Mrs. Bradford regarded me thoughtfully for a moment, probably wondering how I knew Jane’s name, since Mrs. Bradford had only ever referred to Jane in class as “my daughter.” “Certainly, Mickey, I don’t think she’d mind at all. As a matter of fact, I think she’d really love ‘Sunshine Superman.’”
And as simple as that, I was holding her “Silence” in my hands.
“Thank you, Mrs. Bradford, I’ll bring it back.”
She smiled again and turned to go.
“Oh, Mickey, I almost forgot. We’re having a haunted house in our garage tonight. A haunted pirate ship, actually. The pirate idea was…my daughter’s. I thought I’d let you know because your mother said that ya’ll lived right behind us on the other side of the ditch. You should stop by.”
“Yes, ma’am, I’ll try,” I said, in full knowledge that absolutely nothing I had experienced up to that point in my tiny little life could possibly block my path to that garage. I was Speed Racer. Propelled down the hallway by rowdy students pushing like cattle in a stampede, all aching to get home and scarf down their dinners so they could go trick-or-treating and egging cars, I was soon ejected by the crowd down the main stairs and found myself close enough to the bike rack to spit on it by the time the tide of costumes subsided. I was still lost in Jane and the record I held in my hand, when I saw it. And it stopped me cold.
The bike rack was empty. My bike was gone. And there was that noise again, that noise that my throat would make so it would be too busy to cry—a little Grunt that came when I called on every one of my personal resources to not burst into tears. I stared in disbelief, as a sharp pang of loss drowned out my thoughts of Jane. On the very first day my parents ever allowed me to ride that Schwinn Sting-Ray to school, I had left the chain and padlock negligently wrapped around the seat post. I would have always preferred anger to come from my dad and Grandaddy, but I knew that it would instead be a devastating dose of disappointment that waited for me.
Walking home, I accepted that I would be late for dinner and Mom would be worried, even if I took the shortcut through the football fields past the baseball diamond and through the stand of trees with The Hole. The Hole scared me terribly. Even on a practice day with my entire football team covering my back, I wanted nothing to do with it. Now it was just me, no bike, no Steve McQueen. It was Halloween and nobody would be at any practices, so I would have to walk alone past The Hole, an inexplicably harrowing crevice in the earth that I was sure was the doorway to the devil. The one time I would eventually try to climb down into The Hole it was breech, while The Pole would be headfirst. Yet, oddly enough, while The Hole took me further into this world, it was the The Pole that would take me away.
When I got past the stand of trees, I sprinted past The Hole, pausing only long enough to glance into that black gash to hell. I finally got past it and came to the baseball diamond only to find The Plank and its red Firebird right there, directly in front of me. It was silent except for the sound of a radio playing “Crimson and Clover” by Tommy James and the Shondells. I never thought Kevin would, but I actually loved that song. I couldn’t see him anywhere around, so I cautiously approached his car on the passenger side and looked in. Stretched out on his back across both front seats was Kevin with his mouth wide open and his head propped up on the driver’s side armrest. Radio blaring.
I had never seen a dead person before, but this one looked anything but alive. I was both fascinated and shattered with fright at the same time. But at such a tender age, fear inevitably wins. I backed away from the car and ran into the stand of trees by The Hole to find a small tree branch. Nervous, I peered down the dark crevice again and ran back to the car and stuck the branch through the open window and slowly poked at Kevin’s cheek. Nothing. I waited a moment and then pressed that stick even harder up his cheek—so hard that his upper lip crept high enough to expose his teeth. I held that stick there and prayed for some movement—any movement. But there was none. I dropped that stick right in Kevin’s car and ran for help. I got about twenty feet in ten directions when I heard something coming from the car, so I stopped. I had to go back. When I approached the open window this time, I heard a low, sort of guttural moan coming from inside the car. Slowly and carefully I stuck my head back through the window and picked up that stick to touch again. Suddenly, Kevin’s eyes popped open and I immediately jerked myself back, violently cracking my head on the top of the roof before I fell to the ground. I heard another groan as I sat on the ground looking up at that car, so I gathered myself and slowly approached the window until I could see him…and he could see me.
