Dickerson County Consolidated High School, a one-story modern structure with massive pod-shaped concrete buildings stuck together like lily pads, resembles a sewage treatment plant, or a 1950s Mechanix Illustrated rendition of a moon colony. The windowless gym feels like an airplane hangar. No rope—I checked. The cafeteria looks to seat a thousand, and the library displays more books and magazines than I’ve ever seen in one space. Walking the fluorescent-lit curved hallways with my class, I feel spooked: how will I not get lost in this never-ending labyrinth and make it to class on time? I already miss my sunshine-filled, moldy-smelling, 1910-constructed junior high, with its high ceilings and creaky hardwood floors. I glance at Charity, who is at the back of the line beside Kristy Lynn.
An electronic buzzer blares, and the hallway flash-floods with students, most of whom look more like adults to me. So many of the girls have fantastic chests and wear jewelry and makeup, and even high heels. All the guys seem tall, and I note some of them sporting mustaches. My scrawny classmates, marooned in the current of towering upperclassmen, receive a few snickers.
Mr. Swedeson, the high school principal, a tall, thin, bald man with Woody Allen glasses, corrals us onto the gymnasium bleachers.
“All righty, people,” he says, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “Welcome to the high school. Hope you enjoyed your tour.” For the next half hour, as he speaks of how we select our own classes and make our own schedules in high school, I feel so overwhelmed I want to puke.
Dear Jesus . . . don’t send me here. I’m not ready for this place. After what happened with Charity, I think You owe me. Amen.
“We’ll see you all back here in August!” Principal Swedeson grins a devil’s grin. “Enjoy your summer.”
On the bus ride back to the junior high, no one speaks. Clearly, I’m not the only one dreading next year. And I think: Why does life have to change? Why can’t things stay the same? That’s all I want. For life to stay the same. Not that junior high is great, but it looks a heck of a lot more manageable than that high school.
I glance over at Charity. The way she is smiling at Kristy Lynn . . . why couldn’t that smile be for me? Is my girl falling for a big-boned basketball player who wears a ponytail?
After school I am sprawled out on a picnic table in empty Harker Park, my spent eyes staring listlessly at the cottonwood trees above me as they dispense their fluffy, snowflake-like seeds into the air. As much as I want to tell Uncle Ray about Charity, I keep my promise to her. I am flailing around for something to get Charity off of my mind when I remember what Uncle Ray said about finding an “easy” girl. Should I find myself one of those? Where?
I bike down to Burger In A Box, a small, tacky fry bin by the rail yard, and rest my bike against the Tang-colored stucco siding. When I step up to the outside shelflike counter, the little window slides back and my reason for coming stares out at me: Regina Fallers.
A short girl who wears tons of makeup and has a pronounced underbite, Regina has “gone out with” at least ten guys that I’ve heard about. She isn’t a slut per se, but she doesn’t seem to have a problem taking off her bra and allowing guys to fondle her great big boobs.
“Eckhardt party of one,” I quip. “My secretary made reservations for four o’clock—wait, isn’t this Spago?”
Her brow draws in a confused expression. “Huh?”
“Never mind,” I say. “Just making a joke.”
“What do you want, Eckhardt?”
“A small vanilla cone.”
As she busies herself making my soft-serve, I study her plump fanny, ripe beneath her formfitting purple uniform. Her mom, who manages Burger In A Box, is supposedly quite loose herself. I know I will never love Regina. But I am going to get me some of something.
Regina reaches through the window and hands me the cone. “Seventy-five cents.”
I give her a one dollar bill and say in a husky-sexy voice, “Keep the change, sugar.”
“Okay,” she says unenthusiastically, and deposits the money in the register.
I lick the ice cream. “Mmm-mm. You make a killer cone, Regina.”
She closes the register and stares out the window at nothing, chomping her gum.
“So, tell me,” I say as I lean in the window, “how you been?”
She shrugs, still looking out the window, and pops a pink bubble. I can’t resist glancing at her cleavage and thinking about fondling it.
I clear my throat. “So, Regina, I was thinking, how would you like to go out sometime?”
