Now, it’d be real nice here to tell you that Cindy took one look at me in my Army clothes (face it, might as well get some mileage out of my paratrooper uniform) and fell right in love with me. But she didn’t. For one thing, she was the date of Michael Henning, whose old man was president of the oldest bank in the Valley. And Michael himself was no slouch, either—took the basketball team twice to state, and had a swimming scholarship waiting for him at any of three Big 10 schools.
No, she didn’t rush into my arms, but she did look me over. Subtly. Very subtly. Because that was her style. But a few times our gazes met over the flickering flames and—there was some mutual interest. No doubt about it.
She left early, and on Michael Henning’s arm, but just before she vanished into the prairie darkness surrounding the bonfire, she looked at me a last time and I knew I hadn’t been imagining things earlier.
Three weeks went by before I saw her again, during which time I carried her in my mind like a talisman. Always there, burning brightly.
Autumn had come to our small town. On sunny mornings, I walked down to the state employment office to take aptitude tests and to see if they’d found anything for me yet. Then I’d drift over to the library and check out a book by Hemingway or John Steinbeck or Robert Stone. They were my favorite writers. Most of the time, I’d read in the town square, the fierce fall leaves of red and gold and bronze scraping along the walk, pushed by a chill wind. The bandstand was closed for the season and even the two men on the Civil War statues appeared to be hunkering down for winter.
That was where I had my first real talk with her, sitting on a park bench, reading Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle.
She was cutting through the park on her way back to school. I heard her and looked up.
She looked quickly away, but I could tell she’d been staring at me.
“Hey,” I said, “you’re Cindy Brasher, right?”
She grinned. “You were at the bonfire party? You’re Ted’s brother, right?”
I walked her back to school. And after school, I just happened to be sitting in Lymon’s, which is the Rexall drugstore downtown where the kids all go, and where Cindy had told me she just might be if I stopped in. Unfortunately, I’d no more than picked up my cherry Coke and started walking back to the booths than Michael Henning showed up and sat down next to her.
Things went on like this for another month. I got a job selling men’s clothes, just a temporary sort of thing, at Wallingham’s Fine Fashions, and I also got a loan from my dad so I could pay down on a three-year-old Pontiac convertible, a red job that shined up real well.
Of course, my main interest remained Cindy. We saw each other three, four times a week, but always in a sneaky kind of way—one time we sat in the grassy railroad tracks behind G&H Supermarket—and there was never anything romantic. She told me that she was in the process of breaking up with Michael Henning and that he was having a hard time with it. She said he cried a lot and one time even threatened to kill himself. She said she felt terribly guilty and responsible and that Michael was a fine person whom people disliked just because he came from money and that she wished she still loved him but she didn’t and that nothing between us could happen until her break with Michael was final and official and she wouldn’t blame me if I’d go find somebody else, having to wait around like this and all, but of course she knew better. By now there was nobody else for me and never would be.
To be honest, I felt a little guilty about Michael Henning, too. From what Cindy said, she’d been drifting away from Michael before I got back from the Army, but my presence certainly accelerated things. Back in eleventh grade I’d been going with Laurie McKee, a very appealing blonde, and she dumped me for a senior named Sam Hampton. I didn’t take it well. I drank a lot and got into a lot of fights and one night I even ran away from home, loading up my car and taking off down the highway like a character in a Kerouac novel. I came back four days later, broke and aggrieved and scared as hell of just about everything. That was why I finished up my high school at St. Pius, the Catholic school. My folks weren’t all that crazy about papists, but they knew I’d never make it through Consolidated, having to see Laurie every day. As far as that went, that was no magic formula, either, I was still depressed a lot, and still occasionally hinted that I’d like to take my dad’s hunting rifle down and do a Hemingway on myself, and still had notions of taking Sam Hampton out into the woods and kicking his ass real good.
So I pretty much knew what Michael Henning was going through and, believe me, that’s not something I’d wish on anybody.
The breakup didn’t come until after Christmas. The kids all joked that she’d wanted to drag it out so she could get a nice Christmas present, but in fact when Michael gave her that brand-new coat rumored to have cost $500, she told him that it wasn’t right that he’d give her something like this, and would he please take it back?
The same night he took it back, he showed up on my parents’ doorstep and asked me if I wanted to go for a ride. I had a lot of quick spooky premonitions. He might have a gun in his car and blow my brains out. Or he might drive us both off a cliff up at Manning State Park. Or he might drag me over to Cindy’s house for a real humiliating scene.
But I went. Poor bastard was shaking so bad I couldn’t say no, big lanky, handsome kid who looked real scared.
Christmas night, the highways were empty. You saw the occasional cannonball sixteen-wheeler whooshing through the midwestern night, but that was about all. We drove west, paralleling the state park. And we drove fast. He had a Trans Am that did 110 and you barely had to turn the ignition on.
And then he started crying. Weeping, really. And so hard that he pulled off the road and I just sat there and watched him and listened to him, not knowing what to do or say.
“I got to tell you something, Spence,” he said, Spencer being my last name, and Spence being forever my nickname, “I just want you to take care of her. I want you to be good to her, you understand?”
