She turned to me. “Will it be that easy?”
I took a long moment. “No. Not until they make one that can air out the inside of your head.”
She noticed the pack. “You’re leaving, so soon?”
“There’s nothing to hang around for,” I said. “And only seven weeks left of the summer.”
“Can’t you wait a little while?” she asked. “There’s so much we have to talk about.”
“Like what?”
“School. What college you want to go to, what you’re going to do with your life.”
I laughed. “Small choice. My draft board will tell me.”
“Your father says…” She corrected herself. “Your father said that you wouldn’t be drafted.”
“Sure. He had it fixed. Like he did with everything else.”
“Isn’t it time you stopped fighting him, Jonathan? He’s dead now and there’s nothing he can do.” Her voice broke.
“What about you?” I asked. “You don’t believe that any more than I do. He provided for everything. Even death.”
She still didn’t speak, but just stood there with the tears running silently down her cheeks. I walked over to her and awkwardly put my arms around her shoulders. She buried her face against my chest. “Jonathan, Jonathan.”
“Take it easy, Mother,” I said, stroking her hair. “It’s over.”
“I feel so guilty.” Her voice was muffled against my shirt. “I never loved him. I worshiped him, but I never loved him. Can you understand that?”
“Then why did you marry him?” I asked.
“Because of you.”
“Me? I wasn’t born yet.”
“I was seventeen and pregnant,” she whispered.
“Even in those days you could have done something about it,” I said.
She slipped out of my arms. “Give me a cigarette.”
I lit the cigarette for her. “Did you turn on the coffee?” she asked.
I nodded and followed her into the kitchen. She filled two mugs and we sat down at the table.
“You didn’t answer my question. You didn’t have to marry him.”
“He wouldn’t hear of it. He wanted a son, he said.”
“Why? He already had one.”
“Dan was not enough for him. He knew it, and sometimes I think even Dan knew it. That’s why he always tried so hard to please his father. But Dan was soft, and your father was not.” Even Mother no longer called him D.J. “Your father got what he wanted. Whether you like it or not, you’re exactly like him.”
I got to my feet and brought the percolator over to the table. “More coffee?”
She shook her head. I refilled my cup. “You drink too much coffee,” she said.
I laughed. “Think it will stunt my growth?” I stood just over six feet. Even she had to smile. “You know, Mother, you’re a very pretty lady.”
She shook her head. “I don’t feel like one just now.”
“Give yourself time,” I said. “You will.”
She hesitated a moment; then her eyes met mine. “You know about Jack and me?”
I nodded.
“I thought you did,” she said. “But you never said anything.”
“Not my place.”
“Now he wants to get married,” she said. “But I don’t know.”
“You don’t have to rush,” I said. “Nobody’s pressing this time.”
A shade of wonder came into her eyes. “You looked just like your father when you said that.”
I laughed. “I couldn’t have. If I were my father I couldn’t understand why you wouldn’t join me on the funeral pyre.”
“That’s horrible,” she said.
“I always get horrible when I’m hungry,” I said. “Is that like him too?”
“Exactly,” she said, getting to her feet. “And I’m going to deal with you exactly as I did with him. I’m going to make you the biggest breakfast you ever ate.”
***
“That’s enough,” I said. “I won’t have to eat for a week now.”
She smiled. “That was the idea.” She put the empty plates in the sink and refilled the coffee cups. “Do you know where you’re going?”
I shook my head. “Not really. South first, then maybe west. But it all depends which way the traffic is going.”
“You will be careful?”
I nodded.
“There are all kinds of people on the road.”
“I’ll be okay.”
“Will you write and let me know how you are?”
“Sure. But don’t worry.”
“I will,” she said. “If there’s any trouble, you’ll call me?”
“Collect.”
“Collect.” She smiled. “That makes me feel better.”
I glanced at the kitchen clock. It was a quarter to seven. “I’d better get going.”
She looked up at me as I got up. “I’m too young. I’ve always been too young.”
“What do you mean?”
“First I was too young to be a bride, then too young to be a mother. Now I’m too young to be a widow and alone.”
“Everybody has to grow up sometime,” I said. “Maybe this is your time.”
“That’s your father speaking. He had that same cold, clinical way of separating himself from his feelings.” A strange look came over her face. “Are you really my son, Jonathan? Or are you just an extension of him that he implanted in me, as he said?”
“I’m me. I’m your son. And his. Nothing else.”
“Do you love me?”
I was silent for a moment. Then I took her hand and kissed it. “Yes, Mother.”
“Do you have enough money?”
I laughed. I had almost one hundred dollars. At ten dollars a week, I had no sweat. “Yes, Mother.”
***
I slung the backpack over my shoulders and went down the driveway. When I hit the still-sleeping street, I looked back. Mother was standing in the doorway. She waved to me. I waved back and went down the street.
The morning already held the promise of the day’s heat. The chippies were all over the lawn grabbing the early worms, and their chatter was mixed with the occasional trill of a robin. The air smelled green. U.S. 1 was a mile and a half away, just the other side of the bridge over Schuylkill Creek.
