We’re doing a lot for that Benfield—a part-time job here on campus, and Project Promise. A whole new start in life. A second chance. And the newspaper article on him. It does look like he could wear a tie.
Wesley notices Vernon eating his string beans with his spoon. “Hey. Why are you eating those string beans with your spoon?”
Vernon looks at Wesley, at his plate, at the spoon, at Wesley. “I been eating my ham with my fork and knife. I been eating my rice with my fork. I been eating them there little things with my fork. I’ll be eating that cake with my fork. That’s everything but the string beans. Now, I figure they give me the spoon for something. So, I’m eating the string beans with my spoon. What do you expect? You expect me to use my fork on everything, and just leave the spoon sitting there? Why do you think they put the spoon there beside my plate if I ain’t supposed to use it? They don’t just put it there to put it there.”
Wesley opens his mouth, but nothing comes.
“Greg,” Ted calls to the photographer.
Greg rushes over and bends over the president’s shoulder.
“Greg, do get a picture of Mr. Holister, down there at the end, with his son—the one beside him sort of swaying. Mr. Holister owns a small business just off campus.” Let’s see, thinks Ted, ‘Project Promise clients eat in the President’s Room.’ Something like that. No, ‘dine’ in the President’s Room. Maybe the Baptist Review would do something with a picture of a retarded boy in the President’s Dining Room. Ballard wasn’t in the last issue at all. Maybe if. . .
“Sir,” says Greg, “maybe after the meal we can get one of you and the boy, or all four of the retarded people and you. You know.”
“Four?”
“Well, let’s see, that boy rocking back and forth, the girl with Down’s syndrome, and the girl beside her, and then the boy without a tie beside the red-headed woman.”
“The one without a tie isn’t retarded. He just needs a haircut.”
“Oh. Yes sir. Sorry. But, you know, perhaps we could get a shot of you and some of the retarded folks.”
“Yes. Good idea.” Greg is worth every cent we pay him. “And see if you can get some of these shots off to the Baptist Review. And maybe Royal will take a couple at the Star,” says Ted.
“Yessir. I was planning to do that.”
The camera flashes, then flashes again.
“Who does he work for?” Darleen asks Stan. “The photographer.”
“PVA. Photo. Video. Audio. At Ballard. He’s the head man over there. Mainly, he’s the president’s photographer.” And with an eight-hundred-thousand-dollar budget, thinks Stan, a building with state-of-the-art dark rooms and developing equipment, video machines, closed-circuit TV for dog operations at the vet school, and who knows what else, and on call twenty-four hours a day to photograph everything that moves within forty feet of the president. “Have you ever picked up any newsletter or pamphlet around here and gone over two pages without seeing the president’s picture?”
“I’ve never thought about it. You think about that kind of stuff too much, Stan. It’s going to wear you out.” Darleen lifts a tiny thread from Stan’s knee.
“You can’t help but think about it. I’m still thinking about being hungry too.”
“It wasn’t very filling, was it?”
After dinner, the guests are filing out the door and down the side steps. Ned grabs Big Don by the arm and pulls him away from the others to a spot under a tree. They are lighted by the street light. “Divorced,” says Ned. “Divorced. Is Trent divorced!”
Big Don tucks his chin, pulls his head back. “No. His wife died several years ago.”
“Thank God.”
“What?” Big Don turns up his hearing aid.
“Thank God that... we’ve gotten him and his daughter together down here.”
Nearby, Wesley stands by the passenger door to Phoebe’s car and watches Phoebe and her father talking, several cars away.
“When is he going to be able to drive?” asks Colonel Trent, almost whispering.
“I’m not sure.”
“At some point we need to sit down and talk about this.”
“Okay, but he’s really very nice, Father. You just need to get to know him. The BOTA House is almost like summer camp. It’s not really a, you know. They’ve got women there and—”
“Those two women they introduced tonight, right?”
“Yes.”