“Sorry, I thought you were dead.”
Kevin pondered that before asking, “So, wha’d I look like, man? Happy or just sorta peaceful?” And it looked like he really wanted to know.
“Just dead, I guess.”
Gradually, Kevin sat up, staring out at the horizon, but not the way Grandaddy stared out at it. I don’t know if Kevin was fried out of his mind on something or if he just saw things that no one else saw. Their faces were pointed in the same direction, but what they would extract from the view was completely different. Kevin saw smears of color, not hard specifics, whereas my Grandaddy saw every detail before it even got there and long after it was hidden.
“Where’s Trixie?” Kevin demanded and I just stared at him. “If you’re Speed Racer, where the hell’s Trixie?”
I really had to think about this. “I don’t know.”
“Speed, she’s up above you in a helicopter watchin’ your every move, man, that’s where she is.”
Kevin drew himself up and stretched, climbing on the hood of the car right in front of my curiosity.
“And all we’re left with is a monkey in the trunk that likes playin’ with this weird-lookin’ fat kid. But don’t worry, ya know the higher you go, the thinner the air gets up there. She gets too far away, she’ll come crashing down faster’n she can handle.” It seemed like he was really contemplating this for a while, and even looking for her up in the clouds for me, when he suddenly started chuckling to himself. “Besides, we got a fast car! Hah! She’s got a chopper, but we got a car, kid! We got us a fuckin’ car, Speed!” Kevin patted his car and lay back against the windshield to stare wild-eyed at the sky.
“Uh…do you know what time it is, Kevin?” I think that was the first time I ever called him by his name, and probably about the first time we had ever had any kind of conversation.
“I try not to…Sometimes ya can’t help but know, but myself, I try not to.” Kevin stared me down for a long time and it felt weird, but then he suddenly focused. “Why, you gotta be somewhere, Speed?”
“Just home. My mom worries.”
“Nice to have a mom’s worries.” His eyes drifted off.
I noticed the stopwatch tied around his car’s rearview mirror with a lightning bolt logo on the back, and I pulled my leather thong up to show him my dad’s stopwatch. Kevin smiled and closed his eyes.
“It usually takes me fourteen minutes and eight seconds. Well, that’s the record. I coulda broke it today. But they stole my bike.”
“Who’s they?” I had to think about that, too.
“I don’t know.” Kevin smiled at me this time, not at his horizon.
“Yeah, they’re always stealin’ shit ain’t they, Speed, the fuckers. It’s a dog-eat-dog world, man, you can’t be sportin’ Milk-Bone underwear. Where do you live?”
“Just on the other side of the park, over there.” I pointed toward home.
“Wanna ride? I’m thinkin’ we can crush fourteen-eight.”
“No, my mom won’t let me ride with pot smokers.” Kevin chuckled, normal this time, and looked me square in the eye.
“Your mom’s smart.” I nodded my thanks for his approval and waved bye. I got about forty feet from Kevin’s Firebird before he yelled after me, “Hey, Speed! Tell yer dad I’m sorry ’bout tha garage door, but I know he duddn’t got a bathtub to drown me in.”
And Kevin was right; w
e only had a stand-up shower. He grinned and flashed me the peace sign, then leaned back to rejoin his horizon. I watched him a moment longer, but there was Jane and Halloween, so I ran, faster than Tommy, across the entire field of diamonds to the edge and down the path into the trees that lined the field, farther and farther away from The Hole, from Kevin’s radio and that song.
Still sprinting to get through the section of vacant houses and run-down warehouses, I ran across the second intersection before it turned red on me. Just then I heard a distinctive fuzzy thrumming motor right behind me that had run the yellow, too. My goggles blocked my peripheral vision a bit, but I recognized the warm purr. It was a uniquely comforting sound, so I knew it was not the throaty Firebird or Dad’s Gran Torino or Mom’s Dodge Dart. A VW Vanagon is its own instrument in the concert of road traffic, maybe akin to a syncopated popping, like John Bonham’s hi-hat counting down before he plunged into “Moby Dick.” But any illusion of Zeppelin faded as the orange VW Vanagon pulled up alongside me.
