If Jack's in Love

by Stephen Wetta

  “Of course not. You run along. It’s time for me to do my correspondence, anyway.”

  I dashed inside, changed into my street clothes, bade a quick good-bye to Stan and Anya (who barely noticed), and took off.

  It was nearly seven, closing time on Saturdays. Alas, I’d forgotten that Snead came to clean that day. It occurred to me only when I passed the Ben Franklin (my mother was off work) and spotted his truck in front of Gladstein’s.

  As I was mounting to the top of the steps the two men came out of the store. Gladstein was locking up and the Yatzis were bouncing about like Ping-Pong balls in a wind tunnel.

  “Little Witcher!” he called.

  Snead squinted over his cigarette.

  Bashfully I approached. The drink had pretty much worn off, and Snead, who very well might act as spy for my father (you never could tell), was spoiling everything by being present. Once again I was to be prohibited from pouring my heart out to my mentor.

  “Awright, little Witcher, how you doing.”

  “How you doing, Snead.”

  “Where you been, kid?” Gladstein asked.

  “Swimming. You know that new house on Clark Lane? The people there let us come to their pool.”

  “Shit little Witcher, you swimming with the rich folks?” Snead grinned.

  “Yeah.” I came close to telling him about the mixed drink, but I decided to stay on the safe side.

  “Your brother went too?”

  “He almost beat up Gaylord Joyner but the cop came and stopped him.”

  “Deputy Dawg?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Gladstein’s mutts were pawing frantically at his fat legs. “Where are those people from?”

  “Dallas.”

  “Dallas,” he said scornfully, “don’t talk to me about Dallas, that’s where they shot our president.”

  “Shit, Mr. Gladstein, you can’t blame the whole town,” Snead said. “That was that lone nutcase, that Oswald cat.”

  The men moved towards their vehicles. Snead was carrying a bucket and some rags. In the back of his truck, on the flatbed, you could see the handle of the buffer poking up.

  “Jack Kennedy was the best president we’ve ever had.” Gladstein raised his eyebrows, impressing the point on Snead.

  “Fine with me, I ain’t arguing. Why did your brother want to beat up Joyner?” Snead asked.

  “You of all people should know what I’m talking about,” Gladstein went on. “Jews and blacks have to stand together, right? I can’t stand prejudice in the South. Abhor it. I moved down here to protest the injustice of the place. When my wife died, I said to hell with it. You know where I live? In Jefferson Ward. I figured that would show these bigots a thing or two.”

  Snead swiveled his cigarette. “You shitting me, you live in Jefferson Ward?”

  “I never told you?”

  “Nah, I never heard tell where you live.”

  Gladstein nodded, somber, proud.

  “You take your Continental into that neighborhood? You a brave man, Mr. Gladstein.”

  “Oh, they’re good people.”

  I didn’t quite understand. I had heard of Jefferson Ward. It was downtown, a neighborhood forbidden to white people. They called it Niggertown in El Dorado Hills. But this was the first time I’d heard that Gladstein lived there. Perhaps if I had been older, if I had traveled beyond the confines of El Dorado Hills, the incomprehensibility of a white man in Jefferson Ward would have struck me more powerfully.

  Gladstein was all exercised by now. “I figured if I moved into one of these lily-white neighborhoods like El Dorado Hills I’d be no better than anyone else. People have to do it themselves, the government can’t do everything. That’s why I bought in Jefferson Ward. I haven’t had a moment’s problem there. They’re good people, Snead.”

  Snead squinted over his cigarette. “If you say so.”

  I don’t think Gladstein grasped how uncomfortable southerners were made by straightforwardness. Snead didn’t want to discuss it. Integration was fine on the news, but who ever heard of a white man with money moving to Jefferson Ward? It was a bit like Dickie Pudding’s tap dancing.

  Gladstein kept watching Snead’s face, expecting to be congratulated for his subversion. But Snead never gave a thing away. I liked that about him.

  “You don’t approve of my living in Jefferson Ward?”

  “I ain’t got no problem with it. You do what you want, Mr. Gladstein.”

  “You should visit me. Come see for yourself.”

  Snead didn’t reply.

  The jeweler frowned and shook his head. “Black people down here don’t want change any more than the white people.”

