Windchill Summer

by Norris Church Mailer

  “Why . . .” I began, then stopped. I was beginning to get the feeling that nobody was what they seemed like. “Okay. I promise. I’ll take it slow.”

  “Have you done anything yet?”

  “What do you mean by anything?”

  “You know what I mean. Have you done it?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “Are you going to?”

  “Baby, how should I know?”

  “Just think about it long and hard before you do anything, okay?”

  “Long and hard. Yeah. I’ll think about that.”

  She realized what she had said. I started to laugh. She smacked me on the arm.

  “I didn’t mean thatway . . .”

  “I know what you meant. But if you are going to tend to your own rat-killing, I’ll tend to mine. I never said anything to you about Bean, did I? Even thought I thought you could do better.”

  “No. You never did. Is that what you thought all this time, that I could do better?”

  “I think you could do better. I know he is cute and sexy and can sing and all, but he doesn’t have a brain, Baby. You have to know that by this time. All he cares about is that stupid band. He probably has never even read a book all the way through. He’s just not your equal, and he’s not even that great to you.”

  “Now who’s stepping over the line?”

  “You’re right.” I said. “That’s the last thing I’ll say about it. I’m sorry.”

  Although I wasn’t, really. I had wanted to say that to her ever since she started going out with Bean. Back in school, he wasn’t much of a student and made C’s and D’s. Then, when he started going out with Baby, he got a little more cocksure, like he thought he was so cool because he had the band and the smartest girl in class. Since he got back from Vietnam and became the star out at Woody’s, it seemed like he expected Baby to ask, “How high?” when he said, “Jump.” It had gotten to the point that she had to check in with him before we could even go out shopping together.

  Maybe I was just jealous. I guess when you fall in love, the guy always takes first place over the friend. That might be why she wasn’t all that crazy about Tripp. I would just have to try to accept it, and so would she. She was right. Whatever she did with Bean was not my business.

  “I’m sorry. I love you, Baby.”

  “I love you too, Cherry.”

  “You’re not mad at me?”

  “Are you mad at me?”

  “Not anymore,” we both said at once. We laughed, which relaxed things a little, and hugged and kissed. The girls in the window of the beauty school practically had their noses mashed against the glass. Now word would be out that we were queer. I didn’t care. Everything was beginning to change, and it was a little scary. But maybe that’s the way it should be. Everyone had to grow up, and it couldn’t be 1956 forever.

  I started the car again and headed across the railroad tracks to the Family Hand, and the new job, whatever it would be.

  24.Cherry

  On the way over, we were trying hard to get back together from the fight, and I think Baby really wanted to fill me in on everything. She had known about the plans for the head shop for a while but didn’t tell me because she thought it would upset me or something. I was beginning to see that there was a lot I didn’t know.

  The depot had sat empty since the trains stopped carrying passengers back in 1957, and it was pretty dilapidated when John Cool and his girlfriend, Rainy Day Jones, rented it and started fixing it up. They had painted the outside dark green with lavender and blue trim and had already put a big sign up above the door. It was shaped like a giant hand, and every finger was a different color—red, white, brown, yellow, and black—to represent, obviously, all the races. The palm was colored to look like the earth. Across the wrist, in psychedelic letters like a lace cuff, it said THE FAMILY HAND.

  I loved the way the place smelled when we walked in the door—like art: the acrid aroma of new-fired pottery, the musty scent of Indian batik, and the deep satisfying odor of handmade leather all mixed on top of incense, patchouli oil, and clean new wood.

  The shop wasn’t supposed to open for a couple of weeks, but it looked like it was starting to come together. Although half-unpacked boxes sat around everywhere, a lot of things were already on the shelves. There were handwoven ponchos, peacock-feather earrings, and Indian baskets stacked in the corner near a table full of Rainy Day’s Raku pots—smoky and delicate, like dinosaur eggs that have just hatched. If her skin ever cleared up, Rainy Day would be a really pretty girl, even though she didn’t wear makeup. She had nice long straight brown hair, cornflower-blue eyes, and good big teeth, a little bucked, which gave her a cute pouty look. She wore earth shoes and was what you might classify as a granola eater. She had that calm self-assurance they all seem to have, like if you put them out in the woods with only a Swiss Army knife and a piece of string, they could build a shelter, catch fish, dig up roots, and survive quite nicely.

