by Ed Helenski
We made our way back to the area where I had a couple desks set up. I got two grape pops out of the mini-fridge and we drank for a few minutes before she got up the nerve to ask me her question. “I was wondering if you thought this was a good idea. Tell me if you think it’s too much. Or not good for the youth column. You know I already wrote this week's one about Ralph Wiggins from 4H. How he raises pigs to show at the county fair. It’s pretty good, right?”
I told her the piece was just perfect, and in fact it was about as well written as any copy I saw at the Courant, though the subject matter was pretty hokey. Still she was only 12, and writing about another 12 year old who raises pigs seemed fine to me. She beamed at my praise, and it apparently gave her the courage to go on.
“I was wondering, that is, thinking, that maybe some of the pieces could be a little more serious.” Her dark eyes looked at me, then away, and I wondered what was on her mind. “I thought maybe I could write something about what to do if…well,” her voice got low, almost a whisper, “if an adult does something…inappropriate to a child. Who to go see, that sort of thing.”
I was taken aback. A kid’s beat piece on Child abuse? Molestation? Where had she gotten such an idea? “Well, Meg, I kind of think that might be more along the lines of something Reggie Pickett would do. Why do you bring it up?”
Meg looked a little furtive and said nothing.
“Is something going on with someone you know?” I hesitated to ask if it was with her. I hated the idea of anyone hurting a sweet kid like her. “Have you seen something or heard something?” I thought of Bobby’s two girls, claiming Meg told them something nasty.
She continued to look evasive and shook her head. I pressed on, suddenly aware I was far back in my office with a twelve-year-old girl and here in the modern age that was not the brightest move in the world.
“Are you sure Meg? It’s important that you tell someone if there is.” I thought she didn’t look afraid though, not like she was in fear of an adult. Rather, she just looked uncertain.
“Truth is…” She said, looking right at me, “I don’t know about anything exactly. I just…”she trailed off for a moment but her eyes never left me, and taking a deep breath she continued, “I want to check something out. If I found something out you would help me with it right? And if there is a story, maybe let me help with it?”
Oh, I thought, relieved, she just wants a big scoop. “Well, Meg, that sort of thing has to be handled very carefully. Usually the police have to decide something has happened before we can ever print anything. Libel, you understand?”
She nodded her head. “I understand. I just have to keep my eyes and ears open, and if I find anything out I will come to you, okay,Mr. Tharon?”
“Very ok, Meg. Now why don’t you scoot on out of here and have some fun on your day off?”
She smiled at me, and tossed back her hair. “Thanks Mr. Tharon, I knew I could count on you.” With that she left and the bad taste from my visit with the Dolands was gone. Still, was there some nasty thing going on right here in The Corners? I found it hard to believe. I dropped a quick email to Larry, telling him about my encounter with the Dolands, which I thought would give him a good laugh. I closed up shop and headed home. After all, it was Sunday.
Around The Corner Wednesday, September 27
Our little experiment in publishing continues to grow thanks to all the support from you, kind readers. There are a number of classified advertisements this week, and several have taken advantage of my offer: list any for sale item valued at less than twenty-five dollars and the ad is free. Just give me a call or stop by the office and I will fix you right up.
All of our local merchants continue their support which is wonderful. The costs of printing have very nearly been offset now, so as long as you all keep feeding me free meals we can keep this paper going. Of course sooner or later Amy Vickers will want back rent on my house, but one bridge at a time.
Many thanks to Constable Pickett for his contribution to this week's issue. I am sure it is just the first of many, and that you will all support him in his fine work. So many in this town give selflessly of themselves. It makes me proud to help in any way I can.
One of the nicest things about coming home to The Corners has been the renewing of old friendships, and the making of new ones. I have met some great folks here, and it is nice to meet people and just be myself. One of the facts of life in the city is everyone always has an agenda, and no one you meet is what they seem. Life, especially one’s social life, is a game there. It is so good to be here where simple interaction remains just that.
