Home Free

by Dan Wakefield

  “For what?”

  “Home.”

  “Yeh.”

  “Where?”

  “Vermont.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothin.”

  “How?”

  “I believed an ad in the paper. Said ‘castle on lake.’ Went up to see it. What the hell. Forty grand for a castle on lake.”

  “What was it?”

  “Cinder-block house on swamp.”

  Lou got up and made a mean batch of martinis.

  Gene drank one out of a highball glass, full.

  “Where’s the sun?” Thomas asked.

  “Gone down, man,” Gene said. “Winter now. Dude goes down early.”

  “I mean the music. That sun.”

  Gene crawled over to the records and put on Abbey Road. They listened, in silence, to “Here Comes the Sun.” No one got up to dance. The song seemed out of place, like playing “Jingle Bells” at the beach.

  When it was over Gene took it off and piled on four other sides, the first ones on the stack.

  Thomas made a fire With the one log and the Sunday Times.

  Gene scooted over to where Lou was lying and looking at the ceiling.

  “What you see, babe?”

  “Shadows.”

  “Oh.”

  He lay down to look at them himself, wondering if he could find some message in the way they waved and flickered, the rhythm of their dance. He didn’t know what Lou saw in them and wasn’t sure he wanted to know. She was several inches and several worlds away from him. He could feel the huge distance between them, the empty gap.

  “Hey, play it again,” said Barnes.

  “What?” Gene asked.

  “Whatever it was.”

  Gene went back and put the last song on again. It was “Helplessly Hoping” on the Marrakesh Express of Crosby, Stills and Nash. They had all heard it hundreds of times, it was one of their standards, but it never fit before, as it fit now the feeling of the room and the people in it, who didn’t know if they heard hello or goodbye and even whether they’d be together, like him and Lou.

  Helpless to do much else.

  In the shadows on the ceiling—he could see, with the music—her Harlequin hovering.

  Him.

  Everyone seemed to get silent drunk, sullen drunk.

  “Shit,” said Lou. “I’m outa cigarettes.”

  “Got a Kent,” said Barnes.

  Lou shook her head, irritated.

  “Luckies,” she said. “I’ll go get some.”

  Flash stood up and stretched.

  “I’ll come,” he said. “Need the air.”

  Flash and Lou went out to get the cigarettes. They were gone for over an hour.

  “What took so long?” Gene asked her.

  Lou shrugged.

  “Stopped for a beer.”

  When Gene finished writing what he knew was finally his final Final Exam he went over to the Captains Bar in the Statler and ordered a vodka martini on the rocks. It was not quite 11:00 A.M. and the only other customer was a white-haired gent at the bar with a glass of beer. Gene settled himself at one of the little tables along the wall and a waitress who was wearing a miniskirted sailor suit with black net stockings and bowling shoes brought him the drink and a little bowl of peanuts. It was dark and quiet and anonymous. Gene especially liked hotel bars for drinking alone because they gave him the illusion he was not in any particular place, he was simply in a hotel, which might be anyplace, and no one was likely to find you or know where you were. It was like getting out of town for a while without really having to leave.

  He took a sip of the drink, saluting himself in silence, having to smile in spite of it all at the irony of such solitary celebration on this long-anticipated occasion. He had thought when he finally if ever finished his marathon college career he would throw the biggest bash of his history, and that would be pretty damn big. He would buy enough booze and dope to last a week, build a giant stew that would never stop, and go among the guests wearing nothing but his academic robe, bestowing blessings and bounty. Best of all Lou would be proudly beside him, her faith in him justified, her passion intensified. She, clad only in her own academic gown, would stroll with him, hand in hand, and occasionally after spreading their benevolence over the party they would quietly go to the bedroom and close the door, slip off their robes that would fall in a black swirl to the floor, and, supremely naked, make educated love.