  I think before I had smoked that joint the other night, I might have been nervous about coming into a place like this, but somehow now I wasn’t. I felt like part of the club. To my surprise, I didn’t even feel guilty about smoking it. It was not the big, awful thing that everyone makes it out to be. It just makes you feel good. Maybe I will feel guilty later.

  I did kind of feel guilty for was what almost happened on the hood of Tripp’s car. It had been a crazy night, starting with Mama saying all that about the rubbers. It might have gone further than I meant it to, but the zipper on my skirt scraped the hood with a loud skreek,and Tripp freaked out about the paint job. By the time he had inspected the damage, spit on it, and polished it with his sleeve, I had gotten a case of the simples. It wasn’t nice to laugh at him, but you would have thought that the car was a baby or something. It was only a tiny scratch, and before it was too late, he turned it into a joke, apologized, and laughed at himself.

  I really liked him so much. For some strange reason, I wasn’t uptight around Tripp like I usually was with boys, maybe because he liked mea lot and didn’t act like I was a freak or something. He was the first one since Ricky Don that I really felt comfortable with.

  —

  Now, Tripp came down the stairs when he heard us come in. He had on his muscle shirt, and a blue bandanna wrapped around his head. I went up to him and gave him a sweet kiss hello. Baby just stood there looking at the ceiling, her hands on her hips.

  “So what’s all this about a job, Tripp?” she said. “Where’s John Cool and Rainy Day? Are you taking over the shop or what?”

  That was blunt enough. I wished she liked Tripp more.

  “They went out to get a water bed. And I’m a partner in the shop—put some of my inherited wealth into it. I think it will be a good investment.”

  “I didn’t know you were a rich boy, Tripp,” Baby said. “Most rich boys don’t work at the pickle plant.”

  “Rich is all relative, Baby. I expect to make money on this venture. And what better way to get to know the masses than to work among them, right? I’m interested in all kinds of experiences.”

  “Baby, leave Tripp alone. What’s the matter with you?”

  “It’s all right,” Tripp said. “We’re just kidding around, aren’t we, Baby?”

  It didn’t sound to me like they were kidding. I hoped I wouldn’t have to start choosing between Tripp and Baby.

  Tripp had been looking at me funny, then it finally dawned on him that something was different. “What happened to your hair?”

  “Don’t you like it?” I took off the scarf and turned around so he could get the whole effect. He studied it, hand on his chin.

  “I think I liked the old wild curls better. This isn’t permanent, is it?”

  I just couldn’t stand it. I thought I was going to scream. He was the third person to say that. Why couldn’t anybody see how wonderful my hair was?

  “It might be. I don’t know,” I said through tight lips. “Why are they getting a water bed?”
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  “We’re installing a black-light room upstairs, where you can lie back and groove to some sounds. We’ll be selling records up there, and putting in a juice bar. You can relax, have a carrot-and-apple juice, and try the discs out before you buy. Nice, huh?”

  “Sounds groovy to me.”

  I wandered around looking at all the things and finally saw the case with the pipes, papers, and bongs tucked in the corner. It made me a little nervous, I have to say.

  “What is it that Baby and I are supposed to do?” I asked him. “I don’t think I could work selling pot pipes. My parents would flip out.” Maybe I wasn’t as comfortable in all this as I thought I would be.

  “We want you and Baby to paint murals on the walls. You can do anything you want to do, use any kind of paint you want. You design the whole thing—the crazier, the better. We’ll pay you each fifty dollars.”

  “Fifty dollars! That’s incredible! That’s as much as we make in a week at the pickle plant!” I couldn’t believe it. Getting paid for what you love to do. I didn’t tell him, but I would have done it for free. I looked at Baby.

