She glances at her watch. “Goodness gracious. Look at the time.”
“You really slept on a fire escape?”
“Yes, it was cooler out there.”
I wish she would talk more about New York and the fun they had but she stands up. “Well,” she says. “Time for decent people to be in bed.”
“Weren’t you afraid you’d fall off ?”
“No, we were asleep.”
She slips into the kitchen and clinks around in the cupboard for a minute or two and runs water in the sink, and I sit and wait, wishing she’d come back and tell more. I don’t know what I want to know. Everything. Everything they did and said and everything they thought about life and what they were hoping for.
12
At Joe’s Bar
Uncle Sugar has a pool table in the cool of his basement, a souvenir of his old life, and on the knotty-pine paneling hang pictures of the Eldon Miller Orchestra, Sugar in a white tux looking young and moody. Kate and I shoot eight-ball on a hot afternoon, listening to Jelly Roll Morton on the Victrola, and Lars Hinkley singing, Honolulu Mama, how she could dance / In her little pink nightie when she took off her—Oahu! Oahu! Oahu! It’s hard to imagine Uncle Sugar’s life before he found the Lord, but it included “Hyena Stomp” and “Panama” and the Famous Del Ray Ballroom on Lake Elmo—here’s the Eldon Miller Orchestra on the bandstand, saxophones poised, Sugar at the microphone, the handsome maestro holding the long white baton, and women in skimpy dresses with the hemline above their knees dancing, knees in, heels up, arms akimbo, on the long veranda. Kate twitches her butt in time to the music as she lines up a shot and—whack!—she bangs her four-ball into the corner pocket, and as she angles for the three, she says, “What did your parents tell you about sexual intercourse?”
Sexual intercourse! I have always wanted to say the words out loud, so I do. “What did my parents tell me about sexual intercourse?” I say.
“Yes,” she says.
“They pretty much let me figure sexual intercourse out for myself.” I was in Minneapolis once to go to the library and walked down Hennepin Avenue with its marquees blinking and neon arrows pointing and neon women kicking their legs up and down and up and down and neon champagne glasses with bubbles rising and a bookstore, Shinder’s, where I found a book called Sexual Hygiene where I first saw the words coitus and vagina and penis. I read it, wrapped in a National Geographic, standing in the aisle. I couldn’t afford the $1.50, and anyway the clerk was a woman.
—Did it have pictures?
—More like maps.
—What did they show?
—It showed how the penis goes into the vagina.
My heart pounds to hear myself say this delicious thing. I would also like to say coitus but I’m not 100% sure about the pronunciation.
—So it told you how to have sex?
—It gave you a pretty good idea how it goes.
—Did it sound like fun?
—Sort of.
Sort of!!! Sort of?? It sounded like the greatest thing in the world. Even saying the words for it is utterly thrilling and naming the parts of the body.
It’s my shot, the ten-ball, a long shot, lots of green.
—Sex is a lot better than what those books say, she says.
“Oh?” How does she know?
I poke the cueball and the ten-ball skews off into nowhere.
“My mother gave me a book that made sex sound painful, like having your appendix out. That’s what they don’t want us to know, darling. How much fun it is.”
And she switches into her Southern accent.—“Oh, Randolph. It’s so hard to send you back to the front. I can’t bear the thought! I hate this war! Do you hear me! I hate it!” She lights a cigarette and comes around the pool table to me and touches my arm. And kisses me on the lips. “That’s so you’ll have something to remember me by, soldier,” she says.
We shoot pool, listen to jazz, Kate gives me a smoking lesson. She passes me a Herbert Tareyton. I hold it and she corrects my technique. The right arm should be cocked, the wrist bent, the fingers relaxed, the cigarette between the first and second fingers. I light it off her match and inhale, it burns, but not too bad. “Breathe it out.” I do and notice a certain light-headedness. Not nausea, not a prelude to vomiting. But I don’t feel like making any sudden moves.
