The Soho Press Book of '80s Short Fiction

by Dale Peck

Mrs. Evans: Well, this isn’t Patsy’s house. It belongs to her parents. And since they don’t belong to your club, I think you’d better get moving.

  Brad gets up and turns off the hose. Then he walks back to the swings and cricks his neck, motioning to Bobby to come with him. They head for the back wood fence and start to boost themselves over.

  Mrs. Evans: Not that way.

  Mr. Evans: (simultaneously) Oh no you don’t.

  Brad and Bobby slump back to the ground. They walk past the Evanses, down the driveway, and are back on the sidewalk of Winola Avenue. Bobby turns around and says goodnight. They say goodnight back, almost musically, as they get into their Ford Galaxie. Brad just keeps walking, unwilling to forgive or forget.

  They are walking down Winola toward Pierce Street, which is a big street filled with traffic, gas stations, tractor and truck repair factories. This is the street where you get the bus to go into Wilkes-Barre.

  Brad: Let’s do this. I’ll say the name of the family whose house we’re walking by. And you say one thing about them. Then you say the name and I’ll do it. Until we get to Pierce Street. I’ll start. Flaskis.

  Bobby: Tony Flaski plays basketball. One day he turned a hose on you and now you can’t play with him.

  Brad: Okay, you say the next name.

  Bobby: Gleason.

  Brad: Mrs. Gleason’s husband died a few years ago. She paid us one day to paint her front porch. Smiths.

  Bobby: The Smiths go to the same church you do. I always forget what they look like. They don’t have any kids. McCarthy.

  Brad: Her husband died too. And now her and Jamie McCarthy live in that garage converted into a house. He was in the car with the Kilgallen kid who was killed on the way back from Harvey’s Lake on Fourth of July weekend. And he dropped out of school. Crease.

  Bobby: Larry Crease made you kiss his sneakers one day on my front porch. My father saw it through the window.

  Brad: I never did that I just pretended to do it. You can’t tell the difference. Lease.

  Bobby: Rob was one of the guys in the circle when we had that contest I told you about in the lilac bushes. Remember?

  Brad: Next.

  Bobby: Miknoffs.

  Brad: Miknoffs are Jewish too. Marcia and I used to play Fish. She has a crush on me.

  Bobby: And what’s this creep’s name?

  They have come to the white corner house with a dentist’s shingle hanging on a post by the driveway. On the back porch a thin-faced woman is sitting on a lounge chair made of flexible tan rubber strips leafing through a colorful women’s magazine by the light of a mosquito-killing candle. She watches the boys go by, her eyes peering cautiously above the gloss.

  Brad: (sotto voce) I don’t want to talk about him. He’s just a greaser hood. That’s why he locked us in the cellar. We fixed him, though.

  Bobby: You mean your father did, calling. Do you think she recognized us?

  Brad: Let’s stop. We’re here.

  It is now pitch black. Around nine o’clock. They are on Pierce Street with cars whizzing by. Lots of electric lights from headlights, billboards, stores, eating joints. The two of them look very small in the glare. They aren’t talking much because there is too much noise.

  Brad: (shouting) Let’s get fruit.

  Bobby: (regular speaking voice) What kind?

  Brad: (shouting) Any kind. Wait and see.

  They keep walking until they get to an outside fruit stand, the Orange Grove Market. They look around at the fruit, disappointed.

  Bobby: Maybe a vanilla Popsicle.

  Brad: Let’s go to the Pierce Street Market.

  Bobby looks a little shocked because that market is much farther away. Under the train trestle. Near the park and the river. But Brad has already started off so Bobby goes too. It takes about two minutes to pass under the trestle. Scared of being in the dark with cars passing much closer to their bodies, no division between sidewalk and street. Out into the artificial light again. Soon to get to the second market, which is actually a supermarket with cars parked in marked diagonal spaces. They go in the doors which zoom open as soon as Bobby stamps on the corrugated pad.

  They head up the side aisle which is where all the fruit is, light beaming down, frigid air rising all around. Brad sticks his head in over the fruit, feeling the cold, smelling the insulated smell.

  Brad: Which ones are you gonna buy?

  Brad starts looking at the oranges. He wants an orange, but doesn’t want to have to buy a whole plastic bag with a dozen. He just wants a fruit to hold in his hand and eat. Bobby heads straight for a coconut and picks it up, triumphant.