  “Nah, people gotta live, that’s all,” Snead said.

  Gladstein looked around for his mutts and started pensively in the direction of the Continental. I kept my eyes on him, wondering whether he’d remember to ask about Myra. There were so many things I wanted to tell him.

  He stuck his key in the car door and the dogs leapt happily inside.

  Snead said, “I ask you, Witcher, can you imagine a white man parking that car in Jefferson Ward?”

  “I don’t know, I ain’t never been there.”

  “Shit, man lives there. He must have a lucky horseshoe. Man’s got some kind of magic if they let him live in Jefferson Ward.” He laughed. He stared at Gladstein’s car as it pulled up to the top of the hill to exit onto Karen Drive. He gave the sky a saturnine shake of his big, tough, squinting head. “Damn fool,” he said. “Thinks he’s doing black folks a favor.”

  16

  I NEVER DID LEARN how the Joyners came to know about the pool party. And yet it was easy to imagine Myra spilling the beans to a Coghill and that Coghill repeating it to a Pendleton who would report it to another Pendleton who would then ferret the news to Gaylord Joyner. And if the neighbors had by now learned that Myra was associating with a Witcher, well then, what were wars in the jungle or assassination conspiracies or long hair on boys to prove the world was going mad?

  I kept pining for her. For a week I haunted the woods behind Dickie Pudding’s house, gazing at the street and listening for her step. I wandered the terraced slopes of the shopping center, climbing up, climbing down. In Gladstein’s Jewelry I stayed near the corner mirror and studied the sewing store, hoping against hope.

  Gladstein, happy about the power of his ring, told jokes to cheer me up. “You kissed her, Witcher, and you told me she’d never let you.”

  “Plus she came to the party as my date,” I said.

  “A date with Myra Joyner, you Don Juan!”

  Nevertheless, society had dictated its will. My girl had vanished.

  I heard rumors she had been grounded and couldn’t leave the house. That made me feel a little guilty, but also triumphant. I was tapping into the same evil forces that drove my brother. Maybe I’d become as expert at seducing girls as Stan and Pop. What if someday I got a French gal!

  Meanwhile Anya had fallen for Stan, the way girls do for violent, reckless boys. She came to the house to meet the folks. She bore witness to the pallid TRASH legend showing through the watery paint and shook her head, muttering bad things about the philistines of El Dorado Hills. “In California people have tons more money than here. Everyone is free in California, they don’t have all these small-town hang-ups.”

  Mom didn’t approve of such worldliness, no matter if the girl was defending us. Why would she be bringing up California? It must have something to do with those hippies. Pop inscrutably eyed her, appreciating what a chip off the old block Stan was; he was remembering that French gal, I’ll bet.

  Anya, she gazed at where the screen should be, at the tattered carmine sofa, at the car parts beside the house, at the weeds in the yard, and yet all she saw was Stan: his sinewy muscles, his brooding lips, his long hair, his contempt for the plastic suburbanites of El Dorado Hills.

  Wow, man. Women.

  One afternoon while I was watching soap operas with Pop, I
spied a familiar head through the window and I bounded up for a closer look. Kathy Coghill loitered stealthily on the street, gazing towards our house. I raised my hand in greeting and she glanced tentatively away at that very moment, unaware she was being watched. Then she took a quick step to the side, yanked open our mailbox, tossed something inside, and hurried off in the direction of Clark Lane.

  She was around the corner by the time I got to the yard. I opened the mailbox and took out an envelope with my name on it, Jack, composed in flowing cursive, by a hand possessing the deepest artistic feeling.

  I took it to my room.

  The note read:

  Dearest,

  They’ve got me locked in the house and I can’t get out! I’m about to go crazy! I can’t think of anything but you. Rescue me!

  M

  What was I supposed to do? I paced about my room, stunned at the way she’d converted so efficiently from reluctant fawn to eager beaver.

  I left the house by the back door. I didn’t want to have to answer questions from Pop.

  I hurried to Lewis Street and scrutinized the windows of her house, darkened under the afternoon sun. I walked up to the two-lane and retraced my steps. There was no movement at the curtains, no perceptible life. Both Joyner automobiles were missing from the driveway. I went to Stanley Street and passed the Coghill residence, espying nary a Coghill. The entire neighborhood was as dark and sweltering as a ghost town in summer.