It’s a New York bar called Joe’s and she’s sitting at a table in the corner and I walk in, a stranger in a black suit, black hat, and I ask her for a light and she says, “You come here often?”
—Now that I know you’re here, I’ll be coming much more often, I’m sure.
—You look like a writer.
—I am. You’re very beautiful. But I suppose you know that.
—Beauty isn’t that important to me. Physical beauty. It’s only a way to get to meet people. Who do you write for?
—The New Yorker magazine. Ever hear of it?
—I’ve seen it around here and there. What sort of stuff do you write?
—Write about jazz, theater, that sort of thing. Baseball, movies. From now on, I may be writing a little bit about you.
—Ha! You don’t even know me! You don’t know one thing about me.
—Give me time. I’m a good learner, sister.
And we kiss a movie kiss. So light, so sweet. We kiss twice. And then she pulls back and says it’s time to go. We open the windows and wave wet towels and put away the 78s. “I really shouldn’t do that anymore,” she says. “Roger asked me if I ever kissed other boys and I said I didn’t. I don’t want to be a liar.”
“I don’t think this counts. It’s only pretend,” I say. “It doesn’t really mean anything.” Lie, lie, lie. It means everything and I know it.
—I don’t want to hurt his feelings.
—He’ll never know.
—You always know if someone you love is lying to you.
A scary thought. Very scary. Love as a lie detector. A tree toad has to tell a hundred lies before anybody would dream of loving him.
—Do you love Roger? I say.
—I do. We have a lot of fun together.
—Someone said you and he go to beer parties.
—We do a lot of different things. Mostly we talk.
—What about?
She makes a face.
—Wouldn’t you like to know?
Yes, I would. But apparently I’m not going to. So I rack up the billiard balls and set the cue sticks in their clips and I brush the green felt and pick bits of lint off it. Kate waits at the light switch at the foot of the stairs. I am sad to think that Joe’s Bar is going to close. It was a cool joint to hang out and shoot pool in and listen to jazz and do some kissing. I am going to miss the kissing. I wish there would be one last kiss, but she turns and climbs the stairs ahead of me and says goodbye without turning around or waiting and I go out the door, into the Kateless world.
13
A Quiet Pond
That night on Weegee, Big Daddy was about to devour Cheeseburger No. 9 and he rang the Ding-a-Ling Bell and told all the duck butts and skinny minnies to listen up, here’s the latest from the Doo Dads, and in came the bass bip-bipbip-bumming and a falsetto oooooooweeeeeee-we-we-ooooo and it was called “The Ballad of Ricky and Dede”—He was the nicest kid
That you ever saw.
How did he become—a
Fugitive from the law?
He lost his cool and
Slapped around his ma,
Stole her car and drove west,
A fugitive from the law.
In the song, Ricky and Dede try to run a roadblock in Wichita and are gunned down by Sheriff Shaw (He had a shotgun and was quick on the draw) and are laid down on a bed of straw and covered with a mackinaw, and though he was shot in the jaw Ricky reached out a finger (like a twisted claw) and managed to draw in the dirt—Forgive me, Mama,
For my wicked past,
And now your fugitive
Is going home at last. Amen.
It was not on
e of the Doo Dads’ best efforts and seemed an odd song for a guy to write about his own brother.
So I tried a couple versions of my own.
The Fugitive
The Guppy family sat around the kitchen table eating fish sticks and hash browns, and their dog Rex walked in and said, “I wish you people knew what you smell like to me, I think you’d find it informative.”
There they were, eating, talking about the upcoming Boy Scout Rope Climb in Littleville and their visit to Ray at the reformatory, and a still, small voice spoke and they looked down and Rex’s little black lips were moving.
But it couldn’t be true. Dogs can’t talk.
But Rex just did.
“Why’s everybody staring at me?” said Rex. “Did I say something wrong?”
Nobody let out a peep. To reply to Rex would mean that you believe he just spoke to you, and of course dogs can’t talk.