  Bobby: Coconut.

  Brad: What do you do with that?

  Bobby: I know what to do with it. I lived in Florida for a while, remember?

  Bobby’s mention of living in Florida always scares Brad. He feels as if there are secrets to Bobby and to the whole world that he doesn’t know. That anyone looking at him and Bobby could tell the difference in experience between someone who has lived in Florida and someone who has not.

  Brad: How do you eat it?

  Bobby: You get a hammer and you open it. Then you eat the white meat and you drink all the milk. It’s sweet.

  Brad: (zeroing in on one point) And just where are you going to get this hammer?

  Bobby: I’ll use your head.

  Brad: (smugly) My head is more like a coconut than a hammer for a coconut.

  Bobby: Come on, Brad. Make up your mind. Which fruit do you want?

  Brad looks at the bag of oranges. Then at the bag of apples. Feels dissatisfied. Then he sees a pineapple and his problem is solved. Picks up the pineapple.

  Brad: (holding it up to the light, exposing its different facets) Do they have these in Florida? I know they do.

  Bobby: Millions of them. And in Mexico. Where we stayed at the South of the Border Motel. There they have tacos, which is a kind of sandwich but the bread is more cardboardy and inside is the best . . .

  Brad: How do you travel so much? Your father just works in a brewery.

  Bobby: There’s a lot of money in beer. How much does your father make?

  Brad heads off down the aisle, past all the cereals which interest him greatly, then past soups and mayonnaises which interest him less. When he gets to the front, Bobby, less wide-eyed, is already in line. Brad gets behind him. The girl weighs Bobby’s coconut. He gets out change to pay. Brad tries to count how much Bobby has in his dirty palm. Then Brad gingerly hands her the pineapple, his hands stinging from the prickles. Brad recognizes the checkout girl as a cheerleader from high school. He averts his eyes. Sees Bobby off to the side with a big smile, trying to get Brad to show he recognizes her. Brad pays, feeling a slight stab as he has just spent one week’s allowance.

  Brad: (walking out, turning around to Bobby) I’m glad we bought these.

  Bobby: Where do we eat them?

  They are back on Pierce Street again. When they hit the first avenue after the trestle, Bobby motions with his head to turn down. Brad follows. It is dark. On one side of the street is the football stadium with another large field next to it for softball. The bleachers all around, empty, make a kind of curved dark hole where all noise stops. One of the tall spotlight scaffolds covers over strips of moon, like a fencer’s mask. On the side where they’re walking is the dark trestle. Trains only go by once every few hours. The first house is still about a hundred yards ahead.

  Brad: Let’s eat the fruit where we found all the fossils the other day.

  Bobby: On top?

  Brad: Yup.

  Bobby: Are you gonna watch TV tonight?

  Brad: I wanna see the presidential debates.

  Bobby: I wanna see Gomer Pyle. Tonight’s the night the sergeant gets the mumps.

  Brad: Big deal. When the world’s at stake. Let’s go.
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  Brad and Bobby scramble up the trestle, which is about three stories high made, it seems, from a big slag of coal with train streaks running over the top. They keep losing balance and falling in the cutting coal. Their clothes are getting messy and ripped. Once Brad really punctures his palm by falling on top of the pineapple bristles. When he gets to the top, Bobby is sitting there, the moon making his face look like ivory.

  Bobby: You have to grab onto the trees to get up.

  Brad looks down and notices the trees growing unevenly along the side of the trestle. He had not watched how Bobby had made it.

  They both sit down. Brad sits facing in the direction the big city. He can see the dark of the park, a silky string of river, the courthouse lit up with its bald dome to look like the Taj Mahal, and the top of the King’s College building with spotlighted statue of Jesus Christ spreading his arms way out. Bobby sits on the other side facing their town. He just sees a lot of roofs and TV antennas. Since they’re in a valley, eventually their eyes come up against the same curve of mountains with red airplane-warning beacons spaced on the ridges every so often. Brad comes back and joins Bobby.

  Brad: I like it up here.

  Bobby: You can’t see the fossils at night.

  Brad: How you gonna eat yours?

  Bobby: Like this.

