A Conspiracy of Fear Read online

  If it was Peter Fulham, he must have been over ninety years old. The man in question’s head swiveled on a mottled and crepey neck. He peered at the scattered crowd through thick glasses. The very young man seemed to be some kind of attendant. The others clustering around him I guessed to be in their late twenties. Two of the three wore designer outfits.

  I know a little more than I used to about clothes because Scott has headlined several ad campaigns for some high-end fashion houses. He may be doing his first underwear endorsement campaign next spring. He’s modeled some samples from that collection for me. Scott is a hot athlete, but the LACHIC black boxers fit him just right. Scott doesn’t need an athletic cup to fill a bulge in his underwear.

  One of these guys wore a Cesare Attolini black suit, a washed-out sky-blue shirt, and a black tie. The other a burgundy Vittorio St. Angelo double-breasted blazer, with a herringbone tie, white shirt, a vest-pocket square that matched the tie, white pants, and burgundy shoes to match his blazer. The third wore blue jeans and a brown check blazer with patches on the elbows.

  Burgundy blazer reached out and put a hand on the walker. Fulham slapped it away. He rotated his head so he could gaze for several moments at each other person not in his entourage.

  When he spotted Scott and me, he turned toward us and lurched forward. He progressed forward at maybe five steps a minute.

  I muttered, “He must recognize you.”

  Scott murmured back, “Maybe he just wants to go in this direction.”

  I said, “He’s at a gay fundraiser. He’s gay?”

  “I have no idea. If you’re right, and he was in that picture, maybe he is. So what?”

  “A famous closeted gay baseball player from years ago? That might be a deal.”

  It took several minutes for him to traverse the distance between us. Traverno, several others of the gallery staff, and the entourage tripped over themselves attempting to be nearest to Fulham. As he closed the gap, the belt buckle became clearer. As a kid, when I’d been able to tear my eyes away from the area around the zipper of his pants and glance a few inches up, I’d noticed the shiny gold with barns, silos, buffalo, steers, cows, fields of corn and wheat.

  When he got to us, he did not look at Scott. His myopic eyes landed on me. “I gotta talk to you.” His voice was raspy, his breathing labored.

  Hands of those around him reached out, brown-check-blazer said, “Really, we can’t bother these people.”

  The old man clutched the handles of the walker and drew himself up as tall as he could. “Get the hell away from me. All of you.”

  The dark-haired young guy said, “Mr. Fulham, are you sure?”

  Fulham patted the young man’s arm. “Yes, Darryl. I’ll be fine.”

  The gallery and entourage hangers on inched away, but Fulham glared at the group until they dispersed. Darryl stayed at a discreet distance.

  Fulham turned to us and gripped my arm. “You’re this guy’s husband.” He yanked his head toward Scott.

  “Yes.” Up close he smelled clean and medicinal. Whoever was caring for his personal hygiene was doing a decent job except for the top of his head. His few fine strands of wispy gray hair were spread about like untied and abandoned shoelaces. He wore a brown cardigan open over his black western shirt and jeans.

  He said, “I’m Peter Fulham. I used to play baseball.” He leaned close to me and whispered in my ear. “I killed a man.”

  THREE

  Thursday – 4:33 P.M.

  I leaned back and gazed into his light gray eyes behind the thick lenses. He met my look and didn’t turn away.

  Scott leaned closer. “Is everything okay?”

  Fulham put his hand on Scott’s arm. “With your permission, I’d like to speak to your husband in private.”

  Scott and I looked at each other. We both nodded, and he stepped away. I didn’t get any sense of danger from Peter Fulham. Maybe he could run over the toe of my shoe with the wheel of his walker, but that struck me as less than lethal. I was more concerned about his mental state.

  I only knew him from a vague memory of game clips seen when I was a kid, erotic stirrings of a child and a belt buckle, and him perhaps being in the background of the recent gallery picture. I noted that Darryl kept his eyes on the old man. He seemed to have a look of genuine concern on his face. The rest of the entourage had drifted off and were now clustered around several polystone abstract sculptures in primary colors. One was declaiming in a high, loud voice, “The perspective is all wrong.”