The Dairihome Milk truck turned the corner just as I did. Pete stopped the truck when he saw me. “Jonathan!”
I turned and waited while he climbed down. He had a container of orange juice in one hand, a can of beer in the other. “Traveler’s choice,” he said.
I took the beer. It was a good morning for it. Already the heat was reaching into me. He put the O.J. back into the truck and took another can of beer for himself. We pulled the tabs at the same time, and the sound of their popping was the only one on the street.
He took a deep draft, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Sorry for your trouble,” he said. Pete was Irish.
I nodded.
“Where you off to?”
“Don’t exactly know. Just off.”
He nodded. “Good thing to get away. Your mother all right?”
“Fine,” I answered. “She’s a tough lady.”
He studied me for a moment while he thought that over. Pete had known us for a long time. Fifteen years. Finally he answered. “Yes.”
I finished the beer and crumpled the can. He took it from my hand. “How long will you be gone?”
“Seven weeks.”
“Shit!” He grinned. “That’s eighty-four quarts. There goes my milk bonus.”
I laughed. “Leave the two quarts anyway. My mother will never notice.”
“She might not. But I’ll bet that Mamie has a note in the bottle before I get there.” He went back into the truck. He fished around for a moment, then came out with a six-pack. “Better take this with you. It’s gonna be a hot day.”
“Thanks.”
He looked at me. “We’re gonna miss your father.” He
touched the union button on his white coveralls. “He made this mean a lot. I only hope your brother does half as well.”
“He’ll do better than that,” I said.
Again he looked at me for a moment. “We’ll see. But he’s not your father.”
“Who is?”
“You are,” he said.
I stared at him. “But I’m not old enough.”
“Someday you will be,” he said. “And we’ll be waiting.”
He put the truck into drive, and I watched it go out of sight around the corner. Then I crossed the street.
***
“Now do you believe me?”
“No. That’s what you wanted people to think. So you put the idea in their heads.”
“Why would I do a thing like that?”
“Because you’re a prick. And because you were jealous of D.J. You know he’ll turn out better than you ever were.”
“Suddenly you love your brother.”
“No way. But I can see what he is. He cares.”
“I cared.”
“When? How many years ago? Before I was born, before you fell in love with power and money?”
“You still won’t allow yourself to understand.”
“I understand. Too well.”
“You only think you do. But you’ll find out. In time.”
“Go away. You’re just as boring dead as alive.”
“I’m alive just as long as you and your children will be alive. I’m in your genes, your cells, your mind. Give yourself the time. You’ll remember.”
“Remember what?”
“Me.”
“I don’t want to remember you.”
“You will. In a thousand different ways. You can’t help it.”
“But not just now, Father. It’s vacation time.”
***
She was sitting on the concrete abutment at the entrance to the bridge, a backpack beside her, her legs hanging over the side facing the river. She was staring down into the water, the gray pungent smoke curling like a cloud from her lips. “Good morning, Jonathan,” she said, without turning around.
I stopped but did not answer.
“I was waiting for you,” she said, still without turning around. “Don’t be angry with me.”
“I’m not angry,” I said.
She swung her feet around to face me. She smiled. “Then you’ll take me with you?”
I knew that look in her eyes. “You’re stoned.”
“Just a little.” She held the joint toward me. “Want a drag? This is real good shit.”
“No, thanks,” I said. “U.S. Number One is no road to stand out in the middle of with your head in the clouds.”
“You are angry with me.” There was hurt in her voice.
“I said I wasn’t.”
“But you didn’t mean it.”
“I meant it.”
“Then why can’t I come with you?”
“Because I want to be alone. Don’t you understand that?”
“I won’t bother you. I’ll keep out of your way.”
“Go home,” I said. “It won’t work.” I started up the steps to the bridge.
“Then why did you tell me to meet you here?” she called after me.
I turned halfway up the steps and looked down at her. “When did I do that?”
“Yesterday afternoon,” she said, a strange intensity shining through clouds in her eyes. “Just after you finished talking with your father.”
“My father’s dead,” I said.
“I know that.”
“Then how could I have been talking with him? I think the shit you’re smoking has made you cuckoo.”
“I saw you talking to him,” she said stubbornly. “Then you got up and went to the screen door and turned to look at me. I heard you say, ‘Meet me at the bridge in the morning.’ I nodded to you and went inside.”
I was silent.
“Your voice sounded exactly like your father’s,” she said.
I looked at her. The heat of the morning had already drawn fine beads of sweat across her face, making it shine in the bright sunlight. I could see the tracings of moisture gathering in the cleft of her blouse between her breasts and the damp shadows gathering under her arms. “Did I say anything else?”
“Yes. But it was fuzzy. I didn’t quite get it. It was something like ‘I’m not finished with you yet.’ All I know is that it made me very horny. I went upstairs, took off all my clothes and lay on the bed naked and without doing anything to myself, just came and came until I was exhausted.”
I held out my hand. “Give me the joint.”
