by W.E. Turner
Part I—The Soldiers
Wind swept across the high desert plateau. Sand spiraled in small whirlwinds where rocks or other obstructions broke the wind's straight line of flight. When the eddying currents subsided, the heavier sand grains separated from the dust particles in the air and fell to the ground. As another gust of wind blew with renewed fury, the sand grains lifted in flight once more until the next obstruction was met.
Alfred was one of the obstructions impeding the sand's movement. In retaliation for this affront, some sand grains found their way under his hauberk. Most of these intruders were stopped by his mail shirt and the leather jerkin under it, but a few found passage all the way to the skin. There, this sand conspired with the sweat, dirt and a louse or two that already resided on that area of Alfred's skin to form an irritating, odoriferous film over the young man's stripling peasant body.
Alfred shifted uncomfortably under his cloak. Like the other seven men huddled around the campfire, he peered into its flames and wished for a chance to sleep. He blinked to fight off slumber and to sooth his dust-irritated eyes, then looked from one to another of his companions.
The grizzled, gray-haired veteran next to Alfred glanced over at the young man in return, then looked up into the night sky. Finally, wearily, the old soldier stared back into the fire. “Dawn soon,” the old man said. “And battle.”
“How can you tell?” Alfred asked in curiosity and eagerness, his voice rising in excitement upon hearing the prospect of imminent battle.
The old soldier sat silently for a few moments, turned slowly to look at his companion, then faced the fire once more. “You're new here, aren't you,” he said. It was a statement, not a question.
“Yes, I am,” the young soldier answered. “Just arrived...” He paused for an instant, momentarily confused. “...when?” he asked in a puzzled voice. “Yesterday? Yes, yesterday I suppose.” He shook his head as if to clear it. “Name's Alfred.” The announcement of his name was directed toward the group as a whole. It met with little or no acknowledgment. “What's your name?” he asked the old soldier.
The older man said nothing. He only continued staring into the fire. After a few monents he spat into the flames.
“How can you tell?” Alfred asked again, returning to his original question.
The old soldier sat silently, then cleared his throat. He spat into the flames again and listened to the spittle hiss and pop on the coals. “My name,” he said at last, “is Tom. Tom Poole. Thomas of Poole...” His voice trailed off.
From across the fire came the sound of chuckling. Alfred looked over and saw a round, jolly face beneath a rusty soldier's circlet. “Thomas of Gloom, you mean,” the laughing soldier said. “Gloomy Tom.” the round-faced man subsided into chuckles again.
“Shut up, Half-Wit,” Tom said to the laughing soldier. “At least I can remember my name.”
Tom turned back to Alfred. “How can I tell what?” he asked the young soldier. “That it will soon be dawn or there will soon be battle?”
“Both,” Alfred said.
Tom looked back into the fire. “Because there always is.” he said.
“There always is... what?” Alfred asked. The gloominess of his companion was beginning to have an effect on the young soldier. A hollowness of fear began to form deep in the pit of his stomach. He looked at Tom, trying to find a calming word or action to sooth his rising fright. “Always what?” he persisted.
“Both,” Tom said. More laughter from across the fire. “Always dawn and always battle.” He sighed. “And always... soon.”
The laughter from across the fire reached new heights. The round-faced, laughing soldier lifted a tankard of mead to his lips and drained the last few dregs of liquid. He tossed the tankard at Tom through the flames.
The stony-faced old man batted the cup away with a sudden, quick movement of one arm, then resumed his rock-like, gloomy pose. “Shut up, Half-Wit,” he said. But his voice had no intensity. No feeling. It was as though he said the words so many time they lost their meaning.
“Oh, Tom, Tom...,” the round-faced soldier laughed. “...you'll be the death of me yet.”
“That I will, if you don't shut up,” Tom said. “I'll come across this fire and put a sword right through your fat, laughing belly.”
“No you won't, Tom,” the laughing soldier said. He added in a mocking tone, “It's against the rules. You can't.”
“Shut up, Half-Wit,” Tom said, stonily.
“Don't mind old Tom, Alfie me boy,” the laughing soldier said to Alfred. “He's always like that before a battle these days. That's why we started callin' 'im 'Gloomy'.” He paused and looked around him at the dusty night sky, now becoming perceptibly lighter. “And as for how he knows.... Well, when you've been here as long as us, you can tell when dawn's comin' by the way the wind blows. And as for the other.... Why, if you'd looked across the plain last night before the wind came up, you'd have seen campfires. That'd be Saracens. Now we're here. Saracens there. Wind droppin'. Dawn comin'. Battle. It figures.” He laughed again.
“Aye,” Tom said. “It figures. Just like it figures you'd laugh about it. That's why we call you Half-Wit. Only idiots laugh at times like these.”
“Well, you'd be better off, Tom, if you'd learn to laugh like me,” the fat, jolly soldier said. “Hell, man, you get took 'most every time 'cause you're so gloomy. I laugh and I don't care and I ain't been took in... Oh, I don't know... Not more than five, six times in the last fifty years. So laugh, Tom, like me. Or next thing you know, you'll run amok. Move out of turn or somethin'. And then you'll really be took. You'll be took away. Like as what happened to old One-Eye.” He took a drink from another tankard of mead that appeared in his hand.
Alfred looked inquisitively at Tom. He was confused. He shook his head as though trying to clear it. He looked at Tom again, suddenly concerned at he air of sadness and dejection in the old soldier's bearing. “What does he mean, 'took'?” he asked.
“Killed,” Tom answered.
The laughing soldier gave a loud guffaw. “No, no, “ he laughed. “I mean 'took'. Taken. Captured. Lord, didn't anybody explain The Rules to you?”
“What rules?” Alfred asked. “The rules of... of warfare?” he guessed.
“The Rules.” Half-Wit intoned the words with finality, as though The Rules were the utmost power in the universe; that from which there was no escape—no appeal.
“Took,” the fat soldier repeated. “Maybe for some it means 'killed', but not for me. It's 'took'. Hell, when the Riders or the 'Siegers or the Jihads show up, it's down with sword and shield for me and up with the hands. No sense fightin' it out to the end. We ain't got enough power. Not that I ain't took a few of them in my time.... But no, I don't wait 'til they stick me. I let 'em take me and go sit the rest of it out.” he paused. He seemed suddenly tired, as if exhausted from the effort of speaking. He took another drink from his tankard. “It's the rules and I use 'em to advantage when I can. No sense doin' anything else.” He ended his tirade in a quiet, barely audible voice.
Alfred sat open-mouthed, glancing at each soldier's face in turn, searching for some clue or signal that would help him understand. Only blank, stony faces stared back at him.
At that moment a trumpet sounded in the distance. Alfred looked up and saw pages striking the Royal tents. Knights donning their armor were beginning to form ranks aboard their big warhorses.
“Well, call to arms,” one of the soldiers said. “Guess we better form up.”
The soldiers stood and began picking up swords and shields, shaking the dust from their cloaks and forming into ranks.
“Ah, Alfie,” Half-Wit said with an amused lilt to his voice. “I see you've got Queen's Champions. You'll be right in the thick of it. I've got the Bishop's boys—Knights of the Temple. They fight well for bein' such a holy lot. Well, good luck. I've got to get to my place. Don't forget the rules, now. And don't get took.”
As he watched the fat, jolly soldier walk over to his place in line, Alfred was still not entirely certain what was going on. He hefted his sword and shield and looked around him. He saw Tom standing in line to his right. “What did he mean, Tom.” he asked the old soldier. “About The Rules? And about being took?”
Tom looked sadly over at the young man at his side. “He meant The Rules of the Game,” the old man told Alfred in a voice filled with weariness and hopelessness. As he talked, Tom reached inside his hauberk and rubbed his chest through the mail shirt—as if massaging an old wound. “And being took is being killed, no matter what that Half-Wit says. I ought to know. It's happened to me enough times in all the years I've been here.”
Many questions popped into Alfred's mind—it all seemed so confusing. But he only managed to make one inquiry of the old soldier.
“How long have you been here? In the King's army, I mean?”
Tom gazed sadly at the youth. Though he saw before him a young soldier in an ill-fitting suit of mail and a too-large circlet, it was almost as if he was seeing himself many years ago. Alabaster tears began to form in the old man's eyes. “Eight hundred years,” he said.
Part II—The King
The King looked out across the high desert plain at the opposing army. The Saracen troops were dressed in dark, flowing robes decorated with heathen designs.
As he gazed with his trained eye at the enemy battle lines, a grin flashed across his normally stony visage. He saw that the Sultan had again organized the heathen army in the manner of an English or a French commander.
Well, what do you expect, he asked himself. It seems as though we have been fighting each other for a thousand years. It's only natural that he pick up a few of my tricks, just as I have picked up some of his.
From his vantage point aboard his white armored horse, the King could see the Sultan's two movable siege towers. These towers held slingers and archers and were much the same in design and function as the two siege towers placed on opposite ends of the King's battle line. Some observers might question the usefulness of siege towers here on the desert plateau where there was nothing to besiege, but (the King reasoned) if the Sultan was going to continue building siege towers and bringing then to the battle plain, the King would do the same. Besides, the tower often proved quite useful in the many battles the two fought over the years on that same field.
The King had never had, nor ever really desired, a sword-to-sword confrontation with the Sultan during any of the battles to two had fought. In fact, he dreaded the thought of such an occurrence. In that event, surely one of the two protagonists would be killed; which would require the victor to revert back to an all-out war against the vanquished commander's army and homeland. “No,” the King said to himself, “that would be too.... Too savage. Too brutal. Too warlike. Too uncivilized. And maybe the Sultan isn't christian, but he is civilized.” It was much better, in the King's opinion, to simply go on as they had done for so many years, fighting from time to time and waiting until this idiotic holy war was abandoned as a hopeless enterprise.
It was time to begin the battle. “Tell the commander of the peasant infantry to advance from the center,” the King shouted to messenger at his side. The messenger galloped off as the King watched, the early morning sun giving the commander's face the translucence of pure marble.
In every battle the King and Sultan fought over the years, the two maneuvered and counter-maneuvered until one of the commanders was placed in a position from which he could not extricate himself. The unlucky general was then allowed to concede defeat and to retire from the field to raise another army. Later, the vanquished returned to the same plain and another battle was fought.
“Perhaps that's an unrealistic was to wage war,” the King thought, “but mine is a small, insignificant kingdom just as the Sultan's is a small province. By fighting this way, the Sultan protects his home from being ravaged and I get some grand sport out of it. These damned religious wars never settle a thing, anyway, no matter how noble the cause. I am content. I'm willing to go on fighting this noble heathen like this until eternity if need be.”
Soon the King was too busy for reflection because the battle began in earnest.
Two hours later, the King sat aboard his warhorse in a deeply agitated state of mind. The battle was going splendidly but something else had occurred that was quite disturbing. Some of the peasant troops had revolted again.
That made two battles in succession such a thing had happened. And it was not some of the new recruits who had mutinied, but again a veteran company—one of the first levies of infantry that accompanied the King on the Crusade.
The King shook his head. “It's too bad,” he said to no one in particular. “But I have to maintain discipline. I didn't want to execute the poor fools, but they gave me no choice. Not that their hearts weren't in the right place—yet they tried to kill the Sultan. Advanced when they weren't supposed to and tried to assault the siege tower. That's why I ordered the Queen's champions to ride them down—ordered them to kill our own men.... We can't have that. Discipline. Discipline and rules. That's what an army needs.” Again the King shook his head. Finally, with effort, he dismissed thoughts of mutinous peasants from his mind.
The King raised himself in his saddle as best he could, encumbered as he was by his armor, and surveyed the battlefield. “Yes,” he thought, “the battle is going splendidly.” He chuckled in his beard. “This is splendid. Simply splendid.”
The King had not been forced to move his horse from the spot where he first ordered his infantry forward and, except for the dust, he could still see quite clearly what was going on.
The peasant troops were fairly well decimated, he saw, with more than three-quarters killed or captured. And, of course, there had been a few sticky moments. Such as the time when the time when the Sultan's Harem Guards burst through the line of serfs and completely annihilated a group of knights from a dukedom within the King's land.
The King was sorry for the loss of the knights but, he reasoned, there were plenty more young lads eager for knighthood to take their place. For that matter, there were plenty more peasants, too.
After his quick survey, the King decided there was nothing of a pressing manner on the field that his subordinates could not handle so he turned his attention back to the scene of the most dramatic confrontation.
The Queen's Champions, after disposing of the errant peasant infantry, had just finished hacking their way through a cohort of some type if fanatical religious soldiers--“Jihads” as the King's men called them—-and were now attacking the siege tower into which the Sultan had climbed to better view the battlefield. The Champions could be destroyed quite easily, of course, but they would so deplete the personnel in the Sultan's tower that the men in one of the King's siege towers were in position to capture or kill the Sultan. There was no way for the Sultan to get away.
As the King watched, he saw the enemy's flag lowered from atop the black siege tower as a sign of concession. The battle was over.
The King threw back his head and laughed.
Part III—Aftermath
“Honey,” Carol called out in a puzzled voice, “come down here and look at this.”
“OK. Be there in a minute,” Abe said as he pulled on his pants. But he knew what he would find on the den table when he got there. There had been a battle. He remembered being awakened by the sounds of the conflict just about dawn that morning. He recalled the sounds of distant trumpets, the thundering hooves, the shouting voices and cries of pain and despair. Even though Abe heard the sounds of battle distinctly in the distance, he also knew it would do no good to awaken Carol. She would have heard nothing except the morning breeze. So Abe had lain there, letting her sleep, smoking a cigarette he did not especially want, longing to go down to the den to see what was going on. But he also knew from previous experience that all would have been silence and stillness in the den as soon as he touched the doorknob. Abe shook his head in puzzlement and wonder as he buttoned his shirt while descending the stairs.
Abe stopped in the den's doorway. Carol was standing beside the game table holding the body of one of the white pawns in one hand and its marble head in the other.
“How did this get broken?” she asked.
Abe shook his head. “I don't know,” he said. “It was broken last time I put the chess set out.” He walked over to the table. Yes, he said to himself as he looked at the board, there it is. Checkmate. The white queen was directly confronting the castled black king and a white rook was backing her up. The black king had no place to go and a quick glance at the rest of the board showed there was no way for black to capture white's queen except with the king. Checkmate.
“But how did it happen,then?” Carol asked, breaking in on Abe's thoughts as he observed the board. “You keep the damned thing locked up most of the time.” She shook her head and put the broken pieces of the pawn back on the game table. “And now it's broken and you don't even know how?”
Abe nodded as he reached out for the broken pieces. “Yeah. Well,” he said, knowing he had to find some sort of explanation Carol would find believable. “As near as I can figure, after Dave and I played last time we just left the set out here on the table and the dog bumped against it during the night. That knocked some of the pieces over and cracked the head off this one-eyed...” He stopped when he noticed the face on the broken pawn's head. It wasn't the one-eyed soldier, it was the pawn with the furrowed, grizzled old man's face. But he was certain it had been the one-eyed pawn that was broken last time. He blinked a couple of times. “...off this one I have here,” he concluded lamely. He cleared his throat, then embellished his explanation. “The pieces are so old.... Maybe they're getting brittle. I've heard that air pollution does that to old marble like these things are made from. It's even making the Coliseum in Rome deteriorate.”
“Yeah. Sure.” Carol was sarcastic again, She stood looing at the chessmen with a furrowed brow and a rather disgusted look on her face. Then the look changed to one of puzzlement. “Wait a minute,” she said. “When we went to bed last night you had these all set up like they are when you start a game. Now look at them. Those little white ones and that one on the horse and that black one that looks like a Mullah or whatever it is that Moslems call their holy men.... They're all knocked over. And that white one is over there among the black.... It looks like somebody's been playing a game.”
“I woke up about dawn and couldn't get back to sleep,” Abe told her, quickly coming up with another reasonable explanation. He knew he wouldn't tell her the truth—or what he believed was the truth. “And I came down here to work out a chess problem Dave and I were discussing at the party. That's why I put the set out in the first place.”
“No,” Carol said, shaking her head. “I remember you being awake, but you didn't get up. You just sat there in bed and smoked a cigarette.”
“Yes,” Abe said, lying more convincingly now. “And after I sat there a while I came down here to work out the problem. You went back to sleep.” He walked over to the table and began rearranging the pieces. “It's a mate in three moves with the queen here and the...” He stopped and looked up with what he hoped was a foolish, self-deprecating half grin on his face. “And,” he shrugged, “I admit I got a little frustrated because I couldn't get it and I... I guess I kinda knocked over the pieces in frustration.” He shrugged again and tried his best to put on a foolish little boy expression on his face.
Carol went back to her usual sarcasm. “That was real smart. Now we know how it got broken, don't we? A thousand-dollar chess set and you act like a spoiled child with it.”
Abe shrugged again and began setting the chessmen back in their proper places. “I told you it was already broken,” he said rather peevishly. “Besides, it's my chess set and if I want to smash it into little bitty pieces, I will. I don't care how much it costs.”
Carol gave him her best “go-to-hell” stare for a few seconds, then walked out of the den. She continued the conversation from the next room. “Well, be my guest. I don't know why you bought that thing in the first place. You know I can't play.”
“I told you. It's an antique. And it's my memento from the Holy Land. Besides, I just told you what the Arab who sold it to me said. I didn't say I believed him.”
As Abe continued setting the pieces back in their places he looked closely at the white pawns. The one-eyed man was gone. In his place was a young foot soldier dressed in a too-large chain mail shirt and hauberk.
“But you still paid a thousand dollars for it,” Carol said from the other room.
“Yeah,” Abe called over his shoulder. “But have you seen this workmanship? Every face is different; each with his own personality. Distinct. There's the fat, jolly pawn with the cup in his hand—obviously the drunkard every infantry company has. And this young soldier—the kid that's in every outfit. And the old man—the veteran.”
“That's the one that's broken, isn't it?”
“Yes,” Abe said. He regretted his earlier choice of words in describing the soldier with the cup as “Jolly.” He was holding that pawn in his hand right at the moment. The fat soldier looked sad.
“Yes,” Carol said, still sarcastic. “The workmanship. Oh, I'll admit it's a lovely chess set, but that's also how I know it isn't from the middle ages. Art was pretty primitive back then. Medieval. They couldn't carve like that. And besides, if it really is from the thirteenth century or whenever... You couldn't have gotten it for any thousand bucks.”
“The Arab said it had a curse on it. Supposed to drive its owner crazy.”
