“Well, of course you don’t. It’s a surprise party. For your homecoming. This Friday night.”
Sonny squeezed his hands together and tried not to raise his voice. “Who’s coming?” he said.
His mother let out a high, nervous little laugh. “Well, I couldn’t tell you that, or it wouldn’t be any surprise at all.”
She set a plate in front of him with a fresh homemade apple turnover topped with fudge ripple ice cream, and beside it, a large glass of Pepsi with a lot of ice. It was, or used to be, his favorite breakfast, though in college and the Army he had tried to learn to like eggs and sausage and hot black coffee because it seemed more manly. And yet whenever he was home, his mother got him back on the gooey stuff, and he couldn’t resist it, even though it made him mad at her and at himself, and after eating those fattening sweets he felt almost as guilty and depressed as he did after jacking off. He often wondered why he couldn’t help doing things that made him feel so awful after he did them.
“Would it now?” she asked. “Be a surprise if I told you who was coming?”
“Is it people I know?”
“Some you do, some you don’t. But the ones you don’t I promise you’re going to like.”
He had heard such promises before. “Who is it?” he insisted. “Who’s coming that I don’t know?”
“Well, since you don’t know them, you wouldn’t know their names anyway.”
“Who are they?”
The fudge ripple was beginning to melt down the hot sides of the homemade apple turnover.
“I won’t eat till you tell me,” he said, laying down the ultimate threat.
Mrs. Burns sighed and said with a fake casual tone, “Oh, just some of the MRA bunch who happen to be in town.”
Sonny very deliberately folded his napkin, set it on the table, and went into the living room. He sat on the antique velvet settee and lit a cigarette, trying very hard to be calm. The very initials of Moral Re-Armament made him want to scream. It was a nondenominational (but mainly WASP) religious movement with great appeal for middle-class people who found in its doctrine of “Absolute Purity, Absolute Honesty, and Absolute Love,” and in its tearful, wrenching, free-lance confessional sessions, a sort of fulfillment that was lacking in the ordinary going-to-church kind of religion. The adherents to this faith seemed to Sonny a band of smiling, self-satisfied, well-mannered fanatics. They didn’t drink or smoke or jack off, or screw anyone unless they were married, and the girls gave up makeup and pulled their hair into knots and tried not to look sexy. They sang cheery, uplifting songs and looked bright-eyed and serene, in a lobotomized kind of way. Some of the full-time salaried members traveled around in “teams” trying to recruit people, and put on shows and plays proving how wonderful it was to be like they were and believe as they did. Mrs. Burns had gone to one of their performances in Indianapolis and seen the happy shining faces of those wonderful young people and felt a great surge of hope that this might be the answer for her troubled, faith-stripped son.
Sonny had been deeply religious as a boy but, as his mother so often explained to people in a trembling voice, “in college he lost his faith.” She ascribed the loss to the insidious influence of intellectuals, who were known to be almost all atheistic and who yet were given the task of teaching the young. Her suspicion of the influence of college was bolstered by most of her friends, including some who had been there, like Cousin Harriet Van de Kamp, who was on the Indianapolis school board and told Mrs. Burns on good authority that every college faculty in the country was riddled with Reds. Even the ones in Indiana! Sonny was only one of many innocent young people who had fallen under their atheistic influence and was brainwashed by their Godless doctrines. It was Mrs. Burns’ most fervent desire to help Sonny find his faith again, and toward this end she had enlisted an impressive array of spiritual counselors. The fact that none had succeeded in helping Sonny locate what he had lost (his mother seemed to think of it as a tangible object, like a misplaced car key) did not in the least discourage her but in fact drove her on to even greater efforts.