  Fulham motioned to Darryl who hurried over. “Coffee, please, Darryl.” The young man hustled to the tables at the front of the atrium.

  Fulham reached out a hand toward me. I took his arm as he abandoned the walker and leaned on me. He felt light, but the pressure was heavy. He needed help with his progress.

  I led him to a cluster of chairs in one corner of the vestibule set off from the rest of the gallery by five-foot-high partitions of hand-blown clear glass barriers. Stylized figures swirled about in all the windowpanes. Some showed studly men, a few had curvaceous women, many with flowers: roses, tulips, daisies. The ones around this area featured nearly naked men in a variety of poses on a beach.

  We could look out at the ragged group of protesters across the street. None of them seemed to notice us.

  Two potted palms that looked like they could use watering, plus two silk ficus trees with scrawny trunks and bushy heads, and two thirty-meter tall schefflera umbrella plants all thick with foliage provided visual barriers. The music, now a Bach cantata, wafted over us. Two Lumio lamps sat on scrawny black wrought iron end tables at either side of the seating area. Perched towards the center of each table were Madame Ibis pitchers.

  I helped Fulham ease himself into a white and brown Eames fiberglass chair. I sat in the matching one next to him.

  Fulham looked as if he’d had a bout or two with serious illness, or was in the middle of such. His skin seemed to sag, or maybe he was just old.

  Darryl returned with two mugs of coffee. He handed one to me. He then fetched one of the small end tables and placed it where Fulham could reach without straining. He retrieved the walker and parked it next to us. Then he resumed his discreet stance ten feet away.

  The man in the burgundy blazer from the entourage rushed forward, “Is there anything…”

  Fulham snapped, “Get the hell away from me.”

  The man retreated.

  Fulham sipped his coffee, placed it on the table, and gazed at me. He waved his hand toward the entourage. “I don’t like those people.”

  “Why not?”

  “They want to get rich off my carcass. My dead or alive carcass, they don’t much care which.”

  I was not about to point out to him that a carcass would mean he was most likely pretty damn dead himself. I’m an English teacher, but I’m not a grammatical prig.

  I asked, “Why do you keep them around?”

  He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He put the glasses down next to his coffee cup, leaned back in his chair, and met my gaze. “You ask good questions.”

  “And that wasn’t a real answer.”

  His lips parted. Gleaming white teeth showed between thin lips. “Having them around helps me feel young.”

  “You pay them?”

  “Darryl, yes, the others no, but they keep hoping.”

  “What does being mean and rude to them get you?”

  He frowned and had the grace to look guilty. “I should be nicer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sorry.” He spoke in a raspy voice. Now, he cleared his throat and then harrumphed. “Look, I’d like to tell my story. They all want to write my biography or publish my biography or make money off my biography. Or is that my autobiography ghost written?” His lips twisted into a sneer. “I don’t care which it is. The most important thing is I want to tell the real story, but not to them. I want to tell you.”

  “Why me?”

  “I’ve read about you. I’ve h
eard about you. You won’t need to make money or fame off me. You’re married to a famous baseball player. I wish I could have gotten married, lived with a man forever in peace.” He paused and lowered his head. He spoke to his hands clasped over his belt buckle. “I think, I hoped, you’d be someone who would understand. I need to talk to someone. I need to tell. I’ve had this burden a long time.”

  I said, “Mr. Fulham, I’m not sure I’m the person in whom you should be confiding.”

  His eyes met mine. His tongue snaked out and licked his lips. His right hand trembled. His left arm seemed to hang awkwardly.

  “I’m going to die soon.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not. Each day another bit of my body deteriorates. A new pain starts every day, sometimes every hour.” His voice scraped on its lowest register, “Sometimes every minute. I never knew so many things could twitch and ache.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “No, there’s nothing anyone can do. I wish everyone would stop trying to do something. I’d rather be dead.”

  “That must be difficult.”