  “What do you think?”

  I would have died if she had said no, but she just shrugged and said, “Okay. Fine by me.”

  I think she was more excited than she let on. I already had an idea of what I wanted to do, and I could tell Baby was thinking, too. It would be almost like we had our own gallery! I couldn’t wait to get started.

  “Tell John Cool y’all have a deal. We’ll go over to the pickle plant right now and tell Alfred Lynn where he can put his onions.”

  25.Cherry

  Let me put it this way: Alfred Lynn wasn’t exactly all choked up with grief when we told him we were quitting a week early. I can’t believe how free it felt to come out of that steamy, sticky, smelly, hot pickle plant and know that we would never have to go back in there again as long as we lived.

  We went directly from the plant to the art-supply store and bought a bunch of cans of high-gloss enamel in bright colors—orange, red, electric blue, yellow, and green—and black. I had already worked out a design for the murals in my head. I wanted to transform the Family Hand into a jungle, with tigers and lions and likenesses of John Cool, Rainy Day, us, and all of our friends. It wouldn’t be corny, though. More like the Impressionists.

  Tripp, on the other hand, had brought some posters with him from San Francisco of the Grateful Dead’s concerts at the Fillmore. Baby saw those and thought the murals should be like that—song lyrics and names of rock groups crazily winding into and around each other. So we compromised. Baby would paint the upstairs record store and juice bar with the psychedelic lettering; the black-light room would be solid black, with posters of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, and all; and the downstairs would be my jungle.

  As we pulled into the parking lot of the Family Hand with the paint, John Cool and Rainy Day were dragging a frame for the water bed up the steps. This was really going to be some place—like nothing Sweet Valley had seen before. I felt an excitement like the pioneers must have felt, knowing they were starting a whole new way of life.

  —

  It took me nearly a week to draw it all out on the walls, and I was up on a ladder, starting to put green on the leaves, when I heard a familiar voice behind me.

  “Hello, Highpockets. I didn’t expect to find you here. What are you doing up there?”

  “What does it look like, Ricky Don? I’m baking bread.”

  “Same old smart mouth, aren’t you? I meant, what are you doing in this hippie store? And what happened to your hair?”

  “I straightened my hair, and don’t say you liked the old wild hair better, or I’ll cram this brush down your throat. I’m painting a mural. The hippies hired me and Baby to do it. Is that against the law?”

  “That depends.”

  “Yeah? On what?”

  “Where they got the money to pay you.”

  “Where do you think they got it?”

  “That’s what I intend to find out.”

  “Oh come on, Ricky Don. Do you think they are going to sell drugs here?”

  “No. Not here. And I’m not accusing them of selling them at all. But there’s a whole lot of that going on in this town. Places like this don’t help it any. I don’t think you should be hanging out here. People might get the wrong idea.”

  “I’m not hanging out here. I am working on a job.” I put down my paintbrush and wiped my hands. I couldn’t work with him standing there staring at me. “You’ve changed a lot, you know? You used to be more fun.”

  “Yeah, well, if you had seen all I’ve seen, it might take away a little of your fun, too. In Nam, I saw a lot of guys I liked die from overdoses. That, to me, was worse than if they had been shot, because they did it to themselves. I don’t think you realize that this is not something to play with. They always started out with marijuana and then went on to speed and then the hard stuff.”

  “Ricky Don, how long have you known me?”

  “You know how long. Since the first grade.”

  “Do you think I am going to become a drug addict?”

  “Don’t be ignorant, Cherry. I just think you’re hanging out with the wrong crowd.”

  “I told you, I’m not hanging out. I’m working.” I was looking down at the top of his head, and he was getting a crick in his neck, so I climbed down off the ladder. He had become so heavy and serious since he took this job.

  “What is happening with the investigation about Carlene?” I asked him just to get off the subject of me and drugs. “Any leads?”

  “Not any I can discuss. You know I can’t talk about my work.”