“They looked like coal miners or wrestlers or something.”
“Father....”
“Never mind. Did you know President Sears was a Marine?”
“Yes. He talks about being one when he comes to the Nutrition House. He was a fighter pilot in the war—one of the wars.”
“Really? I don’t know how I missed that. He didn’t mention combat to me.” Trent looks at his watch—a diver’s watch, good to two hundred feet down. “Do you have a curfew?”
“No, but they do at BOTA House. Nine o’clock on week nights—if they don’t have demerits.”
“It ought to be earlier, seems to me.”
“What do you think about driving on out to the lake?” says Wesley, as Phoebe turns the car into the Nutrition House parking lot. “I got time. And, I mean, I’ve thought through everything and I just got carried away in the wrong way, and I’m really sorry.”
“No. I don’t think so. It’s getting close to your curfew, and I told you last time, Wesley, I need to, you know, be careful about everything. I just can’t rush into things.”
“I know. I’m the same way. I just got a little carried away. I was actually kind of worried you might not ever speak to me again.”
“I just have to be careful, Wesley. I need to do what’s right, and safe.” I don’t want to lose you, thinks Phoebe. Nobody loves a large woman. No man. Unless he knew her when she was skinny first. I’ve found a kind of treasure in Wesley. A kind of diamond in the rough. A little boy trying to grow up. A little boy with a man’s body who might be a kind of mysterious genius. He certainly knows how to be funny, and nice, at the same time.
Phoebe parks the car farther away from the Nutrition House back-porch light than she usually does.
Damn, thinks Wesley, we’re down here in a dark corner. “Listen, I’m real glad you decided to come with me tonight. I mean, it was nice and all, your daddy being there and everything.” Shut up about her daddy, he thinks. “How’d you like Vernon?”
“He’s a very interesting person.”
“He sure is. He can get on your nerves, though. Listen, if it’s all right with you, I’m going to get out and walk around to that side.”
“Wesley, we—”
“I just don’t feel right over here. Look, I ain’t going to do anything. I promise. Not one thing. I’ll just sing you a song or something.” You parked the car down here in this dark corner, thinks Wesley.
“Well...”
Wesley gets out. He’s walking too fast around the car. He tries to slow down and not show his excitement. He opens the driver’s door as casually as he can and waits for Phoebe to move over. Then he gets in and sits with both hands on the steering wheel. “This is better. I didn’t feel right over there.”
Phoebe’s thigh rests against Wesley’s thigh.
Wesley puts his arm up on the seat behind her. It’s a long way around her.
Phoebe wants Wesley to kiss her, but she doesn’t know how to arrange for it without seeming too forward. “Oh, boy,” she says. “I’m tired.” She lets her head fall onto Wesley’s shoulder.
Yow, thinks Wesley. Yow. Yow. Yow. She’s hungry for love. She’s got to be hungry for love to do that. This is almost a complete turnaround.
“I usually get pretty tense around Father. He’s a little bit worried,” says Phoebe.
“About what?”
“Oh, about us.”
Us? Us! What a good word, what a perfect word, coming from her lips, thinks Wesley. Us. The word fills the car, overflows through the crack in the window on th
e passenger side, over the front seat and down into the back floorboard, around the back seat, down through the seat cracks, and into the trunk. The word fills his chest, his ears. “Oh, well. He don’t have nothing to worry about.”
“That’s what I told him.”
“Maybe a little to worry about.”
Phoebe turns her face toward Wesley and Wesley sees chastisement in her eyes. But it’s light chastisement. His face falls slowly forward like wet clay falling. Their lips touch, hard. But. Something in his mouth—the partial plate. It’ll slip back in place, Wesley thinks. It always does. But. . . the angle of the touch, the force of the touch—Wesley feels a definite dislodgement. Oh, no, Jesus, please. He starts to draw back. I can’t draw back now, he thinks. Phoebe’s lips are opening. Oh Glory. Wait. The damn thing is, is turning inside his mouth—or something. The wire part is about to . . . he’s got to move his head back, away. But Phoebe is already breathing hard. Maybe he can turn his head so that he can get the thing back in his mouth at a safe angle until the first break in this, this kiss. If she sees two teeth stuck on a wire, she’ll... hold still, Phoebe. Jesus, please help this partial plate to—
Phoebe jumps back like she’s been shot. “What was that?!”