“Want a ride?” Mrs. Bradford was smiling, calling out her driver’s side window. “Why are you walking so far from Bentliff Street, Mickey?”
“Oh, hi, Mrs. Bradford, they stole my bike.” I guess Mrs. Bradford somehow understood my loss, or maybe she just smiled at my matter-of-factness.
“Yeah, they’ll do that, won’t they? Well, shame on them. Can I give you a ride?”
“No, thanks, Mrs. Bradford, it’s just a coupla blocks more.”
“Nonsense, hop in, I wouldn’t want my daughter walking around here alone.”
“Yeah, me neither.”
“What?”
“Nothing. I like your radio. I mean the song on it.”
“Serendipity!” Mrs. Bradford smiled.
“What?”
“Nothing. Hop in.”
I would never insult love by claiming that it can be found with a single sense, but I now had three that were conspiring to convince me that it was here. I walked around to the passenger door, and when I opened it up, “Crimson and Clover” welled and I was engulfed in the familiar sweet spice of Jane. I caught my breath. I saw the suede moccasins first, then my eye slid up to her shorts, her tasseled-front suede vest, and then her headdress wrapped around the most beautiful face I ever hoped to see. Jane stared down at me there, rooted to the sidewalk. Far away I thought I heard Mrs. Bradford introducing the two of us. All I could see was Jane, a glittering and perfect unicorn. Dazzling, dressed for Halloween as an American Indian squaw, Jane’s face and arms were painted with cobalt blue stripes and a headband with a single blue feather in the back, exactly like her mother from head to toe.
I know we actually drove home so I must’ve climbed up into the VW Vanagon, but in Jane’s presence I was never able to bring space and time into a manageable volume. I only remember spinning completely out of control. Like an unresponsive fighter plane, my ailerons were out of order, and I expected impact at any moment. Jane would distort everything I knew to be true, even the constant of gravity. She moved differently than others. Around her, my senses seemed to be just a touch out of calibration, delayed, but still crystal clear when it mattered. Her gravity was different somehow, and her inexplicable weightlessness swam around in my head. Seeing her in that proximity put me in a state of grace that would completely shut down my frontal cortex, forcing me to use my primitive brain stem as my sole operating system. Jane was everything I had never seen before. She made me worry that she wasn’t secured to the ground, that she might just come unattached and drift away. But I wanted nothing more than for her to be secure. She was the polar opposite of my Grandaddy, whose feet were locked and loaded in The Law.
I know we drove home because that’s where Jane left me standing, still rooted and gazing up at her at exactly the same angle, but in my own driveway. I had remained hiding the whole time behind my Speed Racer aviator goggles. But Dad was right—I could still see clearly, though my body was steaming. It was as if all of my atoms had locked down at once, and I was in emergency orbit. All I could do was wave my hand and watch Jane’s Vanagon drive away with her smile a spotlit bouquet in a florist shop window as she peered out past the flapping back window curtain.
My only real proof that I had ridden in Jane’s presence was that I now held in one hand her cobalt blue feather and in my other, her “Silence.”
“You got Simon and Garfunkel there, son? Been sittin’ here for minutes waiting for you to move, Mickey.”
“Sorry, Dad.”
“Who was that?” Dad pulled his Gran Torino up to the shattered garage door.
“Oh. My homeroom teacher. They stole my bike.”
“You didn’t lock it, did you?” I was humiliated, but after my moment with Jane I didn’t even need a Grunt to get through his disappointment.
“What’d I tell you?” And then he stopped. “Well, let’s go right now to the police station so you can report it.”
At the police station, I sat shamefaced in the shadow of the hard-nosed sergeant. My Halloween costume sweltered in the overheated office, and my helmet and goggles were starting to itch.
“Shoulda locked it up, Speed Racer. That’s what happens when you don’t take care of your things. Did you have a lock?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, hell, no wonder you lost it if you have a lock and you don’t even bother t—”
Dad stopped him.
“You know, sir, if you have the forms, my son will give y’all the necessary information.”
Eyeballing me, the sergeant handed a theft report to Dad. “What kind of bike was it?”