I nodded.
“She doesn’t think much of herself, Spence, which you’ve probably noticed.”
I nodded again. I had noticed that.
“That old man of hers—boy, would I like to get him in a fight sometime—he always told her she wasn’t worth shit, and now she believes that. She ever tell you how he’d beat her?”
I shook my head. She hadn’t told me that.
“She used to come out to the car with black eyes sometimes, and once she had a compound fracture from where he’d thrown her into a wall, and another time he cracked her ankle and she was hobbling around almost a week before I got her to go to the doctor’s.”
It was real strange, the two of us there, talking about the girl we both loved, and him saying that all he cared about was that I loved her true and took gentle care of her.
And then his tears seemed to dry up and he turned more toward me in the seat—the heater pushing out warm air and the radio real low with a Van Morrison song—and he said, “But you don’t know the truth yet, do you?”
“The truth?”
“About Cindy?”
I felt a chill. And I shuddered. And I wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was just the way he said it there in the dash-light darkness. The Truth.
“I guess I don’t.”
“She has a friend.”
“A friend?”
“Yeah.”
“What kind of friend? You mean another boyfriend?”
He shook his head. “Not exactly.” He smiled. “You I could’ve dealt with. But her friend—”
Then he turned around and put the Trans Am into gear and we squealed out.
We didn’t say a word until we were halfway back to my house.
“Michael?”
“Yeah?”
“You going to tell me any more?”
“About what?”
“About this friend of hers?”
He looked over at me and smiled, but it was a cold and sinister smile, and I saw in it his
hatred of me. He knew something that I didn’t and he was going to enjoy the hell out of me finding out what it was.
When he reached my curb, he reached over and slapped forth a handshake. “Good luck, Spence. You’re a lot tougher guy than I am.” The quick, chill smile again. “And believe me, with Cindy that’ll come in handy.”
I went in and said some more merry Christmas kinds of things to my parents and my brother and sister and then I went down to the family room and put in a Robert Mitchum tape, Mitch being my favorite actor, and settled in with a Pepsi and some popcorn.
At the same time I was watching Mitch and Jane Russell trying to outfox William Bendix in Macao, Michael Henning was up in his bedroom, pulling a Hemingway.
The coroner said that the entire back of his head had been blown out and town rumor had it that try as his parents might over the next few weeks to scrape blood and bone and brains off the wall, they were having no luck at all. Finally, a carpenter came in, cut out that entire section of the wall, and then replastered and repainted it.
Three hundred people came to Michael Henning’s funeral. Not wanting to be hypocritical, I stayed home.
I mentioned in the beginning that it took me nineteen dates to seduce Cindy. I am counting only those dates we had after her monthlong mourning of Michael Henning, during which time the town had a change of heart about her. Where before she’d been their pride, the poor girl with the drunken father who constantly humiliated her, they now saw her as the whore who’d betrayed her lover and driven him to suicide. Townsfolk knew about me, too, and liked me no better.
We did a lot of driving, mostly to Iowa City and Cedar Rapids, on our dates. Couple townspeople were so angry about seeing us together, they came right up to us and started arguing that we had no business enjoying ourselves with poor Michael barely cold in his grave. One guy even tried to pick a fight with me, but my paratrooper tricks were a little too wily for him. Fat slob ended up on his back, huffing and puffing and panting out dirty words.
The worst, of course, was seeing Michael’s parents. We were leaving the Orpheum one night after seeing a Barbra Streisand movie—I guess you can guess which one of us chose that particular picture—and there they were in the lobby, waiting with a small crowd for the next feature to stop. The missus got tears in her eyes and looked away; the mister just glared right at me, staring me down. He won. I couldn’t look at him very long.
Odd thing was, the night we saw them in the lobby was the night that Cindy let me go all the way, which is how she always referred to it.
A friend of mine had an apartment over a tavern and we went up there because he was out of town on a four-day Army Reserve weekend.
I figured it was going to be the same thing as usual, bringing each other to satisfaction with eager hands and fingers, but this night, she said, “Why don’t we do it tonight, Spence? I need to know you love me and you need to know I love you and this is the best way to prove it. Just please let’s keep the lights off. You know, my breasts.” She really had a hang-up about her breasts. So they were small, I didn’t care. But she sure did. A lot of times I’d be petting her or kissing her nipples and she’d push me gently away and say, “That’s enough for now, all right, hon?” Michael had been absolutely right. She really was ashamed of herself in a lot of ways.
After that night, we were closer than ever, and a few weeks later I uttered, for the very first time, the word “marriage.”
She just looked at me all funny and said, “Spence, you know what your parents think of me.”
“It isn’t that they don’t like you, Cindy, it’s just that they worry about me.”
“Worry? Why?”
“I told you about Laurie. You know, how screwed up I got and all.”
“I’m not like Laurie.”
“I know, sweetheart, but they think—well, a young girl doesn’t know her mind. We’ll announce our engagement and everybody’ll start making a fuss and everything—and then you’ll feel a lot better.”
“That really makes me mad, Spence. I’m not like Laurie at all. I love you. The way a woman loves a man.”