Wesley turns away, drops his head, brings his hand to his mouth. “I lar ee in ahy outh.”
“Wesley, what are you doing? Are you sick?”
Wesley has both hands in his mouth. He gets the partial plate back in place and coughs a couple of times with his fist to his mouth before he sits up straight and looks at Phoebe, who has backed herself against the passenger door.
“It was just, ah, a toothpick,” he says.
“A toothpick?”
“Yeah, I forgot about it.”
“How could you—”
“I carry them around in my mouth sometimes. You know, a little short one. I just completely forgot about it.”
“Wesley. That was strange. It scared me to death—to be stuck like that while...”
“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. It’s gone now. See.” Wesley smiles, opens his mouth wide. “It’sokay,” hesays. “Everything’sokay.”
“I hope so.” Phoebe reaches into her bag, pulls out a Kleenex. “A toothpick. Gross. I just. . . where is it?”
“In the floorboard.”
“I don’t want a toothpick down there. It’s nasty.”
“I’ll get it.” Wesley reaches down to the floorboard, pretends to pick up a toothpick. He rolls down the window and pretends to drop it outside. He rolls the window back up and looks at Phoebe. “Now. Where were we at?”
Chapter 11
At band practice on Saturday afternoon, Wesley leads Phoebe in by the hand. She’s wearing a black sweatsuit.
“This is Phoebe, y’all,” Wesley says. “She just wants to sit in.”
White tub of lard, thinks Shanita. When she sit around the house, she sit around the house.
Phoebe smiles, looks around, finds a seat in the corner.
She just flat-out do not care about her figure, thinks Shanita.
Sherri Gold is late. When she arrives, Wesley introduces Phoebe and Sherri. Then he says to the band, “I want to ask you-all about getting a bass player. I know one. I want to start playing some bottleneck while he plays bass so Ben won’t have to be switching off. This guy plays keyboards too.”
Is he black or white? thinks Shanita.
“Ben heard him play on tape, and he heard him play the piano downstairs. I just had to show him stuff one time and he got it. He’s some kind of genius about music. He don’t have to hear something but once and he’s got it.”
“White boy?” asks Larry.
“Yeah, but, I mean, he’s good. I taught him some stuff, and his daddy said he’d buy him a bass.”
Shanita turns sideways in her chair.
“That’d be five of us,” says Larry. “Less money each.”
“We ain’t making no money anyway,” says Sherri. “We might as well sound a little better with a fuller sound.”
“What do you think, Ben?” says Larry.
“Well, Wesley’s sounding good on bottleneck, this guy can play bass, and lots of places we play there’ll be a piano we can mike. You can get some good sounds with a piano. This guy’s pretty good. I think it’s okay to maybe try him out for a few weeks. Don’t promise him nothing.”
Larry looks at Shanita. She turns away more. “I think we’re okay like we are,” he says.
“Look, this tour is going to give us some exposure and we need to have a big sound,” says Sherri. “Seems like to me the bigger the better. I mean, not over seven or eight. There’s just some stuff we do we don’t get a full, big sound on. Y’all know that.”
“How’s the big sound going on that record deal?” Shanita asks Sherri.
“The record deal? Oh, well, Jake is waiting to hear from this guy at BirdSwim. They been talking on the phone and all. It’s going to happen. I don’t have any doubts about that.”
“I want to make some money,” says Larry. “I mean, I ain’t doing this just to pass the time. What’s that provost got on the tour so far, anyway?” he asks Wesley.