Once, on the pretense of taking “a different kind of family vacation,” she had got him to Mackinac Island in Michigan, the MRA’s U.S. headquarters, where whole teams of firm-jawed young men who all seemed to have been champion pole-vaulters or halfbacks when they were in college (which for many was quite some time ago) had tried to make him see the light. They explained how much fun purity could be and told Sonny he would feel a lot better if he told them about some of the dirty things he had done which most every guy did at some time or other, like jacking off and thinking dirty stuff about girls (maybe even doing the dirty stuff!) before marriage. Sonny fled from the island after two sleepless nights, during which he was terrified that if he beat off, an entire team of former Ohio State football stars would burst in the room and demand that he confess and repent, in the name of God Almighty and the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
Mrs. Burns had to admit that the MRA system “hadn’t taken” with Sonny, but she evidently felt that later injections might do the trick. Like the bunch who were coming to supper for Sonny’s “surprise party” welcome-home from the service.
“Fuckin-A,” he said to himself. “Fuckin-A John Do.”
“It’s melting, dear,” his mother said.
She had put the ice cream and apple shit on a tray and brought it into the living room. It sat there before him, a runny disaster.
“What kind of potatoes would you like for the party supper, baked or sweet?”
“Either,” he said.
“I could make sweet with marshmallow topping.”
“Who else is coming?”
“Oh, Sonny, it wouldn’t be any surprise at all then. I wanted it—I wanted it—” Her voice was beginning to quiver.
“O.K.,” he said. “But listen.”
“Yes?”
“Don’t ask Gunner to come.”
“I thought it might do him some good,” she sniffed.
“Don’t ask him.”
“All right, dear. After all, it’s your party.”
Sonny stuck the spoon in the melting goo on the plate and started to eat, so she’d go away. And seeing him eat, she smiled and tiptoed out of the room. A little later, he heard the motor of the wagon burst to a start, like a mortar shell, and gravel churned noisily as Mrs. Burns ripped out of the driveway, hurrying to her missions.
Sonny didn’t feel like doing too much stuff now, and he went to the den and flipped through some magazines. Life had a story of a nun who had outwitted the Commies. It said:
The Deliverance of Sister Cecelia
A resourceful nun who trusted in St. Joseph tells unique story of flight from Reds.
Sonny was getting tired of the damned Reds. He was tired of the damned Christians, too. He wished they’d fight it out and leave everybody alone. They were always “battling for men’s minds” instead of minding their own business. The Reds and the Christians both.
They even had it on television. Every day they broadcast the Army vs. McCarthy show. It sounded to Sonny like a trial, but they called it a “hearing.” Everything seemed to be called something different than it was anymore, like the war in Korea was a “police action,” or a “conflict,” instead of a war. Even though they bombed and shot people. It was like they were trying to water things down so you wouldn’t get too upset about them.
A lot of people were upset about the Army vs. McCarthy “hearings” and most of the people Sonny knew around Indianapolis thought Joe McCarthy was a great hero, hunting down all the dirty Reds in government. The liberal professors Sonny knew, and some of the guys he met in the Army who had gone to college in the East, thought it was McCarthy who was the menace instead of the Reds. Sonny didn’t like the guy’s looks, and he liked the defense guy, old Joe Welch, who was against McCarthy, but he found the whole thing hard to really follow and he didn’t like to get in arguments about it because if you were against McCarthy the people for him suspected you of being a Com
mie, and Sonny had enough things to worry about without worrying about whether people thought he was a Red. Some people in Indianapolis probably suspected he was already because he didn’t believe in God and he thought colored people should go to school with whites and he didn’t agree that laziness was the only cause of unemployment.
He picked up a Ladies’ Home Journal, just to get his mind off that crap, but even they had articles about it. There was one called “Is American Youth Radical?” and Sonny couldn’t help turning to it to find out the answer. The article was written by a woman named Dorothy Thompson, and it said:
“The high schools and colleges are infiltrated with Communists.” So goes the argument in some circles.…
Sonny was glad to see Miss Thompson didn’t go along with the argument. But what she did say kind of depressed him anyway. She was trying to say that young people weren’t too bad, and one of the things she said to try to prove it was that
There was considerable anxiety in Washington lest the GI bonuses would be spent in riotous living. They were not. They were spent for education—and the GI was a very serious student.
