by John Barnes
Finally he just blurted out, “So Gratz let loose with his thing on Marti, and right then I realized I couldn’t give the Madmen up. Couldn’t. I mean . . . been through too much together, love everybody, all that shit. Couldn’t stop being a Madman, you know?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I hope this doesn’t sound too weird, but when Gratz yelled at me, I felt good, because I knew it was going to be Madman fucking legend, the maddest tale of the Madmen ever, all of us walking out on Gratz. Even Darla did, you know?”
“And I didn’t.”
“And you didn’t. And I thought maybe I’d fucked up the friendship so bad you wouldn’t ever really be my friend again, and I thought maybe you really had sold out to Gratz and I’d been wrong about you all along, and I thought maybe even you were jealous about Marti—”
“What? Why would I be jealous about Marti?”
“Sometimes for the guy I love the most in the whole world you are the stupidest son of a bitch ever born.”
Okay, obviously we were friends again, I got that much. So I asked, “If I put an arm around you, you gonna rub wood on me?”
So there we were hanging all over each other, laughing and crying, slapping each other’s backs and calling each other assholes.
Car headlights swept over us and stopped. Realizing that we were two guys hugging with tear-stained faces, and this was still Lightsburg, we pretty much flew backwards, each acting like we had no idea where this other guy came from.
I caught a glimpse of the car as it rounded the corner and sped away. I started to laugh, and laughed harder and harder until I was bent over with my hands on my knees, just trying to get air.
“I guess that was a really funny car,” Paul said.
“It was Stacy,” I said. “Stacy Hobbins.”
“Other than holding the unbreakable record for dumbest social, what’s so funny about her?”
“She thinks Cheryl is cheating on Bret with me, and I’m cheating on Cheryl with Darla. Or she thought that. God knows what she thinks now.”
“Gotta be a story in there.”
“Not much of one,” I said. “After Denny’s last night Cheryl and I took a walk-and-talk around the tar pond, and we surprised Stacy just when poor old Steve was about to finally get his finger wet. Then this afternoon Stacy saw Darla was humping my leg.”
“Why would Darla do that?”
“Well, to hump my arm she’d have to jump too high, I guess.” This was so old times; I could always make Paul beg for a story, and the longer I made him wait the more fun it was. “Hey, are you still locked out?”
“I don’t know if it’s cool to go home yet. I slept in Marti’s car in her driveway last night, and then hid in her garage. When her folks went out to the liquor store this morning, I got a shower and Marti phoned my house and faked her way past my dad to talk to Kimmie. Kimmie brought over some clothes for me, and took my drum major outfit home. I don’t know how I’d survive without her. Hey, I know why you’re not in love with me, Karl, but why aren’t you in love with my little sister?”
“I’m afraid of who I’d have for a brother-in-law. Well, look, all I was trying to find out was whether you needed crash space. If Mom hasn’t locked me out, we can probably crash you in my basement, legit and all. Come on.”
Paul and me walked close, like we always had. The wind blew cold wet spray off the streets and lawns into my face, but the storm seemed to have passed over for real this time, and there were some stars peeking through the black boiling clouds. A few leaves on the sidewalk slipped under my boot soles. Looked like they were going to hold fall this year, too.
“Marti sure joined the group in a hurry,” Paul said. “Already hiding other Madmen, already been locked out herself, it’s like she’s always been here.”
“She’s really changed the group,” I agreed. “But I guess it needed changing. I kind of like her knack for upsetting things.”
“Well, she can upset the shit out of Gratz,” Paul said. “No wonder I’m in love.”
“How does that work, with being gay and stuff?”
“I don’t know, it just does. Probably make my life easier because some football players will decide I can’t be gay if I have a girlfriend. Definitely she’s cool to go places with.” He hesitated as we turned a corner, and then rested his hand lightly on my sleeve. “She talks about you a lot, Karl. It makes me jealous. And I don’t even know which one of you I’m jealous about.”