  Instead, he was hiding out in a hotel bar, putting off the subject of what should have been his triumph in getting a degree he didn’t want because other people’s hearts would break if he didn’t have it, because the mention of it to Lou would immediately raise the now more painful subject expressed in the single nagging sentence: “What are you going to do?”

  When you grow up?

  He guessed he was grown. He could still remember how adults always asked him as a kid, as they asked all kids:

  “What are you going to be when you grow up?”

  “I’m going to be a fireman.”

  Gene fixed on that because he found it made them happiest.

  “Fireman.”

  It was what they expected you to say. It was cute. It proved their adult superiority because they knew you wouldn’t be really, you were just a kid and didn’t know any better and thought it was exciting to answer alarms and ride in a bright red truck with a siren and slide down a pole.

  “Did you hear that? He’s going to be a fireman!”

  Ooh, ahh, chuckle, inneeee sweeet?

  Other kids didn’t ask. Just grown-ups. Other kids might say what they were going to be, but they were too polite to ask you, you could say or not.

  All were taught to chant the list of job opportunities:

  Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief;

  Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief.

  Gene found none of the above appealing. He liked the idea of being an Indian, but didn’t aspire to Chief. Indian or Fire. Lack of responsibility. No ambition. Directionless. Boat without a rudder, ship upon the sand.

  Maybe if things had worked differently he’d have gone on working in his dad’s grocery, from part-time as a kid to full time as a man, having a kid of his own to work part-time and then passing on the store to him, and him to his kid, just like some kind of natural cycle, like birds migrating, knowing what to do and where to go without having to ask or think about it.

  He had liked the store, the clean smell of it, aromas of vegetables, everything fresh, the real touch of fuzzy-skinned green beans, slick limes, soft green foliage crown of a bunch of radishes, hard golden teeth of the smiling corn. Now all that was wrapped and sanitized and sealed, laid out under the antiseptic supermarket aura that was neither night nor day, the droning fluorescent neutrality.

  His father saw it coming, so Gene as a kid knew the store would no longer be there when he grew up.

  “The chains are coming,” his father prophesied so often at supper while his mother listened with gloomy respect. “They will kill off the little man, the independent. The little man believed because he wanted to believe that people in a hurry might switch to the chains but the faithful old customers wouldn’t desert us, prefer to spend a little more and get personal service, friendly attention, a better cut of meat, but that was a pipe dream. The chains are getting stronger and soon will squeeze the rest of us out.”

  As a little kid Gene pictured these giant chains, link upon gargantuan link, slinking and clanking through the streets, wrapping themselves around the little men, squeezing them till they were limp, their poor pink tongues hanging out in deathly surrender.

  When his father’s prophecy was filled by one of the chains putting up a giant store three blocks away, he sold his own place at a loss and took a job as a butcher at the chain store, working invisible behind the walls, not seeing or being seen by the customers.

  So instead of a grocery store he got from his father the money to get a degree. His father, solemn, said he had saved it jus
t for that purpose, that even though he couldn’t pass on the store he could give him this opportunity which counted for more. He believed in the college degree with the fervor and faith of those who never had one, imagining the possession of it opened all doors, solved all material problems. If you had it, his father explained, you could write your own ticket.

  To where?

  Hell, at least one power the goddam degree had was making his daddy happy knowing he had it.

  After another vodka martini he decided to call. Give the old man the pleasure of knowing. No sense to wait for the actual piece of paper, he would send that along when it came.

  He paid his check and got a couple of bucks worth of change and went to one of the public phones in the corridor leading to the lobby. He got his married sister’s number from Chicago information and plinked in the coins.

  “Hey,” he said when she answered, “this is Gene. In Boston.”

  Maybe she’d forgot. Who or where he was.

  “The old man around?” he asked.

  “You don’t know, do you?”

  It was not a question but an accusation. Her voice like a knife.

  “How the hell should I know?”

  “You’re his son, that’s all.”

  He was sure as hell not going to feed more money in just to get a lecture on how he should keep in touch, be a better son.