  I headed for the woods next to the Taylor house where in solitude I might consider my scheme to kidnap Myra and hide her in the abandoned shack on Baskin Road. The main problem would be the distance. I was still only twelve, after all. Even my brother had only occasional access to wheels, although he did possess a driver’s license. (Recently Anya had been letting him drive her GTO.) And then I realized Stan’s confederacy would be crucial to any plot to free Myra from Joyner propriety. If, say, he could borrow Anya’s GTO and be waiting at some corner while I rounded her up, then I might ferry her to Baskin Road. But it would be necessary for me to visit her day after day. I couldn’t just leave her in the shack. I would have to feed her, care for her.

  I rested my head on my knee by the hot banks of the creek. A chorus of cicadas, growing loud and fading off in turn, stepped up the volume. Things were biting me and landing on my skin. Angry wings buzzed at my ear.

  Suddenly I heard voices through the woods, thrashing sounds, stoned laughter. Stan and Anya were hurrying towards me from the direction of the street side. I stood on my feet, guilty of violating a space that belonged to them.

  “Jack!” Anya called.

  “What are you doing here?” Stan said.

  It was late afternoon; Stan had just got off work from the Safeway store. He was wearing an unnaturally wide grin on his face.

  “Just sitting here thinking.”

  “About your little Joyner chick?”

  “Oh, come on, it’s groovy,” Anya said, “he’s sensitive, he’s got feelings.” She gave me a hug. I smelled her sweat and her powder.

  “Kathy Coghill put a letter from Myra in the mailbox while I was watching TV. I saw her through the window. Myra’s parents have got her grounded and now she wants me to rescue her.”

  “Rescue her! From her house?”

  “I guess,” I said. “All of a sudden it’s like she’s in love with me.”

  I showed them the note.

  Anya laughed. “It’s so cute! Look, she says she can’t think of anything but Jack.”

  “How does she expect you to rescue her?”

  “I was thinking I could take her to the shack on Baskin Road and hide her.”

  “How would you get her there?”

  “I’d need a car, I guess.”

  I looked at Anya, and she immediately figured out what I was angling for.

  “Oh no, I’m not playing any part in that.”

  “Why don’t you help the kid out?” Stan said.

  “That would be kidnapping! Look, my dad’s a lawyer, you can get in big trouble for that.”

  “No one would call it kidnapping, they’re just kids.”

  Stan read the letter and handed it over. “Have you talked to the girl?”

  “No, I just got it. Kathy Coghill left it in the mailbox and took off.”

  “What are you gonna do? You need to come up with a plan and write her back.”

  “What kind of plan?”

  “I don’t know. Get her to sneak out of the house after dark, meet you outside. Set up a time, make sure the old man and old lady are in bed.”

  “And then what? Could I bring her to our room?”

  His sunglasses peered in my direction. Truth is, I didn’t really expect him to agree to my bringing a twelve-year-old to the room. Stan had little tolerance for the wholesomeness of twelve-year-olds. Occasionally he would slap Dickie Pudding around simply because he didn’t like the way he whinnied when he laughed. But now we were speaking of a girl whose presence in our house at night would bring shame and devastation to the entire Joyner family. And he liked that idea.

  “You could hide her in the room ’til we come up with something better. Taking her to the shack on Baskin Road is a possibility. We could put her up for a few days, bring her food and water.”

  “Yeah, but …”

  I looked at Anya.

  “N-O spells no,” she said.

  “Shit, man,” my brother said. “Like, wow. We’ll get you and the little Joyner girl fixed up. It’ll be a gas when Gaylord finds out his sister split for a Witcher.”

  Later that afternoon, as I was approaching the house, I noticed the red flag on the mailbox jutting in the air.

  I found another envelope inside, with my name in Myra’s hand.

  I took it to my room and opened it.

  Darling,

  Write me back and let me know what you’re going to do. Kathy will pick up your letter. Leave it in your mailbox. Please do something. Write me! I must see you! I’m going mad!

  Love, You Know Who, M

  I gnawed my nails, terrified of failing her. How had she reached this state of abandon so quickly? Was it my kiss? Was my kiss that good?