Sonny kind of wished the GI money had been spent in riotous living. That’s how he’d like to spend his, if he got the bill himself. Actually, he didn’t see how you could live too riotously on $110 a month. But at least it could get you away from home. He was really going to look into it. Maybe he could even get a degree in photography, if they had them. It almost seemed impossible, getting paid to learn about something you liked.
He put down the magazine and went downstairs to the darkroom in the basement. He hadn’t used it for a couple years, and there were a lot of crates of old clothes piled up in it. His mother collected old clothes and sent them to the Indians. She couldn’t see why there was suddenly such concern about the colored when nobody cared about the Indians and they were the real Americans.
Sonny picked up his camera and blew the dust off of it. He hadn’t used it since his last leave home. He loved the camera, but had just got out of the habit of using it regularly when he went in service. It was a Rollieflex, and he had bought it from one of the photographers at the Star, a guy who had helped him learn how to use it. He held it in his hands, and it felt solid and reassuring. He almost felt there was something magic about it, that it was a secret weapon he could use to free himself, to become a person in his own right, to have his own life that was different from his parents’. He resolved to go buy film as soon as his mother got back with the wagon.
5
For the next several days, Sonny and Gunner went on a picture-taking binge. Gunner could use his mother’s wheels any day that he got up and drove her to work down at WIBC-TV, and he didn’t even have to pick her up because some guy she dated at the station drove her home anytime she wanted him to. After leaving his mother off, he’d come by and honk for Sonny, and they’d go out with their cameras, driving all over town and shooting stuff. They drove to the top of Crown Hill Cemetery, a historic landmark of the city where the famous criminal John Dillinger was buried. From the top you could see almost the whole city spread below, flat and green. They went out to the Speedway and tried getting some action shots of the cars in the Time Trials for the great Five-Hundred-mile race that was held every Memorial Day and known throughout the world. They drove way north to where Gunner knew a guy who had a farm, and shot pictures of the livestock; they even took their cameras inside the Riviera Club swimming pool and got pictures of guys going off the high dive.
Gunner was restless, always asking questions, and he sort of reminded Sonny of a spy, or maybe a foreign correspondent, prowling the city and looking into little nooks and crannies and snapping pictures and asking people things, like he was trying to get the real scoop on this mysterious city and its natives, the puzzling place where he was born and grew up. He kept asking one particular question that people took as an insult, the question of some kind of nut or subversive troublemaker—Why?
When Gunner got an urge to drop in on someone, Sonny just tagged along, listening and smiling. It turned out Gunner wasn’t at all ashamed of being seen hanging around with a nobody, as Sonny had suspected he might be, but in fact seemed to want him along, seemed to like hashing things over with him after they’d been someplace, liked hearing what Sonny thought about what was said and what happened, even though most of the time Sonny pretty much agreed with him. Sometimes Sonny felt he ought to disagree more, feared that Gunner might suspect him of just sucking up to him or something, but actually Gunner was so damn convincing that Sonny really did buy most all his ideas and impressions, even the ones that were kind of weird.
One afternoon they buzzed out to Gunner’s sister’s house to get some shots of her kids. Gunner’s sister Peachie lived on Guilford in the forties, one of those blocks of small graying frame houses and brick doubles with front porches, little front yards and occasional hedges to divide one yard from another, a few paint-chipping picket fences, and an alley in back with weather-beaten garages and a few backboards with iron hoops nailed up on them. It was hardly fancy, but nothing you had to be ashamed of; the sort of place a young couple started out in before going farther north to the newer, ranch-type developments. Peachie was only two years older than Gunner, but it might as well have been twenty years or so; the way she was settled into the niche of her life, it would take a load of dynamite to blast her out of it even if she wanted to. She had two little kids and went around most of the day with a kerchief around her head, mopping and cooking and dusting and washing. She had never been a pretty girl, but was sharp and energetic and fun to be around, and always able to organize things. She had been in some of the good clubs at Shortley and made Delta Gamma at Butler, where she went for a year before marrying Bud Belzoni.
