What am I to think? I ain't seen you in three years and now Scott says you're begging to take care of Donny."
Colton froze. "Scott said you wanted me to do it."
"Fucking numbnuts, "Barbara hissed. "Shoulda guessed that idiot was doing another fence-mending scam."
Colton glanced at the half-made doily suit on the recliner. He should have known Barbara still didn't need him around.
"Look Barbara, I only agreed to babysit because I thought you wanted me to help. You don't want me there, I won't be there." He paused. "But you're the one been drawing all this out. Okay?"
Barbara slammed the phone on him, but called back ten minutes later. "Come by Friday at five."
"Must be really hard getting babysitters for teenagers," Colton said.
Barbara slammed the phone again.
* * *
When Colton was fifteen, he, Scott, and Barbara went on a church group campout down by the Tallapoosa River. Colton's images of that night refute clarity and mix with their other nights together and other memories of days and years growing up with Scott and Barbara. But what's true is that the campout came at the same time as Barbara suddenly growing breasts, which also came with Scott and him suddenly alternating between fights and still wanting to be best buds.
He remembers the campout--the bonfire, the ice chest of cokes, the marshmallows turning into solar flares on stick while the group sang Jesus songs. There was no wind but the clouds above still skated across the backlit moonlight. It was a nice campout. But then, as soon as the adult chaperon went to sleep, Barbara and Scott sneaked away. Colton followed their footprints in the sand and sneaked up on them kissing under some scrub oaks.
He remembers so perfectly the sight of Scott's hands on Barbara's body. He still sees her stomach and thighs, and how he was shocked by the sudden realization that the white fabric he was seeing were her panties. He'd never seen true panties on a girl.
Colton had wanted to say something--make a joke, be jealous--but after watching Scott and Barbara kissing for what seemed like minutes becoming hours all he could do was scoop up a handful of sand and throw it at them.
Scott chased him toward the river. Colton was laughing so hard he kept stumbling on rubber legs as if he were slow-dream running, and he barely saw the barb-wire fence before he jumped over it and stumbled. He then realized Scott wasn't going to see the wires, and watched as Scott zinged the fence and fell backward into the sand. Colton collapsed and couldn't stop laughing.
Scott rolled over to Colton. "You shit," he said, half-menacing. Colton laughed so hard he coughed up spit. Scott lay on the sand beside him, laughing and rubbing the wire welts across his stomach. When Barbara walked up she kicked sand at them. "You're both just stupid little boys," she said, but she also lay down with them. They watched as the wind picked up and stirred a dust devil across the dunes while moon reflections bounced off the river mist.
Later that night in their tent, Colton and Scott talked while laying side by side in their sleeping bags.
"I don't know," Scott said. "You think you're friends with someone but one day, huh ya, you look at them different."
"Yeah," Colton said. "Different."
Nine months later Scott and Barbara had a fight and Colton slept with her. That was the only thing in his life he was willing to regret.
* * *
Barbara and Scott lived in a ranch house just off Highway 231, halfway between Montgomery and the smaller town of Wetumpka. Their house perched on a hundred foot cliff above four lanes of cars and trucks. The cliff looked solid--with sun-bleached clays that were packed hard and stable when dry--but any passing thunderstorm brought new ruts and miniature canyons to the cliff as it eroded in cascades of pebbles and soggy dirt clogs.
Barbara sat in the kitchen when Colton walked in. Her purse was dumped out across the counter as she dug through paper wads, change, and extra keys. Colton sat on a stool next to her.
"It's claustrophobic," he said. "The ridge out back's gonna collapse to the highway one day. How can you live here?"
Barbara scooped her stuff back into her purse. "Claustrophobic ain't the word, idiot. That's being afraid of enclosed spaces."
"You know what I mean."
Through the kitchen door, Colton saw Donny playing video games in the den. Barbara glanced at her son.
"Colton, I ain't gonna spend my trip worrying about you messing up my kid. What do you have planned?"