  “They insist on feeding me. They give me pills. Darryl threatened to put IVs in me with my meds in the solution.”

  “He seems genuinely concerned.”

  “He’s well paid.”

  “You sound kind of mean.”

  He tapped the right side of his forehead with the tip of his finger. “It’s the pain in here that I want to make go away.”

  “I’m not sure I’m capable of helping with that.”

  He sighed. One hand reached for wisps of hair to pull on. The other tugged at his misshapen ear for several seconds. Up close it looked as if someone had clamped down with their teeth on it and tried to yank it off, but only got the top third. I met his gaze and his eyes continued to bore into mine. He said, “It’s the telling. It’s the unburdening.”

  I said, “I’m just a guy.”

  “I’m an old, dying, gay man asking for help. All you need to do is listen.” Somehow it felt to me as if there was more behind his request. Perhaps I was being manipulated in ways I couldn’t fathom at the moment.

  He was old, and gay, and dying, or at least closer to death than most. I pitied him. I recalled Gandalf’s comment to Frodo when referring to Bilbo sparing Gollum’s life in the Goblin tunnels. In the book, the telling happens before Frodo sets out from the Shire, in the movie, when they are in Moria. But the sentiment was apt. “Pity? It was pity that stayed Bilbo’s hand. Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends. My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to play yet, for good or ill before this is over. The pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many.”

  I doubt if my ripple of pity would have the cosmic consequences that it had in Middle Earth, but at the very least I could listen to the man. Isn’t that what most of us want, to be listened to?

  Fulham coughed and hacked and covered his mouth with his hand. Darryl rushed forward and took a small white towel from the satchel he’d put the coat in. Fulham wiped his fingers with it and kept it in his left hand. Darryl backed away when this ritual was finished. Fulham frowned at me. “I’m a sick old man, and I have to talk to someone.”

  Something seemed out of whack here. I reiterated my earlier question. “Why me, Mr. Fulham?”

  He nodded toward Scott. “I played baseball. I wish I’d known someone like you. I wish I’d had a husband as he does.” I looked toward Scott who was gazing at a sculpture of a man showing a young boy how to throw a baseball.

  “How do you know about me?”

  “I follow the gay news online.”

  “You didn’t really kill someone.”

  He placed the towel in front of his mouth and coughed into it. Darryl took a step toward us, but Fulham gave a shake of his head that I took was a silent communication that he was okay and didn’t need help. He wiped his lips with the cloth. Each movement was taken with great care.

  He reached over and patted my arm. “I most certainly did.”

  I said, “Mr. Fulham…”

  He interrupted me. “Why don’t you let me tell you my story?”

  I took a sip of my coffee, set the cup on the small table, scooted my chair as close as I could to his and leaned toward him.

  He bent forward so that our heads were a foot apart. His raspy voice was now a whisper. “It was a long time ago. In a different city. Aah, a long time ago.” His eyes got a distant look. He smiled, and his eyes shone. He looked at a blank space on the wall on the other side of the room as he spoke. “The grass was so green. The smell and feel of the leather of my glove, my most prized possession. The feel of a bat in your hands. Running the bases. Ah, the world was good, very good.” He sighed and looked at me. “I was closeted then. We all were in or out of baseball. I grew up near a farm town in Nebraska. As a sophomore in high school, I’d sucked off half the high school baseball team before some closet case turned me in to the school authorities.”

  “That must have been awful for you.”

  “Got that right. They ratted to my parents. So, late that same night, I got thrown out of the house. My parents said they never wanted to see me again.” He paused and gulped. “They never did.” He touched his gleaming gold belt buckle. “This is all I have from those days. My father taught me how to make them back in the day. I made them for my family and a few friends.”

  He sighed, rubbed his hand over his forehead, and then resumed. “That very same night, I got ridden out of town by some of the very boys I’d been sucking off. I know I forget a lot these days. I know I’m old. But the details of that night are seared into my brain.” He raised an arthritic hand and jabbed a finger in my direction. “Oh, how I remember.” The hand trembled. He used it to wipe a tear and then let it fall back into this lap. He resumed, “They threw me in the trunk of a car. I thought I was going to die. They took me to the county line and tossed me into a cow pasture. They held me down and kicked me and beat me. One guy put his foot on the back of my head and mashed my face into the mud, blood, and shit on the ground. It was my own blood.” He touched the disfigured ear. “My younger brother took a pair of pliers and tried to yank my ear off.”