Sonny remembered Belzoni from the teams at Shortley. He was never a star, seldom made first string, and when you thought about it his main talent was in looking good on the football or baseball field or the basketball court. There were always guys like that, and Sonny kind of got a kick out of them. In baseball they never could hit worth a damn but were terrific chatter guys—C’mon-babe-c’mon-boy-c’mon-Pete, throw it in there baby throw it past him babe way to go keed. In basketball they weren’t good shots but were fancy dribblers and liked to pass behind their backs. In football they were the guys who always patted the lineman on the ass and yelled a lot of defensive warnings and pointed all over the place, but they seldom tackled anybody. But you needed guys like that. They made everybody feel better, and they looked like All-Americans.
Belzoni only went to Butler one semester and then joined the Naval Reserve and went to work at Allison’s automotive and airplane plant. He worked the night shift and played on the company’s semi-pro baseball team, the Allison Jets, which gave him an extra something every week during summer, though Peachie claimed he put it all back in beer. He was getting something of a belly on him, which was especially noticeable because he wore his pants down around his crotch. He still had a crew cut, and walked in a real pigeon-toed stride, and mostly hung around the house in an old pair of khakis and some sweat socks, drinking beer and scratching his belly and belching a lot. On his nights off he hung out with the boys, hitting the Tropics Club and the Topper and the Red Key. At least he said it was the boys, though Peachie suspected there were some girls, too. She’d confided to Gunner that once last year Belzoni came home with a case of the crabs that he said he must have got off a toilet seat.
“She must have been some toilet,” Peachie told him.
Peachie was nobody’s fool.
The front room was littered with toys and kids. The baby, a little girl named Babs, was squawling in the playpen, and little Bud, Jr., who was around four years old, was playing soldiers with a little towheaded boy named Richard who lived next door. Peachie was in her faded blue jeans and a scruffy man’s shirt with the sleeves rolled up, washing the inside of the windows. She said to go on back to the kitchen, she’d be there in a jiffy.
Belzoni was in the kit
chen with his sweat-socked feet up on the table, drinking a Weidemann’s and listening to a Cubs game on a portable radio. He popped a couple of beers for Sonny and Gunner, and even though they said they weren’t hungry, he poked around in the icebox and brought out a bowl of some leftover potato salad, stuck a fork in it, and set it on the table next to where he propped his feet. He turned the ball game down a little so it was easier to talk.
“So,” Gunner asked, “how’s the ball club doin’? You guys burnin’ up the league?”
“Be serious, man. We lost our only pitcher who could get the fuckin ball over the plate. Remember Bo Begley?”
“Pitched for Manual-Tech?”
“Yeh, he even got a tryout with the Dodgers. Well, he got his fuckin pitching hand caught in a fuckin lathe last week. Lost two fingers.”
“Jesus,” Gunner sympathized, “what a break.”
“Put us up shit crick without a paddle,” Bud said. “Last night we got our ass cleaned by Link-Belt, fourteen-five.”
“That’s rough,” Gunner said. “But what about Begley?”
“Like I said, he lost two fingers. No good to us now.” Belzoni belched, rubbing his stomach reflectively, and said, “Unless he could work on some kind of knuckle ball. Maybe he could develop a knuckle ball of some kind.”
Sonny felt himself rubbing his hands together, checking on his fingers. When he heard stuff like that, he got very nervous and checked to see if his own parts were in place. Peachie came in, got herself a beer, and pulled a chair up to the table with the guys.
“You taking the summer off?” she asked Gunner.
“I dunno. Trying to figure my next move.”
“You staying in Naptown?” Bud asked.
“I dunno. Doubt it.”
“Nina’ll have a conniption fit,” Peachie said, “if you don’t settle down here.”
Gunner got kind of red. “She’ll live,” he said.
“Man, if I were you,” Belzoni said. “Loose as a goddam goose, nothing to tie you down—”
Going All the Way Page 5