I walk along the streets most afternoons and see the day to day activities of our town. I see Tommy Slicdale making his rounds, delivering the mail everyone waits for. I see Mrs. Bellafont getting gas at Wyscome’s and Old Man Hurley getting gas at the Dinor (just kidding Mr. Chancy), Children play hopscotch on the sidewalk in front of the Schwartz’s house, my papergirls Charlesse and Corinne among them. I see Vera Carrone in her bright serape walking to work at the Paul Bunyan. I see the teenagers doing what teens have done from time immemorial, hanging out at the Pizza Parlor and looking askance at any adults that go by.
I see many things. The good things. The ordinary things. Even the bad things. But put together, assembled into a whole, they make up the machine of this town, and it is a machine that runs pretty smoothly.
In Hartford it was not unusual for me to have to step over an unfortunate reduced to sleeping on the sidewalk. To have a teenager pull a knife and request my wallet. To see the men shout obscenities at the women, and the women reply in kind. To see ugliness, and intolerance, hatred and violence. Where the police are just nameless and faceless robots in blue, doling out an indifferent justice. Garbage littered the streets, homes went uncared for and people looked the other way when they heard the word help.
The Corners is different. The Corners is better. The Corners is home.
Thomas Tharon
Chapter 5
I find a certain irony slipping into what I write on these pages when contrasted with what I write in the paper. My experience here has not been exactly as anticipated. This week was no different; things certainly took some strange turns. Bizarre is more accurate. I have remarked that I was not unused to a certain amount of casual sex in the city. By a certain amount I meant that perhaps every few months I would meet up with someone and we might spend four or five evenings engaged in satisfying our lusts. Occasionally I had longer-term relationships. There was Jana of course, but after my marriage I dated Charlette Starrington for about six months, and we were most definitely active. Since then, for the past seven or eight years really, I have shied away from any relationships that showed signs of getting serious. For a while I went on again off again with Terry Mately at the Courant. She was in editorial, though, and was therefore my superior in a manner of speaking. That always made me feel a bit strange, but in a good way I suppose. And I twice had Mary Forrester move in with me only to have her leave again. The sex with Mary was, well, perhaps the most devastating and powerful erotic experiences I had ever had. Maybe it was the fact that she is almost ten years younger than me, or it could be the huge amounts of effort she expends on learning sex, practicing sex, thinking about sex. In any event she used to have her way with me, whenever she wanted. Inevitably I would become jealous of her friends; she would vanish for a few days, and then come back and move out. There was no stability there.
I have discovered I would like some stability, along with devastating sex. I have not found that particular combination yet. And my encounters of this week are not likely to lead to stability, that’s for sure. And yes, I said encounters. With an s.
Thursday afternoon I was in the office getting as much of the advertising set up as possible so I could block out the remaining sections and see how much copy I needed to generate. With the addition of Reggie’s stuff, the town calendar, what Meg writes, the new piece by Tastler, it didn’t require all that much to fi
ll the rest of the paper. Two or three short stories, a couple photos, and my column make up the space nicely. I really have to get out with the camera more so I don’t have to use photos people bring me. The quality will no doubt improve.
I had just about finished when the phone rang. “Gazette and Clipper, can I help you?” I asked.
“Hello there” a rather husky voice replied. It was vaguely familiar but I couldn’t quite place it.
“Hi, can I help you?”
“I sure hope so…” breathy, lush, suggestive. “You DO know who this is, don’t you?”
“I am afraid you have me at a disadvantage.”
“Hmmmm. Sounds like you want me to take ADVANTAGE of you.” The speaker paused for a moment, then continued. “I have something you need. Can you come over and get it?”
“I am not quite sure I understand”. About the only thing I was sure of was that I was talking to a woman, and that I had heard her voice before. From the way she was talking I would have expected it to be Sarah Jacobs, but this voice lacked her twang and coarseness. “Maybe if you told me who you were I would be able to figure this out”. I wasn’t being exactly rude, but I wasn’t really in the mood for games either.