“What’s the matter?” says Rex. “Cat got your tongue?”
The mother looked at the father, Roger looked at Jim, who looked at Ricky, who said to Rex, “What do we smell like?”
Rex said, “Very pungent. A bad combination of smells. Like kerosene, hair oil, beer, cigars, and that blue slop you put in the toilet. I go to get a drink of water and it makes me gag.”
The father opened the door and told Rex to go outside.
“Gladly,” said Rex.
And the next day there was no more Rex. Ricky came home from rope-climbing practice and Rex was gone and his water dish too. The boy searched all over Littleville, from the schoolyard to the junkyard, but the old dog was gone. “Daddy took him to live on a farm. He’ll be happier there,” explained Mom.
A despicable lie and the boy knew it. And the next day Daddy didn’t return home from work at the gas plant. Daddy, poor Daddy. People at the gas plant said he seemed normal and everything when he left. The police said maybe he stopped at a roadside tavern for a libation. But Daddy doesn’t drink. “I guess he went to live on the farm with Rex,” said Ricky. “Maybe what we do unto others eventually is done unto us. This happens sometimes.”
But the next day Rex came back. Mom was cooking up a burger and was so shocked she almost dropped the skillet.
“Your hubby is lying in a ditch with stars in his eyes from getting clobbered by a two-by-four. Ricky did it. And then he stole your car and headed west with that sweet girl with the luscious orbs.”
Mom was distraught but what could she do? The coppers fetched Daddy from the ditch but he was never the same after that pasting he got, and the FBI hightailed it after Ricky and Dede, but the West is a big place and the desert tells no tales. Nothing would ever be the same again. The Scouts climb the rope and the crowd waits and the Scouts don’t come down. We are all fugitives but from what? We may never know.
To Hell With It
The big sister is washing dishes in the kitchen and the dog walks in and barks, “Glory be to God in the highest!” and suddenly a fat lady in a white satin robe appears, holding a flaming torch and singing, “Stand up, stand up for Jesus, ye soldiers of the cross,” and suddenly the big sister is with Jesus and Grandpa in heaven. The streets are copper, not gold, and people don’t play harps (thank goodness), but otherwise heaven looks much as you’d expect from the pictures you’ve seen, very peaceful and shiny.
“Good to see you, kiddo,” says Grandpa. “Say hello to our Lord and Saviour.”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” says Jesus. “How was your trip up?”
“It was real quick.”
They stand around chewing the fat and then she says, “Would you do me a big favor? I know you’re very busy, but this’ll only take a sec. Would you give somebody a painful disease that would make him a helpless cripple in a wheelchair? I think it’d be good for him to learn a lesson.”
“Who?” says Jesus.
“You know.”
Jesus gives her his Good Shepherd look and tells her that she can’t stay in heaven if she is harboring anger in her heart.
The big sister looks down at me on earth reading my filthy books and getting away with murder and she feels a big hot lump of lead in her left ventricle. Should she love me or should she wait until Jesus is in a better mood? She decides to wait.
“He’s a friend of that kid who knocked his mother down and stole the car and took his girlfriend to Montana. He and that boy are peas in a pod. Practically brothers. Both of them willful and rebellious and heedless of Your Holy Word and—what’s worse, Lord—they’re getting away with murder!” There are no tears in heaven but the big sister’s eyes are full of them. “Just look down there! Look at what he’s reading! And look at that kid in the motel in Montana! Take a gander! How can you let this go on?” She pulls a sheaf of papers from her radiant white robe.
“I’ve made a list of 493 different infractions of Your Holy Word that Gary and Ricky have committed—just in the past four days that I’ve been in heavenly paradise and have been able to conduct surveillance. Here. If you really are omnipotent, now is the time to show it.”
It’s the wrong thing to say, and even she knows it and is about to say she’s sorry, but heaven is no place for apologies.