“Oh, bull. I bet if you look hard enough you'll find out it was made in Japan by laser carving techniques or something like that. And made just last year.”
“Maybe,” Abe said. He had all the pieces back in place now except for the broken pawn and the two kings. He sat the broken pawn's head back in place atop its marble shoulders just as he'd done previously with the head of the one-eyed pawn. The head stayed in place.
“Besides,” Carol said from the door of the study. “It's too late to drive you crazy. Anyone who'd pay that much for a few pieces of rock already has a screw loose. Well, I'm ready. We better hurry if we're going to meet Dave and Irene for brunch.”
“OK,” Abe replied as he sat the broken pawn down in its place on the board. “You wait out in the car. I'll go get my jacket.” Abe walked out of the room. He didn't notice the face of the broken pawn change from that of an old man to that of a youth.
As he stood on the desert plateau, trying to blink the dust and tears of pain from his eyes, Alfred rubbed his side through the mail shirt. He remembered the Saracen knight riding down on him and the terrible feeling as the lance pierced his body. He looked around, dazed. He saw several familiar faces among the infantrymen, but he didn't see Tom. Instead he saw an unfamiliar young soldier. At his side was Half-Wit, still holding his tankard. The smile was gone from the fat soldier's lips.
“'Lo, Alfie,” Half-Wit said. “You get took?”
“I think so,” Alfred said. “I really don't know what's going on. The Saracen.... He struck me with his lance. But....” The young soldier shook his head and looked around. “Where's Tom?” he asked.
Half-Wit shook his head. “He's gone,” he said slowly. “I saw it. He run amok. Moved as how he shouldn't. And them...,” he nodded at the Knights of the Queen's Champions sitting aboard their warhorses. “They come along and chopped off his head. Kilt him. Gone. Same thing as happened to old One-eye.” The fat soldier leaned tiredly on his shield, stuck point-first into the hard ground of the desert plateau. “Gone,” he repeated, shaking his head slowly from side to side. “And him... Him and One-Eye... They was the last of the original ones. Lasted a long time, he did. As long as that one.” He nodded toward the King, off to one side, away from the battle line. “Him and his bloody game.” He smiled ruefully but with no mirth at his joke. “His bloody game. Our blood.”
The fat soldier suddenly stiffened into a rock-like pose. 'Hush, now,” he whispered. “He's back.”
Abe entered the den and walked over to the game table. He picked up the two kings, one in each hand, and looked at them. The black one was dressed in flowing robes and wore a turban. There was a grimace of dismay on his face. The white king wore armor and a beard and his head was thrown back in a silent guffaw.
Abe reached up with the thumbs of each hand and tried to mold the faces into different shapes. It did no good; the two chessmen were made of stone.
“Now you two boys be good, “ he said as he set the two kings back in place, As each chessman touched the board their faces changed. They both now wore looks of grim determination. Abe shook his head. The transformation had ceased to frighten him. He wondered, though, if he shouldn't put the chess set away somewhere and not leave it out on the table. He walked over to the door leading out of the den, then paused with his hand on the doorknob and looked back toward the table. “And may the best man win,” he said softly as he shut the door.
The trumpet sounded in the still air of the high desert plateau. Half-Wit sighed and picked up his shield. “Well,” he said. “Call to arms again.” He turned to Alfred and drained the ever-present tankard in his hand, then hung the cup on his belt. “Take care, Alfie,” he said. “And don't get took.”
Alfred looked across the plain at the Saracens. He was beginning to understand. Fear gripped him. He could still feel the pain of the Saracen's lance from the last battle. He wondered how long it would be before he, too, ran amok. He looked back over his shoulder at the King on his white horse. Maybe Tom had the right idea, Alfred thought. Only maybe Tom went after the wrong King.
Soon a messenger arrived from the King and ordered Alfred's company to advance.
In the den of Abe's house, on the table that held the old stone chess set, the white king's pawn, unaided by any visible hand, moved forward two spaces.
The Sultan looked out over the high desert plateau at the infidel army. The sun made their armor shine like polished marble. A smile curled the Sultan's lips like a flash of sunlight on a block of obsidian.
“I'm disappointed in you, Your Highness,” the Sultan said. “Such a standard opening move.”
Friday, November 26, 2010
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Prom Night
by W.E. Turner
The roiling clouds of mist were cold; cold steam, unreal in its clamminess. It let Jeff know the whole thing was just a dream, like something he might see on MTV, except there was no music. He pulled the towel from its hanger on the side of the washstand and reached up to wipe off the mirror so he could see his face. One swipe of the towel erased the layer of mist on the glass, but Jeff only caught one brief glimpse of his appearance before the mist recondensed on the mirror and rendered his image a mere outline shape. He wiped the glass again. Again his visage appeared, then quickly faded to soft gray lines and shadows as the fog came back. Again and again Jeff wiped the glass. Each time, he glimpsed his own strong, lantern-jawed countenance for a time, but it was ephemeral and elusive as the fog returned. With each swipe of the towel over the glass, the cloth grew heavier as it picked up more moisture and each pass of the towel over the mirror was less efficient in removing the condensation.
When Jeff saw his face, wet streaks cut across it, slicing it from the lower right jaw up to the left ear. Or was it the lower left jaw up to the right ear? After all, everything was mirror-image and backward. His arm grew tired and the towel was heavy. Wiping the mirror did no good. Time would not stand still and the fog always came back. He couldn't read the words written on the wall behind him in a childish scrawl, some letters were reversed dyslexically and the mirror reversed them again into double negatives that made no sense.
"It's the morning show, with Ralph Begliter and Jerry Nash, bringing you all today's top hits. No moldy oldies here...."
Jeff reached over, quickly, and jabbed at the snooze button on the clock radio. Then, thinking better of it, he turned the alarm off. No time to waste this morning, he thought. This is The Big Day.
As Jeff shaved after his shower, he heard his father's knock on the bathroom door. He could always tell his father's knock; it was massive and powerful.
"Hurry it up, Jeff," his father's voice came through the wood. "Other folks gotta use this thing, too, ya know."
Irritated at the Old Man's insistence, Jeff opened the door. His father pushed past him, making his way hurriedly to the stool.
Another stroke up the neck, carefully avoiding the protruding Adam's Apple. Wash off the razor under the running water.
"'Stead of goin' to all that trouble, Jeff," his father said over the sound of his urine splashing into the water of the toilet bowl, "why you don't just spread some cream on your face and let the cat lick that peach fuzz off".
Jeff shot an annoyed glance over at his father, then quickly looked away, embarrassed at the sight of the man's thick, veined member and the stream of yellow liquid flowing from it. At the same time the boy was jealous, wondering if his own equipment would ever attain that size.
The Old Man laughed at his outdated joke. "Today's the big day, huh?" he said, a smile still on his face.
Jeff ignored his dolt of a father and concentrated on the next stroke of the razor down the jawline. Out of the corner of his eye, though, he could see his father shake his penis, then stuff it back through the fly of his boxer shorts. Jeff was glad that thing was out of sight.
Jeff's father let out a loud, loutish belch, then farted even louder. "Goddam beans," he said. He belched again. "Goddam beer."
Jeff cringed, sickened at his father's behavior.
"What time do you gotta pick ol' Stephanie up tonight?" the Old Man asked.
"I'm not taking Stephanie to the Prom," Jeff said, irritated that his father couldn't remember who his current girlfriend was. "That was last year. I'm taking Adrian Pollock."
"Polack?" Jeff's father asked. "You datin' a Polack? Why, I thought you had better taste."
"Please, Dad," Jeff said, disgustedly. "Don't call her that."
"Oh, I'm just kiddin', son. You know that."
No, I don't, Jeff thought as he washed off his razor. It'd be just like you to call her a Polack right to her face.
Jeff bent over to wash the remainder of the shaving cream from his cheeks. He stood up and examined the results of his shave in the mirror.
"You missed a spot," his father said.
Jeff darted a hate-filled glance at the Old Man's image in the glass, offended by the family resemblance he saw in the reflection. He had seen the blondish hairs he missed with the razor at the corner of his mouth; he didn't need the Old Man's prompting to tell him he missed them. Jeff picked up the razor and scraped it over the spot, slicing the hairs off but also cutting away a portion of the skin underneath.
"Shit!" Jeff said. "Now look at what you made me do."
"Hell," his father said. "I didn't do nothin'. Ain't my fault you're a clumsy shit."
Jeff's father kept looking in the mirror, examining his own face just the way Jeff inspected his. "Tell me," The Old Man said as he watched Jeff reach over to the toilet paper roll, tear off a small portion of tissue and paste it on the cut, "are you fuckin' this Polack girl?"
"Oh, please, Dad!"
"Well, hell," the father said. "That sorta thing does happen, ya know. I remember. I was young once, too."
No you weren't, Jeff shouted in his mind. You weren't ever my age. You were always an old fart. You always had those gray hairs on your chest. You always had that beer gut. All those pictures Grandma has of you as a boy are just forgeries.
"Well," Jeff's dad said, "I just wanna be sure that if you are, you're usin' some kinda protection. I don't 'specially need any more grandkids right now."
"Shouldn't you be more concerned about me catching AIDS?"
"Well, yeah. I guess so. But I know you ain't no Fag, so I'm not too worried about that."
Jeff shook his head at the Old Man's ignorance.
"I'm more worried 'bout a bunch o' Polack grandkids," his father went on. "Them nigger kids your sister's got are bad enough."
"They're not black," Jeff said, coming to Barbara's defense in spite of himself. It didn't matter whether he liked his sister and her husband or not, he couldn't allow his father's prejudices to go unchecked. "Hasif's an Iranian. That's a Persian. Hell, the Persians were civilized when the early Europeans were still running around in bearskins.
"Besides," Jeff went on, "Adrian's folks are of British descent, I think, just like us. Their name's Pollock. Like the fish. They're not Polish."
"Hell, we ain't Brits," Jeff's father said. "We're part Irish and part French and part Scotch with a little bit o' Cherokee Indian thrown in on the side. Then, your mom's got some German in 'er. Not all o' her red hair comes out of a bottle, ya know. We're Americans, through an' through an' proud of it. Got a little bit o' everything in our blood. 'Cept maybe nigger an' spic. And gook."
The Old Man opened the bathroom door and went out, leaving Jeff sickened and disgusted at his father's intolerance. He shook his head in resignation and then checked under the tissue to see if he'd stopped bleeding yet. He hadn't and put the toilet paper back in place, telling himself to be sure to remember to remove it before he left for school.
At the breakfast table, Jeff spooned vitamin-enriched cereal into his mouth as he reread the chapter in his Government textbook that today's test would cover. The smell of the bacon and eggs his mother was frying for his father's breakfast nearly nauseated him.
My God, he thought, doesn't The Old Man know the kind of crap he's putting into his body? All that cholesterol. He's going to have a heart attack and die one of these days if he keeps on eating that shit. Hope so.
The Old Man was whistling tunelessly thorough his teeth as he entered the kitchen. He carried his helmet under one arm and the newspaper was in his hand. His motorcycle patrolman's uniform pants and shirt were creased to razor sharpness, the shirtsleeve crease running directly through the peak of the sergeant's chevrons. Sunglasses hung from the shirt's top buttonhole.
"Hey, Babe," the Old Man said, slapping his wife's ample posterior with the folded newspaper. "Did you know ol' Jeff busted up with Stephanie Tilford?" he asked. He sat down at the kitchen table and opened the paper.
"Oh, yes," Jeff's Mother said without turning around from the stove. "Months ago. How long's it been, now, Jeffy?"
"Since February," Jeff said around a spoonful of cereal. He swallowed and continued. "Valentine's Day. She didn't like the card and flowers I gave her. Said it should have been jewelry, since we'd been dating for so long. I think she was hoping for a Promise Ring. That started a fight and we ended up breaking up."
"Yeah, that's the way with them bitches," Jeff's father said as he sipped his coffee and started reading the Sports Page. "They always want to tie a guy down. Get 'im so far in debt he can't afford to do anything but spend time with them. Hell, look at your mom, Jeff. I woulda shitcanned her a long time ago, but after I get done payin' for the house and cars and all the other crap we got, I ain't got nothin' left to pay a lawyer. Only reason I ain't divorced her."
"The only reason you haven't divorced me," Jeff's mom said as she walked over to the table and set her husband's breakfast in front of him, "is you know damned good and well you couldn't find anybody else who'd put up with you."
"Now, that ain't so," Jeff's father said as he reached for his wife and pulled her down into his lap. "I got women just standin' in line waitin' for me."
"Yeah, to be booked for soliciting," Jeff's mom said. She worked her way out of the man's grasp and got up. She went over to the toaster just as the English Muffins popped up, then began buttering them.
"Wish I hadda known about you and Stephanie last week, Jeff," his father told him. "Stopped her for speeding down on River Boulevard. Let her go with just a warning 'cause I thought she was still your girl friend."
"What was she doing?" Jeff asked.
"Fifty-five in a forty. Drivin' her Dad's Masseratti. Then, when I came up to the side of that convertible, she just flashed those baby blue eyes at me and said 'Oh. Hi, Mr. Danielson.' Then she propped those big ol' tits o' hers right up there on the side of the car door..."
"Jerry!" Jeff's mom said, reproachfully.
"...so's I'd be sure to see plenty o' cleavage." Jeff's father concluded, ignoring his wife's pleading.
"I think that's enough with the graphic description," Mrs. Danielson said, munching her buttered muffin. "Not in front of Jeff. He still has to go to school with that girl."
"Hell, Beth. Ol' Jeff's probably had his hand right in there between them boobs. More'n once, too, I betcha. It looked mighty inviting, let me tell you."
Jeff looked down at his cereal bowl. He could feel his face turning red but didn't know how to stop it, just like he didn't know how to tell his father he'd never gotten that far with Steph. He'd been able to feel them from outside the girl's blouse or sweater, but each time he'd been able to get his hand inside her clothes, trying to touch the skin of those magnificent breasts of hers, she'd always pulled his hand back out, making him feel like a naughty little boy filching cookies.
The Old Man ate hurriedly, silently reading. After only a few minutes, he'd gulped down the last of his bacon and eggs, then stood up, bending out over the table to drink the last of the coffee in his cup, careful not to spill anything on his nice, crisp uniform. "I gotta go," he said. "Got a court date this morning."
Gulping your food isn't good for your digestion, either, Dad, Jeff thought as he watched his father walk over to his mother. Why the hell don't you take better care of yourself?
Officer Jerry Danielson quickly kissed his wife, then hurried out the door to his car. He'd drive down to the courthouse, then pick up his motorcycle at the Police Garage, later.
Jeff looked up in time to see his mother gazing longingly at the door from which his father exited. A small smile plied across her lips before she lowered her gaze to her coffee and the other toasted English Muffin.
"Why do you put up with his shit, Mom?" Jeff asked.
"Watch your mouth, Jeff," his mother said displaying all the serenity of Michaelangelo's Pieta Madonna. "Just because I let your father get away with saying things like that, doesn't mean you can. That's a double standard, I know, but that's how life is, sometimes. You just have to accept it. You don't have to like it; just accept it."
Like hell I will, Jeff thought, but he didn't dare voice his opinion.
"Hey, Jeff," Jeremy Weigands said, "did you hear about what ol' Stephanie Tilford's been sayin' about your Dad?"
"You mean about him stopping her for speeding?" Jeff replied as he and Jeremy walked down the hall toward Mr. Hodge's class. "Dad said he let her go with just a warning because he thought we were still going together."
"No. That ain't what Steph's been sayin'. She says your dad asked her for a blow job. She says he did stop her for speeding, but said he'd let her off if she'd suck his dick."
Jeff stopped dead in the hallway. "That bitch," he said. He started walking again. The smile that had been starting to creep across his face faded into a hard frown. "Well," he asked, "did she give him one?"
"All depends on who you talk to," Jeremy said. "According to one person, she did. 'Cording to another, she didn't. Linda Guerrero says Steph kicked him in the balls, but you can't believe anything that dyke tells you, anyway."
"That ain't no shit," Jeff muttered, looking down at the floor of the hallway. He wondered if it was true, though. After hearing his father that morning, Jeff wasn't so sure. He could just imagine the encounter, with Stephanie leaning over the car door to let his father get an eyefull and his dad looking hard at her tits, just the way Jeff had always done until he found out those mountains were unassailable.
"Is Steph gonna do anything about it?" Jeff asked. "She can get my dad into a whole lot of trouble if she makes a complaint about that."
"I don't know," Jeremy replied. "I only heard about it from Linda and Jennifer Holland. Don't know who they heard it from. Do you think it's true?"
"No," Jeff said as if the whole concept was ridiculous. "My dad might be an asshole, but he isn't stupid."
A man would have to awfully damned stupid to do anything like that, Jeff thought. But still, he wondered.
"Can you imagine that bastard Hodge scheduling a test for the day of the Prom?" Jeremy asked, pulling Jeff rudely back into the real world. "You study for it?" Jeremy asked, then shrugged his shoulders and answered his own question. "Yeah, yeah, I know. Dumb question. You study for all of 'em. You fucking honor students give me a pain."
"But, hell," Jeremy went on, "I know half a dozen girls who aren't even in school today. They stayed home to get ready for tonight. You picked up your Tux yet?"
The High School world of Proms and tests and who was dating who went on as Jeff and Jeremy continued down the hall.
After the lunch hour, several kids came back to school with the information a motorcycle policeman was shot that morning during a bank robbery attempt at a branch bank beside one of the local malls. Jeff heard the news as he, Jeremy, Dan Hutchinson and several other boys were sharing a half-pint bottle of whiskey out behind the Gymnasium. Following a time-honored tradition, the boys were priming themselves for tonight's festivities.
"Think that might be your old man?" Jeremy asked.
Jeff was aware of a slight twinge of anxiety, but he shook his head. "Naw," he said, fighting hard to swallow the whiskey in his mouth. He wasn't sure he liked the taste of the stuff. "Dad's too smart to let himself get caught in the middle of something like that." Beside's, Jeff remembered, his father had court this morning. That was why the Old Man was in uniform at breakfast, instead of the civilian clothes he usually wore to work. Jeff knew court dates worked into all-day sessions, sometimes. Then, too, Jeff figured his father probably spent an hour or two at lunch, flirting with some waitress, somewhere. I doubt if Dad's even out on patrol yet, Jeff thought.