Colton wobbled his chin in mock understanding. "Not a problem. We're going to the mall. I thought Donny would get a kick out of going to an R-rated movie. Nothing sexy like, just some gore and blood and stuff."
Barbara looked at Donny again.
"Yeah, he'd like that. Think he's doing something secret behind my back. You need some money for the movie or whatnot?"
Colton smiled. "Taken care of already."
Barbara called Donny into the kitchen. Donny slouched in, said hey to Colton without looking eye to eye. It had been years since Colton had seen Donny, but he resisted comments on how Donny had grown while absolutely looking the same, with his face still skinny and his cheeks sucked in as if a deep space vacuum sat just beyond his throat. Colton glanced at Donny's eyes. They were still green brown like his own.
As Barbara drove her car away, Donny and Colton stood on the front step.
"You wanna go to a movie?" Colton asked.
"Nothing I wanna see."
"How about an R movie?"
Donny nodded.
"Thought there was nothing you wanna see?" Colton asked.
"There's not. But I'll see nothing if it's R."
They got in the car. Colton drove down Rifle Range road to Highway 231. But just after he got near Montgomery he turned on the bypass loop going away from the malls.
"Where you going?" Donny asked.
"To the mall."
Donny waited.
"Wanna go to a mall in Birmingham?" Colton asked.
* * *
Birmingham was an hour and a half north of Montgomery on I-65. Thirty minutes into the drive Donny asked Colton if he was some kind of pervert.
"Hell no. Your dad would kill me if I was."
Colton kept the car at seventy--the speed limit--but wouldn't engage the cruise control. Donny leaned away from Colton and stared outside. They passed two earthen dams--the lakes behind them visible as thin blue lines, while water from the spillways turned metal waterwheels without reason. A billboard on the second dam proclaimed, "Go to church or the devil will get you." A red devil on the sign poked his pitchfork towards the spinning waterwheel.
"My mom thinks you're a pervert."
That shocked Colton. "She actually said that?"
"Pervert. Weird. Something like that."
"Big difference in those words." Colton shifted lanes so a fast mini-van could pass him. "Besides, if she really thought I was a pervert she wouldn't let me take care of you tonight."
"Then why Birmingham?" Donny asked.
"It's Friday night. How many people you know gonna be at those malls in Montgomery?"
"Lots."
"Well if you're gonna do something crazy, you do it where no one knows you."
Those words stood between them for ten miles or so while Donny messed with Colton's tape collection: Metalica, Garth Brooks, some Amy Grant. Donny popped a tape in, listened to it being eaten to a crackling and chewing sound before Colton informed him that the tape player didn't work. Donny popped the tape out and sniffed.
"So what's the craziness we're doing?"
Colton told him about the doily suit.
* * *
Barbara gave birth to Donny when she was seventeen. It was a cesarean birth, with the doctor cutting her open because he didn't believe teenagers should be in labor for more than fifteen hours. Colton visited her in the hospital and couldn't see any of himself in Donny's little red wrinkles and carp sucking mouth. He felt relief that Donny wasn't his.
Barbara confirmed this at Scott's place a month later. Scott lived in a giant log house his father had built. Scott's parents were inside taking care of Donny while the three of them hung together outside, taking turns swinging from an old rope swing.
Scott had tied the rope to an old sweetgum tree years ago. They'd climb the storage shed, squat the giant rope knot between their thighs, then jump off the roof and swing across the yard. They'd been doing it like this since they were in grade school. But now, when it was her turn to go, Barbara refused to swing.
"She's sore down there, you idiot," Scott whispered, as if this was a secret between men. Colton almost argued--how can she be sore down there when the doctor cut her belly open--but he kept his mouth shut. Since Barbara had gotten pregnant, Scott had been trying to get her to marry him but she'd been resisting. Colton figured the marriage bit was Scott just trying to impress Barbara with his sensitive side.
When Scott went into the house to check on Donny, Barbara kicked at a pine tree.
"You ain't being an idiot," she said. "I didn't wanna swing because that's something kids do."