  “Look,” he said, “just tell him I finished up my credits. I’ll get the degree. Tell him I’ll write the details.”

  “Don’t bother. He’s dead.”

  “What?”

  “December. We tried to find you.”

  He realized the phone was in Lou’s name, he had never put his address on the postcards he sent when he moved, when he reported he was going back to school. He didn’t even say which one.

  The operator told him to deposit twenty cents for another three minutes.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and put the receiver back in its cradle.

  A man in the phone stall next to his was saying with frantic urgency, “I tell you, I got to have it now, not a month from now.”

  Gene walked toward the glass doors at the end of the corridor. He watched the calves of a woman walking ahead of him, wearing a swell-looking fur coat. They were muscular legs like dancers have, the calves knotting as the step went down, then loosening as it lifted. He followed her awhile, absorbed. Concentrating on the calves. He went into a luncheonette and ordered a cup of coffee and French fries. He hadn’t eaten all day. He ate the French fries slowly, separately, purposefully. The coffee burned his tongue. He blew on it, staring at the tiny flecks on the black surface. He wondered why there were always those tiny flecks in luncheonette coffee. Maybe it was his fault. Dandruff maybe. After a while he drank it.

  He did not remember going back to the apartment. He remembered sitting there on the living room floor with a big glass and a bottle of gin, wearing just his ratty bathrobe. He remembered he had vomited. He remembered Lou coming in sometime after dark and saying, “My God, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.” He remembered saying, “Yes.”

  The collar pinched his neck. He had not worn a tie for over a year. His one standard “grown-up” suit felt itchy and cumbersome. He had bought it on sale when he first came to Boston at one of those “plain pipe rack” stores, and he didn’t mind that it was really too big. He liked the feeling he was hiding out in it. The vest added to the sense of protection and disguise.

  “Tell me, Mr. Barret,” said the rotund man behind the personnel desk, speaking through a fixed and professional smile, “why did you choose to come to Boston to complete your education?”

  “Because my old lady got a job here.”

  “Your mother is employed in Boston?”

  “Oh. No, sir. My—uh—girlfriend.”

  “Your girlfriend found employment in Boston and so you left your former college and followed her here?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The smile that was not a smile leaned forward.

  “Come, come now, Mr. Barret, we have to do better than that.”

  “We do?”

  “Oh, indeed.”

  “Why?”

  Fat fingers laced together, chin rested on them, smile drawn above.

  “Because rational decision-making is a key part of the maturation process.”

  “What’s a better reason for coming to a place than to live with the person you love?”

  Palms raised upward, nothing to hide. Smile still painted in place.

  “If you don’t know, Mr. Barret, I doubt I could explain.”

  “Right.”

  Firm handshake.

  At the door, Gene turned, said through his own smile:

  “Incidentally, sir, with all due respect, you’re the slimiest cocksucker I’ve come across yet.”

  Mouth open.

  Out.

  Coffee break.

  A railroad car luncheonette on Cambridge Street near Government Center was nearly deserted, there was counter room for unfurling the employment section of the Globe. Gene studied the columns, pencil poised to ring any reasonable possibility for the “real work” he was pledged to do. For Lou. For himself, too. He said. Or she said.

  The headings themselves, the boldface-type descriptions over the details of what was being offered gave him a dry, aching feel:

  Commodity Options, Full Charge Bookkeeper, Shipping Dept. Helper, Offset Feeders and Tenders, Layout Person, Printed Circuit Board Assembler.

  But he made himself look below the titles, read the real nature of what was available:

  “CLERK: Conscientious person to learn computer billing.”

  The thought of a lifetime lurched ahead of him, sick on the roller coaster.

  “PURCHASING AGENT: Ambitious, systematic individual for supervis. capac. Prefer background in fence, hardware.”

  No chance there, no background whatsoever in fence, hardware.