During his fifth-hour Calculus class, though, a call came through to Jeff's classroom that he was wanted in the office. As Jeff started toward the school offices. He knew... somehow just knew... the whole thing had something to do with his father.
The bank robbery, Jeff thought, Dad was involved in that bank robbery thing. Oh, no. Oh, please, God, don't let it be Dad. That'd just kill my mom.
Jeff tried to keep his face impassive and his pace steady as he walked down the hallway, but several times he found himself nearly breaking into a trot. When he reached the school office at last, he opened the door almost trepidatiously, halfway expecting to see the Police Chaplain and Captain Roundtree, his father's patrol supervisor, in the office. Jeff's father explained, once, that the Police Chaplain and the man's supervisor always broke the news to the next of kin when an officer was killed in the line of duty.
But only the normal office traffic of late returnees from lunch, discipline cases, school secretaries and student assistants were in the office when Jeff arrived. As usual, everyone seemed to be involved in a telephone or intercom conversation when he entered and Jeff had a problem getting anyone's attention. When he finally got one of the secretaries to notice him, she merely motioned him to a telephone on the counter. Jeff picked it up and pressed the flashing line selection button at the bottom.
"Hello?" he said into the mouthpiece.
"Jeff?" the anxious voice of his mother sounded through the telephone. "Finally. I just wanted to tell you, Jeff. Your father's fine. He wasn't hurt or anything, but he was involved in a shooting this morning. I just wanted...."
"What? At that bank?" Jeff asked. His voice sounded unusually loud and strident to himself and he consciously lowered it. "Was he at that bank that was robbed this morning?"
"Why,... Yes. Have you heard?"
"Some kids heard about it on the news at lunchtime. They said a policeman got shot. Is that true?" Jeff's mother seemed to take a long time to answer. "Is that true?" Jeff asked again.
"Yes, it is," his mother's voice came back, speaking slowly. "Kenny Lawler. Your dad's partner. Remember him?"
Jeff had a mental image of a round-faced, grinning black man who seemed too young to be a policeman. "Yeah," Jeff said. "I remember him. Was he the one shot?"
"Ye.... Yes, he was, Jeff." A long pause ensued, then his mother's voice said softly, "He was killed. Then your dad shot the man who shot Kenny. They don't know about him, yet. The robber, I mean. He's still in surgery, they say."
"But you're sure Dad's OK?"
"Yes, he is." Jeff could hear his mother suck in a breath and let it out in a sigh. "Chaplin Parretta called me to let me know Dad was all right."
Jeff could hear the strain in his mother's voice and could almost feel the tension she was under. Her feelings came through the telephone lines loud and clear.
"Mom?" he said. "Do you want me to come home?"
"Oh, no. Oh, no," his mother said. "You stay there at school. Your dad's not home yet. They're still talking to him about the shooting, I guess. Internal Affairs or whatever that department is. He probably won't be home for hours, yet."
"OK," Jeff said. "I'll see you when I get home." He started to hang up the phone, then thought of something else. "Mom?" he said.
"Yes?"
"Better call Barbara."
"I will."
The phone clicked to silence, followed by a dial tone. Jeff hung up the telephone, then looked up to see several people staring in his direction.
So, you all know about it, huh, he thought. Vultures. That's what Dad always calls you people. Always show up and stare when an accident or something like that happens. Vultures. Good name for you.
"Is your father OK, Jeff?" Patty Franklin, one of the office student assistants asked.
"Yeah," Jeff said. "He's OK."
"He was at that bank robbery this morning, wasn't he? I heard a couple of policemen got shot."
Jeff shook his head. "Just one. And the robber. My dad,..." he stopped and considered the implications of what happened. "My dad shot the guy."
"Who was it that got shot?" Patty asked. "The policeman, I mean. Did you know him? Is he all right?"
Jeff shook his head again. He cleared his throat, surprised at the constriction he felt there. He wondered why he felt so emotional. After all, he asked himself, I really don't give a shit if the Old Man lives or dies, do I?
"I can't tell you," Jeff told Patty. "I can't... uh... divulge the name. Uh.... Understand?"
Patty nodded and Jeff turned, walking out the office door. He knew the news would be all over the school almost immediately. Patty Franklin was a notorious gossip.
When Jeff got back to his class he just couldn't concentrate. After the bell rang, Jeff decided to leave.
Jeff's father still hadn't arrived home by the time Jeff got there.
"Have you heard anything else?" Jeff asked his mother as he placed Adrian's corsage in the refrigerator.
"The bank robber died," she said, staring off toward the far kitchen wall. She was sitting on the stool beside the counter in the kitchen, the same place she'd been when Jeff left for school that morning. "I heard that on the radio. Also, they must have gotten hold of Kenny's wife and parents because they released his name to the media. I heard them mention his name last time I listened to the news. Have you been listening?"
"No. Mind if I turn on the TV? The Headline News Channel has a local spot at a quarter till the hour. They might show Dad." Jeff much preferred visual information to radio news.
"I'd rather not see it," Jeff's mother said. "It's bad enough hearing about it on the radio. I don't know if I could stand it if they showed Kenny's body on TV. You know his wife's pregnant? Their first child."
The sound of the telephone ringing made both Jeff and his mother jump.
"Don't answer it," Jeff's mother said. "It's probably the newspaper or one of the TV stations. They've already called twice, trying to get an interview with your dad. They must have found out he was Kenny's partner, somehow. Heaven knows how they got hold of our phone number."
But it could be dad, mom," Jeff protested, picking up the telephone handset. "Hello."
"Oh. Hi, Jeffy, it's Barbi," his sister's voice said from the other end of the line, using the diminutives for both their names in the manner that always irritated Jeff. "Can I talk to Momma? She left a message on my answering machine and said it was urgent."
"Barbara," Jeff said, handing the receiver to his mother.
As his mother began talking to his sister, Jeff took his tuxedo and formal patent-leather shoes into his bedroom. From there, Jeff went into the family room and turned on the television. He searched through the ever-present commercials until he found the talking head of the Headline News Reader, then went back to the kitchen for a Coke.
The local news segment was just starting when Jeff returned to the family room. The bank robbery was the second story, just after the city commission budget report. The story on the robbery was a voice-over of videotape that showed an ambulance pulling away from the branch bank building, then a long shot of spectators standing around the bank, a couple of police squad cars and one police motorcycle, then cut to a head shot of the bank manager, then to the Police Watch Captain for the day. The Watch Captain was an officer Jeff didn't recognize who said, "...then the second police officer drew his service revolver and fired two times, striking the uh,... alleged perpetrator in the neck and chest." The scene then cut to what Jeff assumed was the most attractive female bank teller the TV reporter could find, who gave the television audience the profound insight, "Oh, yeah. I was really scared, ya know."
Finally, a shot of bloodstains on the sidewalk was shown with the reporter's voice overlay reading the information that Officer Ken Lawler was 24, was a veteran of two years on the police force, was married and that he and his wife were expecting their first child in August. The screen cut back to the newsroom where the studio reporter said the yet-to-be-identified alledged bank robber died during surgery at Memorial Hospital without regaining consciousness.
"Good," Jeff said, taking a swig from his Coke as the newcast went on to the local weather.
Jeff's father still had not returned home by the time Jeff left to pick up Adrian. Jeff had showered for the second time that day and checked to see if he needed to shave again, then put on his rented Tuxedo, expecting all the while to hear his father's car in the driveway. When Jeff reached Adrian's house, corsage in hand, her parents' conversation about how great Jeff looked in his Pearl Gray Tuxedo Jacket, black pants and lavender cumberbund and how beautiful Adrian looked in her lavender formal gown quickly switched to talk of the robbery and shooting. They congratulated Jeff for his father's part in it.
Jeff tried his best to shrug off their comments saying, truthfully, that he didn't know much about it. "But it's just part of a Policeman's job, you know," he told them. "Goes with the territory." He also tried his best to smile and look pleasant as Mr. and Mrs. Pollock took pictures and shot videotape of the couple, but it was difficult.
The last stop before the country club, where Jeff had wangled dinner reservations, was back at the Danielson house. Jeff's mother also took pictures and gushed appropriately over how great Adrian and Jeff looked together. Adrian was a sloe-eyed brunette with a pale, creamy-smooth complexion that complemented Jeff's blond, All-American-Boy appeal very well. With her creamy white skin, black hair and nearly-lavender eyes, many people told Adrian she looked like a young Elizabeth Taylor but Jeff didn't really see any resemblance. Only their coloration was identical, in his mind. After all, Elizabeth Taylor was a fat old woman, wasn't she? Adrian was only 18 and a size six.
"Where's Dad?" Jeff asked. "I see his car's in the driveway."
"I think he's in the family room," Mrs. Danielson said. "He said he wanted to see you two when you came back." She turned her attention to Adrian. "Oh, Adrian," she said, deftly changing the subject, "I think I see a loose thread on your dress, there. Let me get it for you."
She left the girl standing beside the kitchen table and managed to pull Jeff aside without seeming to do it deliberately. "Go talk to him, Jeff," she whispered to her son as she pushed past him on the pretext of going to get her scissors. "He's really upset about this thing. I'll keep Adrian out here."
Jeff started toward the family room but his mother stopped him with one last whispered comment.
"And Jeff,..." she said, "...he's been drinking."
Feeling very much like a Daniel entering a Lion's Den, Jeff opened the door to the family room. His father was sitting in his usual chair, directly in front of the TV, watching the Braves game on WTBS.
"Why, Jeff. Jeff," his father said, standing up and placing the beer can in his hand on the end table beside the chair. "You certainly do look handsome, there, boy. Turn around, turn around, let me look at ya."
Jeff obliged; a shy, embarrassed grin on his face as he self-consciously and awkwardly pirouetted in the middle of the floor.
"Gettin' all grown up, these days, ain't ya." Mr. Danielson ran his eyes up and down Jeff's tall frame, grinning foolishly.
With a start, Jeff realized his father had to elevate his gaze slightly to look his son in the eyes. Jeff was taller than his father, something he had never noticed before.
"Well, where's your date? Wanna meet her. I haven't met her before, have I?"
"She's been over here," Jeff told him. "But I think it was when you were still on night shift." He paused awkwardly, wondering how to bring up the subject of the shooting.
"You two goin' to dinner before the Prom?"
"Yeah," Jeff said. "Jeremy got us reservations at his dad's country club. We gotta go meet him and his date there."
"You got enough money for all this?"
"Yes, I think so."
"Well," his father said, "better take some extra." He reached down to his pants pocket, then paused, rather embarrassed. He was wearing black denim pants and a white T-Shirt. "Oh," he muttered, "these ain't... uh... my pants. Had to borrow some civilian clothes out of another guy's locker. My uniform pants had... blood on 'em." He stood there in the middle of the room for a moment, as if unsure what to do. "Oh, I know," he said brightly. "Got some money up here. If your Ma hasn't found it and spent it all yet, that is."
Jeff watched as his father walked over to the bookcase built into the wall behind the TV and lifted a wooden tobacco humidifier off the top shelf.
"Use this as my hidey-hole, since I quit smokin' my pipe," his father said as he opened the lid. A thick roll of bills was inside the humidifier. Most of the bills were ones, fives and tens, Jeff noticed, as Mr. Danielson shuffled through them. Finally, at the center of the roll, he found what he was looking for and pulled out two one hundred dollar bills. He held them out to Jeff.
Jeff took the bills reluctantly and stood there, looking down at them as his father replaced the money in the humidifier and put it back on the shelf.
"I'm sure your mom knows about that money, there, Jeff," his father said, "but she pretends she doesn't. So don't mention it to 'er, if you don't mind." Mr. Daniels stood, rubbing his hands together.
His borrowed T-shirt was too small for Jerry's thick, bulging arms and barrel chest and it made him look even more muscular in the upper torso than usual. The shirt barely covered his middle-age spare tire, though.
"Been tryin' to save up enough to buy your mom a new car," Jeff's father said. "Or a newer used car, I guess. Whatever. I know she's always wanted a '65 Mustang. Maybe I can find one of them at a decent price and we could fix 'er up. Together. You and me." He stood there, half grinning, running his eyes over his son's face, like he was trying to memorize each aspect of it; storing it to recall later.
"You... uh... heard about what happened today, didn't ya?" Jeff's father started, awkwardly.
Jeff nodded.
Jeff's father sucked in a long, noisy breath, then let it out slowly in a deep sigh. "Kenny Lawler was killed," he said.
"How,..." Jeff started.
"You know his wife's pregnant?"
"Yeah."
Jerry Danielson gave a short, sardonic laugh. "That sorta thing never happens to a bachelor, seems like. Or to some old, decrepit fart like me. Always happens to somebody like Kenny. Somebody who has little kids or a pregnant wife or something like that. Somebody who has his whole goddam life in front of 'im."
"You aren't old, Dad," Jeff said. "Only Forty-Four."
"Forty-Five," Jerry corrected. He started to say something else but Jeff interrupted.
"How did it happen?" Jeff could tell his father was becoming maudlin, somehow blaming himself for what happened. But Jeff realized his mother was right. His father needed to talk to somebody about it.
"We... uh... we were gonna go and set up a speed trap out on Patterson Drive," he said, beginning rather slowly, then allowing the words to come out more freely after he began. "You know, where the Interstate offramp is. Folks get off that Interstate and think they can still do 65 down Patterson." He gave out a little chuckle. "Prime huntin' ground."
"But we... uh... heard a call 'bout a silent alarm goin' off at the First National branch over in Cherry Hills, so we started over there. We were pretty close."
The man stopped and walked over to the end table where he'd left his beer can. He picked it up and looked at it, feeling by its weight that it was almost empty. "Wanna beer, Jeff?" he asked. "I guess you're old enough to have one, now."
Jeff shook his head.
"I know you take one every once in a while," his father said. "I drink a lot of 'em, I know, but I usually know how many I have left. Your mom doesn't drink 'em. She don't like beer."
"No, thank you, Dad," Jeff said, slightly embarrassed that the man knew. "I think you're changing the subject." It amazed Jeff to realize he had the temerity to say that to his father.
Jeff's dad shot an annoyed glance at his son. "Yeah, I guess I am," he said. He looked down at the rug and shook his head.
"Anyway," he continued, running his hand through his close-cropped, graying, sand-colored hair, then looking back up at his son, "we split up when we got to the bank. Ken took the west entrance and I took the east. My side was all glass and this Mexican kid who was tryin' to rob the place saw me and takes off, goin' out the west side door. I guess Ken was just gettin' up to the entrance when this kid comes out. It was probably just reflex or somethin' on his part, but as soon as he sees Ken, this kid fired. Sawed-off 12 guage. Close range."
"I kept on goin' around the building when I seen the kid run out. Don't think I even heard the shot over the sound of the bike. But then, when I got to the other side, I saw Ken and his bike down on the pavement and his kid standing over him, reachin' down to get Ken's .357 out of his holster.
Well, I.... I guess I dismounted and drew out my piece and everything all at the same time. Don't remember gettin' off the bike, though. I see the kid pump his shotgun and start to point it at me. That's when I fired. I musta shot three times, 'cause that's how many fired shells there was in the cylinder. But I got him once in the chest and once here, in the neck." He indicated a point where his neck muscles joined his shoulder. "I think the uh... carotid artery might have been cut, cause blood was kinda spurtin' out."
"Anyway, this kid went down and I got on the radio and called for backup and told 'em an officer was down. Called EMS, too, but didn't really need to. The folks inside the bank called 911 as soon as the kid ran out."
"But I established there was nobody else in on the robbery from the people in the bank. He was a loner. Then I tried to help out Ken and the kid I shot. That's how I got blood all over my uniform."
While he talked, the man walked up to a spot just in front of Jeff. Jeff could see the tension lines in his father's face, the corded neck muscles, the redness in the man's unfocused eyes. Jeff smelled both whiskey and beer on his father's breath. Jeff wanted to take a step back but could not make himself do it. He stood, rooted to the spot.
"Julio Rodriguez. That's what the kid's ID said his name was. Mexican. Green Card." Jerry raised his hands in front of him, his fists clenched, then dropped them to his sides in frustration. "He was just a fuckin' kid, Jeff," he said suddenly, intensely. His face was twisted in confusion. "A goddam kid. Twenty. Not much older than you. Just like Ken. Just fuckin' kids, both of 'em." Jeff father leaned over and placed his head against his son's shoulder.
The action took Jeff completely by surprise. It seemed so thoroughly out of character for his father, Jeff was stunned into an awkward silence. He was afraid the man was going to start crying. For a fleeting moment, Jeff was concerned about stains on the Pearl Gray jacket. He lifted his hands, not really sure where to place them. He didn't know if he should hug his father or not; he didn't know if he could.
The thought crossed his mind of patting the man on the shoulder, but that didn't seem appropriate, either.
"Dad," he said, finally. "It's OK. It's OK. You... you should't feel so bad about it. You did what you had to do. It's your job. Don't feel bad about it. It's over. Besides, what difference does it make if there's one less Spic in this world."
His father's head jerked up off Jeff's shoulder. The man's upper lip was curled back in distaste and a look of hatred was in his red-rimmed eyes as he took a half step backward.
Before Jeff could move or do anything to block the blow, a resounding, rifle-shot slap stung the left side of the boy's face.
"Don't you ever,..." the man said through clenched teeth, "ever say anything like that again. Don't you dare trivialize a man's life like that." A shaking hand with an extended forefinger, held up in front of the boy's face, slowly unclenched and dropped to the man's side.
Jerry Danielson's torso slowly relaxed and his head bowed as he realized what he'd done. "I'm sorry, Jeff," he said softly, looking down and turning away from his son. "I'm sorry."
Jeff still stood in the same spot, his ear ringing and his face smarting from the effects of the slap. He wanted to turn and run away, but he couldn't make himself go. He wanted to rub his face where his father slapped him, but he wouldn't allow himself to do that, either. He could feel tears stinging his eyes and blinked to keep them from welling over. No matter what the Old Man did to him, Jeff vowed, he would not allow his father the satisfaction of seeing him cry. Ever again.
For a time, no one moved or said anything. Finally, Jerry hunched his shoulders and placed the fingers of one hand into his back pocket. He slowly walked over to the end table and picked up his beer can again.
"Dad," Jeff said at last. He met his father's eyes as the man looked up. He held the gaze steadily, without flinching. "There's something else. Something I need to know. It's about the time last week when you stopped Stephanie Tilford for speeding."
"What about it?"
"Did you say or do anything to her?"
"Like what?"
"Did you,..." Jeff searched for the proper word, "did you proposition her?"