She said this as Colton perched the shed roof for another swing. He paused and debated the childishness of swinging again.
"I ain't a kid," he said. "Kids don't drive cars."
"They don't have babies either."
Hell, Colton thought, and jumped sideways off the shed. He swung in a wide loop, like a spinning clock hand, with his head leaning back only inches above the ground. As he slowed down, Colton let go and back flopped across the pine needles and dirt.
"Still gotta have fun," he said. "Can't be so grown up you don't do crazy stuff."
Barbara smiled. "You think I should marry him?" she asked.
"If it's his kid."
Barbara bit her lips and swallowed something mad. "It's not an it. He's Donny. And he's all Scott. Got nothing to do with you."
Colton laid still, looking up through the lens of the pine-tree canopy. He could see right up Barbara's low cut t-shirt from this angle. He remembered the feel of her breasts from their one time together.
"Are you breastfeeding," he asked, "or were they just smaller back then?"
Barbara kicked the shit out of him, then stomped to the house to check on her baby.
That joke was another thing in his life that Colton regretted.
* * *
The Galleria sat just off the interstate loop in Birmingham. As Colton parked the car, Donny jumped out the door and stood fifteen feet away. He kept that distance from Colton until they walked through the mall entrance and were around other people.
"I'm still not a pervert," Colton said.
The Galleria was much bigger than any mall Montgomery had to offer, with two floors, glass elevators, and the best upscale stores in Alabama. Donny and Colton ordered some fries and a milkshake and sat near the atrium waterfall. Donny looked once at two skinny girls who sat nearby, then turned his eyes back to the milkshake foam in his glass.
"Odds are," Colton said, "no one in this mall will ever reappear in your life." Donny sipped more of his milkshake and looked back at the two girls.
"Might as well say hi to them," Colton suggested.
Donny wobbled up and down in his chair, then finally stood up and walked over.
"Would you like to sit with us?" he asked.
"Why?" the shorter of the two girls asked. Donny smiled slightly. "Because odds are, we'll never see each other again." Colton snickered, but the girls pulled chairs over anyway and asked if Colton was Donny's father.
"Just a family friend," Donny said. Colton said he was pleased to make their acquaintance. Short girl, tall girl--that's how Colton pegged them, not caring to give any effort on remembering their names. When he was Donny's age they were the kind of girls he'd be lusting over, with their little breasts, bulging hips, and short skirts. He realized that Donny probably was lusting over them, but after the cancer Colton had no desire for any of that foolishness.
"Where are you from?" the short girl asked.
"Atlanta," Colton lied.
They talked about nothing until eight o'clock, when Colton said he had to go to the bathroom. Before going, he pulled a video camera out of the backpack he had with him. The tall girl asked what he was doing.
"We want everyone back home to see what a real mall looks like." Act natural, he thought, and focused the lens on the girls, who giggled and tried to look uninterested. He handed the camera to Donny.
"Be right back."
Mall bathrooms amused Colton, with the stickiness of their stalls, the random graffiti, and the ever-present glory holes. He especially liked the way the toilet water sucked up and down as if breathing.
Coming back out, Colton saw that Donny already had the camera on him. But no one else noticed him until the short girl beside Donny yelled, "Oh my gawd."
Colton waved to his audience. His doily suit fit perfect and the lapels gave him just the perfect flair, with the blue doilies fcurving like some space-time continuum around his legs, arms, and body. He smiled at Donny and the shaking camera. Colton had neglected to tell Donny that the doilies weren't strategically placed to cover Colton's ugly stuff--like his crotch or butt. Instead, there was penis, hanging free and wobbly in the center of a doily. When Colton did a pirouette for his audience, there was butt crack, running clear and true behind the dolly gaps.
"That is so sick," the short girl said. The tall girl agreed but didn't look away.
As if on cue, Colton shouted: "Attention on the nads, please."
Colton felt the attention of the entire food court snap to understanding on why his lower end didn't look right. People who'd been staring suddenly looked away. One man yelled for someone to call the fucking police. Colton ignored them, walked between the tables and chairs, and came right up to Donny and the two girls.