“Hah,” I said, thinking fast because if he stayed on this subject he’d work himself up into an even more major hissy-fit. “If I can just catch a cat shitting on my bed, I can lose my cherry to somebody with boobs.”
“That’s gotta be a story, let’s hear it.”
I told him.
“Wow,” he said. “Little Karl, knocking off a piece of Spooky Darla. All because he’s an insane cat killer.”
“Well, I am insane. I might decide to kill one particular cat. But that’s not the same thing as being an insane cat killer.” We argued about that distinction the rest of the way to my house. Like I said, very old times.
The door was unlocked. When I turned the lights on I saw a folded note taped to the door to the upstairs:Karl-o-Tiger,
I’ve gone up to Put-in-Bay after all! And Bill explained everything, and he’s even more wonderful than I thought! See you tomorrow afternoon! I’m so excited!!!!
Moms!
“I guess she’s plural when she’s that excited,” I said to Paul, showing him the letter. “Or she’s decided that’s a cool pet name and it’s her way of telling me to start using it.”
“So is Bill really wonderful?”
“Lying sack of shit and a complete bozo,” I said, “but a lot classier than Neil and all the other just-outta-jail crowd she’s usually with. I guess I’m less worried than I usually am—he’s not gonna beat her up or anything.”
Paul had a beer and I had some orange juice, and we washed our glasses neatly; the kitchen had now been clean for almost eighteen hours, a record since Dad had died.
“Thing that worries me,” I admitted, “is that when Mom gets to feeling really good, especially about a guy, she always crashes really hard. Every time. So since I know he’s a lying bozo—worse yet an English professor for fuck’s sake—and she’s obviously crazy about him, I foresee a major crash about to happen.”
We both took quick showers so we could both have it hot; I put Paul’s clothes into the wash and loaned him sweats and a T-shirt, which fit him like a tent. We didn’t want to stop talking, so we flopped down on my bed side by side, still dressed; after a minute Hairball nosed his way in, jumped up on the bed, and stretched out, purring between us. “I feel so much safer ever since I got my antihomo cat,” I said. “Guard, Hairball.”
“Hah. I happen to know this cat is gay. He just wants to protect me from your psychotic queer-bashing ass.”
Old times again. I remembered that when one of us got back from camp, back in grade school, Dad would have to clump up the stairs and yell at us to shut up, like, six times before we went to sleep.
Tonight we talked about everybody and everything till one of us fell asleep, and the other went out like a light right after. I don’t know that that was even separate events; with Paul and me, there was a lot of stuff you just couldn’t separate.
PART FIVE
(Sunday, September 9, 1973)
22
Paradise Lost, Bedshitter Found, Paradise Regained
PAUL AND ME got up about eight and goofed through making fun of the religious programs while we ate Cap’n Crunch. If I’d felt any happier I’d’ve wet myself, I can tell you that. In between we told each other all the stuff we’d been meaning to last night, and got the rest of the way caught up on our stories. I made a pot of strong coffee and we drank that while Reverend Billy Bob Bighair ranted on about the Apocalypse-uh Which-uh Biblical-uh Prophecy Unquestionably Proved-duh Would Come-uh By 1980. He didn’t say you’d get your money back if it didn’t.
None of the Toledo stations showed cartoons or old movies on Sunday mornings, and the further-away stations were fuzzy this morning.
Paul looked a lot better for having had a safe place to sleep all night.
He had choir at First UM for the second service, and they paid him eighteen dollars a week to do tenor solos, so he really couldn’t afford to miss it. He borrowed my razor, stuck in a new blade, shaved and combed his hair, and made himself semipresentable by borrowing one of my shirts and a tie; it was huge on him, but the choir robe would hide everything between his collar and his shoes. Just before he took off he said, “No more bullshit between us, okay? We’ve been friends all our lives, let’s be friends when we’re both eighty.”
“Well, okay,” I said. “But if she’s still around, dibs on Rose Carson. Old Browning says she’s a piece and a half.”