“Go out where?”
“How about we just go for a walk, see where it takes us.”
“I don’t like to walk,” she says to the window.
“Well, then, we can go for a sit.” I laugh a little, to help her know this was a joke.
She pops another bubble.
“Maybe we could go down to the park this evening when you get off work and hang out.”
“Why?” She is now inspecting the nail on her right index finger.
“Well, I’d, uh, like to get to know you a little better.”
“You’ve known me since kindergarten,” she says between chomps.
“I think we can have a lot of fun together, just you and me.”
“You mean, like a date?” she says, nibbling on a hangnail.
“Yeah, like a date.”
Her cheeks puff up and her Tootsie Roll brown eyes, shrewd beneath blue eyeliner, roam around the tiny kitchen. “You wanna take me out?”
“Uh-huh.”
“But aren’t you one of those gay-wads?”
“I am not!”
“But you’ve never gone steady with any girl and you don’t play football.”
“That doesn’t mean I like guys.”
“Yeah, well, anyway,” she says, “you don’t even have a car.”
“But I know how to treat a lady like you, Regina.” She still isn’t looking at me. “So when do you get off work?”
“At seven.”
“Perfect! I’ll come by then.”
She sighs and closes the takeout window. Mission accomplished.
“Now, Les, your uncle Ray’s going to be very groggy,” Dad says as he wheels into the hospital parking lot. “He’s on a lot of pain medication.”
The Harker City Hospital is a one-story, twelve-bed brick building on the northern edge of town, out near the high school and nursing home. Dad is the only full-time physician in a thirty-mile radius. Dr. Hayes, who is in his late seventies, works only a few days a week (and never when the fishing’s good).
When we walk into his hospital room, I stop at the sight of Uncle Ray lying in bed: head immobilized with a neck brace, bandages covering his ghoulishly bruised face, both eyes blackened and reddened, bottom lip puffed up like a poppin’ fresh dinner roll. I feel my knees liquefy and everything fades to black. . . .
When the light returns, I see Dad kneeling over me with a concerned look and an old-lady nurse standing behind him.
“Les, can you hear me?” Dad asks.
“Yeah.” I feel something on my right wrist and see that Dad is taking my pulse.
“You passed out, son,” Dad says.
He and the nurse lady each take one of my arms and help me into a nearby chair. Uncle Ray stares at me from his bed. God, he looks awful. Will this end his womanizing ways? Is Jesus trying to teach me a lesson about the wages of sinful behavior? The nurse hands me a cup of water and I sip from it.
“Ray, how’re you feeling?” Dad asks as he removes the chart from the end of the bed, flipping it open.
“I can’t turn my head, my back feels like someone took a chain saw to it, I have to piss in a bottle, and I can’t smoke in this goddamn hospital,” Uncle Ray grouses. “That answer your moronic question?”
Dad, taking out his penlight, approaches Uncle Ray. “I need you to follow my index finger with your eyes.”
Dad examines Uncle Ray’s reflexes, then clicks off his penlight. “Seeing you don’t have insurance, I
’m going to have to release you from here, but I’ll observe you at home for a while.”
“I’m fine.”
“Now, Ray, we don’t know that yet,” Dad counters. “You need to be watched carefully for at least a week.”
“Where’s my damn Corvette?”
Dad glances at me, as if looking for support or sympathy, then back at Uncle Ray. “The mechanic said the concrete seeped into the engine. Wrecker service is going to deliver it to the house.”
Uncle Ray’s eyes turn desolately out the window and he mutters, “Forgot to renew my damn car insurance last month.”
I want to do something, say anything, to make him feel better, but what?
Dad nudges the food tray, where a wilting green salad and tired-looking fruit cocktail sit untouched. “Ray, be good for you to eat a little something, huh?”
Uncle Ray looks at Dad. “What’d they do with that psycho?”
“Leo’s in lockup,” Dad says. “The county’s going to press charges.”
About twenty minutes later I wheel Uncle Ray out to Dad’s Dodge Charger. He gasps and winces as Dad and I ease him into the backseat. On the ride home I sit up front with Dad.
