Chapter 20E

One day in early October when I came home very late from school, Mom said as I entered the kitchen, "Oh, there you are. You missed Martha Jane's call. I told her I didn't know where you were.

I said tonelessly, "Okay." I opened the refrigerator, looking for something to eat.

Mom stood with her hands in the dishwater. "That reminds me, she called a couple of weeks ago, and you weren't here then, either. I guess I forgot all about it."

I took a milk carton out of the refrigerator. "Hm. okay."

"Where've you been all day? It's after supper."

I opened an upper door of the kitchen cabinets and fetched a clean glass. I said dully, "Had to stay late in the library."

"And JoAnn called."

"All right." I squeezed open the top of the milk carton.

Mom got a dish towel and dried her arms and hands. "Oh, well... Martha Jane's gonna be here the last Sunday in October with her husband, you know, that guy from Connecticut she married. We're gonna have a little barbecue out back on the patio. Your daddy's out there repairin' the barbecue stand. Anyway, you gonna be here that Sunday afternoon? Last weekend in October?"

"Yeah," I said, pouring a glass of milk. "I guess."

"You gonna bring JoAnn? Martha Jane never met JoAnn. Martha Jane says she want to meet her."

"Yeah, I guess so." I set the milk bottle down loudly. "Her name's not Martha Jane. It's Martha."

"I tell ya, that girl's stepdaddy, that Mr. Buchanan, he's a hoot, ain't he? He won't even let her and her husband come to his house. I tell ya, some of these rich folks are nuts. I cain't figure him out, I thought he wanted his daughter married. Anyway, Martha Jane will be here, and her mother and her sister Evelyn will be here, they're gonna sneak away from Mr. Buchanan and be here that Sunday. And Evelyn Graham's husband, too. She's married, too, you know. Some guy at the First National Bank."

"That's nice," I said as I emptied the unused milk from the glass into the sink. Nothing had set well in my stomach for days. "I'll be here, I guess."

"Well, it'll start at four-thirty or so, we figure it'll be nice outside and not too cool by then..."

As she rambled, I went into my room without a word and closed the door. Many of my belongings had been packed in boxes standing against one wall. My family was preparing to start moving in a few days to an older but better neighborhood in Memphis, near Southwestern College. Many of the Lobianco family members lived in that area, with several related clans living next door to each other. Our own neighborhood had deteriorated rather early and was quickly being overrun by lowerclass residents who displaced the original homeowners.

Because we were moving to a different part of town, I quit my small paper route. I would have quit the paper route, anyway. It had worn me out and had grown too large to be serviced in a few minutes. And I had proven myself as a hard worker to the Lobianco's and the Ricci's, who were beginning to prefer that I spend more time at Christian Brothers and keep up my grades for college.

I was about to quit my weekends at the grocery store. I had told my mother about it, but hadn't mentioned it to Tony. When my mother asked why I planned to quit the store, I replied morosely, "I'm tired. And I don't wanna give any more."

She balked at my answer and asked what I meant.

I said, "It means I'm tired. I'm worn out. That's all."

In my room that night in October, I sat at my desk and looked around for anything that might be left of Martha. I had destroyed her letters -- burned them in the garbage can out back, along with the pictures and articles and everything that I'd brought home from New York. I had stirred the ashes and dumped more paper on them and burned it all again. The burning included poems, notes, and anything in my bedroom that would remind me of Martha. I left the typewriter at my Aunt Frances' house, and bought a smaller one. Of course, there was still the rest of Memphis to contend with; every car trip into the Memphis State area brought back another set of memories.

All that remained, in the small top drawer of the desk hutch, was her last letter. It arrived about two weeks after the phone call. It had a return address in Riverside, Connecticut. It was a thick envelope. I could tell that Martha must have had to fold the flap firmly in order to seal it. I had never opened it. The seal remained intact. Now and then I would look at the envelope and wonder what was inside and wonder if I should get mixed up in it by opening the thing and reading the letter.

Often in my bed at night, as I tried to sleep, I would see in my mind the flaming, smoking letters in the big metal drum in our back yard. I remembered the night I gathered them and all the other remnants, going through my room meticulously to make certain I'd overlooked nothing. I did it without pause, without thinking. Even as I was doing it, I didn't know why. I vaguely recall Fiore saying "You can't go back, only ahead." I knew of no other way to go ahead. If I felt an emotion welling up, I thought about something else as I gathered and burned the memories. I allowed only unrelated thoughts to enter my head. I told myself that if I could ignore pain when I worked out, I could ignore pain any time.

The unopened envelope had survived by accident. When it arrived I placed it in a spot apart from the others, intending to open it later. Each time I brought out the envelope, it remained unopened.

Later that week in October, my family started the move to the new house. My room was one of the first to be emptied. Anything and everything that was left in my closet got thrown out.