"Did I...." A smirk crossed Jerry's lips and his eyes were laughing with an ironic light. "My God. What a sense of priority. Two men...." Suddenly the eyes became hard and penetrating as he turned on Jeff. "Two fucking men, Jeff. They're dead. Dead. Do you know what that means? They're dead. And here you are askin' me if I got fresh with some goddam bimbo." He shook his head, hopelessly.
"Well," Jeff said with a shrug. "You tried to change the subject earlier. Now it's my turn."
Jerry chuckled. "Yeah," he said. "I guess it is."
"Well," Jeff asked, "did you?"
"Fuck, no."
The denial came too quickly, too easily, too abusively to his father's lips. Jeff was certain he was lying.
"She says you did."
His father closed his eyes and shook his head in resignation. "Oh, shit," he said. "That's all I need." He opened his eyes again and looked at Jeff. "Is she makin' a complaint?"
"I don't think she has," Jeff said. "Yet."
Jerry shook his head again, raised his eyes to the ceiling, then looked back at his son. "Jeff," he said, "I know you don't think that highly of me, sometimes, but...." He stopped and gave a little half laugh, half sigh. "I would never do anything like that to you. To you or... to your mother... or to your girlfriend. Last week, that's what I thought Stephanie was. And I don't care how damned jealous I might be of you, I'd never...."
"Jealous?" Jeff interrupted. "Jealous of me? Why the hell would you be jealous of me?"
His father stood and stared at Jeff a long time, a half smile playing upon his lips. The expression in his eyes was a mixture of amusement, sadness, and longing. "Well," he said, "I guess it's true. Youth is wasted on the young." He shook his head again and reached up to rub the back of his neck.
"Why would I be jealous of you?" Jerry asked rhetorically. "Well, Jeff, I'll tell ya. Because you're 18. I'm 45. I'm gonna retire from the police force in two years after 25 years on the job; still a Sergeant. Been passed over for promotion more times than I can count. You got your whole life to live yet. You can be whatever you want. I ain't ever gonna be anything more than what I am right now. You're gonna take your scholarships and go off to a good college next year. You still can get girls like Stephanie Tilford.... And I bet this Adrian's just as nice, isn't she? I got your mother. Now, I still love 'er and all that.... But she's still.... Well, we've been married for 23 years. That's why when some little prick teaser like Stephanie looks at me, I look back. But I don't do anything about it. Afraid to. Got too much to lose, Jeff. And, besides, I'm too big a coward." He laughed when he saw Jeff's questioning look, which Jerry interpreted as one of disbelief. "Yeah, I'm a coward. Afraid to do anything like that. Too afraid of losin' all them things I got. You don't have to be afraid of anything. That's why I'm jealous sometimes, Jeff, 'cause you got opportunity and I don't. Just regrets. 'S all I got. Regrets. Regrets that I didn't do some things different. Like every man has, I guess. It ain't original with me, but I think there's a saying, somewhere, that says old men have regrets and young men have opportunities. Or the other way around."
Again the two men, one young and one old, but still very much alike, stood and stared at each other.
Finally, Jerry broke the tension. "Now, I know you don't believe a single word of what I just told you," he said. "Kids never believe what their fathers tell 'em, but I said it just the same. I know you gotta go out and fuck up your own life, just like every man does." Jerry walked up and placed a comradly arm across his son's shoulders, turning them both toward the kitchen. "So, I'll tell ya what I'll do, Jeff. I'll give you some advice. Some advice I sometimes wish your Grampa had given me."
"Here it is," he said. Jerry tapped lightly on his son's chest with his forefinger. "As long as you can do it without hurtin' anyone, don't ever turn down pussy if it's offered to you."
Jerry smiled and Jeff found himself smiling despite himself.
"Now, that ain't very sage advice, son, and with AIDS goin' around and all the other crap you can catch--jealous husbands and palimony suits and all that--it probably ain't very safe advice, either. But it's all I got to offer. I guess I outta amend it a little, though, and say: Don't ever turn down pussy if it's offered to you; but always use a rubber."
Jerry smiled with genuine affection toward his son and Jeff returned it in kind.
"Dad," Jeff said, "come on out to the kitchen and meet Adrian."
After goodbyes were finally said, preceded by a bit of good-natured chiding from Beth Danielson for having kept the women waiting for so long while father and son discussed "guy things," Jeff and Adrian finally climbed into Jeff's car to leave. Jeff shook his head and gave a sardonic chuckle as he started the engine and pulled away from the curb.
"What's so funny?" Adrian asked.
"My old man," Jeff told her. "How can you tell somebody like that they're full of shit and get them to believe it?"
In his rearview mirror, Jeff could still see his mother and father silhouetted in the doorway of their house as he drove away.
"Why, I thought your father was very charming, Jeff," Adrian said. "You always told me he was a real dork. He isn't at all. He's very nice."
"He's drunk," Jeff said. "A 'charming' drunk."
"Well, I suppose he has a good reason to be, tonight, after what happened today. Does he drink a lot?"
"According to my mom, he does."
"Do you really think he did what Stephanie Tilford says he did?"
"No," Jeff said. Not really.
"Do you think he's going to get into trouble about that?"
"I don't know," Jeff said, rather curtly. "Do you mind, Adrian? I really think we can find better things to talk about tonight than my old man."
"Yeah," Adrian said with a genuine, affectionate laugh, reaching over and placing her hand lightly on Jeff's arm. "You're right. We ought to talk about us. Talk about what we're going to do tonight and about what a good time we'll have."
Jeff reached over to Adrian and pull her closer to him on the bench seat of his car. He was suddenly glad he didn't have the bucket seats he often considered installing. Jeff glanced down as Adrian rubbed her hand lightly along the top of his thigh. He smiled.
Well, he thought, maybe the Old Man's advice isn't quite as stupid as it sounded, after all.
The roiling clouds of mist were cold; cold steam, unreal in its clamminess. It let Jeff know the whole thing was just a dream, like something he might see on MTV, except there was no music. He pulled the towel from its hanger on the side of the washstand and reached up to wipe off the mirror so he could see his face. One swipe of the towel erased the layer of mist on the glass, but Jeff only caught one brief glimpse of his appearance before the mist recondensed on the mirror and rendered his image a mere outline shape. He wiped the glass again. Again his visage appeared, then quickly faded to soft gray lines and shadows as the fog came back. Again and again Jeff wiped the glass. Each time, he glimpsed his own strong, lantern-jawed countenance for a time, but it was ephemeral and elusive as the fog returned. With each swipe of the towel over the glass, the cloth grew heavier as it picked up more moisture and each pass of the towel over the mirror was less efficient in removing the condensation.
When Jeff saw his face, wet streaks cut across it, slicing it from the lower right jaw up to the left ear. Or was it the lower left jaw up to the right ear? After all, everything was mirror-image and backward. His arm grew tired and the towel was heavy. Wiping the mirror did no good. Time would not stand still and the fog always came back. He couldn't read the words written on the wall behind him in a childish scrawl, some letters were reversed dyslexically and the mirror reversed them again into double negatives that made no sense.
"It's the morning show, with Ralph Begliter and Jerry Nash, bringing you all today's top hits. No moldy oldies here...."
Jeff reached over, quickly, and jabbed at the snooze button on the clock radio. Then, thinking better of it, he turned the alarm off. No time to waste this morning, he thought. This is The Big Day.
As Jeff shaved after his shower, he heard his father's knock on the bathroom door. He could always tell his father's knock; it was massive and powerful.
"Hurry it up, Jeff," his father's voice came through the wood. "Other folks gotta use this thing, too, ya know."
Irritated at the Old Man's insistence, Jeff opened the door. His father pushed past him, making his way hurriedly to the stool.
Another stroke up the neck, carefully avoiding the protruding Adam's Apple. Wash off the razor under the running water.
"'Stead of goin' to all that trouble, Jeff," his father said over the sound of his urine splashing into the water of the toilet bowl, "why you don't just spread some cream on your face and let the cat lick that peach fuzz off".
Jeff shot an annoyed glance over at his father, then quickly looked away, embarrassed at the sight of the man's thick, veined member and the stream of yellow liquid flowing from it. At the same time the boy was jealous, wondering if his own equipment would ever attain that size.
The Old Man laughed at his outdated joke. "Today's the big day, huh?" he said, a smile still on his face.
Jeff ignored his dolt of a father and concentrated on the next stroke of the razor down the jawline. Out of the corner of his eye, though, he could see his father shake his penis, then stuff it back through the fly of his boxer shorts. Jeff was glad that thing was out of sight.
Jeff's father let out a loud, loutish belch, then farted even louder. "Goddam beans," he said. He belched again. "Goddam beer."
Jeff cringed, sickened at his father's behavior.
"What time do you gotta pick ol' Stephanie up tonight?" the Old Man asked.
"I'm not taking Stephanie to the Prom," Jeff said, irritated that his father couldn't remember who his current girlfriend was. "That was last year. I'm taking Adrian Pollock."
"Polack?" Jeff's father asked. "You datin' a Polack? Why, I thought you had better taste."
"Please, Dad," Jeff said, disgustedly. "Don't call her that."
"Oh, I'm just kiddin', son. You know that."
No, I don't, Jeff thought as he washed off his razor. It'd be just like you to call her a Polack right to her face.
Jeff bent over to wash the remainder of the shaving cream from his cheeks. He stood up and examined the results of his shave in the mirror.
"You missed a spot," his father said.
Jeff darted a hate-filled glance at the Old Man's image in the glass, offended by the family resemblance he saw in the reflection. He had seen the blondish hairs he missed with the razor at the corner of his mouth; he didn't need the Old Man's prompting to tell him he missed them. Jeff picked up the razor and scraped it over the spot, slicing the hairs off but also cutting away a portion of the skin underneath.
"Shit!" Jeff said. "Now look at what you made me do."
"Hell," his father said. "I didn't do nothin'. Ain't my fault you're a clumsy shit."
Jeff's father kept looking in the mirror, examining his own face just the way Jeff inspected his. "Tell me," The Old Man said as he watched Jeff reach over to the toilet paper roll, tear off a small portion of tissue and paste it on the cut, "are you fuckin' this Polack girl?"
"Oh, please, Dad!"
"Well, hell," the father said. "That sorta thing does happen, ya know. I remember. I was young once, too."
No you weren't, Jeff shouted in his mind. You weren't ever my age. You were always an old fart. You always had those gray hairs on your chest. You always had that beer gut. All those pictures Grandma has of you as a boy are just forgeries.
"Well," Jeff's dad said, "I just wanna be sure that if you are, you're usin' some kinda protection. I don't 'specially need any more grandkids right now."
"Shouldn't you be more concerned about me catching AIDS?"
"Well, yeah. I guess so. But I know you ain't no Fag, so I'm not too worried about that."
Jeff shook his head at the Old Man's ignorance.
"I'm more worried 'bout a bunch o' Polack grandkids," his father went on. "Them nigger kids your sister's got are bad enough."
"They're not black," Jeff said, coming to Barbara's defense in spite of himself. It didn't matter whether he liked his sister and her husband or not, he couldn't allow his father's prejudices to go unchecked. "Hasif's an Iranian. That's a Persian. Hell, the Persians were civilized when the early Europeans were still running around in bearskins.
"Besides," Jeff went on, "Adrian's folks are of British descent, I think, just like us. Their name's Pollock. Like the fish. They're not Polish."
"Hell, we ain't Brits," Jeff's father said. "We're part Irish and part French and part Scotch with a little bit o' Cherokee Indian thrown in on the side. Then, your mom's got some German in 'er. Not all o' her red hair comes out of a bottle, ya know. We're Americans, through an' through an' proud of it. Got a little bit o' everything in our blood. 'Cept maybe nigger an' spic. And gook."
The Old Man opened the bathroom door and went out, leaving Jeff sickened and disgusted at his father's intolerance. He shook his head in resignation and then checked under the tissue to see if he'd stopped bleeding yet. He hadn't and put the toilet paper back in place, telling himself to be sure to remember to remove it before he left for school.
At the breakfast table, Jeff spooned vitamin-enriched cereal into his mouth as he reread the chapter in his Government textbook that today's test would cover. The smell of the bacon and eggs his mother was frying for his father's breakfast nearly nauseated him.
My God, he thought, doesn't The Old Man know the kind of crap he's putting into his body? All that cholesterol. He's going to have a heart attack and die one of these days if he keeps on eating that shit. Hope so.
The Old Man was whistling tunelessly thorough his teeth as he entered the kitchen. He carried his helmet under one arm and the newspaper was in his hand. His motorcycle patrolman's uniform pants and shirt were creased to razor sharpness, the shirtsleeve crease running directly through the peak of the sergeant's chevrons. Sunglasses hung from the shirt's top buttonhole.
"Hey, Babe," the Old Man said, slapping his wife's ample posterior with the folded newspaper. "Did you know ol' Jeff busted up with Stephanie Tilford?" he asked. He sat down at the kitchen table and opened the paper.
"Oh, yes," Jeff's Mother said without turning around from the stove. "Months ago. How long's it been, now, Jeffy?"
"Since February," Jeff said around a spoonful of cereal. He swallowed and continued. "Valentine's Day. She didn't like the card and flowers I gave her. Said it should have been jewelry, since we'd been dating for so long. I think she was hoping for a Promise Ring. That started a fight and we ended up breaking up."
"Yeah, that's the way with them bitches," Jeff's father said as he sipped his coffee and started reading the Sports Page. "They always want to tie a guy down. Get 'im so far in debt he can't afford to do anything but spend time with them. Hell, look at your mom, Jeff. I woulda shitcanned her a long time ago, but after I get done payin' for the house and cars and all the other crap we got, I ain't got nothin' left to pay a lawyer. Only reason I ain't divorced her."
"The only reason you haven't divorced me," Jeff's mom said as she walked over to the table and set her husband's breakfast in front of him, "is you know damned good and well you couldn't find anybody else who'd put up with you."
"Now, that ain't so," Jeff's father said as he reached for his wife and pulled her down into his lap. "I got women just standin' in line waitin' for me."
"Yeah, to be booked for soliciting," Jeff's mom said. She worked her way out of the man's grasp and got up. She went over to the toaster just as the English Muffins popped up, then began buttering them.
"Wish I hadda known about you and Stephanie last week, Jeff," his father told him. "Stopped her for speeding down on River Boulevard. Let her go with just a warning 'cause I thought she was still your girl friend."
"What was she doing?" Jeff asked.
"Fifty-five in a forty. Drivin' her Dad's Masseratti. Then, when I came up to the side of that convertible, she just flashed those baby blue eyes at me and said 'Oh. Hi, Mr. Danielson.' Then she propped those big ol' tits o' hers right up there on the side of the car door..."
"Jerry!" Jeff's mom said, reproachfully.
"...so's I'd be sure to see plenty o' cleavage." Jeff's father concluded, ignoring his wife's pleading.
"I think that's enough with the graphic description," Mrs. Danielson said, munching her buttered muffin. "Not in front of Jeff. He still has to go to school with that girl."
"Hell, Beth. Ol' Jeff's probably had his hand right in there between them boobs. More'n once, too, I betcha. It looked mighty inviting, let me tell you."
Jeff looked down at his cereal bowl. He could feel his face turning red but didn't know how to stop it, just like he didn't know how to tell his father he'd never gotten that far with Steph. He'd been able to feel them from outside the girl's blouse or sweater, but each time he'd been able to get his hand inside her clothes, trying to touch the skin of those magnificent breasts of hers, she'd always pulled his hand back out, making him feel like a naughty little boy filching cookies.
The Old Man ate hurriedly, silently reading. After only a few minutes, he'd gulped down the last of his bacon and eggs, then stood up, bending out over the table to drink the last of the coffee in his cup, careful not to spill anything on his nice, crisp uniform. "I gotta go," he said. "Got a court date this morning."
Gulping your food isn't good for your digestion, either, Dad, Jeff thought as he watched his father walk over to his mother. Why the hell don't you take better care of yourself?
Officer Jerry Danielson quickly kissed his wife, then hurried out the door to his car. He'd drive down to the courthouse, then pick up his motorcycle at the Police Garage, later.
Jeff looked up in time to see his mother gazing longingly at the door from which his father exited. A small smile plied across her lips before she lowered her gaze to her coffee and the other toasted English Muffin.
"Why do you put up with his shit, Mom?" Jeff asked.
"Watch your mouth, Jeff," his mother said displaying all the serenity of Michaelangelo's Pieta Madonna. "Just because I let your father get away with saying things like that, doesn't mean you can. That's a double standard, I know, but that's how life is, sometimes. You just have to accept it. You don't have to like it; just accept it."
Like hell I will, Jeff thought, but he didn't dare voice his opinion.
"Hey, Jeff," Jeremy Weigands said, "did you hear about what ol' Stephanie Tilford's been sayin' about your Dad?"
"You mean about him stopping her for speeding?" Jeff replied as he and Jeremy walked down the hall toward Mr. Hodge's class. "Dad said he let her go with just a warning because he thought we were still going together."
"No. That ain't what Steph's been sayin'. She says your dad asked her for a blow job. She says he did stop her for speeding, but said he'd let her off if she'd suck his dick."
Jeff stopped dead in the hallway. "That bitch," he said. He started walking again. The smile that had been starting to creep across his face faded into a hard frown. "Well," he asked, "did she give him one?"
"All depends on who you talk to," Jeremy said. "According to one person, she did. 'Cording to another, she didn't. Linda Guerrero says Steph kicked him in the balls, but you can't believe anything that dyke tells you, anyway."
"That ain't no shit," Jeff muttered, looking down at the floor of the hallway. He wondered if it was true, though. After hearing his father that morning, Jeff wasn't so sure. He could just imagine the encounter, with Stephanie leaning over the car door to let his father get an eyefull and his dad looking hard at her tits, just the way Jeff had always done until he found out those mountains were unassailable.
"Is Steph gonna do anything about it?" Jeff asked. "She can get my dad into a whole lot of trouble if she makes a complaint about that."
"I don't know," Jeremy replied. "I only heard about it from Linda and Jennifer Holland. Don't know who they heard it from. Do you think it's true?"
"No," Jeff said as if the whole concept was ridiculous. "My dad might be an asshole, but he isn't stupid."
A man would have to awfully damned stupid to do anything like that, Jeff thought. But still, he wondered.