"Shit," the tall girl said. "He's gonna stop here." And Colton did. He stood two feet from their table. Donny kept the camera running, but had it pointed at Colton's chest. Colton leaned over, and Donny--face red and shivering--tried not to stare.
"Been nice chatting with you two," Colton said to the girls. "I'm really his father, you know."
The camera fell, knocking Donny's milkshake in a spray across Colton's legs. "Cold," Colton said. He picked up the camera, focused it on Donny and the girls before handing it back to Donny.
Colton paraded through the food court for another minute before the security guards ran up. Then he raced across the atrium, up the stairs, around the second floor, and down and out and away.
* * *
Colton walked up to his car to find Donny waiting inside. Colton had already changed back into his bluejeans and shirt. He tossed the doily suit on the back seat.
"I thought the police got you," Donny said. "It's been almost an hour."
"They almost did. I had to hide out back in the pine trees for a while."
"You could have warned me."
Colton scrunched down in his seat as a police car drove by the front of the mall.
"Would you have talked to those girls if you'd known what was coming?"
"No."
"That's the answer, then."
Colton drove until just outside Prattville, then stopped at a Stuckeys for some icecream. They replayed the tape on the videocamera's monitor as they ate. Both of them laughed at the girls' reactions and at Donny's quivering red face.
"You ever been that embarrassed?" Colton asked.
"Never need be again, either." Donny shook his head. "What are you gonna do with the tape?"
"Don't know. Keep it for laughs. The doctors say the cancer's got a good chance of making it's way back on me. I might need the laughs when that happens."
"And the suit?"
"Probably donate it to Goodwill. Gotta be some homeless guy who can use it."
Donny picked the cherry out of his icecream. "That stuff you said, about being my father and all. What's with that."
Colton shook his head.
"Ain't nothing to it," he said, then started singing softly to a no-tune song of his own making. "Ain't got no nads, ain't got no son."
Donny smiled. "You really are a pervert. Just not the kind of pervert who'd do me wrong."
* * *
Colton and Donny made it back to Wetumpka by midnight. Exhausted, Donny went straight to his room to sleep. Colton slept on the sofa downstairs.
The next afternoon, some of Donny's friends picked him up for football practice. As evening came, Colton sat on the back porch, watching headlights from the highway below electric zap the edge of the dropoff. He had a small TV and VCR sitting on the wicker table in front of him and he kept flipping and scanning through the mall videotape. He was still sitting there when Scott pulled his truck into the driveway.
After dumping his bags, Scott walked onto the porch. Colton clicked the video off just as Scott collapsed into a lawn chair.
"Good kid you got there," Colton said, handing Scott a beer. Scott's National Guard uniform was sweaty and smudged with dirt. He downed the bottle in one gulp.
"I know. Barbara say anything to you?"
"Said she'd be back around ten tonight."
"I mean about anything else."
Colton placed his beer bottle on the glass table between their chairs. The bottle sat firmly on a blue doily he'd crocheted that morning.
"She didn't say much. Still don't like me, I guess."
Scott grabbed another beer.
"It ain't easy raising a teenager," Colton said. "We had a great time last night. Today, though, he's all moody and don't want two words with me. Still, thanks for giving me some time with him."
"Teenage boys don't understand a thing," Scott said. "I sure didn't."
Colton nodded. Scott leaned over, ejected the videotape and looked at it.
"A video about doilies," Colton said. "Teaching me the amazing things I can do with them."
Scott flipped the tape into Colton's lap then knocked the rest of his beer away. Then he stood up and pitched his beer bottle over the edge of the cliff. There was a long pause before the pop of glass on the asphalt below. Suddenly Colton understood the benefit of living above a dropoff. He smiled as another burst of instant inspiration filled him up--a perfect combination of something he and Scott could both get a kick out of doing.
"Beer bottles in doily wraps," he said. "Bet that'd make a sound, smacking the highway at a hundred miles an hour."