“The fair, two or three churches, high school, Christmas luncheon at Eastern LinkComm. We could at least try the guy out. I swear he’ll learn every song we know in no time. And it’ll fill us out. Now, he is retarded. I’ll have to say that. But it don’t normally show—specially if we comb his hair.”
“Let’s vote,” says Sherri.
“How about we just vote on trying him out?” says Larry.
“Okay,” says Wesley. “On trying him out. All in favor. . . . Okay, opposed? Three to one. I’ll let him know.”
“I be up smoking a cigarette,” Shanita, standing, says to Larry.
Phoebe decides she’d like to step outside, too. It’s warm in the basement. And she feels she should get to know Shanita. They’re each dating a band member, and they’ll be seeing a good bit of each other. She tells Wesley she’ll be back in a minute, follows Shanita out the door and up the steps.
Standing outside on the ground at the top of the basement stairs, Shanita lights up, shakes out the match and tosses it away, looks off toward some bare tree tops standing against the late afternoon sky.
“Do you come to these practices often?” Phoebe asks. She leans back against the side of the house, her arms crossed. She’s wearing her extra-large green down jacket.
“Most of the time.”
“They sound real good. I got the tape they made.”
“Yeah.” Shanita draws on the cigarette, blows smoke.
“Do you ever play music with them or sing or anything?” asks Phoebe.
“Naw.” What is this? thinks Shanita. The Spanish Inquisition. She does have a pretty face, if she’d lose two or three hundred pounds. “Nobody asks me.”
“Do you sing?”
“Oh yeah, I can sing.”
“I can too. I’ve been in several choirs. Maybe we can ask them if we can sing back-up on a couple of songs.”
“I don’t know about that.” Shanita takes a drag, blows smoke, drops her cigarette, steps on it. “Well, I’m going on back down.” Inside, the band starts playing— “Jesus Dropped the Charges.”
When the song is over, Ben says to Larry, “Larry, you dragging on that bridge.”
“I ain’t dragging.”
“You are, too. Right where it goes into the bridge and after that. You dragging.”
“Naw, I ain’t. What’s wrong with you? Shanita, you think I’m dragging?”
“Yeah, you was dragging.”
“Why don’t you ask me if you were dragging?” says Sherri.
Larry is still looking at Shanita. “What do you mean?” Larry frowns, looks at Sherri. ‘“Why I don’t ast you?’”
“I’m in the band. That’s what I mean. Why didn’t you ask me?”
“Listen, bitch. You was dragging yourself. That’s why I didn’t ast you.”
“Don’t you call me a b
itch, goddammit, you son of a bitch.” Sherri steps toward Larry, hits against a cymbal.
Larry stands up.
“Red alert, red alert, red alert.”
Just a closer walk with Thee. Just a closer walk with Thee.
Sherri starts swaying back and forth with the music. Larry slowly sits behind his drums, singing, frowning, as if concentrating on his harmony part.
Ned Sears comes through the basement door, stands listening. The song is finished. “That’s very good. But I didn’t hear someone say the g. d. word, did I?”
“It was ‘got down,’” says Sherri. “‘Got down’ like you slowed down. I was saying Larry got down.”
Larry’s chin tucks in, his head pops back, his eyes open wide.
“Well, you-all should know,” says Ned, “that we’ve had a few complaints about use of the g. d. word at BOTA House, and the last thing we want is a tarnished image for Ballard University. There are certain expectations of everyone in the Ballard family, expectations that are part and parcel of all the privileges. If this tour comes off, and I have every reason to believe it will, then you-all must be particularly careful about your language.”
Talk to me, blabby-mouth, thinks Shanita.
“I just didn’t know what to think of you, you know,” Phoebe says to Wesley. She is driving him from band practice to visit Mattie Rigsbee so that she can finally meet her. “You were in BOTA House, of all places, and we all knew it was a halfway house. We used to sit on the porch at the Nutrition House and make jokes.”
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