"Can you imagine that bastard Hodge scheduling a test for the day of the Prom?" Jeremy asked, pulling Jeff rudely back into the real world. "You study for it?" Jeremy asked, then shrugged his shoulders and answered his own question. "Yeah, yeah, I know. Dumb question. You study for all of 'em. You fucking honor students give me a pain."
"But, hell," Jeremy went on, "I know half a dozen girls who aren't even in school today. They stayed home to get ready for tonight. You picked up your Tux yet?"
The High School world of Proms and tests and who was dating who went on as Jeff and Jeremy continued down the hall.
After the lunch hour, several kids came back to school with the information a motorcycle policeman was shot that morning during a bank robbery attempt at a branch bank beside one of the local malls. Jeff heard the news as he, Jeremy, Dan Hutchinson and several other boys were sharing a half-pint bottle of whiskey out behind the Gymnasium. Following a time-honored tradition, the boys were priming themselves for tonight's festivities.
"Think that might be your old man?" Jeremy asked.
Jeff was aware of a slight twinge of anxiety, but he shook his head. "Naw," he said, fighting hard to swallow the whiskey in his mouth. He wasn't sure he liked the taste of the stuff. "Dad's too smart to let himself get caught in the middle of something like that." Beside's, Jeff remembered, his father had court this morning. That was why the Old Man was in uniform at breakfast, instead of the civilian clothes he usually wore to work. Jeff knew court dates worked into all-day sessions, sometimes. Then, too, Jeff figured his father probably spent an hour or two at lunch, flirting with some waitress, somewhere. I doubt if Dad's even out on patrol yet, Jeff thought.
During his fifth-hour Calculus class, though, a call came through to Jeff's classroom that he was wanted in the office. As Jeff started toward the school offices. He knew... somehow just knew... the whole thing had something to do with his father.
The bank robbery, Jeff thought, Dad was involved in that bank robbery thing. Oh, no. Oh, please, God, don't let it be Dad. That'd just kill my mom.
Jeff tried to keep his face impassive and his pace steady as he walked down the hallway, but several times he found himself nearly breaking into a trot. When he reached the school office at last, he opened the door almost trepidatiously, halfway expecting to see the Police Chaplain and Captain Roundtree, his father's patrol supervisor, in the office. Jeff's father explained, once, that the Police Chaplain and the man's supervisor always broke the news to the next of kin when an officer was killed in the line of duty.
But only the normal office traffic of late returnees from lunch, discipline cases, school secretaries and student assistants were in the office when Jeff arrived. As usual, everyone seemed to be involved in a telephone or intercom conversation when he entered and Jeff had a problem getting anyone's attention. When he finally got one of the secretaries to notice him, she merely motioned him to a telephone on the counter. Jeff picked it up and pressed the flashing line selection button at the bottom.
"Hello?" he said into the mouthpiece.
"Jeff?" the anxious voice of his mother sounded through the telephone. "Finally. I just wanted to tell you, Jeff. Your father's fine. He wasn't hurt or anything, but he was involved in a shooting this morning. I just wanted...."
"What? At that bank?" Jeff asked. His voice sounded unusually loud and strident to himself and he consciously lowered it. "Was he at that bank that was robbed this morning?"
"Why,... Yes. Have you heard?"
"Some kids heard about it on the news at lunchtime. They said a policeman got shot. Is that true?" Jeff's mother seemed to take a long time to answer. "Is that true?" Jeff asked again.
"Yes, it is," his mother's voice came back, speaking slowly. "Kenny Lawler. Your dad's partner. Remember him?"
Jeff had a mental image of a round-faced, grinning black man who seemed too young to be a policeman. "Yeah," Jeff said. "I remember him. Was he the one shot?"
"Ye.... Yes, he was, Jeff." A long pause ensued, then his mother's voice said softly, "He was killed. Then your dad shot the man who shot Kenny. They don't know about him, yet. The robber, I mean. He's still in surgery, they say."
"But you're sure Dad's OK?"
"Yes, he is." Jeff could hear his mother suck in a breath and let it out in a sigh. "Chaplin Parretta called me to let me know Dad was all right."
Jeff could hear the strain in his mother's voice and could almost feel the tension she was under. Her feelings came through the telephone lines loud and clear.
"Mom?" he said. "Do you want me to come home?"
"Oh, no. Oh, no," his mother said. "You stay there at school. Your dad's not home yet. They're still talking to him about the shooting, I guess. Internal Affairs or whatever that department is. He probably won't be home for hours, yet."
"OK," Jeff said. "I'll see you when I get home." He started to hang up the phone, then thought of something else. "Mom?" he said.
"Yes?"
"Better call Barbara."
"I will."
The phone clicked to silence, followed by a dial tone. Jeff hung up the telephone, then looked up to see several people staring in his direction.
So, you all know about it, huh, he thought. Vultures. That's what Dad always calls you people. Always show up and stare when an accident or something like that happens. Vultures. Good name for you.
"Is your father OK, Jeff?" Patty Franklin, one of the office student assistants asked.
"Yeah," Jeff said. "He's OK."
"He was at that bank robbery this morning, wasn't he? I heard a couple of policemen got shot."
Jeff shook his head. "Just one. And the robber. My dad,..." he stopped and considered the implications of what happened. "My dad shot the guy."
"Who was it that got shot?" Patty asked. "The policeman, I mean. Did you know him? Is he all right?"
Jeff shook his head again. He cleared his throat, surprised at the constriction he felt there. He wondered why he felt so emotional. After all, he asked himself, I really don't give a shit if the Old Man lives or dies, do I?
"I can't tell you," Jeff told Patty. "I can't... uh... divulge the name. Uh.... Understand?"
Patty nodded and Jeff turned, walking out the office door. He knew the news would be all over the school almost immediately. Patty Franklin was a notorious gossip.
When Jeff got back to his class he just couldn't concentrate. After the bell rang, Jeff decided to leave.
Jeff's father still hadn't arrived home by the time Jeff got there.
"Have you heard anything else?" Jeff asked his mother as he placed Adrian's corsage in the refrigerator.
"The bank robber died," she said, staring off toward the far kitchen wall. She was sitting on the stool beside the counter in the kitchen, the same place she'd been when Jeff left for school that morning. "I heard that on the radio. Also, they must have gotten hold of Kenny's wife and parents because they released his name to the media. I heard them mention his name last time I listened to the news. Have you been listening?"
"No. Mind if I turn on the TV? The Headline News Channel has a local spot at a quarter till the hour. They might show Dad." Jeff much preferred visual information to radio news.
"I'd rather not see it," Jeff's mother said. "It's bad enough hearing about it on the radio. I don't know if I could stand it if they showed Kenny's body on TV. You know his wife's pregnant? Their first child."
The sound of the telephone ringing made both Jeff and his mother jump.
"Don't answer it," Jeff's mother said. "It's probably the newspaper or one of the TV stations. They've already called twice, trying to get an interview with your dad. They must have found out he was Kenny's partner, somehow. Heaven knows how they got hold of our phone number."
But it could be dad, mom," Jeff protested, picking up the telephone handset. "Hello."
"Oh. Hi, Jeffy, it's Barbi," his sister's voice said from the other end of the line, using the diminutives for both their names in the manner that always irritated Jeff. "Can I talk to Momma? She left a message on my answering machine and said it was urgent."
"Barbara," Jeff said, handing the receiver to his mother.
As his mother began talking to his sister, Jeff took his tuxedo and formal patent-leather shoes into his bedroom. From there, Jeff went into the family room and turned on the television. He searched through the ever-present commercials until he found the talking head of the Headline News Reader, then went back to the kitchen for a Coke.
The local news segment was just starting when Jeff returned to the family room. The bank robbery was the second story, just after the city commission budget report. The story on the robbery was a voice-over of videotape that showed an ambulance pulling away from the branch bank building, then a long shot of spectators standing around the bank, a couple of police squad cars and one police motorcycle, then cut to a head shot of the bank manager, then to the Police Watch Captain for the day. The Watch Captain was an officer Jeff didn't recognize who said, "...then the second police officer drew his service revolver and fired two times, striking the uh,... alleged perpetrator in the neck and chest." The scene then cut to what Jeff assumed was the most attractive female bank teller the TV reporter could find, who gave the television audience the profound insight, "Oh, yeah. I was really scared, ya know."
Finally, a shot of bloodstains on the sidewalk was shown with the reporter's voice overlay reading the information that Officer Ken Lawler was 24, was a veteran of two years on the police force, was married and that he and his wife were expecting their first child in August. The screen cut back to the newsroom where the studio reporter said the yet-to-be-identified alledged bank robber died during surgery at Memorial Hospital without regaining consciousness.
"Good," Jeff said, taking a swig from his Coke as the newcast went on to the local weather.
Jeff's father still had not returned home by the time Jeff left to pick up Adrian. Jeff had showered for the second time that day and checked to see if he needed to shave again, then put on his rented Tuxedo, expecting all the while to hear his father's car in the driveway. When Jeff reached Adrian's house, corsage in hand, her parents' conversation about how great Jeff looked in his Pearl Gray Tuxedo Jacket, black pants and lavender cumberbund and how beautiful Adrian looked in her lavender formal gown quickly switched to talk of the robbery and shooting. They congratulated Jeff for his father's part in it.
Jeff tried his best to shrug off their comments saying, truthfully, that he didn't know much about it. "But it's just part of a Policeman's job, you know," he told them. "Goes with the territory." He also tried his best to smile and look pleasant as Mr. and Mrs. Pollock took pictures and shot videotape of the couple, but it was difficult.
The last stop before the country club, where Jeff had wangled dinner reservations, was back at the Danielson house. Jeff's mother also took pictures and gushed appropriately over how great Adrian and Jeff looked together. Adrian was a sloe-eyed brunette with a pale, creamy-smooth complexion that complemented Jeff's blond, All-American-Boy appeal very well. With her creamy white skin, black hair and nearly-lavender eyes, many people told Adrian she looked like a young Elizabeth Taylor but Jeff didn't really see any resemblance. Only their coloration was identical, in his mind. After all, Elizabeth Taylor was a fat old woman, wasn't she? Adrian was only 18 and a size six.
"Where's Dad?" Jeff asked. "I see his car's in the driveway."
"I think he's in the family room," Mrs. Danielson said. "He said he wanted to see you two when you came back." She turned her attention to Adrian. "Oh, Adrian," she said, deftly changing the subject, "I think I see a loose thread on your dress, there. Let me get it for you."
She left the girl standing beside the kitchen table and managed to pull Jeff aside without seeming to do it deliberately. "Go talk to him, Jeff," she whispered to her son as she pushed past him on the pretext of going to get her scissors. "He's really upset about this thing. I'll keep Adrian out here."
Jeff started toward the family room but his mother stopped him with one last whispered comment.
"And Jeff,..." she said, "...he's been drinking."
Feeling very much like a Daniel entering a Lion's Den, Jeff opened the door to the family room. His father was sitting in his usual chair, directly in front of the TV, watching the Braves game on WTBS.
"Why, Jeff. Jeff," his father said, standing up and placing the beer can in his hand on the end table beside the chair. "You certainly do look handsome, there, boy. Turn around, turn around, let me look at ya."
Jeff obliged; a shy, embarrassed grin on his face as he self-consciously and awkwardly pirouetted in the middle of the floor.
"Gettin' all grown up, these days, ain't ya." Mr. Danielson ran his eyes up and down Jeff's tall frame, grinning foolishly.
With a start, Jeff realized his father had to elevate his gaze slightly to look his son in the eyes. Jeff was taller than his father, something he had never noticed before.
"Well, where's your date? Wanna meet her. I haven't met her before, have I?"
"She's been over here," Jeff told him. "But I think it was when you were still on night shift." He paused awkwardly, wondering how to bring up the subject of the shooting.
"You two goin' to dinner before the Prom?"
"Yeah," Jeff said. "Jeremy got us reservations at his dad's country club. We gotta go meet him and his date there."
"You got enough money for all this?"
"Yes, I think so."
"Well," his father said, "better take some extra." He reached down to his pants pocket, then paused, rather embarrassed. He was wearing black denim pants and a white T-Shirt. "Oh," he muttered, "these ain't... uh... my pants. Had to borrow some civilian clothes out of another guy's locker. My uniform pants had... blood on 'em." He stood there in the middle of the room for a moment, as if unsure what to do. "Oh, I know," he said brightly. "Got some money up here. If your Ma hasn't found it and spent it all yet, that is."
Jeff watched as his father walked over to the bookcase built into the wall behind the TV and lifted a wooden tobacco humidifier off the top shelf.
"Use this as my hidey-hole, since I quit smokin' my pipe," his father said as he opened the lid. A thick roll of bills was inside the humidifier. Most of the bills were ones, fives and tens, Jeff noticed, as Mr. Danielson shuffled through them. Finally, at the center of the roll, he found what he was looking for and pulled out two one hundred dollar bills. He held them out to Jeff.
Jeff took the bills reluctantly and stood there, looking down at them as his father replaced the money in the humidifier and put it back on the shelf.
"I'm sure your mom knows about that money, there, Jeff," his father said, "but she pretends she doesn't. So don't mention it to 'er, if you don't mind." Mr. Daniels stood, rubbing his hands together.
His borrowed T-shirt was too small for Jerry's thick, bulging arms and barrel chest and it made him look even more muscular in the upper torso than usual. The shirt barely covered his middle-age spare tire, though.
"Been tryin' to save up enough to buy your mom a new car," Jeff's father said. "Or a newer used car, I guess. Whatever. I know she's always wanted a '65 Mustang. Maybe I can find one of them at a decent price and we could fix 'er up. Together. You and me." He stood there, half grinning, running his eyes over his son's face, like he was trying to memorize each aspect of it; storing it to recall later.
"You... uh... heard about what happened today, didn't ya?" Jeff's father started, awkwardly.
Jeff nodded.
Jeff's father sucked in a long, noisy breath, then let it out slowly in a deep sigh. "Kenny Lawler was killed," he said.
"How,..." Jeff started.
"You know his wife's pregnant?"
"Yeah."
Jerry Danielson gave a short, sardonic laugh. "That sorta thing never happens to a bachelor, seems like. Or to some old, decrepit fart like me. Always happens to somebody like Kenny. Somebody who has little kids or a pregnant wife or something like that. Somebody who has his whole goddam life in front of 'im."
"You aren't old, Dad," Jeff said. "Only Forty-Four."
"Forty-Five," Jerry corrected. He started to say something else but Jeff interrupted.
"How did it happen?" Jeff could tell his father was becoming maudlin, somehow blaming himself for what happened. But Jeff realized his mother was right. His father needed to talk to somebody about it.
"We... uh... we were gonna go and set up a speed trap out on Patterson Drive," he said, beginning rather slowly, then allowing the words to come out more freely after he began. "You know, where the Interstate offramp is. Folks get off that Interstate and think they can still do 65 down Patterson." He gave out a little chuckle. "Prime huntin' ground."
"But we... uh... heard a call 'bout a silent alarm goin' off at the First National branch over in Cherry Hills, so we started over there. We were pretty close."
The man stopped and walked over to the end table where he'd left his beer can. He picked it up and looked at it, feeling by its weight that it was almost empty. "Wanna beer, Jeff?" he asked. "I guess you're old enough to have one, now."
Jeff shook his head.
"I know you take one every once in a while," his father said. "I drink a lot of 'em, I know, but I usually know how many I have left. Your mom doesn't drink 'em. She don't like beer."
"No, thank you, Dad," Jeff said, slightly embarrassed that the man knew. "I think you're changing the subject." It amazed Jeff to realize he had the temerity to say that to his father.
Jeff's dad shot an annoyed glance at his son. "Yeah, I guess I am," he said. He looked down at the rug and shook his head.
"Anyway," he continued, running his hand through his close-cropped, graying, sand-colored hair, then looking back up at his son, "we split up when we got to the bank. Ken took the west entrance and I took the east. My side was all glass and this Mexican kid who was tryin' to rob the place saw me and takes off, goin' out the west side door. I guess Ken was just gettin' up to the entrance when this kid comes out. It was probably just reflex or somethin' on his part, but as soon as he sees Ken, this kid fired. Sawed-off 12 guage. Close range."
"I kept on goin' around the building when I seen the kid run out. Don't think I even heard the shot over the sound of the bike. But then, when I got to the other side, I saw Ken and his bike down on the pavement and his kid standing over him, reachin' down to get Ken's .357 out of his holster.
Well, I.... I guess I dismounted and drew out my piece and everything all at the same time. Don't remember gettin' off the bike, though. I see the kid pump his shotgun and start to point it at me. That's when I fired. I musta shot three times, 'cause that's how many fired shells there was in the cylinder. But I got him once in the chest and once here, in the neck." He indicated a point where his neck muscles joined his shoulder. "I think the uh... carotid artery might have been cut, cause blood was kinda spurtin' out."
"Anyway, this kid went down and I got on the radio and called for backup and told 'em an officer was down. Called EMS, too, but didn't really need to. The folks inside the bank called 911 as soon as the kid ran out."
"But I established there was nobody else in on the robbery from the people in the bank. He was a loner. Then I tried to help out Ken and the kid I shot. That's how I got blood all over my uniform."
While he talked, the man walked up to a spot just in front of Jeff. Jeff could see the tension lines in his father's face, the corded neck muscles, the redness in the man's unfocused eyes. Jeff smelled both whiskey and beer on his father's breath. Jeff wanted to take a step back but could not make himself do it. He stood, rooted to the spot.
"Julio Rodriguez. That's what the kid's ID said his name was. Mexican. Green Card." Jerry raised his hands in front of him, his fists clenched, then dropped them to his sides in frustration. "He was just a fuckin' kid, Jeff," he said suddenly, intensely. His face was twisted in confusion. "A goddam kid. Twenty. Not much older than you. Just like Ken. Just fuckin' kids, both of 'em." Jeff father leaned over and placed his head against his son's shoulder.
The action took Jeff completely by surprise. It seemed so thoroughly out of character for his father, Jeff was stunned into an awkward silence. He was afraid the man was going to start crying. For a fleeting moment, Jeff was concerned about stains on the Pearl Gray jacket. He lifted his hands, not really sure where to place them. He didn't know if he should hug his father or not; he didn't know if he could.
The thought crossed his mind of patting the man on the shoulder, but that didn't seem appropriate, either.
"Dad," he said, finally. "It's OK. It's OK. You... you should't feel so bad about it. You did what you had to do. It's your job. Don't feel bad about it. It's over. Besides, what difference does it make if there's one less Spic in this world."
