Stuck in Neutral by Terry Trueman Page B

son had a terrible seizure condition and was retarded. Earl isn’t an educated man like my dad; he worked at a gas station during the day and a pizza place at night. When he was charged with killing his son, he pled guilty. Talking from the steps of the courthouse as he was being led away, he said, “I did it. I killed him. How can I say ‘not guilty’? I loved my son too much to watch him suffer anymore.” Then he added that he’d killed his two-year-old son to “end my baby’s pain.”
    I’m pretty good at adding two plus two and coming up with four. Dad’s getting deeper and deeper into this whole “ending pain” stuff, which means that I’m in deeper and deeper trouble.

11
    Lindy and Shawn and I are alone,
    her mother, gone,
    our friends, gone,
    and I look at Lindy
    and she looks at me
    and there is nothing left
    for either of us to see .
    O n Wednesday Dad and Cindy flew to Los Angeles to tape The Alice Ponds Show . Paul, of course, refused to go. They flew back home on Thursday. The show is being broadcast this afternoon, Monday, at three P.M.
    The Alice Ponds Show is one of the most popular programs in America. Alice appeals to an uneducated, loud audience. Actually, most times I’ve ever seen it, it’s seemed pretty ridiculous.
    Mom, Cindy, and Paul are all in the family room when it’s time for the program to start. To the degree my eyes will cooperate, I’ll be able to see it too, from my spot by the window.
    Alice opens her show in her typical style, introducing the day’s program in as controversial and outrageous a manner as she can:
    â€œParents who kill,” she begins, shaking her head sadly. “Parents who kill. Why?”
    Her audience instantly boos. What a courageous group, I sarcastically decide, they’re against parents who kill their kids.
    Alice presses on: “Today, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet and author Sydney E. McDaniel will be joining us, along with his daughter, Cynthia McDaniel, to discuss Mr. McDaniel’s newest work in progress, his book about Earl Detraux, a man who murdered his own child.”
    The audience boos again at the mention of Detraux’s name.
    Alice, smiling inappropriately, says, “Parents who can’t love their own children? Mothers and fathers who slaughter defenseless, innocent infants? The Susan Smiths, the Diane Downses, the Earl Detrauxs of the world. What can these people show us about the nature of pure evil? In today’s hour we’ll look at one such monster and see if we can find some answers.”
    I immediately remember the old news stories and TV movies: Susan Smith is that mother who backed her car into a lake in South Carolina, killing her kids and trying to blame it on “black abductors”; Diane Downs was the woman from Oregon in that old movie Small Sacrifices who shot her three children; and, of course, Earl Detraux, homegrown here in Washington state, from the small community of Otis Orchards, near Spokane. Earl smothered his two-year-old retarded son.
    As Alice Ponds carries on, Paul hops up and walks across to the kitchen. He grabs a bag of Ruffles Mesquite Barbecue Potato Chips. Noticing that Mom’s attention is glued to the TV screen, Paul pops a tiny piece of chip into my mouth as he walks past. As he does this, he looks at me and smiles, then gives me a little wink. Mom hates for him to feed me anything without my bib on, because it’s a saliva free-flow disaster, but when he sees a chance to do it, Paul often sneaks me treats anyway. I truly love him for it.
    Unfortunately, just as Dad and Cindy come onto the screen, I begin to feel a seizure start. It’s not a real big one, more like a brain sneeze that can’t quite decide whether it’s going to happen or not. Still it’s frustrating. Somehow I manage to keep the bite of potato chip in my mouth. This seizure is not big, but it’s big enough for me not to