Paul got this smug look and said, “Yeah, well, in that case, dibs on Browning.” He could always gross me out and crack me up.
After he took off, I did the dishes, wiped the kitchen down, and decided to get going on the storm windows.
While I was in the toolshed, getting out the sawhorses and working my way through the stacked storm windows, I checked around, just casual glances ’cause you never knew which neighbor kids might be watching, and made sure that the four cash stashes I had out there were still in their places.
Only three storms needed reglazing—I’d kept up pretty regular, and last winter had been mild. Two more needed some dry spots in the glazing broken out and the gaps refilled. All five would need repainting, of course.
If I ate lunch late, I could probably have some real free time this afternoon. And Darla was off work at two on Sundays.
That got me moving a little faster. I pulled out the storms I was going to work on, stacked them by the shed, and set the first one on its sawhorses.
I was about to open the can of glazing compound when the phone rang inside the house. I locked the shed—no matter what, I always did that, after that sneaky little bastard Eddie Cockburn called my house and stole a stash while I was inside getting the phone.
I got to the phone before it stopped ringing. It was Rose Lee Nielsen, Marti’s mother, with a super-long super-complicated message for Mom. Apparently this afternoon the super super ladies were getting together to talk about Watergate and “the Bermuda Triangle connection to it,” which meant they’d get drunk and agree loudly that elves were good and grays were bad. Rose wanted to show Mom some new documents that would “really reveal something about what’s really going on,” before they got together with Judy and Jolene to get drunk and smoke pot out back of Judy’s place.
After I got all that taken down and read it back twice, she told me a couple more times what a nice young man I was, and how much Marti liked me. Luckily, a Saab that really wanted tuned rolled up in front of the house. Since it was old and ugly and barely worked, it had to be Wonderful Bill’s. “Uh, I think maybe she’s coming home now,” I said.
A minute later Bill and Mom came in. Her hair had the clean, full look it got when she took time brushing. She wore no makeup, and the sweater and jeans were nothing special, just some stuff I’d gotten her from Sears when she was complaining about being broke and her clothes wearing out (then she’d started complaining about wearing Sears clothing). She was wearing tight jeans tucked into her Go-Get-Laids, the way the college girls were just starting to do, and she had big sunglasses pushed back on her head.
Come to admit it, she looked like she had walked in straight out of a movie, but at least it was a happy movie. Wonderful Bill was in the same corduroy two-piece, but he’d changed his shirt. He was still wearing that Greek fisherman’s hat like a smashed pie on top of his head, and it still looked stupid.
He looked like he was trying to be either Peter or Paul, and failing, and Mom looked like she was trying to be Mary and nearly succeeding.
I handed off the phone to Mom and went back out to get those storms glazed and painted.
The thing I like about reglazing windows, it’s fussy and neat but you use your whole arm; you have to put that glazing compound in firm, in one clean stroke, and strike it off neat, or it looks like shit.
I had just broken the old dried-out compound out of the frame and laid down two of the sides of the new compound when I smelled something that was kind of like someone had stuffed old newspapers up an elephant’s ass, waited for him to shit them out, dried them, and smoked them. Bill. Puffing on a cigar.
“Your mother’s probably gonna be talking for a while,” he said.
“Yeah, once she gets rolling, she doesn’t stop.” I struck off another side, the fresh compound peeling away like dough, and wiped after with my vinegar-wet rag to leave the glass clean right up to the glazing.
“Like some help?”
“You’re in a suit.”
“It’s an old one, and I’m very neat. And I wouldn’t’ve offered if I thought I’d get any on me.”
It was less of a faggot-loser answer than I’d been expecting from an English professor. I shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
He moved one of the storms that needed a touch-up onto two more sawhorses. He busted out the bad spots in the glazing—didn’t need me to tell him which they were, or to tell him that that one just needed a touch-up. And at least now his cigar was downwind of me.