“Farmers sure need rain,” Dad says rhetorically.
“Sure do,” I reply. No comment on the lust for rain from the backseat.
When we pull into our driveway, there sits Uncle Ray’s Corvette. Barely a foot off the ground, the front seat is filled to the dashboard with solid concrete. Uncle Ray moans as we roll past. “My poor baby.”
Mom doesn’t even look up from kneading her biscuit dough at the kitchen island when we help Uncle Ray into the house. Once in my room, Dad and I slowly lower Uncle Ray onto the bed. “Oh God!” he yells as his head touches the pillow. “Jesus Christ!”
“Can I get you anything?” I ask Uncle Ray.
“A buttload more of them painkillers,” he says, his chest heaving.
“Not for another two hours,” Dad says crisply, glancing at his watch on his way out the door.
Uncle Ray motions me over and whispers, “I need ya to pick me up some whiskey. Grab my wallet on the dresser over there and take out a twenty.”
I do as he asks.
“Just go to the back door of the Dutch Lunch and knock as loud as you can,” he says. “Vera should answer. Tell her you’re my nephew and that I need a bottle of Jack Daniel’s Black Label. You can keep five for yourself. And, kid, I need it fast.”
After dinner I brush my teeth, put on a clean shirt, mousse my hair into stylishness, and slap on a little of Uncle Ray’s Polo cologne. From down the hall I hear the crackle of Dad’s ham radio. I inform Mom, who is knitting on the sofa and watching Wheel of Fortune, that I’m going over to Howard’s for a little while.
“My, don’t you look spiffy,” she says.
“Not really.”
“Well, be home by dark.”
The Dutch Lunch squats on a low-end part of Main Street, next to a boarded-up pawnshop and the rail yards, and is notorious for its bar fights. It is the last place on earth I thought I’d ever go. A handful of rusty pickups and motorcycles are parked diagonally in front. I bike around to the graveled alley, look around, and tap on the weathered back door. The stench of stale beer is nauseating, and I notice several fly-swarmed trash cans overflowing with empty bottles. I knock harder, hear the clicking of the lock, the door opens, and—oh, God, why do you hate me?—there stands Brett Jenkins. I’m too stunned to run. We blink at each other for a good ten seconds. Brett seems every bit as shocked and confused as I am. Country-western music mixed with the sporadic clacking of pool balls echoes around us.
“Leth-bian?”
“I’m here to see a lady named Vera.”
“Huh?”
“Brett,” a gruff woman’s voice calls out from behind him. “Who is it?”
A lady with penciled-on eyebrows appears behind him. Her Miller High Life T-shirt strains, and she has a trail of cigarette ash down her left boob. She rasps, “What do you want, kid?”
“Are you Vera?”
“What’s it to ya?”
“I’m Ray Eckhardt’s nephew.”
“Brett, you know this kid?”
“Yeah,” Brett mumbles. “I know the fag.”
“Heard Ray’s in bad shape,” she says. “How’s he getting along?”
“Not so hot,” I say, and hand her the twenty dollar bill. “He sent me for a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.”
She opens the door further and motions me inside. The place is dark and thick with haze. At the end of a short hallway I can see pool tables, the jukebox, and a bar.
“Brett, y’better have him wait in our apartment while I fetch his J.D.”
“Do I hafta?” he whines.
Smack! Her hand strikes upside Brett’s face like lightning. I step back, terrified.
“Don’t you ever give me mouth, boy!”
Brett just sighs indifferently and leads me into a depressing room. A tattered sofa faces an old black-and-white TV with tinfoiled antennas. Beside the dish-stacked kitchen table, a baby kicks in a high chair, its very wide face smeared with what looks like pureed carrots. The baby doesn’t look normal: its slanted eyes are too far apart and its mouth hangs open.
“C’mon in, homo.”
Standing there in that awful, smelly apartment, I know why Brett hates me. I even feel sorry for him. The dick-wad.
“Can’t believe you had the gutth to come here,” he says as he sits beside the baby, who is now crying and slapping its hands on the tray. “Thought you Eckhardth were too good for a playth like thith.”
“Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think.”
“I don’t wanna know you at all,” he says, and grabs a small yellow plastic spoon from a glass jar on the table. Brett is feeding the baby! I am on Mars. I decide to embrace the weirdness.
“I want you to stop beating me up,” I say.
“Oh yeah, and what’re you gonna do if I don’t?”
“I’ll tell everyone at school you have a retard for a brother.” I hate myself for saying it, but as Uncle Ray told me, “You gotta take no prisoners.”
He glares at me a long moment, then points his finger at me. “You do that and I’ll fuckin’ kill—”
His mother thunders through the door and hands me a heavy paper sack and a five dollar bill. “Here ya go, kid.” I place the bottle in my backpack and glance at Brett, who stares bullets at me while continuing to feed the baby.
Once outside I pedal off. The Bank of Harker City digital clock flashes 6:55. I’m right on time.
When I pull up to Burger In A Box, Regina, still in her waitress uniform, is leaning against the building, dragging on a Kool. Can I kiss a girl who smokes? Maybe I could, somehow, skip the kissing and just get right to her tits?
“Hey there, Regina,” I say, and brake dramatically in front of her, my back tire skidding on the concrete. “So, how about we go down to the park and hang out?”
She glances around, as if looking for someone, then shrugs.
“Great!” I exclaim. “Climb on.”
I move forward on the seat as she squeezes on behind me. Never before has anyone ridden on my bike with me; it’s hard to steer and even harder to pedal as we wobble all over the road. If I get a hard-on, this could be fatal.
“Finish your literature report?” I ask.
“Uh-huh.”
“What book did you choose?”
“Hollywood Wives by Jackie Collins.”
“Sounds fascinating.”
About a minute later, as I struggle to steer us down Main Street, I ask, “So, what’s it like working at Burger In A Box? You must see a lot of crazy stuff there, huh?”
“What’s so hard in your backpack?” she asks.
“Oh, that’s just a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.”
“Hot damn!” She squeals and squeezes me as if she had just won a new dinette set on The Price Is Right.
Harker Park is empty and leafy and deep with shad
ows—perfect for my seduction.
“Well, m’lady, let’s go on over to the teeter-totter,” I say as I climb off the bike.
“After we break out the whiskey,” she counters.
With shocking swiftness she has my backpack unzipped and the bottle uncapped.
“You surprise me, Eckhardt,” she says after her first swig. “Thought you were a total dweeb, but boy was I wrong.”
“Hey, Les is more!”
“Heh-heh. I guess it might be.”
She laughs a little and takes another swig, then offers me the bottle. It tastes like what I imagine kerosene might taste like, and it takes every ounce of self-control to swallow it. Regina is already on her fourth nip when I snatch the bottle and cap it. “Let’s, um, pace ourselves, what do you say?”
The silly grin that creases her face tells me she is already buzzed. “So, you want to get down in my panties, don’t you?”
“What?!” I nearly fall over.
She fires up a cigarette and says, “That’s why you showed up at the Box today.”
“That is absolutely not true,” I protest. “You just seem like—like a nice girl. Someone I’ve always wanted to get to know better.”
She exhales smoke out the corner of her mouth. “Guys only hit on me ’cause they think I’ll put out.”
I look around, all horrified, my mouth ajar, as if looking for those dirty, dirty bastards. “I can’t stand guys like that,” I say. “All they think about is a girl’s body. They don’t care about who she is inside. So uncool.”
I keep noticing she is glancing expectantly at the street.
“Trust me, Regina, sex was the furthest thing from my mind.”
“My mom says never trust a guy who says ‘trust me.’ ” She flicks her ashes, then inhales more smoke. “Here’s the thing, Les-is-more, I’m not as easy as everyone says. But I wouldn’t mind making out with you a little. You’re a freak, but kinda sweet.”
My heart speeds up. “Really? You mean it? About the making out?”
I’m finally going to kiss a girl! And hopefully get to touch her bazookas!
“What do you say we move to the bench over by the old cannon?” I ask, in an unfortunately high-pitched voice.
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