The next Friday morning at five AM I got into my Ford to drive all the way out to throw the paper route in the Macon Road area for the last time. The husky, crew-cut, bull-necked teenager I'd trained for the last two weeks to take over the route was waiting in front of his home when I picked him up. The kid's name was Barry. Another kid waited with him, a thin, mop-headed kid who stood looking half asleep at the curb when I drove up. The thin kid had a small paper bag in his hand.

Barry stuck his face in the window when I pulled to a stop. He said, "Hey, I got my buddy O'Dell with me. He's gonna go out with us, all right?"

I said, "All right, c'mon. I wanna go back home to sleep."

Barry turned to the other kid. "Hey, O'Dell! Wake up!" He opened the rear door of the car. "Git in the back seat and don't fuckin' bother nobody."

The kid named O'Dell looked eighteen or nineteen. He clumsily crawled into the rear seat and sat slumped and closed-eyed. I smelled beer. The kid's head swayed drunkenly. His face was red and gaunt, his eyes unfocussed.

I threw Barry a glare as he got into the front seat. Barry said, "Go on. He's all right. He'll just sit back there and shut up, don't worry."

I asked, throwing the car into first gear and starting off, "What's wrong with 'im?"

"Aww, got himself all fucked up. Showed up at my place a half hour ago, all fucked up. Cain't leave 'im there, he'll just pass out in the front yard."

In the back seat, O'Dell spread the paper sack open and rolled the top down to expose the top of a bottle of beer. He took a sip. He swallowed, his head rocking and swaying. He mumbled, "Fucked me up."

Barry said, "Shut up, O'Dell."

O'Dell muttered louder, "Bitch fucked me up."

Barry turned halfway around in the front seat. He said angrily, "O'Dell, I told you. You don't shut up, we're stoppin' this car. And you can finish that fuckin' beer in the middle of Given Avenue."

O'Dell looked out the window. "Fucked me up good. Bitch."

Barry muttered, "Him and his goddamn girlfriend." He glanced at me. "See what pussy does to ya?"

O'Dell was quiet for a moment. Then his face scrunched up and he grimaced and cried for a second, then he swallowed hard. He grit his teeth and took another swig of beer, and he moaned tearfully, "Bitch!"

Barry turned all the way around in the seat. He yelled, shaking a fist at O'Dell in back, "Listen, you pussy whipped piss ant, I tole you, SHUT UP! You gonna be with us, you gonna shut up!"

O'Dell slurred weakly, "Right. All right." He gazed out the window.

Barry settled into the front seat again. "Damn pussy whipped piss ant let a pussy fuck him up. Just go find another one, goddammit. Find another one. Pussy whipped piss ant."

I glanced at O'Dell in the rear view mirror. A tear ran down his red, sweaty face. I looked at the road ahead. I thought: I won't let myself become that. Never.

The following Friday afternoon, I drove after school to visit my Uncle Johnny in his hospital room at Baptist Hospital. He'd had an operation on his hip, the hip that made him walk with a stiff limp and kept him from taking strolls longer than a few dozen yards at a time.

While my deceased father's sister, my Aunt Catherine, took a break in the hospital coffee shop, I sat in a chair beside Uncle Johnny's bed. It seemed odd to see this elderly but large, distinguished looking man with his silver hair and twinkling eyes lying listlessly in a bed in the bare hospital room. But he smiled, and there was always that light in his eyes as if nothing had ever gone wrong.

He said, "You ain't been actin' right, Speedy, 'round the Tremont. Look like you're in a bad mood about somethin'."

I said, "No, not really. Overworked, I guess."

He grinned at me. "You in love or somethin'?"

I blushed.

"You been chasin' a squaw, Little Beaver?"

I looked out the window across the room. "Ah, I dunno. Seems like the squaw might be taking off to elsewhere."

He chuckled. "Maybe not. You don't never know." He sighed, the way he always sighed, a weariness built up over years, but he always recovered with that twinkle in his eye. "You don't never know. You be careful, now. You might get her and she'd turn out to be like your Aunt Frances." He laughed, wheezing tiredly. He said, "Aw, she's all right. Good lady. Loves everybody. Little hard to get along with, that's all. Cain't do anything about that. Ain't got no control over it. Only the good lord can change that."

"Well... I think I'll be all right."

"Aw, sure. Yeah, Speedy, you'll be all right. You gonna turn out all right. You gonna turn out better 'n most of 'em. You'll turn out fine, you'll find a good woman. You won't be no wife beater like your Uncle Glenn. Won't be no crook like your Uncle Frank. Won't be no drunk like your other Uncle Frank." He looked away, musing aloud, "Lots of bad ways a person could turn out. You won't be like them. Not like your Uncle Frank, your daddy's brother. Money done somethin' to that man. Money made him mean. You won't be like that, 'cause you take after your daddy. Walk like him, talk like him. Look like him. You gonna be just like your daddy."