His father's head jerked up off Jeff's shoulder. The man's upper lip was curled back in distaste and a look of hatred was in his red-rimmed eyes as he took a half step backward.
Before Jeff could move or do anything to block the blow, a resounding, rifle-shot slap stung the left side of the boy's face.
"Don't you ever,..." the man said through clenched teeth, "ever say anything like that again. Don't you dare trivialize a man's life like that." A shaking hand with an extended forefinger, held up in front of the boy's face, slowly unclenched and dropped to the man's side.
Jerry Danielson's torso slowly relaxed and his head bowed as he realized what he'd done. "I'm sorry, Jeff," he said softly, looking down and turning away from his son. "I'm sorry."
Jeff still stood in the same spot, his ear ringing and his face smarting from the effects of the slap. He wanted to turn and run away, but he couldn't make himself go. He wanted to rub his face where his father slapped him, but he wouldn't allow himself to do that, either. He could feel tears stinging his eyes and blinked to keep them from welling over. No matter what the Old Man did to him, Jeff vowed, he would not allow his father the satisfaction of seeing him cry. Ever again.
For a time, no one moved or said anything. Finally, Jerry hunched his shoulders and placed the fingers of one hand into his back pocket. He slowly walked over to the end table and picked up his beer can again.
"Dad," Jeff said at last. He met his father's eyes as the man looked up. He held the gaze steadily, without flinching. "There's something else. Something I need to know. It's about the time last week when you stopped Stephanie Tilford for speeding."
"What about it?"
"Did you say or do anything to her?"
"Like what?"
"Did you,..." Jeff searched for the proper word, "did you proposition her?"
"Did I...." A smirk crossed Jerry's lips and his eyes were laughing with an ironic light. "My God. What a sense of priority. Two men...." Suddenly the eyes became hard and penetrating as he turned on Jeff. "Two fucking men, Jeff. They're dead. Dead. Do you know what that means? They're dead. And here you are askin' me if I got fresh with some goddam bimbo." He shook his head, hopelessly.
"Well," Jeff said with a shrug. "You tried to change the subject earlier. Now it's my turn."
Jerry chuckled. "Yeah," he said. "I guess it is."
"Well," Jeff asked, "did you?"
"Fuck, no."
The denial came too quickly, too easily, too abusively to his father's lips. Jeff was certain he was lying.
"She says you did."
His father closed his eyes and shook his head in resignation. "Oh, shit," he said. "That's all I need." He opened his eyes again and looked at Jeff. "Is she makin' a complaint?"
"I don't think she has," Jeff said. "Yet."
Jerry shook his head again, raised his eyes to the ceiling, then looked back at his son. "Jeff," he said, "I know you don't think that highly of me, sometimes, but...." He stopped and gave a little half laugh, half sigh. "I would never do anything like that to you. To you or... to your mother... or to your girlfriend. Last week, that's what I thought Stephanie was. And I don't care how damned jealous I might be of you, I'd never...."
"Jealous?" Jeff interrupted. "Jealous of me? Why the hell would you be jealous of me?"
His father stood and stared at Jeff a long time, a half smile playing upon his lips. The expression in his eyes was a mixture of amusement, sadness, and longing. "Well," he said, "I guess it's true. Youth is wasted on the young." He shook his head again and reached up to rub the back of his neck.
"Why would I be jealous of you?" Jerry asked rhetorically. "Well, Jeff, I'll tell ya. Because you're 18. I'm 45. I'm gonna retire from the police force in two years after 25 years on the job; still a Sergeant. Been passed over for promotion more times than I can count. You got your whole life to live yet. You can be whatever you want. I ain't ever gonna be anything more than what I am right now. You're gonna take your scholarships and go off to a good college next year. You still can get girls like Stephanie Tilford.... And I bet this Adrian's just as nice, isn't she? I got your mother. Now, I still love 'er and all that.... But she's still.... Well, we've been married for 23 years. That's why when some little prick teaser like Stephanie looks at me, I look back. But I don't do anything about it. Afraid to. Got too much to lose, Jeff. And, besides, I'm too big a coward." He laughed when he saw Jeff's questioning look, which Jerry interpreted as one of disbelief. "Yeah, I'm a coward. Afraid to do anything like that. Too afraid of losin' all them things I got. You don't have to be afraid of anything. That's why I'm jealous sometimes, Jeff, 'cause you got opportunity and I don't. Just regrets. 'S all I got. Regrets. Regrets that I didn't do some things different. Like every man has, I guess. It ain't original with me, but I think there's a saying, somewhere, that says old men have regrets and young men have opportunities. Or the other way around."
Again the two men, one young and one old, but still very much alike, stood and stared at each other.
Finally, Jerry broke the tension. "Now, I know you don't believe a single word of what I just told you," he said. "Kids never believe what their fathers tell 'em, but I said it just the same. I know you gotta go out and fuck up your own life, just like every man does." Jerry walked up and placed a comradly arm across his son's shoulders, turning them both toward the kitchen. "So, I'll tell ya what I'll do, Jeff. I'll give you some advice. Some advice I sometimes wish your Grampa had given me."
"Here it is," he said. Jerry tapped lightly on his son's chest with his forefinger. "As long as you can do it without hurtin' anyone, don't ever turn down pussy if it's offered to you."
Jerry smiled and Jeff found himself smiling despite himself.
"Now, that ain't very sage advice, son, and with AIDS goin' around and all the other crap you can catch--jealous husbands and palimony suits and all that--it probably ain't very safe advice, either. But it's all I got to offer. I guess I outta amend it a little, though, and say: Don't ever turn down pussy if it's offered to you; but always use a rubber."
Jerry smiled with genuine affection toward his son and Jeff returned it in kind.
"Dad," Jeff said, "come on out to the kitchen and meet Adrian."
After goodbyes were finally said, preceded by a bit of good-natured chiding from Beth Danielson for having kept the women waiting for so long while father and son discussed "guy things," Jeff and Adrian finally climbed into Jeff's car to leave. Jeff shook his head and gave a sardonic chuckle as he started the engine and pulled away from the curb.
"What's so funny?" Adrian asked.
"My old man," Jeff told her. "How can you tell somebody like that they're full of shit and get them to believe it?"
In his rearview mirror, Jeff could still see his mother and father silhouetted in the doorway of their house as he drove away.
"Why, I thought your father was very charming, Jeff," Adrian said. "You always told me he was a real dork. He isn't at all. He's very nice."
"He's drunk," Jeff said. "A 'charming' drunk."
"Well, I suppose he has a good reason to be, tonight, after what happened today. Does he drink a lot?"
"According to my mom, he does."
"Do you really think he did what Stephanie Tilford says he did?"
"No," Jeff said. Not really.
"Do you think he's going to get into trouble about that?"
"I don't know," Jeff said, rather curtly. "Do you mind, Adrian? I really think we can find better things to talk about tonight than my old man."
"Yeah," Adrian said with a genuine, affectionate laugh, reaching over and placing her hand lightly on Jeff's arm. "You're right. We ought to talk about us. Talk about what we're going to do tonight and about what a good time we'll have."
Jeff reached over to Adrian and pull her closer to him on the bench seat of his car. He was suddenly glad he didn't have the bucket seats he often considered installing. Jeff glanced down as Adrian rubbed her hand lightly along the top of his thigh. He smiled.
Well, he thought, maybe the Old Man's advice isn't quite as stupid as it sounded, after all.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
1959--Osage County, Oklahoma
by W.E. Turner
Alphonse Bonet sits on the railroad trestle, waiting on the 4:14. He knows it ought to be along any minute.
The hot Oklahoma August sun glistens off the water that drips off Al's skinny, sun-browned body. The water--half sweat, half creek water--is squeezed out of the pores of Al's quarter-breed Osage skin and out of his wet, cut-off Levi's. The mixture runs down the boy's legs and drips into the tepid brown water of Sand Creek below Al's feet.
Al glances up at the sun, then quickly looks away, feeling the pain the old boy causes.
"Hey. Warbonnet," Vince Goodby asks, bastardizing Al's last name the way all the boys do. "What time is it?"
"I don't know," Al says. "Ask Willie. He's got the watch."
"It's ten minutes past four," Willie says. He puts the waterproof, bandless Timex back into the bib pocket of the cut-off overalls, hand-me-downs he got from Al this summer.
Al wishes his watch still worked. The watch and the Barlow knife in the pocket of his cut-off Levi's were the only gifts he received from the old man on their visitation to Norfolk last Christmas--the same things Willie received. Only now, Willie's knife is nowhere to be found and Al's watch doesn't work anymore. So each of the two boys only retain half their legacy.
But two halves make a whole, don't it? Al chuckles.
The thought of his father makes Al remember the old man and their visit. When they boarded the train, headed east, both he and Willie had identification tags running through the buttonholes of their coats--just like those pictures of the expectant, wide-eyed children he saw once on "The 20th Century" on Grandma's TV. Those kids were going somewhere, to do something, but he doesn't remember what it was. But Al does remember the day his father took the two boys to Washington, D.C.
Lincoln's head was massive--bigger than the Buick the old man drove. Of course, the Cherry trees were not in bloom--not in December. The White House tour was only 45 minutes long, but Dad didn't show up until two hours later, and when he did, he smelled just the way Mom did after a night out on the town--reeking of whiskey and cigarette smoke and cheap perfume.
All five of the boys in the group sit or stand on the railroad trestle. They can see the train coming now, shimmering in the heat waves off toward the bluffs.
Can't jump early, Al thinks. You'll be a chicken, if you do. All the other boys'd make clucking sounds every time they see you. They'll laugh at you.
The train's at the end of the trestle, now. The vibration of the locomotive's wheels makes the whole bridge shake.
Come on, Mister, blow that horn, Al's mind screams. Three long blasts, like always. Come on. Come on. Please, Mister, blow the horn. I don't wanna die. Come on. Come on. Please. Please. Please.
The sound of the horn splits the air. All the boys are off the bridge even before the second blast sounds.
Alphonse Bonet sits on the railroad trestle, waiting on the 4:14. He knows it ought to be along any minute.
The hot Oklahoma August sun glistens off the water that drips off Al's skinny, sun-browned body. The water--half sweat, half creek water--is squeezed out of the pores of Al's quarter-breed Osage skin and out of his wet, cut-off Levi's. The mixture runs down the boy's legs and drips into the tepid brown water of Sand Creek below Al's feet.
Al glances up at the sun, then quickly looks away, feeling the pain the old boy causes.
"Hey. Warbonnet," Vince Goodby asks, bastardizing Al's last name the way all the boys do. "What time is it?"
"I don't know," Al says. "Ask Willie. He's got the watch."
"It's ten minutes past four," Willie says. He puts the waterproof, bandless Timex back into the bib pocket of the cut-off overalls, hand-me-downs he got from Al this summer.
Al wishes his watch still worked. The watch and the Barlow knife in the pocket of his cut-off Levi's were the only gifts he received from the old man on their visitation to Norfolk last Christmas--the same things Willie received. Only now, Willie's knife is nowhere to be found and Al's watch doesn't work anymore. So each of the two boys only retain half their legacy.
But two halves make a whole, don't it? Al chuckles.
The thought of his father makes Al remember the old man and their visit. When they boarded the train, headed east, both he and Willie had identification tags running through the buttonholes of their coats--just like those pictures of the expectant, wide-eyed children he saw once on "The 20th Century" on Grandma's TV. Those kids were going somewhere, to do something, but he doesn't remember what it was. But Al does remember the day his father took the two boys to Washington, D.C.
Lincoln's head was massive--bigger than the Buick the old man drove. Of course, the Cherry trees were not in bloom--not in December. The White House tour was only 45 minutes long, but Dad didn't show up until two hours later, and when he did, he smelled just the way Mom did after a night out on the town--reeking of whiskey and cigarette smoke and cheap perfume.
All five of the boys in the group sit or stand on the railroad trestle. They can see the train coming now, shimmering in the heat waves off toward the bluffs.
Can't jump early, Al thinks. You'll be a chicken, if you do. All the other boys'd make clucking sounds every time they see you. They'll laugh at you.
The train's at the end of the trestle, now. The vibration of the locomotive's wheels makes the whole bridge shake.
Come on, Mister, blow that horn, Al's mind screams. Three long blasts, like always. Come on. Come on. Please, Mister, blow the horn. I don't wanna die. Come on. Come on. Please. Please. Please.
The sound of the horn splits the air. All the boys are off the bridge even before the second blast sounds.
1967--Pawhuska, Oklahoma
by W. E. Turner
The men pull their jackets close about them to ward off the wind's chill, unnoticed while the game was in progress; the field populated with straining, sweating boys and the stands barely containing the expectant, cheering students, parents and townfolk. They pass the bottle of bourbon among them and each, in turn, pull from its umber contents one smoky, nostril-tingling swallow.
They curse, each word it own sentence; testimomy to every sound's intensity.
“God. Damn.”
“Son. Of. A. Bitch.”
One by one, the men speak, detailing the turning point. The words are delivered slowly, in a high plains nasal twang. Each statement pronounces sentence on the season. Every addition is individual, surrounded by its own frame of silence.
“One little ol' diddy-waddle pass an' that's it. Finished.”
“All's them Bonnet boys had t' do 'uz knock it down. But did they?”
“Naw. They had ta go an' play Volly Ball with it.”
“Let that sum bitch get b'hine 'em and ketch it.”
“An' that's it. Finished.”
“Outta th' playoffs agin.”
“In the first fuckin' roun'.”
“Same dam' thang as las' year.”
“Well, I don't think the boys have anything to be ashamed of. They played a hell of a....”
The statement straggles off to no conclusion as every other set of eyes slowly turns the speaker's way; glaring, searing such altruism away. They don't want similar ideas to form and contaminate their misery.
The litany repeats.
“God. Damn.”
The men continue to sit in the stands, even after the liquor is gone.
The men pull their jackets close about them to ward off the wind's chill, unnoticed while the game was in progress; the field populated with straining, sweating boys and the stands barely containing the expectant, cheering students, parents and townfolk. They pass the bottle of bourbon among them and each, in turn, pull from its umber contents one smoky, nostril-tingling swallow.
They curse, each word it own sentence; testimomy to every sound's intensity.
“God. Damn.”
“Son. Of. A. Bitch.”
One by one, the men speak, detailing the turning point. The words are delivered slowly, in a high plains nasal twang. Each statement pronounces sentence on the season. Every addition is individual, surrounded by its own frame of silence.
“One little ol' diddy-waddle pass an' that's it. Finished.”
“All's them Bonnet boys had t' do 'uz knock it down. But did they?”
“Naw. They had ta go an' play Volly Ball with it.”
“Let that sum bitch get b'hine 'em and ketch it.”
“An' that's it. Finished.”
“Outta th' playoffs agin.”
“In the first fuckin' roun'.”
“Same dam' thang as las' year.”
“Well, I don't think the boys have anything to be ashamed of. They played a hell of a....”
The statement straggles off to no conclusion as every other set of eyes slowly turns the speaker's way; glaring, searing such altruism away. They don't want similar ideas to form and contaminate their misery.
The litany repeats.
“God. Damn.”
The men continue to sit in the stands, even after the liquor is gone.
1968--Charleston, South Carolina
By W. E. Turner
At first glance, Al Bonet guesses the woman who answers the knock on the duplex door is about his own age: eighteen. But when she looks up through the straggly brown hair falling over her face and smiles a crooked smile, the yellow glow from the bare bulb above the stoop falls on two broken, discolored molars on the upper left side of her mouth. Al revises his estimate of her age upward about ten years.
"Henri Bonet?" she asks sweetly. "Sure, he lives here." The woman turns her head and yells over her shoulder, "Hey, Chief." her voice is a bellow, now, aimed toward the rear of the apartment. The voice is deeper; coarse and grating, like a bastard file scraped on the edge of a piece of sheetmetal. "Someone here ta see ya."
Her voice changes again as she opens the door wider. "Come on in," she says, girlish once more. "He'll be out in a minute."
Al stoops down to pick up his athletic bag, then turns to gently kick at Willie's feet. His brother is leaning against the brick wall beside the door and is almost asleep again. Willie blinks his eyes and looks around, as if trying to re-orient himself. It's close to midnight and Willie slept most of the way in from Columbia.
"We're here, Willie," Al says. "Go on in."
Groggily, Willie staggers through the door and Al follows, all the while trying to take in his surroundings and follow the movements of the woman ahead of them. Her ample posterior stretches the vertical ribs of the cloth robe, its swirling contours making a statement of her zaftig figure. Al recalls the glimpse of deep cleavage the front view afforded as she swung back the door. The room, he notices, smells of dirty diapers.
The woman turns and plops down indelicately on the couch and picks up a drink glass from the coffee table in front of it. "You boys from the Holland?" she asks, then takes a drink from the glass.
Willie grins sheepishly and sinks his head down into his shrugging shoulders, making him appear even younger than his sixteen years.
"No, ma'am," Al says, gravely. "I'm Al. This is Willie. We're Chief Bonet's sons."
"His boys?" she exclaims, sitting up, then reaching down to demurely pull the corner of her bathrobe over one exposed, cellulite-dimpled thigh. "Why, he told me y'all 'uz comin', but he didn't tell me when. Didn't think it 'uz gonna be this soon." She turns toward the back rooms of the apartment and again the foghorn bellows. "Chief. Get yer fat ass out here. Someone ta see ya."
The chameleon act continues as the woman turns back toward Al. She's all sweetness and light again. "Y'all drive straight on through from Oklahoma?"
"No, ma'am," Al says. "We stopped in Chattanooga last night. Stayed the night before last over in Arkansas, then took a ferry 'cross the Mississippi yesterday morning. Willie wanted to see the Mississippi in the daylight."
"Oh, yeah?" She turns toward Willie and he grins back at her, then lowers his eyes. "How'd ya like it?" she asks.
"It's biiiiig," he says with an embarrassed laugh.
Still giggling, Willie plops down in the easy chair set at right angles to the couch. Al hangs his letter jacket on the back of a kitchen chair in one corner of the room, then sits on the front edge of the chair's seat.
"It sure is big, all right," the woman says. "Biggest damn' river I ever seen." She looks from one of the boys to the other, smiling slightly. Willie can't meet her glance but Al stares at her stoically.
Her cheeks are smooth, round and slightly freckled, he notices. Her lips are full and softly formed. Her eyes are green.