“I guess I didn’t make much of an impression on you, Tom. I have the materials from the church bulletin for you. Does that give you a hint?” A chuckle.
“Mrs. Doland?” I was aghast. But the voice clicked in my mind. I recalled her legs, the way she teased me with her foot. I was in deep trouble here.
“Mrs. Doland. Mrs. Doland. My, my, we are formal. Call me Yolanda. So, do you have a little time? I would like you to stop by and pick these up.”
The last thing I wanted to do was go see her right now, but I did need to get the materials. “Uh, yeah ok, I was just finishing up here. Shall I stop by the church office?” I already knew better, but a fella can hope, right?
“No, silly. The house. Come by the house. I’ll be waiting.” She hung up.
It was with a great deal of trepidation that I made my way around the corner to the Doland’s house. I have to confess, part of me was afraid that she was going to make a pass at me, and part of me was afraid she wouldn’t. She was certainly attractive, although quite a bit younger than I had ever considered dating. Still, men my age have dated women in their twenties before. It occurred to me as I walked over that a person having an affair in this town would have to be mighty careful, everyone knew everyone’s business. By the same token, I was there in less than two minutes. It was certainly convenient to my office.
She opened the door when I rang the bell. Her outfit was the same as on Sunday, shorts and a very tight tee. She smiled and allowed me to pass. I thought of just standing on the steps and waiting for the materials but I didn’t want to be rude. Or at least that’s what I told myself.
The television was on, some steamy soap opera, and on the coffee table sat a bottle of tequila, and a cutting board with the remains of a lime and a shaker of salt. “You wait right here Tom,” she said, taking me by the hand and pulling me to the couch. “Have a drink, there’s nothing like tequila in the afternoon.” It was apparent she had been doing more than just eating limes. Her breath was redolent of the liquor. I got the impression I would find her like this on any afternoon. Her nipples bulged at the tee shirt, and it was with difficulty that I pulled my eyes away. I was already getting aroused. I must be out of my mind. “I will go and get what you need.” She walked off to the stairs, her ass wiggling in those shorts in a way guaranteed to get my attention. I saw the ass stop on the stairs and looked up to find her smiling. “Caught you!” She shook a finger at me and went the rest of the way up.
I wondered where the good Reverend was. I wondered if the good Reverend had any guns. I wondered if I was crazy enough to do what was clearly on this woman’s mind. Of course I could be kidding myself, she might just get a kick out of flirting with old guys, then laughing at them. The idea shrank my excitement a bit. I had better be sensible, I decided. Married women were not a good idea. I had slept with a married woman once before, but had been unable to bear the worry. Besides, Yolanda was clearly the sort of girl Candy Tharon had warned me about.
A faintly familiar odor brought me back from my reveries. Just as I realized it was marijuana a hand touched the back of my neck. Smoke wafted around me. “Would you like some? It’s the Rev’s but I don’t think he will miss one little joint. I don’t suppose you have a little joint, now do you?”
I turned around to find Yolanda standing behind the couch. She was holding out a burning joint to me, and had gotten rid of her shorts somewhere. Naked from the waist down, I could see she was a natural blonde. She also had a tattoo, of a dragon or sea monster, coiled around her sparse pubic hair. My voice cracked as I spoke, “Uh, ahem, Uh, Mrs. Doland, uh, Yolanda. I, I think you have the wrong idea.” Whatever notion of bedding this young thing that I had vanished in the face of reality. She was WAY out of my league, and looked like nothing but trouble. I hadn’t been high in decades, since college really, and the smoke was already getting to me. I had to get out of there. My eyes were stuck on the tattoo and what lay below it. I tore them away and looked at the door saying, “I really should be going. I will come back when the Reverend is home.”
“Little Bertie is out making pastoral calls in the country, Tom. He won’t be back for hours.” Her free hand was kneading my neck. She took a long drag on the joint and then brought her face down to mine. “Let me give you a little of this.” She moved her mouth to mine, but before she could exhale I jumped off the couch. Backing towards the door I mumbled about having to go and bolted. As I got outside I heard her say “Shit.”