  “I don’t know any such of a thing. Who am I going to tell? Your boss? Like I’m really going to call up that fat old geezer and say, ‘Oh, Mr. Sheriff, Ricky Don’s telling secrets!’ Please. You know you can trust me.”

  He crammed his hands into his pockets and sighed. He never could resist me when I really wanted something from him, and I was pleased to see I still had a little control.

  “The honest to God truth is that they don’t tell us a lot of what is going on. The state police has come in here like they’re Perry Mason or something. They’ve taken over the office. They treat us like the Junior Woodchucks, and I don’t mind telling you it is beginning to get to me. Half of those guys don’t even know zip-all about the people or the country around here, and they won’t ask us a thing. They’ve interviewed everyone out where she used to work and done some more things, but I don’t really think they’ve found out much. They still don’t know where the killing actually took place or who had a motive. Her truck was parked near the restaurant, but nobody out that way saw anything that night.”

  “What if I was to tell you something that is all yours? Something that they don’t know?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I told him about the writing up at Fat Man’s Squeeze. He didn’t say anything.

  “Well, don’t you think that might be a clue?” I asked after a minute. I thought he’d leap on this piece of information. “I mean, Baby said that Carlene’s nickname was Ida Red, and then it shows up on the rocks? Don’t you think that might mean something?”

  “I’ll check it out. It probably was just kids, though. I wouldn’t get too excited about it. Kids are always writing stuff on the rocks up there. We did it ourselves, remember?”

  Of course I remembered. A bunch of us climbed the rocks and wrote SENIORS ’66 in silver paint on a big bald outcropping called Sweet Rock, the one by Fat Man’s Squeeze. There were SENIORS OF written on it every year in every color since 1904, when the high school was built. It was tradition. The rock was a landmark for people passing by on the highway below.

  “I painted your shoes silver, remember?” I said. “You nearly killed me!”

  “And I grabbed the paintbrush out of your hand and put a big X on your butt!”

  “My mama was so mad at you—those were brand-new jeans!”
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br />   I guess we must have looked a little chummy. It was the first real conversation we’d had in years, and unfortunately, at just that moment, Tripp walked in the door. He looked a little surprised, to say the least, to see Ricky Don standing there in his uniform, his big gun on his hip, laughing and talking with me. For the first time ever, I must have looked disappointed to see him. What bad timing.

  “Ricky Don just stopped by to say hi. Ricky Don, you know Tripp, don’t you?”

  “I know of him. Never had the pleasure to meet him.”

  “Well then, Ricky Don Sweet, meet Randall Tripp Barlow.”

  Tripp stuck out his hand; Ricky Don shook it.

  I probably was wrong, but Tripp seemed a little nervous. He fumbled in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes, shook one out, and put it in his mouth.

  “The store isn’t open for business yet, Sweet.”

  “I’m not here to buy anything. Just checking it out.”

  “We have the permits. Everything is in order.”

  “I’m sure it is.”

  Before he could get his lighter out, Ricky Don pulled his and lit the cigarette. Tripp drew in until the tip glowed red, then blew out the smoke and looked close at the lighter.

  “Can I see your lighter?” he asked Ricky Don.

  “Be my guest.”

  It was a silver-colored Zippo, more or less like the one I had seen Tripp use. There was an inscription, and I craned my neck to read it, over Tripp’s shoulder. It said: “Yea though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil—because I am the meanest son of a bitch in the Valley.”

  Tripp laughed a little and handed it back. “I saw that one a few times. That’s a good one.”

  Ricky Don put it back in his pocket. “You got yours?”

  Tripp reached in his jeans pocket and pulled out a Zippo just like Ricky Don’s. I saw now that it, too, had an inscription. Ricky Don took it and read out loud: “‘Let Me Win Your Heart and Mind or I’ll Burn Your Hut Down. Charlie Company, 1/20thQuang Ngai, 1968.’

  “Quang Ngai. Charlie Company.” Ricky Don seemed to be trying to remember something. “Wasn’t that Jerry Golden’s outfit?”