"They call me Spider, by the way," she says. "Name's really 'Samantha,' but they been callin' me 'Spider' ever since I got this." She holds up the back of one forearm to show the boys a large black arachnid tattoo. "Me an' my kids live here with your dad."
"You shackin' up with 'im?" Al asks, hoping he's using the vernacular correctly.
Spider turns sharply and peers at Al through her hair for a while before answering. "Yeah," she says, throatily, then pulls a cigarette from the pack on the coffee table and places it between her lips. "We're shackin' up." She uses a cigarette lighter and closes the lid with a loud snap.
"Hey," Spider says, suddenly sweet again. "I was real sorry ta hear about y'all's mama."
Finally, Al lowers his gaze. "Well," he says. "It don't matter, really. She's probably better off, now. She'd been sick a long time."
"Oh. Did she have cancer, or somethin'?"
"No, ma'am. Cirrhosis of the liver."
"Yeah," a gruff voice says from the doorway into the hall. "Goddam half-breed Injun bitch done drank herself to death. Just like her old man."
Chief Boatswain's Mate Henri Bonet stands in the doorway. His stained skivy shirt stretches across his protruding stomach and the boys can see the fouled anchor tattoo on his right arm. Under the belly, the khaki uniform pants are wrinkled, like they'd been slept in.
It's easy to see Al's sandy brown hair and square jaw favors his father's appearance. Willie's features are darker and softer.
Henri travels unsteadily toward the couch where Spider sits and plops down heavily on it. "Goddam Injuns can't hold their liquor," he says. "Ain't like us Cajuns." He gives a long, rattling belch and the air is saturated with the aroma of stale beer.
"Hi, boys," Henri says at last. "How ya'll doin'?"
"Just fine, Pop," Willie says with a smile.
Al just glares at the man from under his lowered eyebrows.
"How's yer Gramma?"
"Gettin' old," Willie says. "You know Aunt Bev an' Uncle Paul put her in the Rest Home, don't you?"
Henri nods, looking glum. "Well, I see ya'll done found this place all right," Henri says. This observation effectively stifles conversation in the room.
Henri sits on the couch and stares sleepily at the rug. Both Al and Willie dart their eyes around the room, taking in its features; familiarizing themselves with their new surroundings. After a few minutes, Spider picks up her drink glass from the coffee table. She takes a drink, then swirls the ice in the glass. They all hear the tinkling of ice cubes.
"What grade you in this year, Willie?" Spider asks, setting the glass back on the table.
"A Junior."
"Well, I hear the schools here in Charleston are pretty good," Spider says. "You play football, too, don't you?"
"Did last year. I was a wide receiver on offense an' a safety on defense."
"Willie made the varsity last year at Pawhuska," Al volunteered. "He was one of only two sophomores on the team."
"Yeah," Willie said. "An' me an' Al was both safeties. They called us the Warbonnets. Big Warbonnet and Little Warbonnet. We was pretty good."
"But not good enough ta get no scholarship nowhere," Henri says. He raises his eyes and looks at Al, who returns the stare. "Or did ya get offered one, somewhere, and just didn't take it?"
"No," Al says. "I didn't get offered any scholarship."
"So I guess you expect me ta pay for college. Huh?"
"I don't expect you to pay for nothin'," Al says. "I ain't goin' ta college."
Henri stares at his son for a long time, then finally turns his eyes away. "Figures," he says.
Both father and son decide now is a good time to look at the walls.
Spider takes another drink from her glass, then begins cleaning her nails with a nail file she picks up from the coffee table. Her eyes occasionally flick upward as she works, flitting between Henri, Willie and Al.
"So, what are you gonna do?" Henri asks, after a while. “Sit here on yer ass until they draft ya?”
Al shrugs. “Well, if that happens, it happens.”
“You know what that’ll mean, don’t ya? Vietnam. They’ll send your sorry ass right to the fuckin’ jungle. Then they’ll shoot the son-of-a-bitch off.” Henri leans forward to peer intently at his son. “But let me tell you somethin’, Alphonse. You don’t want to go to no ‘Nam. You don’t want to go there at all.”
“Don’t seem to have hurt you none,” Al says. “Like when you was over there on them PT boats and stuff.”
“PBRs,” Henri says, disgustedly. “River Patrol Boats. Or Patrol Boat, River: PBR, the way the Navy abbreviates things.” He leans back on the sofa again. “But I tell you somethin', son, you don’t wanna go over there.”
"OK,” Al says. “I heard ya. Guess I'll just get me a job, then. Somewhere."
Henri nods and silence returns to the room.
"Tell ya what I'll do," Henri says after a while. "I know some guys, yeah. We'll see if we can't get you into the Shipbuilders' Local, then get ya on as a helper out at the shipyard at the Naval Station." He turns and looks at Al, who returns the look. "I think a Union card'll run ya 'bout two-fifty. I'll loan it to you, then you can pay me back after ya get hired."
"OK," Al says. "Thanks."
“That way,” Henri says, “You can get classified 1-Y. Defense worker. Only get called up in a national emergency.”
Henri stands up. "You wanna beer?" he asks Al.
"Can I have one?" Al asks in return.
"Sure. Eighteen's legal age for beer here in South Carolina. Same as Kansas. And I know how you an' you friends usta slip up there to Sedan from Pawhuska ever' chance you got to buy beer."
"Where'd you hear that?"
"Yer Grandma. She kept me posted 'bout you guys."
Al grins and nods his head.
Henri stands up and starts for the kitchen. He pauses and looks at Al, who is still sitting on the edge of the kitchen chair in the corner. "Well, come on, if you want a beer," Henri tells Al. "I ain't no fuckin' waiter."
Al gets up and follows his father into the kitchen.
After Henri gets two bottles of Miller High Life out of the refrigerator, he opens them both with a church key and hands one to Al, then stands at the kitchen sink, leaning his backside against its curled porcelain edge. He stares down at the green-tiled floor of the kitchen.
Al stands awkwardly in front of Henri, self-consciously sipping on the beer.
"You know," Henri says, his voice at times lapsing into a hint of his native cajun sing-song, "your mother never really could hold her liquor, no. Her an' me usta go out drinkin' ever' once in a while. She'd always try to keep up wit' me -- drinking shots and chasin 'em wit' beer." He pauses and half smiles, his eyes unfocused. "Hell, wasn't no time 't all 'fore she was under the goddam table -- just drunk on her ass. Then she'd wanna dance." The Chief takes a drink of his beer and stands there, looking down the neck of the bottle. He sighs. "So we'd get out there on the dance floor, but it wasn't really dancin'. It was more just me jus' movin' 'round, holdin' her up. Ever'ting was a slow dance wit' her. Didn't matter what the band was playin'. She was there with 'er hands 'round my neck an' we'd go shufflin' 'round. 'Course, th' other men'd try to cut in, thinkin' they might be able to take advantage o' this drunk woman, but I never let 'em, no."
"Is... uh,..." Al starts out, slowly. "Is that why you busted up? Got divorced? Because o' her gettin' drunk an' all?"
Henri looks up at his son. "What your mama tell ya 'bout that?"
"Not much," Al replies. "She just said you couldn't get along. But I always wondered...." He lets the sentence taper away.
Henri shakes his head. "No. It wasn't her drinkin'. It had more ta do with me goin' off to the Far East. The destroyer I was in got sent over to Korea. We'd just run back an’ forth 'tween Korea an' Yokosuka. Only got back stateside for a little bit back in '51, then went right back out three months later." He paused and thought a moment. "She just couldn't take it. Went back to Oklahoma."
"Well, didn't you try...."
"I did. Tried ever'ting. Even took 30 days leave an' went to Pawhuska ta see 'er." He gives a half-grunting laugh. "Hell, how do ya think Willie got here?"
Henri takes another drink of his beer and looks away from Al, toward the refrigerator and the wall behind it. "Even put in for transfer to some kinda shore duty, somewhere, just so's we could be together." He shakes his head and goes on, slowly. "But they don't need Bo'sun's Mates on shore stations much. An' hell, I'd only just made 2nd Class.... Didn't have enough time-in-grade... or even time in the service, for that matter... to qualify for anyt'ing 'cept a shipboard berth."
"So you split up?"
"So we split up," Henri says, nodding. "She filed for divorce just after Willie was born." He looks back up at Al and takes another drink of beer. He shrugs. "But, what the hell. That's a sailor's life." Henri stands up straight again and heads back toward the living room.
Al, in his father's wake, can think of about a lot of things to say or ask, but he can't get any of them out before they're back in the presence of Willie and Spider.
Willie sits huddled in the chair, his head down between his shoulders again. He looks up as the other two enter the room and they can see his swarthy complexion blushing a bright crimson.
"What the hell's this whore been doin' to ya, Willie?
"Nothin'," Spider says with a laugh. "I was just askin' 'im about his girl friends. Then he goes an' tells me he's a virgin."
"No, I never," Willie says, giggling. "You drug it outta me."
Henri gives a little laugh as the two men reseat themselves in their former positions. Al can't really tell if his father's laugh has any humor behind it or not.
"Well, that ain't all she'll drag outta ya if ya give 'er a chance," Henri says. "She'll roll ya an' leave ya in th' gutter, boy. That's what whores do ta sailors. Ain't that right?" he says, his eyes flicking over in Spider's direction. "They roll 'em an' leave 'em in th' gutter."
"Oh, hell," Spider says. "I ain't never rolled a sailor in my life."
"Says you," Henri says. "But you were a whore, weren't ya?"
"That's right," Spider says. "That's right, I was." She directs her answer more toward Willie and Al than Henri but looks directly at none of them. "Worked up at 'The Pines.' That usta be a whorehouse, up north o' town, there. It's closed, now."
"Hell," Henri says. "You know what she done first time she met me? It was in a bar down on the strip, just outside the gate o' the Naval Station. Hell, she started blowin' me. Right there in the bar."
Spider laughs, swirling her drink with her finger. She smiles slightly as Henri continues, looking up at Willie as Henri tells the tale.
"I was dressed in civies that night," Henri says. "I had on a maroon dress shirt and under it I had on one o' those little turtleneck collar things... What d'ya call 'em?..."
"A dickey," Spider says.
"Yeah. A dickey," Henri goes on. "Anyway, I had one o' them on an' a jacket... er, a blazer over it, an' all. Ol' Spider, there, she tells me I look like I'm a priest." Henri laughs. "Can you 'magine that? Me? A goddam priest?"
"Well, hell," Spider says, "ya did kinda look like one. 'Course, I 'uz drunk then, like I always was in those days." She holds up her drink glass and shakes it, slightly, so the ice tinkles against the sides again. "But this's all I drink, now. Coca-Cola."
"Anyway," she goes on, laughing, "I'd always said I wanted ta give a priest a blow job, someday, an' I figured that 'uz my chance."
"So she ain't just a whore, Willie," Henri says. "She's a sacrilegious whore, at that." Henri laughs again, then looks over at Willie from under his shaggy, graying eyebrows.
Al, still sitting on the edge of the kitchen chair, notices his father's smile is no more than a baring of gritted teeth.
"But, anyway, Willie, if you want ol' Spider, there, ta grow ya up some.... If you don't want ta be a virgin, no more, after tonight.... Now's you chance."
Willie just looks down at his hands in his lap. Al alternates his glance between Willie, Spider and Henri.
"Look at 'er Willie," Henri commands. "Look at 'er. Look at the way she's lookin' at you. She wants ya, Willie. She wants to grow you up, some. She wants ta make you a man."
Al watches as Willie slowly raises his head and Spider smiles at him. Willie quickly looks back down, pulling his head down farther into his jacket.
"Go ahead Willie," Henri says. "Take 'er. Take 'er inta that bedroom back there." He jerks his head over his shoulder to indicate the direction. "This is Free Love, boy," he says. "It's like all them dam' Hippies is always talkin' 'bout. Go on, take 'er."
After several more silent moments pass, Spider takes another drink from her Coke, sits the glass down and slowly rises. She straightens out the folds and wrinkles of her bathrobe, walks up to Willie's chair and holds out her hand. "Come on, Willie," she says, softly. "Let's go."
Slowly, Willie reaches one hand up toward her, then allows himself to be pulled to his feet.
Henri does not look at the woman and the boy as they walk past the end of the couch. His eyes remain fixed on the far wall, but unfocused. After a few moments, he lays his head back until it rests on the back of the couch. He heaves a deep sigh.
"Why did you do that, Dad?" Al asks from the corner where he sits.
Henri's head jerks up and he turns it toward Al. He looks at the boy curiously, as if he had forgotten his son was even in the room. He takes a drink from his Miller High Life.
"Don't call me 'Dad,'" Henri says, looking away. "I ain't yer 'dad.' I may be your father, but I ain't nobody's fuckin' 'daddy.' Spider's always tryin' to get her kids ta call me 'Daddy.' I ain't their daddy. I ain't nobody's fuckin' daddy."
"What should I call you, then?"
"Call me 'Chief.' Ever'body else does. Even Spider."
"We used to call you 'Daddy.' Me an' Willie. When we was little." Al takes another drink of his beer.
Henri waits a long time before he replies. "I know," he says, finally. "Your mama used to call me 'Daddy,' too." He leans his head back until it rests on the back of the couch again. The awkward position of his head and stretched neck muscles constricts his throat and raises the timber of his voice.
"She had this little dog... a Pekinese... that she usta call her 'baby.'" Henri chuckles. "This was before you even came along, boy. Anyway, she usta baby that dog somethin' awful. Called herself 'Mama' an' me 'Daddy' when she was talkin' to it. I always usta tell 'er I wasn't that goddam dog's 'daddy.'" Henri pauses and sighs again. "But then, when you come along... I didn't mind bein' called 'Daddy' so much. She called me that. 'Daddy.' I didn't mind it, then. But I mind it now."
There is silence in the room for a long time.
"You still didn't answer my question," Al says at last. "Why did you do that thing you just did? With Samantha an' Willie? And how come you keep callin' her a 'whore?'"
"'Cause she usta be. Still is, in my books. Once a whore, always a whore."
Al stares at his father. "Is that why you sent Willie into the bedroom with 'er? 'Cause she's a whore?"
"No," Henri says, slowly. "I sent him in there... because... 'cause she's a woman." He pauses. "And women,... need certain things." Henri raises his head again and looks directly at Al. "Things I can't provide no more. Know what I mean?"
Al looks at Henri for a long time. His brows are knitted as he contemplates the import of his father words. "Oh," he finally says, the sound barely audible. He can't meet Henri's eyes now, and looks away to stare at the floor.
Henri lays his head back down.
"You know," Henri says, "I guess I kinda lied to ya before. Little bit. When I said your mama went back to Oklahoma while my ship was overseas.... Well, she didn't. She didn't go back until I come back to th' States in '51." He raised his head back up. "Ya see, Al,... When I came back... I had a case o' syphilis. So, when I finally did get back after bein' gone so long.... Hell, I couldn't even make love to 'er. That's when she went back to Oklahoma."
Henri pauses a long time.
Al sits and stares open-mouthed at his father, wondering why the old man is telling him all this.
"Hell," Henri goes on, finally, "I guess I musta had the syph and the clap, both, a total o'... three?... no,... four times since I been in the Navy. Sent me up an' down the rate ladder a few times, let me tell you." He gave a mirthless chuckle. "And, even though the doctors is been able ta get me over it, ever' time.... Well, I guess it done took its toll. I just can't seem ta be able ta get it up no more."
Al can't look at his father, now, and turns to stare at the wall across from him again. "So,..." he says. "Since you can't... can't do it no more,... you decided to fix Samantha up with your son. That it? You want Willie to... to... to service 'er for you. Is that it?"
Henri raises his head again and looks over at Al. "What th' hell's buggin' you, Alphonse?" he asks. "Are you jealous o' your brother? Wish it was you, 'stead 'o him in there with 'er, right now? That it? You want 'er ta make you a man, too? Want 'er ta grow you up, some?"
"I'm grown up enough, already."
"I doubt that," Henri says, chuckling as he lays his head back down. "Aw, don't worry 'bout it, none, son. You'll get yer chance. Hell, you can have 'er tonight if ya don't mind sloppy seconds."
"You're disgusting," Al says finally, leaping to his feet. "Mom always told me you were a sick, disgusting,... filthy old man. Well, she was right. I never saw it before, when we came to visit ya. I guess you were on your good behavior, then. Now that she's gone, I reckon you think you can say an' do anything you dam' well please." Al reaches for his letter jacket on the back of the kitchen chair. He shoves one hand into a jacket sleeve. "Well, maybe you can. Daddy. But I don't have to stay here and listen to it."
Al has the letter jacket on, now, and heads toward the door, picking up his athletic bag as he passes through the foyer. "I won't be back," Al says. He goes through the front door and lets the screen door close behind him with a loud bang.
Henri continues to sit in the chair, unmoving except for the hand holding the beer bottle. The bottle lifts to Henri's lips and he drinks deeply, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down as he swallows.
At first glance, Al Bonet guesses the woman who answers the knock on the duplex door is about his own age: eighteen. But when she looks up through the straggly brown hair falling over her face and smiles a crooked smile, the yellow glow from the bare bulb above the stoop falls on two broken, discolored molars on the upper left side of her mouth. Al revises his estimate of her age upward about ten years.
"Henri Bonet?" she asks sweetly. "Sure, he lives here." The woman turns her head and yells over her shoulder, "Hey, Chief." her voice is a bellow, now, aimed toward the rear of the apartment. The voice is deeper; coarse and grating, like a bastard file scraped on the edge of a piece of sheetmetal. "Someone here ta see ya."
Her voice changes again as she opens the door wider. "Come on in," she says, girlish once more. "He'll be out in a minute."
Al stoops down to pick up his athletic bag, then turns to gently kick at Willie's feet. His brother is leaning against the brick wall beside the door and is almost asleep again. Willie blinks his eyes and looks around, as if trying to re-orient himself. It's close to midnight and Willie slept most of the way in from Columbia.
"We're here, Willie," Al says. "Go on in."
Groggily, Willie staggers through the door and Al follows, all the while trying to take in his surroundings and follow the movements of the woman ahead of them. Her ample posterior stretches the vertical ribs of the cloth robe, its swirling contours making a statement of her zaftig figure. Al recalls the glimpse of deep cleavage the front view afforded as she swung back the door. The room, he notices, smells of dirty diapers.
The woman turns and plops down indelicately on the couch and picks up a drink glass from the coffee table in front of it. "You boys from the Holland?" she asks, then takes a drink from the glass.
Willie grins sheepishly and sinks his head down into his shrugging shoulders, making him appear even younger than his sixteen years.