  What if Myra’s parents made her go to a psychiatrist too? This was the madness of Courtney Blankenship all over again!

  I found some paper in the wooden desk by the window and wrote a reply. “Dear Myra,” I began, forgoing the “dearest.” I had decided on a no-nonsense approach.

  Stay calm. I am working on a plan. Will you be able to climb out your window at night? Maybe tonight or tomorrow? I will rescue you and hide you somewhere so we can be together. We will get jobs and make money and buy a farm. Don’t worry.

  Your boyfriend,

  Jack

  I dropped the letter in the box and put up the red flag.

  At midnight it was there. And again at eight the next morning. But sometime later, I don’t know when, the flag went down and the letter was gone.

  A Coghill abetting a Witcher to elope with a Joyner: what a revolution was taking place in El Dorado Hills!

  17

  THE ANSWER DIDN’T COME until the afternoon, when I heard the mailbox lid creak on its hinges and spotted Kathy Coghill rushing past the window. I left Pop in front of the TV (he was too involved in As the World Turns to notice the daytime drama under his nose) to retrieve the missive lurking in the cryptic depths of the box. I read it in my bedroom with my shoulder against the door to bar intruders. Myra said she was ready to do whatever I wished. However, she did make one small adjustment to my plan. Her bedroom being on the second floor, she couldn’t very well slip out of that window; on the other hand, the den window behind the house would suit nicely. Her parents went to bed early, but to stay on the safe side I should wait until after midnight. But we couldn’t do it tonight, she added, because her parents were going to a play at a local supper club and would be out later than usual. Otherwise, and this is exactly how she put it, “I am yours.”

  My heart pounded when I read t
hat line. Had she truly written those words? In a daze of ecstasy, of apprehension, I roamed up to Gladstein’s shop. I was so preoccupied that I forgot to look in on my mother when I passed the Ben Franklin.

  The prissy bell tinkled, the Yatzis yapped, Gladstein shouted a greeting.

  But I didn’t say a word.

  I placed the letters on the counter for him to see.

  He beetled his brow and read what I’d given him.

  “My my,” he said, “the magic works.”

  “Is it really magic?”

  Gladstein remained silent awhile, thinking, and then he said, “If it works, it is magic.”

  He let me ruminate on that, watching me with a smile. One of his eyebrows was quivering like a Cupid’s arrow about to be shot into the air.

  “You have quite a situation here,” he told me, “a damsel in distress, and she’s locked in an attic. What are you gonna do about it?”

  “I guess I have to help her. This whole mess is because I kissed her.”

  “You’ll get no argument from me, Witcher. I may not look like Paul Newman, but I once had my day.” He was from Atlantic City, he said, where horses dive off boards and Miss Americas ride the boardwalk in shiny new convertibles. They smile in their bathing suits with their arms in the air, like movable Statues of Liberty, and all the while the great ocean is lapping behind them. Atlantic City is a world of fun rides, Ferris wheels and roller coasters; people from Atlantic City possess an innate sense of beauty, Gladstein told me. As a young man he’d gone on a romantic quest for a Miss North Carolina whom he met while employed as a bellboy in a hoitytoity hotel. One afternoon while the beauty queen was in the hotel’s lounging area—she was with a few other contestants—she suddenly expressed, loudly and within earshot, a desire for cotton candy. She’d glanced directly at him, batting her lashes in case he didn’t understand. Gladstein, being young and vigorous and strong, had instantly leapt to the occasion. He abandoned his post, dashed to the boardwalk, procured a sticky bale for his Tarheel queen, and rushed back holding the fluffy confection aloft. Meanwhile his boss had been pacing the lobby, incensed. He fired Gladstein on the spot for leaving without permission. “But what did I care? I was in seventh heaven. I asked Miss North Carolina for her phone number and she told me she wasn’t allowed to date. Instead she gave me the address of her parents’ house in North Carolina and said I could write her there. And you know something? Every week for three years I sent that gal a letter to Rocky Mount, North Carolina. And to every letter I sent she penned a gracious reply, thanking me for the cotton candy I had lost my job for. I would think, Ah, these southern gals, so sweet, so soft-spoken. Then in one of her letters she expressed a racist sentiment and I never wrote her again.”