“A Schwinn Sting-Ray with a black banana seat and purple handlebar grips with brand-new eight-track streamers. It was a racin’ bike.”
“A racing bike, huh? If only kids nowadays would memorize their serial numbers, my life would be a lot…”
“4TOE776449,” I said.
And with that, I saw the Sergeant’s shift in demeanor from irritation to, well, something else. “Okay, can you repeat that again? Slowly, please.” He jotted it down, then led us out back to a small fenced-in area filled with stolen bikes of all kinds.
My hope slipped into despair, and I shoved my fist against my mouth to hide my quivering lip. There was not a complete bike to be found, nor one that even looked remotely worth rebuilding. Dad rummaged through the piles and parts.
“We’ll give you a call if we find it, but don’t hold your breath, Speed.”
“This works.” Dad lifted a rusted-out frame, with only a rear wheel attached, but it was a Schwinn Sting-Ray. “Sergeant, write this serial number down. If no one claims it in ninety days it’s mine, right?”
“Yeah, hell, that mighta been here ninety already. You can probably just take it now if ya want.”
“No, just call me when you find out.”
* * *
With all the delays that Halloween, Dad and I sat down at our little white kitchen table just as Mom was carrying away two plates of blackened hot dogs and beans.
“It’s cold. I’ll make you fresh.” Mom never grumped over stupid stuff.
“We’ll eat it, Genie,” Dad instructed her, giving her a kiss on the lips, and patted her backside.
And then my mom protested slightly, “Paul, not in front of Mickey,” as if I hadn’t already grown up my whole life seeing my dad do this.
“Seedlin’, get out here!”
Out I went. I found my Grandaddy on the porch in his lawn chair, where he always was, watching Magda wiggle sexily up the sidewalk in her skimpy Halloween costume. He pointed at her shaking ass strolling up our driveway toward the front door and asked me, “What you think o’ that one, boy?” I saw him gesture at her ass, and I knew exactly what he was referring to.
“You mean Magda?”
“Yep, that one.”
Until that moment I had never thought about Magda, so I hesitated before answering, as I actually found her fucking repellant. “Um, she’s pretty, I guess.”
He let out an almost u
ndetectable grumble and slowly shook his head back and forth.
“I want you ta take a good look at that one and ’member what you seein’. That one got the VD right there. You need ta know for when you go out huntin’ what ta look for. Hunt that breed an’ you gon’ starve. All treat and no sustenance. Ain’t got what ya need, though ya eyes be tellin ya otherwise. That trash right there. Ain’t got nothin’ ta offer a man she ain’t given away free to ten others ’fore him. Ya don’t marry on one sense, ya marry on all of ’em, and they more than five you gon’ find. A woman you after come inta this world with a lotsa negotiatin’ power. That power called ‘the virtue.’ She lose a little bit o’ that power every time she let a fella bother her. She ignore all tha’ botherin’, then she got lots to negotiate with. She do too much botherin’, she use it all up and wonder why no man give a goddamn. You find yourself one that done lotsa ignorin’, hear me, boy? Hussy don’t make no wifin’ momma. A momma fer ya babies need ta be able ta offer ya lots o’ things that she ain’t never offered no man ’fore ya. If all it is’s a child, then move along. Birthin’ just take care of the nature, but ain’t no quality nurturin’ possible if she in the ‘Virtue Debt’; you gotta ’member what the VD look like for when you old enough to hunt, it wearin’ that same costume…and you sidestep that shit when it come lookin’ for my granbabby. A hussy got her place, but the chapel ain’t it. Hear me, boy? Now don’t tell ya momma I’m learnin’ you up early.”
Magda let herself into our house like she always did, and hugged my mom and dad as I followed her inside. She turned around to me and wobbled my Speed Racer helmet, steering my eyes right to her cleavage.
“Hey, punk.” Magda tried to make her voice seductive even when she talked to a kid. And her trashy streetwalker costume didn’t help.
Lilyth ran into the kitchen costumed as a risqué Tinker Bell with a winged bikini top.
“I’m going to Magda’s.”
“You’re not going anywhere dressed like that.” Dad frowned.
Jane Two Page 8