  Bobby slams his coconut down on the train tracks. Milk spills all over and the coconut breaks into a dozen big chunks. Bobby bares his teeth and begins eating out the inside of one. He hands a chunk to Brad who chews too. Then Brad takes his pineapple and throws it against the tracks also. His pineapple just mooshes into a lump, juice flowing out all over his hands and the rail. He picks at a few pieces but is not really so interested. Bobby picks up a chunk and sucks on it.

  Bobby: Okay, since you asked before, what’s your dream?

  Brad: I haven’t had any. I just watch that lady next door through the opening in her fan. She sits there and reads books all night and watches Johnny Carson. Her husband died too.

  Bobby: What is it around here? All the husbands are croaking off.

  Brad: What about you? Did you have a dream?

  Bobby: Last night. A big one.

  Brad: How big? What happened?

  Bobby: Well, I dreamed I was on this operating table. Like in a hospital. Or Frankenstein. This was in somebody’s house. I didn’t have any clothes on. And I was strapped down to this flat cold table with straps. And over this part (rubbing his crotch) there was like a metal jockstrap that came down. Timmy Wilson was in the dream. He’s the one who picks on me at catechism.

  Brad: I know him. What’s with him?

  Bobby: I don’t know. But he came over to my house once with his tape recorder.

  Brad: What happened?

  Bobby: Come on. Let me tell the dream. So this metal thing clamps down, and Timmy has this dial where he can send volts into my whole body through this. Sometimes he turns it off and on real fast, sometimes so high I scream, sometimes low and I just feel vibratings.

  Brad: Did it feel good?

  Bobby: Well. Yes and no. I mean, it was torture. But . . . And Timmy didn’t have any clothes on. Except this white doctor’s coat that was open. You could see his whole front. And his face kept changing. Sometimes he was mean. Sometimes not.

  Brad: Well, he is sort of mean. In real life.

  Bobby: And then he started getting really bad. Turning it up and up and it hurt. Then I woke up and I had to go to the bathroom.

  Brad: (not wanting to stop) What did he say in the dream?

  Bobby: Nothing. He just smiled. Or laughed. Oh and someone with a mask over her face came in with rubber gloves and they were cold and felt my body to check for temperature every so often. To make sure I didn’t get killed.

  Quiet for a long time. Then,

  Brad: Did anyone ever eat a sundae off you?

  Bobby: What are you talking about?

  Brad: But we don’t have any whipped cream.

  Bobby: Eat a sundae how?

  Brad: Like I could put pineapples and whipped cream on your pecker and eat it all off. Then you’ll forget that dream.

  Bobby: Yeah you’d like to wouldn’t you?

  Brad: Uh-huh.

  Brad starts picking up the pineapple chunks and punching makeshift holes in the centers with his thumb. Bobby looks around, unzips his zipper and lets his cock show out.

  Brad: You have to open it more. Or your pants will get all sticky.

  Bobby undoes his thin belt, lowers his pants a little. Has a thick cock and big balls with bristly hair all around. He sits gingerly back on the coal rocks, keeping his arms straight while leaning back to give himself some leverage. Brad slips the sloppy pineapple rings over. Bobby feels back with his arm, finds a coconut section with a puddle of milk still inside. He pours the milk over.

  Bobby: Here. This makes it a real sundae.

  Brad goes down, slurping theatrically as he eats the pineapple rings and licks off the sweet milk. The smell from Bobby’s pubic hair is an intenser version of the sweet breezes of the night, but a bitter taste also cuts through the fruity pineapple and sweet creamy coconut milk. Bobby doesn’t make a sound. Seems to be holding his breath.

  From faraway the low tone of the train horn begins. It is still miles off. But the tone can already be felt in all the houses in the Valley, especially those near the trestle, a low, almost mournful sound, like a whale’s call. Some people hear it through television soundtrack and just feel funny for a minute. Some people, especially young teen-age boys and girls, hear it from their rooms when they are lying on the bed, lights either on or off, and feel a strong pull, a real loneliness that has to be solved. Young kids hear it and are relatively unaffected. Animals perk up their ears for cars, but not for this. Brad and Bobby know they have time. Bobby feels it is up to him to listen so that when the train gets close enough he can warn Brad and they can scratch their way back down the trestle. Brad feels the train sound means more to him than to anyone else.