  “I’m so sorry all that happened to you.” My response seemed woefully inadequate. What do you say to a memory so primal?

  “The pain was unbelievable.” He sighed, shook his head, and frowned again. “I remember the fear and the pain.” He paused and stared into the middle distance for over a minute then he cackled and snorted. The abrupt change was odd and disconcerting.

  He said, “But I also get to have the memory of how much I enjoyed swallowing their straight loads, from the youngest freshman to the oldest senior on the team. Behind the barn was kind of an ‘in’ joke. Until it wasn’t.” He sighed. “All of my brothers were in the convoy of cars that drove to the county line that night.” Again he pulled at his wisps of hair, leaving them more awry than they’d been. Once more he touched his misshapen left ear. “So much blood.” He shook his head. He wiped his face, sipped coffee, gave several rasping coughs, let out a deep belch, and then let loose a number of prolonged farts. My grandfather had apologized in his later years for these. Poor guy. Fulham made no such apologies.

  “Did you ever find out who turned you in all that long ago?”

  “I always figured it was the last guy I had done, our star-starting pitcher, a for-sure Hall of Famer, if he hadn’t been killed in the war. I don’t know how I felt about that. He was a shit, and he died, but he was beautiful and kind as well, but he died.” He coughed and tugged at his hair. “It could have been somebody before that, but I was suspicious of him. He enjoyed it more than most. He even reciprocated a little which was a whole lot more than most. I think he was scared. Who can blame him? That night he was the one who had his foot on the back of my head.”

  I was filled with horror at his st
ory of incredible woe as a gay teen, but nagged by misgivings and doubts about his veracity and his ability to recall. This was a memory from seventy-five, maybe eighty years ago. What tricks might his aging memory be playing? It certainly sounded real. I would not express any doubts until I had more information. I wanted to talk to someone who knew him. I wasn’t going to throw doubt on his story before I heard as much as he wanted to tell. Mostly at the moment, I was feeling sorry for a very old gay man. I was no physician or expert, but his mental faculties seemed to be functioning okay.

  I asked, “What did you do? Where did you go?”

  “My earliest memories are of doing farm chores. So I was strong and resilient. They didn’t kill me. There was nothing at hand for me to kill myself. After they left, I got up out of the mud and shit and started walking.

  “The first railroad tracks I came to, I stopped and waited. I stood on the crossties for hours it seemed. Then a big old freight came rushing toward me out of the night, its headlights waving. At the last instant, I jumped out of the way. I don’t know why. I didn’t even have the courage to kill myself.” His voice was very soft. A tear coursed down one of the folds under his eyes. “The world would have been better off.”

  I leaned close enough so I could place my hand on his. It felt dry and warm. I held it as he fell silent for a few moments. Then he pulled in a deep breath and looked me in the eyes.

  With a voice matching his in softness, I asked, “What did you do?”

  “I endured, somehow. Nights and days I walked on. I did odd jobs. Sometimes I was hungry, or I stole food. If I had to, I lied about my age. I’d played ball since I was nine so I played ball whenever I could.

  “One year an old farmer took me in. He had his wife and kids in the house. I worked twelve hours a day. I slept in the barn and most nights he stopped by, and I made him feel good. That was west of Des Moines, Iowa. Then some guy saw me pitch. I don’t remember his name. He told a scout from a farm team in Des Moines about me, and I got a tryout. I struck out the whole damn team.”

  Another round of coughing, burps, belches, and farts. Finished, he sighed and leaned back. “So I had a career. I pitched and won a lot of games. Struck out a lot of guys. And had sex with a whole lot of straight guys and a few gay guys. I sucked off straight guys in over half the clubhouses in both leagues.”