Feeling like a complete fool I made my way over to the dinor for a cup of coffee. One nice thing about The Corners, nothing was more than a few blocks away. I hardly ever used my car. It looked as if the church held more temptation than anywhere else in town. The Rev was apparently a pot smoking urban snob, and his young wife was obviously a pushover and a bit of a boozer. I would have to be very careful about things there in the future. I just hoped she wasn’t the sort to carry a grudge. A woman scorned and all that.
The Dinor was mostly empty, and Sarah Jacobs hurried to get my coffee. She parked herself in front of my seat at the counter, head resting on elbow, and smiled at me. “Sure I can’t get you some pie to go with that? The apple is fresh today.”
“No, thanks. I don’t want to spoil my dinner, now do I? It’s nearly four now.” I was hoping she would leave me in peace at that point, but no such luck.
“And just what do you plan to do for dinner?” she asked me, her voice a bit lower.
I had no plans at all, but normally I would have made something up. The business with Yolanda, despite having acted like a scaredycat, had left me with a certain aching in my lap. Sarah wasn’t really bad looking, but I knew better than to get involved with someone plainly hunting for a husband. In the back of my mind I seemed to recall hearing that she had children. Plural. Still, the little head had been thwarted at the Doland’s; it was going to get it’s way this time. “That depends. What do YOU have planned?”
Her eyes lit up, much the way a pinball bumper will light up when a ball strikes it. “Why, going out to dinner with you, Tom. What else?” And so that was how I ended up taking Sarah to the Lone Star out by the interstate.
Truth be told she did look lovely that night, in a vaguely trashy sort of way. She wore tight jeans and a silk blouse underneath a suede jacket. Typical rural country snaking clothes, and snaking she was. But I was in the mood to be snaked. We ate, drank, and on the drive back to town she kept leaning over and running her tongue into my ear. My penis, acting on orders from the primal part of my brain, responded appropriately. By the time we got back to the Corners, I was eager.
We ended up at my place, where we had a couple more drinks and started out on the sofa. By the time an hour had passed we were in bed, and I knew Sarah inside and out. Well at least skin deep. I would like to say we mad
e love, but love didn’t really enter into it. We fucked, plain and simple, and she was very good at it. There was a certain artificiality to her actions, and I am fairly certain she didn’t really have the several orgasms she wanted me to believe. Unlike most of the women in Hartford I had been with, she wasn’t aggressive in a selfish way, but rather was aggressive at making me feel good. I enjoyed that, although I felt a little deceitful about it. Just like the city women though, the first thing she did was make sure I understood a condom was needed. Some things are the same everywhere.
Afterwards she lay in bed and smoked. I was kind of annoyed by that, I don’t smoke and hated the smell in the bedroom, but it’s hard to be rude to a woman you have just been inside of. She said she would like to stay, but had to go home, and did I understand? I did, and was greatly relieved to see her go. I had needed the release, but I wanted to keep this on a strictly physical and fun level. I had no desire to get involved with Sarah Jacobs.
After she left I lay thinking of my lot here in The Corners. When I had been a teen, I had thought the people crude, stupid, and cruel. To an extent my Mom had helped that idea along, always encouraging me to think beyond the borders of the town. I think the happiest I ever saw her was the day I said I wanted to be a writer. I had gotten what I thought I wanted. So why was I still so empty? Had I gotten MY dream, or hers?
On Friday Meg came by with her copy for the week, a short piece on the science project the seventh graders were working on. They were using some sort of device Shirley Robbins had rigged up. She was Squid Corners answer to Professor Frink. The machine was taken to various places throughout the county and measured the soil content for a bunch of things. Meg didn’t really understand all of it, neither did Shirley’s students I was sure, I didn’t understand it either. But she wrote it up nicely, and I congratulated her on the good work. There was no more mention of our conversation of last week, and I let the subject drop for the present.