Photo by Matias Contreras on Unsplash
On our very first date, after a couple drinks, me two whiskeys, her two wines, if I recall, Sally asked me if I'd ever heard of Donald Gene Turnupseed.
"Turnip seed?" I asked.
"No. Turn-up-seed," she said. She emphasized the "up" in this pronunciation.
"Oh," I said.
"In 1955, Donald Turnupseed took a left turn onto US Route 466 and killed James Dean."
"You're putting me on," I said.
"I am not."
"There is no way a guy with a name like Donald Turnip-seed killed James Dean."
"It's Turnupseed and he sure did."
"Look I might have been born yesterday but I sure as hell wasn't—" I stopped, knowing I'd screwed that up.
"You can look it up. I swear I'm not lying. Imagine, going through life with a name like Turnupseed and then going ahead and killing James Dean."
"How about that," I said.
"I know," she said. "It's incredible. I mean, Turnupseed was only twenty-three when he killed James Dean. After the accident, instead of giving him a ride, the California Highway Patrol told him to hitchhike home. An official inquest cleared him of all wrongdoing and he went on to inherit ‘Turnupseed Electrical Services’ from his father, marry twice, have three children and die from lung cancer at age sixty-three. But that's not even the most incredible part. Donald Turnupseed spent his entire life refusing to talk about James Dean. Imagine that, killing James Dean and never wanting to talk about it. I mean, it was awful, but when your name is Donald Turnupseed and you kill a guy as famous as James Dean you'd think you'd take every chance to claim your rightful piece of the myth."
I think I was about to ask what she meant by that but she seemed to anticipate my question. "I mean, the entirety of the James Dean myth depends on Donald Turnupseed failing to see Dean's low riding Porsche 550 Spyder, taking a left turn onto US Route 466 and smashing Dean to pieces. He is an instrument of fate, a tool of the Hollywood divines. Without Donald Turnupseed, James Dean is left to molder like Brando. Can you imagine James Dean growing old and fat and insane? Of course you can't and you can't because of Donald Turnupseed.”
She made great sweeping gestures with her arms as she spoke. I wasn't sure if anything she said made any sense but it sure was thrilling being around a beautiful woman so excited about such a thing.
"How about that," I said.
Sally loved telling people about Donald Turnupseed. Get a couple drinks in her at a party and she'd be off. It was at one of these parties, one we hosted at our place a couple months after she moved in, that she got to telling Craig Sommerson about Donald Turnupseed in the kitchen of our apartment. I'd been in the living room with everyone else when I went into the kitchen to get some ice for my drink and it was just her and Craig in there and she was about at the part where she talks about how important Donald Turnupseed is to the myth of James Dean. Neither of them paid much attention to me as I struggled to get the ice cubes out of the tray. Craig was grinning and nodding like a buffoon while Sally was touching his forearm.
"You know," I said, interrupting her, "maybe he never wanted to talk about it because he killed a guy. None of us know what that's like. You don't know. I don't know, neither of us know. Who's to say how'd we'd take it. You know, I had a granddad in World War Two, he won some medals for valor but if anyone ever brought it up he'd leave the room."
"But that's not at all how he took it," she said. "I've read the letter. The letter he sent his Navy buddy after the accident. The only thing anyone's ever seen where he mentions it. He's so indifferent. Calls it the "affair with Dean." Is more concerned about his smashed Ford Tudor and what he salvaged from it. Even includes a picture of the wreck. It's so cold and indifferent. He said the whole thing is in the past."
"Seems like he's fooling himself," said Craig. "The past is never past, the debris is all around us." I think someone else had said that first part but I worried that the second part was of his own creation.
"See, he gets it," said Sally.
"Oh," I said. I quit fooling with the ice and left her in the kitchen with Craig Sommerson.
She always talked about writing a book. Not just about Donald Turnupseed but a book about the other parties involved in famous deaths. Donald Turnupseed was going to be her centerpiece, the individual and the event that gave clarity to every celebrity death both before and after. In all the time I knew her I never once saw her put pen to paper or finger to keyboard.
It was really only at parties that she ever did anything with Donald Turnupseed. It was at another party, one later on, that she was telling a room full of people all about Donald Turnupseed. Craig was at this party, Craig and a few other fellas. Fred McGinnis was there and Albert Connor. I think even Sidney Barrett was there. Of course, there were women there too. Probably more women than men but at the moment I can't seem to recall any of their names or faces.
I was sitting alone on the couch listening to her and trying to watch her through the crowd around her when she was coming to the end of her great big show. "You know," I said, yelling at her from my isolated spot on the couch. "Maybe some guys don't want to be known as a killer. Maybe all Donald Turnupseed ever wanted for his life was to be the guy with kids, grandkids and the small family electrical business and that was it. Some guys ain’t got any bigger notions than that and there's nothing wrong with that."
"That's the problem with you Stuart," she said in front of everyone so everyone could hear. "That you can say something like that and honestly believe it. That's the root of all your goddamn problems."
I'm not sure what I expected her to say. I'm not sure if I expected her to say anything, but whatever I expected I sure as hell didn't expect her to say that.
Adam Skowera is a writer whose work has appeared in The Offing, Bull, and Parhelion. His last name is Polish and the ‘W’ is pronounced like a ‘V.’