  “EARN REAL MONEY” caught his eye, wondering if it meant the other ads were just come-ons for funny money. Monopoly money. But he realized it only meant this promised more money. Real meant a lot. All you had to do was “Learn to sell and install aluminum and vinyl siding. Perfect opportunity to become your own person in one of today’s fastest-growing fields.”

  The chance to “become your own person” appealed but shit, siding was Flash’s field, and he wasn’t about to go up to the boondocks and try to muscle Flash out of siding sales, aluminum or vinyl. Let em send some innocent up there.

  The ads he liked the ring of he knew would not pass as appropriate or serious or worthy for a man of his degree. A shame, for he liked the offer to

  “DRIVE DANDY DAN ICE CREAM TRUCK on established routes.”

  The idea of driving a Dandy Dan Ice Cream Truck was a gas in itself, but to think you wouldn’t be driving it just anywhere, not into untried or hostile territory but on established routes, that was a real zinger. That meant the kids would be waiting for you, they’d hear that “Dandy Dan” jingling bell theme music coming and they’d be out on the sidewalk with their little fists full of change, faces all rosy with eager little smiles.

  He could see Lou’s rosy face and its eager little smile when he drove home his first night in the Dandy Dan Ice Cream Truck, and stepped out in his red-and-white jump-suit uniform with “Gene” written in scroll over his pocket and the black-billed white cap perched rakishly on his head.

  No thanks.

  The only other one that really caught his fancy was “ORGANIST, must be able to entertain a mature crowd.”

  Far out. Could it be for one of the strip joints in the Combat Zone, someone who had to pound that organ so wild that it kept the “mature crowd” from rioting till the next act came on? Or maybe this was for the job of organist at Fenway Park, who had to play the “Fight” music at just the right time, trill to the homers, hit loud chords of inspiration when the Red Sox came to the plate, and all the time keep the “mature crowd” in hand and off the field with martial music drown
ing out the ugly decision of an umpire?

  Now this was a job with thrills and challenge, and one he could wear a suit to work in, too, satisfying both his own sense of restlessness and Lou’s sense of propriety.

  But shit. He didn’t play the organ.

  Gene was jostled as people sat down on each side of him. It was nearly noon and the place was filling up. He folded in his Globe, looked up at the menu of the day, and ordered a Pepsi and a meatball sub.

  “Don’t be discouraged,” Lou told him after the first week of trying.

  Gene wished to hell he had Flash’s knack for inventing jobs, even though they didn’t last long.

  Flash fell by one night full of enthusiasm for his new career. He was decked out in white bell-bottom trousers, brown suede boots, a red silk shirt, and two strands of love beads.

  He was a rock impresario.

  Well, not quite an impresario. Not yet. That would come later, staging mammoth concerts and so on. Right now he was simply the manager of a new rock group.

  “Which one?” asked Gene.

  “Rasputin and the Schemers.”

  “Far out,” said Lou. “Historic yet. How’d they get the name?”

  “Dude on bass went to college,” Flash explained. “He’s like the leader. Rasputin. Grew himself a little goatee, to throw a little evil in the image. Then there’s a brother and sister, they’re like the Schemers part. Chick plays organ, he does guitar.”

  “What’re they into?” Gene asked.

  “Just grass and pills. No hard stuff. I laid that down heavy, one of my conditions for takin em on. No hard stuff.”

  “I mean what kinda music,” Gene said.

  “Oh, Christ, you know, the regular shit you hear. Like everyone else. It all sounds the same to me. They’re no worse than the other ones. The difference is, they got me to handle em.”

  Flash had heard the group at a small bar in Somerville, got to rapping with them, kind of started improvising what he could do for em. That was their first gig, the one in Somerville. They lived around there and the bartender fixed it up for em. But shit, they had no future. Nothing lined up. What they needed was professional help, guidance. Flash offered them a package. He would act as their road manager, publicist, promoter, business agent, all rolled into one, for an even fifty percent of the take.