He didn’t overpush, letting the tool do the work, quick and clean and controlled. He was at least a step up from that dumbass Neil. Plus Mom had been smiling when she came in. He was still a fool and a liar, but Mom had been with a lot worse.
“So,” he said, “your mother says your dad taught you how to do all this home repair stuff.”
“Yeah, well.”
He borrowed my vinegar rag and wiped. On balance I decided I’d be willing to glaze a window with old Bill.
As he finished striking off, he said, “Um, you probably know that your mother didn’t say ‘home repairs,’ she said ‘ucky ucky Mister Fixit Man Things’ and complained that you spend too much time on them, especially on Sundays.”
“I bet she did.”
“She did indeed.”
“Indeed.”
“Oh, God, did I sound like an English professor?”
“Indeed.”
He laughed, which made a big cloud of foul smoke billow up and blow off toward the neighbors’ yard. “You know, every single mother I have dated, and there have been quite a few, has told me her kid is funny, and you are the first one who actually is. All right, I did sort of want to talk to you about something sort of serious, which does concern your mother, but you’re welcome to avoid that if you prefer.”
I shrugged. “There’s no ball game on the radio.”
“Good point. Well, Beth gave me what I think must be her standard sermon about how you should spend more time being free and that the house gets too much attention and so forth.” He finished laying in a side and struck off again; just the right pressure to clean off the excess, not enough to scratch or press the glass. “I said I thought there was something very fine about a man who took care of things, and did them right, and about being a craftsman in a world of bozos.” He laid in three gaps at the top.
I still wasn’t going to say anything to him that wasn’t a direct answer to a question.
After a bit he shrugged and said, “I noticed half a dozen jobs you’d done around here. The painted railings on the back porch. That patch on the roof. The tuck pointing on your chimney. You’re good at this stuff, Karl, real good, and what’s more, you insist on being good.
“Now, the reason why I’m blowing all this flattering smoke up your kilt here”—he paused to give his full attention to striking off—“is that I am a bit serious about your mother.”
“You like my mom?”
“I do. A lot. Unfortunately I have a lifelong habit of falling in love very quickly and then living in an intense state of regret afterward.”
“Well, Mom’ll get you to that pretty quick.” Something was m
aking me ask, “What do you like about her?”
“Probably just that she’s the sexy J.D. girl that would never speak to a nerd like me in high school.”
“J.D.?”
“Juvenile delinquent. I guess I’m revealing my age.”
“Naw, I’d already caught on.”
He did have a pretty good laugh, for a fool. And at least he appreciated my sense of humor. “All right, then, so we have two things in common: we want your mother to be happy and we like to fix stuff. Thing is, there’s a third one you won’t like—we both go to AA meetings. Or I did. Anyway, last week I fell off that wagon pretty hard, and ended up at a bar in Lightsburg, and met your mother.”
“That would be the place to do it.”
He looked over his finished work, and so did I. We both nodded and he moved the window to the completed stack, next to the one I had finished.
“You’re good at this,” I observed.
“It paid for grad school.” He puffed on that horrid cigar again, and said, “Anyway. I’m going to a meeting this evening, and if I stay dry till tomorrow morning, I’m back to one day of sobriety.”
“I’ve got eighty-two days,” I said. “The first one’s the hard one, and then the rest are hard, too.”
“Amen. I had almost three years when I fell off.”
“You said you will have one day,” I said, calculating, “but you met my mother on Thursday night—”
“And then got so chickenshit-scared that I got drunk after work on Friday and didn’t wake up till ten A.M. Saturday. Scared she’d turn me down, scared I’d get there and she would have forgotten, mostly just scared. If there was ever a good reason to stop drinking it’s having done something that stupid. But then I already had plenty of good reasons to stop and stay stopped.”
“It’s staying stopped that matters,” I agreed.
We each set up a window on the sawhorses, both of us taking a complete reglaze this time, and worked so much alike we finished at the same time. He said, “Looks like one more to patch the glazing on, and then paint them all?”