"No, ma'am," Al says, gravely. "I'm Al. This is Willie. We're Chief Bonet's sons."
"His boys?" she exclaims, sitting up, then reaching down to demurely pull the corner of her bathrobe over one exposed, cellulite-dimpled thigh. "Why, he told me y'all 'uz comin', but he didn't tell me when. Didn't think it 'uz gonna be this soon." She turns toward the back rooms of the apartment and again the foghorn bellows. "Chief. Get yer fat ass out here. Someone ta see ya."
The chameleon act continues as the woman turns back toward Al. She's all sweetness and light again. "Y'all drive straight on through from Oklahoma?"
"No, ma'am," Al says. "We stopped in Chattanooga last night. Stayed the night before last over in Arkansas, then took a ferry 'cross the Mississippi yesterday morning. Willie wanted to see the Mississippi in the daylight."
"Oh, yeah?" She turns toward Willie and he grins back at her, then lowers his eyes. "How'd ya like it?" she asks.
"It's biiiiig," he says with an embarrassed laugh.
Still giggling, Willie plops down in the easy chair set at right angles to the couch. Al hangs his letter jacket on the back of a kitchen chair in one corner of the room, then sits on the front edge of the chair's seat.
"It sure is big, all right," the woman says. "Biggest damn' river I ever seen." She looks from one of the boys to the other, smiling slightly. Willie can't meet her glance but Al stares at her stoically.
Her cheeks are smooth, round and slightly freckled, he notices. Her lips are full and softly formed. Her eyes are green.
"They call me Spider, by the way," she says. "Name's really 'Samantha,' but they been callin' me 'Spider' ever since I got this." She holds up the back of one forearm to show the boys a large black arachnid tattoo. "Me an' my kids live here with your dad."
"You shackin' up with 'im?" Al asks, hoping he's using the vernacular correctly.
Spider turns sharply and peers at Al through her hair for a while before answering. "Yeah," she says, throatily, then pulls a cigarette from the pack on the coffee table and places it between her lips. "We're shackin' up." She uses a cigarette lighter and closes the lid with a loud snap.
"Hey," Spider says, suddenly sweet again. "I was real sorry ta hear about y'all's mama."
Finally, Al lowers his gaze. "Well," he says. "It don't matter, really. She's probably better off, now. She'd been sick a long time."
"Oh. Did she have cancer, or somethin'?"
"No, ma'am. Cirrhosis of the liver."
"Yeah," a gruff voice says from the doorway into the hall. "Goddam half-breed Injun bitch done drank herself to death. Just like her old man."
Chief Boatswain's Mate Henri Bonet stands in the doorway. His stained skivy shirt stretches across his protruding stomach and the boys can see the fouled anchor tattoo on his right arm. Under the belly, the khaki uniform pants are wrinkled, like they'd been slept in.
It's easy to see Al's sandy brown hair and square jaw favors his father's appearance. Willie's features are darker and softer.
Henri travels unsteadily toward the couch where Spider sits and plops down heavily on it. "Goddam Injuns can't hold their liquor," he says. "Ain't like us Cajuns." He gives a long, rattling belch and the air is saturated with the aroma of stale beer.
"Hi, boys," Henri says at last. "How ya'll doin'?"
"Just fine, Pop," Willie says with a smile.
Al just glares at the man from under his lowered eyebrows.
"How's yer Gramma?"
"Gettin' old," Willie says. "You know Aunt Bev an' Uncle Paul put her in the Rest Home, don't you?"
Henri nods, looking glum. "Well, I see ya'll done found this place all right," Henri says. This observation effectively stifles conversation in the room.
Henri sits on the couch and stares sleepily at the rug. Both Al and Willie dart their eyes around the room, taking in its features; familiarizing themselves with their new surroundings. After a few minutes, Spider picks up her drink glass from the coffee table. She takes a drink, then swirls the ice in the glass. They all hear the tinkling of ice cubes.
"What grade you in this year, Willie?" Spider asks, setting the glass back on the table.
"A Junior."
"Well, I hear the schools here in Charleston are pretty good," Spider says. "You play football, too, don't you?"
"Did last year. I was a wide receiver on offense an' a safety on defense."
"Willie made the varsity last year at Pawhuska," Al volunteered. "He was one of only two sophomores on the team."
"Yeah," Willie said. "An' me an' Al was both safeties. They called us the Warbonnets. Big Warbonnet and Little Warbonnet. We was pretty good."
"But not good enough ta get no scholarship nowhere," Henri says. He raises his eyes and looks at Al, who returns the stare. "Or did ya get offered one, somewhere, and just didn't take it?"
"No," Al says. "I didn't get offered any scholarship."
"So I guess you expect me ta pay for college. Huh?"
"I don't expect you to pay for nothin'," Al says. "I ain't goin' ta college."
Henri stares at his son for a long time, then finally turns his eyes away. "Figures," he says.
Both father and son decide now is a good time to look at the walls.
Spider takes another drink from her glass, then begins cleaning her nails with a nail file she picks up from the coffee table. Her eyes occasionally flick upward as she works, flitting between Henri, Willie and Al.
"So, what are you gonna do?" Henri asks, after a while. “Sit here on yer ass until they draft ya?”
Al shrugs. “Well, if that happens, it happens.”
“You know what that’ll mean, don’t ya? Vietnam. They’ll send your sorry ass right to the fuckin’ jungle. Then they’ll shoot the son-of-a-bitch off.” Henri leans forward to peer intently at his son. “But let me tell you somethin’, Alphonse. You don’t want to go to no ‘Nam. You don’t want to go there at all.”
“Don’t seem to have hurt you none,” Al says. “Like when you was over there on them PT boats and stuff.”
“PBRs,” Henri says, disgustedly. “River Patrol Boats. Or Patrol Boat, River: PBR, the way the Navy abbreviates things.” He leans back on the sofa again. “But I tell you somethin', son, you don’t wanna go over there.”
"OK,” Al says. “I heard ya. Guess I'll just get me a job, then. Somewhere."
Henri nods and silence returns to the room.
"Tell ya what I'll do," Henri says after a while. "I know some guys, yeah. We'll see if we can't get you into the Shipbuilders' Local, then get ya on as a helper out at the shipyard at the Naval Station." He turns and looks at Al, who returns the look. "I think a Union card'll run ya 'bout two-fifty. I'll loan it to you, then you can pay me back after ya get hired."
"OK," Al says. "Thanks."
“That way,” Henri says, “You can get classified 1-Y. Defense worker. Only get called up in a national emergency.”
Henri stands up. "You wanna beer?" he asks Al.
"Can I have one?" Al asks in return.
"Sure. Eighteen's legal age for beer here in South Carolina. Same as Kansas. And I know how you an' you friends usta slip up there to Sedan from Pawhuska ever' chance you got to buy beer."
"Where'd you hear that?"
"Yer Grandma. She kept me posted 'bout you guys."
Al grins and nods his head.
Henri stands up and starts for the kitchen. He pauses and looks at Al, who is still sitting on the edge of the kitchen chair in the corner. "Well, come on, if you want a beer," Henri tells Al. "I ain't no fuckin' waiter."
Al gets up and follows his father into the kitchen.
After Henri gets two bottles of Miller High Life out of the refrigerator, he opens them both with a church key and hands one to Al, then stands at the kitchen sink, leaning his backside against its curled porcelain edge. He stares down at the green-tiled floor of the kitchen.
Al stands awkwardly in front of Henri, self-consciously sipping on the beer.
"You know," Henri says, his voice at times lapsing into a hint of his native cajun sing-song, "your mother never really could hold her liquor, no. Her an' me usta go out drinkin' ever' once in a while. She'd always try to keep up wit' me -- drinking shots and chasin 'em wit' beer." He pauses and half smiles, his eyes unfocused. "Hell, wasn't no time 't all 'fore she was under the goddam table -- just drunk on her ass. Then she'd wanna dance." The Chief takes a drink of his beer and stands there, looking down the neck of the bottle. He sighs. "So we'd get out there on the dance floor, but it wasn't really dancin'. It was more just me jus' movin' 'round, holdin' her up. Ever'ting was a slow dance wit' her. Didn't matter what the band was playin'. She was there with 'er hands 'round my neck an' we'd go shufflin' 'round. 'Course, th' other men'd try to cut in, thinkin' they might be able to take advantage o' this drunk woman, but I never let 'em, no."
"Is... uh,..." Al starts out, slowly. "Is that why you busted up? Got divorced? Because o' her gettin' drunk an' all?"
Henri looks up at his son. "What your mama tell ya 'bout that?"
"Not much," Al replies. "She just said you couldn't get along. But I always wondered...." He lets the sentence taper away.
Henri shakes his head. "No. It wasn't her drinkin'. It had more ta do with me goin' off to the Far East. The destroyer I was in got sent over to Korea. We'd just run back an’ forth 'tween Korea an' Yokosuka. Only got back stateside for a little bit back in '51, then went right back out three months later." He paused and thought a moment. "She just couldn't take it. Went back to Oklahoma."
"Well, didn't you try...."
"I did. Tried ever'ting. Even took 30 days leave an' went to Pawhuska ta see 'er." He gives a half-grunting laugh. "Hell, how do ya think Willie got here?"
Henri takes another drink of his beer and looks away from Al, toward the refrigerator and the wall behind it. "Even put in for transfer to some kinda shore duty, somewhere, just so's we could be together." He shakes his head and goes on, slowly. "But they don't need Bo'sun's Mates on shore stations much. An' hell, I'd only just made 2nd Class.... Didn't have enough time-in-grade... or even time in the service, for that matter... to qualify for anyt'ing 'cept a shipboard berth."
"So you split up?"
"So we split up," Henri says, nodding. "She filed for divorce just after Willie was born." He looks back up at Al and takes another drink of beer. He shrugs. "But, what the hell. That's a sailor's life." Henri stands up straight again and heads back toward the living room.
Al, in his father's wake, can think of about a lot of things to say or ask, but he can't get any of them out before they're back in the presence of Willie and Spider.
Willie sits huddled in the chair, his head down between his shoulders again. He looks up as the other two enter the room and they can see his swarthy complexion blushing a bright crimson.
"What the hell's this whore been doin' to ya, Willie?
"Nothin'," Spider says with a laugh. "I was just askin' 'im about his girl friends. Then he goes an' tells me he's a virgin."
"No, I never," Willie says, giggling. "You drug it outta me."
Henri gives a little laugh as the two men reseat themselves in their former positions. Al can't really tell if his father's laugh has any humor behind it or not.
"Well, that ain't all she'll drag outta ya if ya give 'er a chance," Henri says. "She'll roll ya an' leave ya in th' gutter, boy. That's what whores do ta sailors. Ain't that right?" he says, his eyes flicking over in Spider's direction. "They roll 'em an' leave 'em in th' gutter."
"Oh, hell," Spider says. "I ain't never rolled a sailor in my life."
"Says you," Henri says. "But you were a whore, weren't ya?"
"That's right," Spider says. "That's right, I was." She directs her answer more toward Willie and Al than Henri but looks directly at none of them. "Worked up at 'The Pines.' That usta be a whorehouse, up north o' town, there. It's closed, now."
"Hell," Henri says. "You know what she done first time she met me? It was in a bar down on the strip, just outside the gate o' the Naval Station. Hell, she started blowin' me. Right there in the bar."
Spider laughs, swirling her drink with her finger. She smiles slightly as Henri continues, looking up at Willie as Henri tells the tale.
"I was dressed in civies that night," Henri says. "I had on a maroon dress shirt and under it I had on one o' those little turtleneck collar things... What d'ya call 'em?..."
"A dickey," Spider says.
"Yeah. A dickey," Henri goes on. "Anyway, I had one o' them on an' a jacket... er, a blazer over it, an' all. Ol' Spider, there, she tells me I look like I'm a priest." Henri laughs. "Can you 'magine that? Me? A goddam priest?"
"Well, hell," Spider says, "ya did kinda look like one. 'Course, I 'uz drunk then, like I always was in those days." She holds up her drink glass and shakes it, slightly, so the ice tinkles against the sides again. "But this's all I drink, now. Coca-Cola."
"Anyway," she goes on, laughing, "I'd always said I wanted ta give a priest a blow job, someday, an' I figured that 'uz my chance."
"So she ain't just a whore, Willie," Henri says. "She's a sacrilegious whore, at that." Henri laughs again, then looks over at Willie from under his shaggy, graying eyebrows.
Al, still sitting on the edge of the kitchen chair, notices his father's smile is no more than a baring of gritted teeth.
"But, anyway, Willie, if you want ol' Spider, there, ta grow ya up some.... If you don't want ta be a virgin, no more, after tonight.... Now's you chance."
Willie just looks down at his hands in his lap. Al alternates his glance between Willie, Spider and Henri.
"Look at 'er Willie," Henri commands. "Look at 'er. Look at the way she's lookin' at you. She wants ya, Willie. She wants to grow you up, some. She wants ta make you a man."
Al watches as Willie slowly raises his head and Spider smiles at him. Willie quickly looks back down, pulling his head down farther into his jacket.
"Go ahead Willie," Henri says. "Take 'er. Take 'er inta that bedroom back there." He jerks his head over his shoulder to indicate the direction. "This is Free Love, boy," he says. "It's like all them dam' Hippies is always talkin' 'bout. Go on, take 'er."
After several more silent moments pass, Spider takes another drink from her Coke, sits the glass down and slowly rises. She straightens out the folds and wrinkles of her bathrobe, walks up to Willie's chair and holds out her hand. "Come on, Willie," she says, softly. "Let's go."
Slowly, Willie reaches one hand up toward her, then allows himself to be pulled to his feet.
Henri does not look at the woman and the boy as they walk past the end of the couch. His eyes remain fixed on the far wall, but unfocused. After a few moments, he lays his head back until it rests on the back of the couch. He heaves a deep sigh.
"Why did you do that, Dad?" Al asks from the corner where he sits.
Henri's head jerks up and he turns it toward Al. He looks at the boy curiously, as if he had forgotten his son was even in the room. He takes a drink from his Miller High Life.
"Don't call me 'Dad,'" Henri says, looking away. "I ain't yer 'dad.' I may be your father, but I ain't nobody's fuckin' 'daddy.' Spider's always tryin' to get her kids ta call me 'Daddy.' I ain't their daddy. I ain't nobody's fuckin' daddy."
"What should I call you, then?"
"Call me 'Chief.' Ever'body else does. Even Spider."
"We used to call you 'Daddy.' Me an' Willie. When we was little." Al takes another drink of his beer.
Henri waits a long time before he replies. "I know," he says, finally. "Your mama used to call me 'Daddy,' too." He leans his head back until it rests on the back of the couch again. The awkward position of his head and stretched neck muscles constricts his throat and raises the timber of his voice.
"She had this little dog... a Pekinese... that she usta call her 'baby.'" Henri chuckles. "This was before you even came along, boy. Anyway, she usta baby that dog somethin' awful. Called herself 'Mama' an' me 'Daddy' when she was talkin' to it. I always usta tell 'er I wasn't that goddam dog's 'daddy.'" Henri pauses and sighs again. "But then, when you come along... I didn't mind bein' called 'Daddy' so much. She called me that. 'Daddy.' I didn't mind it, then. But I mind it now."
There is silence in the room for a long time.
"You still didn't answer my question," Al says at last. "Why did you do that thing you just did? With Samantha an' Willie? And how come you keep callin' her a 'whore?'"
"'Cause she usta be. Still is, in my books. Once a whore, always a whore."
Al stares at his father. "Is that why you sent Willie into the bedroom with 'er? 'Cause she's a whore?"
"No," Henri says, slowly. "I sent him in there... because... 'cause she's a woman." He pauses. "And women,... need certain things." Henri raises his head again and looks directly at Al. "Things I can't provide no more. Know what I mean?"
Al looks at Henri for a long time. His brows are knitted as he contemplates the import of his father words. "Oh," he finally says, the sound barely audible. He can't meet Henri's eyes now, and looks away to stare at the floor.
Henri lays his head back down.
"You know," Henri says, "I guess I kinda lied to ya before. Little bit. When I said your mama went back to Oklahoma while my ship was overseas.... Well, she didn't. She didn't go back until I come back to th' States in '51." He raised his head back up. "Ya see, Al,... When I came back... I had a case o' syphilis. So, when I finally did get back after bein' gone so long.... Hell, I couldn't even make love to 'er. That's when she went back to Oklahoma."
Henri pauses a long time.
Al sits and stares open-mouthed at his father, wondering why the old man is telling him all this.
"Hell," Henri goes on, finally, "I guess I musta had the syph and the clap, both, a total o'... three?... no,... four times since I been in the Navy. Sent me up an' down the rate ladder a few times, let me tell you." He gave a mirthless chuckle. "And, even though the doctors is been able ta get me over it, ever' time.... Well, I guess it done took its toll. I just can't seem ta be able ta get it up no more."
Al can't look at his father, now, and turns to stare at the wall across from him again. "So,..." he says. "Since you can't... can't do it no more,... you decided to fix Samantha up with your son. That it? You want Willie to... to... to service 'er for you. Is that it?"
Henri raises his head again and looks over at Al. "What th' hell's buggin' you, Alphonse?" he asks. "Are you jealous o' your brother? Wish it was you, 'stead 'o him in there with 'er, right now? That it? You want 'er ta make you a man, too? Want 'er ta grow you up, some?"
"I'm grown up enough, already."
"I doubt that," Henri says, chuckling as he lays his head back down. "Aw, don't worry 'bout it, none, son. You'll get yer chance. Hell, you can have 'er tonight if ya don't mind sloppy seconds."
"You're disgusting," Al says finally, leaping to his feet. "Mom always told me you were a sick, disgusting,... filthy old man. Well, she was right. I never saw it before, when we came to visit ya. I guess you were on your good behavior, then. Now that she's gone, I reckon you think you can say an' do anything you dam' well please." Al reaches for his letter jacket on the back of the kitchen chair. He shoves one hand into a jacket sleeve. "Well, maybe you can. Daddy. But I don't have to stay here and listen to it."
Al has the letter jacket on, now, and heads toward the door, picking up his athletic bag as he passes through the foyer. "I won't be back," Al says. He goes through the front door and lets the screen door close behind him with a loud bang.
Henri continues to sit in the chair, unmoving except for the hand holding the beer bottle. The bottle lifts to Henri's lips and he drinks deeply, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down as he swallows.
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