On a cool Tuesday afternoon in May, John Bandy climbed up a rope in an abandoned lot at the end of my street and disappeared forever.
Phil Welle says you could see the moon hanging in the sky all day the next day, but Phil’s a liar and half blind after he drunk that moonshine he bought off’a Fred Tillerman. Fred, he said he seen a man explode a whole cactus with just the guts of a battery-powered flashlight, but I ain’t believe nothing Fred said since I was 12 years old and he said you could straighten your goddamn hair with a toothbrush.
Phil Welle never met a beer he didn’t like but he sure as hell didn’t like Fred when he told him so on a frozen October evening, 20 and 17. They waltzed up the street pitching teeth and blood like there’s no tomorrow.
And I guess for John Bandy there ain’t.
Fred tells me Phil Welle can fix up the dead tooth he give him with plaster and baking soda and some peroxide and I don’t know what all. Now, I ain’t taking dental advice off a guy, his mouth looks like a stretch of bad road, but Fred’s desperate, saying he can’t chew nothing, ast me to help ‘em mix up a batch.
Got a shipment a dental floss down the five and dime. Old Cooper talked about it for damn near half an hour; ordered wax, come unwax, some shit. I just shook my head, bought the pack of gum off Fred’s list, left him there talking to the wall. He used to have a cat in there keep him company. I think it stays over t’the Johnsons now, but, hell, don’t tell Coop.
Fred and Phil Welle and me got the mix all done up, and got it stuck in Fred’s gum before it set, but Fred got that heat-set plaster, and it cooked the rest his teeth pretty good. Now he got one fake tooth and no real ones, but John Bandy said Fred could chew a steak pretty good with that one, so I guess that’s improvement. Where John Bandy saw Fred and a steak together at the same time I could not tell you.
Guess I’m never know, now.
So, Fred and Phil Welle had a lot of that plaster stuff left over, and they thought it’d be fun giving old Reaser a little shit. That’s Old Danny Reaser not his nephew. Now, old Reaser, stays down off the Square, you know him, he put the new gutters on the Hemingway place down on Oak, back that Christmas. You probably seen it. They painted the damn thing green. Used to be a Victorian, now it’s, aw hell, who even knows? Anyway them gutters started leaking the day the last nail went in. Old Reaser says he ain’t gonna fix nothing till the Hemingway check clears. Said it to me, not to Hemingway. You know Hemingway. He’s got a temper on him. Anyway that check bounced, the gutters all fell off the house. So it’s hard to say who’s right, but Fred and Phil Welle was in Hemingway’s class back in fourth grade and they figure if there’s sides, they probably owe Old Reaser a black eye.
So, anyway, them and John Bandy and me went over to Old Reaser’s place middle of the night and they had took that plaster with ‘em, thinking they’d figure it out on the day. Fred grabbed a spoon out the kitchen and Phil Welle had the tub and John Bandy and me was lookouts, out the sidewalk.
Old Reaser’s inside, and he’s in a dead drunk. So, Phil Welle grabbed Old Reaser by the lips and Fred took a spoonful of that plaster and just went to town.
Now, what Fred and Phil Welle forgot, Old Reaser got his teeth out the Sears catalog. Them Sears teeth ain’t bad, but that plaster starts to cook, the plastic in them starts to melt. So, Old Reaser got a mouth full of this mess of hot plaster and melted denture and foaming mess and I don’t know what all, and Land o’Goshen, he come running out the house just bellering fit to bust.
Now, I kinda expected it, ‘cause Fred and Phil Welle is kinda bloody minded, but John Bandy just stand there staring at Old Reaser running down the street spewing that nasty stuff, leaving little steaming piles in the street every time be spits. And goddamn if a big old glop didn’t hit John Bandy right in the face.
Fred and Phil Welle come running out the house and take off down the street the other way, and I go to follow after, and we lost track of John Bandy.
So, next week, I run into Fred, says nobody ain’t heard from John Bandy in a minute. I went looking and found him down the library, wearing the same clothes he had on, smelling like I don’t know what and he got a big old purple spot on the whole side of his face. Turns out, he stood outside that house ‘til the sun come up, just staring down the street. Then he pulled that stuff off his face and went over t‘the library and started looking up, said he seen a hole in the universe or something, was looking for what it meant, and he hadn’t slept since.
So, I talked him into going home, take a shower, but next day he was right back in the library, looking up whatever he was looking for. Fred and me figure ain’t nothing in that library but a bunch of kid’s books and mystery rags, but something was keeping John Bandy busy.
And then, on that cool May afternoon, there he went. I never saw nothing, but I heard from Fred, said John Bandy went right up. I seen the rope after, but I didn’t see John again.
Phil Welle wasn’t never the same, keeping that rope tied up around the basketball hoop in his driveway. But John Bandy never did climb back down that rope.