Anne placed it in my fingers. Her touch was hot and dry. I flipped it out into the river. “Got any more shit?”
She dug into her pack and came out with the Bulldog pouch. I took it. “That’s it?”
She nodded.
I threw it into the river. She turned to watch it float a moment on the surface of the water, then sink slowly as it moved with the current under the bridge. “You just can’t get shit like that anymore,” she said sorrowfully. “Why did you do that?”
“I’m not lookin’ to get busted and spend the next seven weeks in some tank-town jail.”
Suddenly her eyes began to fill with tears. “Touch me,” she said.
I took her hand and she guided me to her breast. She closed her eyes, squeezing the tears from the corners of them. “God, that feels good,” she whispered.
Anne came down from the abutment. We went down around the corner and under the bridge. We made it there, with the sound of the trucks roaring against the pavement over our heads drowning her moaning cries. Afterward she was very quiet and lay there looking up at me as I pulled my jeans up around my hips and snapped the buttons. She reached over for her pack, pulled out some Kleenex and stuffed it into her cunt. Then she got up and pulled up her own jeans.
“It feels so good in there, I don’t want to lose any of it,” she said. “Better than anything I can do in my head.”
I didn’t answer.
She reached for my hand. “Jonathan. Do you think maybe I’m in love with you?”
I looked into her eyes. There was a bright and shining contentment in them. “No,” I said shortly. “You’re not in love with me. You’re in love with my father.”
***
U.S. 1 was already hot and dusty, and a gray-blue pall of exhaust fumes hung heavy in the air over the road. We waited for a break in the traffic, then made it to the southbound side. We stood there watching the traffic roar by.
She pushed long, damp hair back from her face. “It’s got to be over eighty already.”
I nodded.
“Maybe we can find some shade and cool off a bit first?”
I led her over to a clump of trees and we plunked ourselves down on the ground under them. I broke out the six-pack Pete had given me. “This will help.”
She took a long swallow. “Grass dehydrates me. So does fucking.”
I laughed. “You’ll have to pace yourself.”
She smiled at me. I pulled at my beer and looked out at the road. The early trucks had already gone, and the highway was filled with commuter traffic to New York. The big cars, air-conditioned against the heat and smell, had their windows rolled up tight. The little cars had their windows wide open, their occupants hoping to escape the heat with the speed, although in the morning crush it seemed a futile thought.
“Where are we heading?” she asked.
“West Virginia,” I said, without thinking.
“Why West Virginia?”
“Good a place as any,” I said. “Besides, I’ve never been there.”
I didn’t tell her that that was where my father had come from. Near a town named Fitchville, which I had once found on an A.A.A. map. I wondered what it was like, because he never spoke about it at all. Now, suddenly, I knew I had to go there, even though I hadn’t realized it when I left the house this morning.
I finished off my beer in a long swal
low and got to my feet. I slung the pack behind my shoulders and looked down at her. “Ready?”
She reached into her pack and pulled out a floppy-brimmed felt hat, which she stuck on her head. “How does it look?”
“Beautiful.”
She got to her feet. “Let’s go.”
***
An hour later we were still hanging our thumbs on the doors of the cars going by. By now she was sitting on her pack, her face flushed and warm. I lit a cigarette and gave it to her.
“It’s not as easy as it looks in the movies,” she said.
I grinned as I lit another cigarette for myself. “It never is.”
“I’ve got to pee,” she said.
“Over there.” I gestured to the clump of trees.
She looked at me questioningly.
“Might as well get used to it,” I said.
She fished some Kleenex from her pack and disappeared behind the trees. I turned to watch the road. Traffic was lighter now that the morning rush was over. Fewer passenger cars, more trucks. The road began to shimmer in the heat haze.
I heard her come up behind me as I squinted into the sun. A giant Fruehauf trailer crested the hill and came down the hill toward us. Automatically I raised my hand in the familiar signal. Then I heard the hiss of its powerful air brakes as it slowly came to a stop, its giant shadow shielding us from the sun.
I watched the door open silently outward from the cab three feet off the ground. The voice came from a man I could not see. “You kids want a ride into town?”
I felt her restraining hand on my arm, but the voice I heard was not her voice. “Daniel. Paw tol’ us to walk.”
I shook her hand angrily off my arm. “We suah do, mistuh,” I said.
Book One
Another Day
Chapter 1
The small field on the side of the hill was bare except for a few sparse clumps of bushes that resisted the drought and the heat of summer. The earth was beginning to cool with the first fading of the afternoon sun when the rabbit cautiously stuck his nose out of the small hole behind one of the bushes and sniffed at the still air. A second later he emerged on the ground. With tiny jerking movements he turned his head. He saw nothing. The world was safe.
Still he moved cautiously. Ears back, flat against his head, he kept his body close to the ground so that his white-flecked sandy-gray fur did not stand out against the bare, sun-bleached earth. In short quick hops he jumped from bush to bush, pausing at each to reconnoiter, before moving down the hill toward the small, green wooded forest near the banks of the almost dried-out brook.
Memories of Another Day Page 3