He looked at me. "Lemme tell you somethin' about your daddy. There's a lot you don't know, a lot that don't make any difference, ain't worth talkin' about. He had a lot to put up with. He made some mistakes. Mistakes that might have made him go mean. But that ain't what he did." Uncle Johnny gazed toward the window. "That ain't what happened. What happened was, he wanted to go one way, but history went another. Last time I saw your daddy, I went down to Central Station, when he left. Had that big troop train down there. Three of 'em, three trains, lined up. He was standin' there by that big iron gate, where you go out. You know that big iron gate? You seen it, it's still there. He said, 'Uncle Johnny, I volunteered for this. Nobody wants me to do this. But ain't nothin' much I can do for Speedy if I stay here. I got business with Hitler.'" As he looked out the window, a sadness came over him. "That was your daddy. That's what he was like. That was the last time I saw him."

That Friday night, after JoAnn and I left a movie, I drove to a Holiday Inn in East Memphis. I had talked an older cousin of mine into renting the room earlier in the day, and paid him for it. I picked up the room keys before I picked up JoAnn that night.

JoAnn asked when I pulled into the parking lot, "Where we goin'?"

"Here," I said, pulling up the hand brake.

"What's goin' on in here?"

I looked at her. "We're what's going on. I got a room for us."

She frowned, tilting her head. "For what?"

"What do think for what? So we can take our clothes off for a change."

She fiddled with her hands in her lap, and looked out at the motel. She said, "Oh, I -- Listen, I don't know."

"What's wrong?"

"Well, this is so tacky." She looked at me, incredulous. "It's tacky. You really wanna do this?"

"You don't want to?"

"No!" She looked at the place again. She said anxiously, "Steven, I don't. I don't. It doesn't feel right. It's -- Nice people don't do this."

I sighed, getting very angry, counting to three, five, six. "All right. Whaddya want to do?"

She said, eyeing me fearfully, "Well, we can park. We always do. We can find a place. There's lots of safe --"

"All right," I said, cutting her off and starting the engine. I backed up quickly, then took off with the tires squealing.

She watched me while I drove, my eyes straight ahead. "Steven, what's the matter? I mean, you have me scared, what's wrong with you?"

"Nothin'."

"Well, you... Listen, I'd do it with you, but... you know, let me think it about it. All right?"

She eyed me warily from across the seat as I drove along, headed for the heavily forested side roads of the pricey Shady Grove section of town, where she lived. After a moment she moved closer to me and put a hand on my leg.

She asked, "Did I do somethin'?"

I shook my head no. "It's all right. I just wanted, you know, to do it right."

"Well, I -- Well, could you just let me know? I mean, you sprung it on me. It's -- " She folded her arms across her bosom. She gazed out the passenger window. She said, "It's the kind of thing cheaters do. You know? The honky-tonk crowd."

"Okay. It's fine, it's okay."

She gazed at me for a moment. She said softly, "You been like this for days. What is it?"

I clinched my jaws. I let out a slow breath. "Nothin'."

"Well, can you just settle down a little bit? I don't want to if you're gonna be like this."

I nodded. I calmed down. "You're right. You're right, don't worry." I glanced at her and blew her a kiss.

We parked on a dead quiet, dead end street in the far eastern suburbs near her home in Shady Grove where we knew no traffic flowed. We'd been there before. We made out for a few minutes and I was loving and slow. When she lay down and removed her panties I raised her skirt and looked at her lovely legs and pussy. She was trim and soft and warm, her pelvis taut, her supple, smoothly muscled thighs parted, her dark, prominent furrow half covered with a fuzzy veil of soft, sepia fur, her mild, healthy young woman's aroma lushly enticing. I wanted to bury my face in her cunt. I wanted to suck her clit and make her cum eight times and then I wanted to die fucking her.

I kissed her knee, and she gave a little gasp and smiled, her eyes closed. I kissed higher, lightly, letting my lips linger in delicious flesh, letting her flesh soak into my lips. She gasped again. My lips moved higher. I felt her hand on my head, slightly resisting. I kissed high on her inner thigh.

She whispered shyly, "Steven, what are you doin'?"

I kissed her pelvis, and inch from her cunt.

She pulled her legs together, blushing, smiling nervously. "Steven, stop that." She gave a little laugh. "Don't, silly. She smiled sweetly down at me. "C'mon, don't tease. You know we don't do that."

I sat up. I took a deep breath. I closed my zipper. I said, "Get up."

"What's the matter?"

"Get up. We're leavin'."

"Steven... !"

I pulled her skirt down and picked up her panties off the seat and handed them to her. "Get up. C'mon."

She sat up, folding her legs and pulling herself up against the driver's window. She looked hurt and confused. "But what'd I do?"

I moved to the passenger side and opened the door. Wordlessly, I got out of the car. I slammed the door shut angrily, jolting the car, and through the window I saw her eyes pop open with a start. Then she glowered at me darkly. I walked around the front to the driver's side. While she got herself together in the front seat I lit a cigarette. I took a couple of puffs. She sat in the front seat, pouting, looking beautiful, waiting, glancing at me, looking around. I fumed silently. I counted to fifty, puffing on the cigarette. I took a last puff and got into the car. She was silent. I started the engine, turned around, and started for her house.