Suddenly she’s smack-dab in the middle of a burning lake, flames licking her legs, her hair and eyebrows gone, clothes burned up, and Satan is sitting on a rock nearby and laughing his big hairy ass off.
“You’re a dumb shit, you know that?” he yells. “You were in paradise and it wasn’t good enough for you, bitch! Hope you enjoy suffering, ’cause you’re in for a whole train-load of it! You are going to suffer your butt off!”
And she says, “Would you do me a favor and go and get my brother and his buddy Ricky Guppy and bring both of them down here?”
“He’s not scheduled for here. Not yet.”
The big sister brightens. “You mean he’s coming eventually?”
“Wait and see. Maybe. Who knows?” Satan laughs again. “Meanwhile, here’s some piss to drink and a big dogshit sandwich for lunch.”
I didn’t show that story to Miss Lewis or anyone else, I kept it in a shoebox in my closet, where later High School Orgies and other sensitive materials joined it, such as my story about Kate. I couldn’t stop thinking about her blue angora sweater and that day in the boys’ toilet when I said I could run away with her and she said That’d be nice and she put my hands on her breasts. I thought about it every day. I wanted to write letters to her saying how sweet it was, but they were too corny.
Dancing at the Del Ray
My favorite Doo Dad song is “My Girl” and Kate and I are dancing to it at the fashionable Del Ray Ballroom (“The Dance Hall for Folks on the Ball”) and she tells me what cool dance moves I have, as the Doo Dads sing, Her eyes so blue and pale
Could make a good man go to jail
I once was lost and now I’m blind
Because I got her on my mind
My Girl
What a success I could have been
I’ll never dream of it again
I would murder, I would steal
Because of all she makes me feel
My Girl
And after the dance, we step out on the long tiled veranda to cool off among the potted plants and she dabs at her temples with a hanky I have given her, not knowing it is soaked in secret cologne.
We stand at the railing and look at Lake Elmo bathed in moonlight and she whispers, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have a cool swim right now?”
The Doo Dads are singing the next song, Saturday night and time to be gone,
Slipping and sliding with my new shoes on,
Heading downtown to the old dance hall,
Baby, we’ll have a ball.
But she leads me by the hand behind a potted palm and gives me a Herbert Tareyton and lights it and we share a smoke and she says, “I want to be naked with you.”
I got my hepcat threads and a gold watch chain,
And with you in hand, I’m feeling no pain.
Hold me clo
se, baby, don’t let go,
And we’ll dance all the way down to Mexico.
A few minutes later we stand in the shadows beside the bathhouse. Dim figures swing and sway in the lighted windows of the ballroom.
“Too bad we don’t have swimsuits,” I say.
“You don’t need swimsuits to go in the water,” she says. And she pulls her dress up over her head and walks toward the water in her bra and panties.
I strip to my shorts and follow her. We swim out to the diving dock and float there for a minute, her proud young breasts clearly outlined under the taut wet cloth.
“I admire your lack of inhibition,” I say. She says, “I love being naked. I love it more than anything.”
My heart pounds at the thought. I have long hoped for this. She slips off her bra and panties and flings them into deep water and motions to me to do likewise.
“God created our bodies, why shouldn’t we enjoy them?” she says. I don’t know what she means exactly but I can see her breasts underwater. Then, suddenly, she dives, her trim young buttocks rise, and I feel her grab my shorts and pull, and they’re off! She comes bubbling to the surface, grinning.
“What if someone sees us?” I say. I can feel my manhood thickening.
Her beautiful buttocks rise again and under she goes and gropes for me underwater and I dive and she holds my arms tight, pulls me close, and we kiss a bubbly kiss, eyes open, her breasts like two small friendly otters. I struggle to rise to the surface but she won’t let me go. She holds my hardness in her hand until I can bear it no longer. With a powerful thrust, I propel us both to the surface and hoist her onto the dock and rise dripping from the water—
Lake Wobegon Summer 1956 Page 11