How could a guy go wrong with a girl like that?
By spring, I had a better job, this one at a lumber company out on 151. I worked the front desk and handled all the wholesale orders. Salary plus commission. Kept me hopping, but I enjoyed it. Nights were all free and only half a day on Saturdays.
Couple nights a week we drove up to an old high school haunt of mine, place where kids back in the days of the Bee Gees and Donna Summer liked to make out. It was great because now the high school kids used the state park. Hardly anybody came up here.
One night as I sat there, looking down at the lights of the little prairie town where I’d grown up, Cindy all snug in my arms, she said, “Spence? If I asked you an honest question, would you give me an honest answer?”
“Sure I would.”
“Well…”
And right away, I thought of my folks and how smug they’d look when I told them what I feared she was about to say—that she’d been thinking real hard and had decided that maybe I really was just a tad old for her, or that she’d met this senior boy, see, and without wanting to, without planning for it or even wanting it to happen in any way, well, she’d gone and fallen in love with somebody else.
“You’re trembling,” she said.
“I just know this is going to be real bad news.”
“Oh, honey, no, it’s not. Honest. You’re so silly.”
And then she tickled me the way she always did, and then gave me one of those big warm, creamy kisses of hers, and then she said, “It’s just that I’ve got this friend I’d like you to meet sometime.”
Right away, of course, I remembered what Michael had told me that night in his car. About her friend.
“This is a male friend?”
“Yes, hon, but nothing to be jealous of.” She smiled. “When you meet him, you’ll see how silly you are. Honest.” Then she gave me another one of those creamy kisses.
“How’d you meet him?”
“Let’s not talk about him anymore tonight, all right? Let’s just sit here and look at the stars. I love looking at the stars—and thinking about life in outer space.” Pause. “You believe in that?”
“In what?”
“You know, that there is life on other planets.”
I made a scary sound and a monster face, but she didn’t laugh. Didn’t even smile.
“I’m serious, Spence. Do you?”
“Guess I haven’t thought about it much.”
“Well, I do.”
“Believe that there’s life on other planets?”
“Uh-huh.”
I gave her a very long kiss. My crotch started getting real tight. “Well, if you do, I do.”
“Believe in life on other planets?”
“Uh-huh.”
We had another kiss on it.
—
Three nights later, Cindy suggested that we drive up by Dubuque, which, for a rainy night, was something of a hike, being more than a hundred miles away. When I asked her why, she just shrugged and said, “I just like looking at the Mississippi. Makes me feel peaceful. But if you don’t want to—”
Makes her feel peaceful. What was I going to say, “No, I don’t want you to feel peaceful”?
We drove up by Dubuque and it was nice, even with the rain. When we reached the Mississippi, I pulled up and parked. In the distance you could see the tugs and barges, and then a fervent bright gambling boat, and then just the dark river rushing down to New Orleans and the Gulf. We sat there for an hour and then she suggested we head back.
When we were forty miles from Cedar Rapids she spotted a convenience store shining like a mirage on a dark hill. “Could I get you to pull in there?”
“Sure.”
“Thanks.”
When we got to the drive, she said to just park and she’d run in. “Just need to tinkle,” she said and grinned.
Ten minutes late
r, we were back on the highway. She kind of scooched up to me the rest of the way home.
The following day, I must’ve heard the story on the news six, seven times before I finally figured it out. At first I rejected the whole idea, of course. What a stupid idea it was. That Cindy, good Cindy, could possibly have—
That night, no place better to go, we parked up in the state park and got in the backseat and made love and afterward I said, “I’ve had this really crazy idea all day.”
“Yeah? What kind of crazy idea?”
“You hear the news?”
“News about what?”
But as soon as I said it, I felt her slender body tense beneath mine. She hadn’t put her bra back on yet and her sweet little breasts were very cold. Usually she would have covered up right away, but as soon as I mentioned having this idea, she just kind of froze in place. I could smell her perfume and the cold night air and the jism in the condom I’d set in the rear ashtray.
“You remember when we stopped at that convenience store last night? Coming back from Dubuque?”
“Sure.”
“Place got robbed. And the kid working got killed.”
“Oh? Really? I hadn’t heard that.”
Now she started getting dressed real fast. “You mind if I have a cigarette?”
“Thought you quit.”
Smoking was her only bad habit. Winston Lights.
“I just carry one around, hon. Just one. You know that.”
“How come you need it all of a sudden?”
She shrugged, twisting her bra cups around so they’d cover her breasts. “Just get jittery sometimes. You know how I get.”
“You did it, didn’t you?”
“What, hon?”
“Robbing that place, killing that kid. You.”
“Well, thank you very fucking much. Isn’t that a nice thing to say to the girl you love?”
We didn’t talk for a long time. We took our respective places up in the front seat and I got the car all fired up and we drove back into town, but we still didn’t talk.
When I pulled up in front of her house, I said, “I don’t know what came over me, Cindy. God, I really don’t. Of course you didn’t rob that place or kill that guy. Of course you didn’t.”
Dark Screams, Volume 4 Page 5