  Sodomy

  Gary Indiana

  It was before the war. I used to meet Jack every Friday at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central. I was employed as a memory typist at a survey firm. Jack worked in publishing. He was my age, twenty-eight. He had the soft brown eyes of a southern boy, full lips and a strong chin. Jack worked out, he had an inspiring physique. His hair was the color of a motorcycle jacket. It looked very glamorous on him.

  “Hiya, sweetheart,” was Jack’s normal greeting. I arrived early, he arrived late. An inflexible pattern.

  “Jack,” I’d say. “My prince.”

  He smiled a lot. Even his teeth were sexy. He liked my little romantic things. There was nothing binding in them.

  “You look like a million dollars,” Jack would say, not just being flattering. Between Friday night and Saturday afternoon, Jack found me totally enthralling. We never had two consecutive nights together and I knew we never would. If I saw him on the street with somebody else it was always hello goodbye, no kiss, no handshake even. Fridays were different. Jack paid for everything, the oysters, dinner, endless gin and tonics, often a bottle of champagne at the end of the evening. We went to strip joints and discos and fist fuck bars on the West Side to dance and score poppers or a few hits of coke. At some hour we’d end up at his place. He had a clean, dark apartment near Avenue A on East 13th. He shared this place with a former lover who was perpetually out of town, on nebulous business. Jack would put on some jazz and light candles, making an atmosphere. We’d smoke a joint, then Jack undressed me with an air of great confidence. One thing he liked, he’d spread honey and strawberry jam on his cock and balls, then kneel over me while I licked it off. The candles flickered big shadows on the wall. Jack eased my legs over his shoulders and drooled saliva across his fingertips, smearing it around my asshole and the head of his prick. He plunged in bluntly then froze with just the tip in
side until my muscles relaxed around it, squeezing in deeper a half inch or so at a time. The shaft of Jack’s penis was about ten inches long and almost two inches thick. Once he had it in all the way it felt like an iron pipe, but Jack knew how to make it nice, I’d tighten around it if he slid more than an inch of it out. I could twist over onto my stomach without losing any of it. Sometimes Jack carried me across the room, his arms wrapped around my thighs, fucking the whole time like an air hammer. In the mornings we fucked standing up in the shower, and usually once more on the carpeted floor in the living room, dog style, though this second fuck made both of us stoned and hazy for the rest of the day. I really had to struggle to get anything accomplished on Saturday afternoons the whole year and a half I was seeing Jack. But we were hungry for each other. To tell you the truth, Jack was about the only thing that made sense to me at the time.

  As things go, it wasn’t much. Jack couldn’t make love cold sober on Friday, though he did fine on a Saturday morning hangover. The one time we skipped cocktails and the drugs, Jack barely could get it up and flung his wad in about two minutes. I wondered about that, after he apologized and fell asleep: did he invent his lust out of mere alcohol? Was it just convenient, after a hard week at the office, to fuck me instead of looking out for someone else? It’s true we had sentiments about each other. But when we really scratched the surface of our real opinions and ideas, it was obvious Jack and I came from two distant planets. I wanted us to have more in common than we did, so I agreed a lot with Jack’s dumb ideas; I’m sure he went along with mine, too.

  In those last confused years before the war, it was possible for something like Jack’s sexual organs to play a key role in my life, along fairly homely lines of supposedly vanquished stereotypes. He never let me fuck him, for example, pleading hemorrhoids. He went down on me from time to time, but mainly he played the man. It was fine for a while but it got boring. He could make me come with his dick, which isn’t so common as people suppose; but I never came inside him, and I had the idea that this meant something important. Perhaps it didn’t, looking back on 1978.

  But there was this, too: I didn’t love Jack, and Jack didn’t love me. We liked each other’s bodies, it went that far. The guy I did love didn’t want anything to do with me, not physically anyway. Dean. Dean was an actor in off-Broadway, then. What attracted me to Dean was the certainty of rejection, added to a funny gambler’s hope of somehow beating the house, seducing him through sheer will, making the unlikely blossom into heady passions like a million stale Hollywood endings. As a former resident of Nevada, I know perfectly well, and knew then, that no one ever beats the house. However, this never stopped anybody from dropping their mortgage payment on the table at Caesar’s Palace and it didn’t stop me from being in love with Dean.