Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories

by Jean Shepherd

  Refusing to admit it to myself, I whistled moodily as I sprayed the irises and watched a couple of low-flying bats as they skimmed over the lawn and up into the poplars. Mrs. Kissel, next door, creaked back and forth on her porch swing, a copy of True Romances open in her lap, as she waited for Lud’s return with his usual snootful. My kid brother came out onto the porch and, from sheer habit, I quickly shot a stream of water over him, catching him in mid-air as he leaped high to avoid the stream. It was a superbly executed shot. I had led him just right. He caught it full in the chest, his yellow polo shirt clinging to his ribs wetly, like a second skin. Bawling at the top of his lungs, he disappeared into the house and slammed the screen door behind him. Ordinarily, this small triumph would have cheered me up for hours; but tonight, I tasted nothing but ashes. Suddenly, his face reappeared in the doorway.

  I’M GONNA TELL MA!” he yelled.

  Instantly, like a cobra, I struck. Sweeping the stream quickly over the screen door, I got him again. Another scream of rage and he was gone. Again, I sank into my moody sea of reflection. Was I going to boot the prom?

  Flick had asked Janie Hutchinson, a tall, funny girl who had been in our class since kindergarten. And Schwartz was lined up with Clara Mae; all he had talked about that week had been that crummy orchid and how good a dancer he was. Flick had stopped asking me about Daphne ever since the past Wednesday, when I had gotten mad because he’d been needling me. All week, I had been cleaning up my Ford for the big night. If there was one thing in my life that went all the way, my only true and total love, it was my Ford V8, a convertible that I had personally rebuilt at least 35 times. I knew every valve spring personally, had honed each valve, burnished every nut and bolt she carried. Tuesday, I had simonized her completely; Wednesday, I had repeated the job; and Thursday, I had polished the chrome until my knuckles ached and my back was stiff. I had spent the past two days minutely cleaning the interior, using a full can of saddle-soap on the worn leather. Everything was set to go, except for one thing—no girl.

  A feeling of helpless rage settled over me as I continued spraying the lawn. I flushed out a poor, hapless caterpillar from under a bush, squirting him mercilessly full blast, until be washed down the sidewalk and disappeared into the weeds. I felt a twinge of evil satisfaction as he rolled over and over helplessly. It was getting dark. All that was left of the sun was a long purple-orange streak along the western horizon. The glow of the steel mills to the north and east began to light up the twilight sky. I had worked my way down to the edge of our weedy, pock-marked bed of sod when, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something white approaching out of the gloom. I sprinkled on, not knowing that another piece was being fitted into the intricate mosaic of adolescence. I kicked absent-mindedly at a passing toad as I soaked down the dandelions.

  “What are you doing?”

  So deeply was I involved in self-pity that at first my mind wouldn’t focus. Startled, I swung my hose around, spraying the white figure on the sidewalk ten feet away.

  “I’m sorry!” I blurted out, seeing at once that I had washed down a girl dressed in white tennis clothes.

  “Oh, hi, Wanda. I didn’t see you there.”

  She dried herself with a Kleenex.

  “What are you doing?” she asked again.

  “I’m sprinkling the lawn.” The toad hopped past, going the other way now. I squirted him briefly, out of general principles.

  “You been playing tennis?” Since she was wearing tennis clothes and was carrying a racket, it seemed the right thing to say.

  “Me and Eileen Akers were playing. Down at the park,” she answered.

  Eileen Akers was a sharp-faced, bespectacled girl I had, inexplicably, been briefly in love with in the third grade. I had come to my senses by the time we got into 4-B. It was a narrow escape. By then, I had begun to dimly perceive that there was more to women than being able to play a good game of Run Sheep, Run.

  “I’m sure glad school’s almost over,” she went on, when I couldn’t think of anything to say. “I can hardly wait. I never thought I’d be a senior.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I’m going to camp this summer. Are you?”

  “Yeah,” I lied. I had a job already lined up for the summer, working for a surveyor. The next camp I would see would be in the Ozarks, and I’d be carrying an M-1.

  Wanda swung her tennis racket at a June bug that flapped by barely above stall speed. She missed. The bug soared angrily up and whirred off into the darkness.

  “Are you going to college when you graduate next year?” she asked. For some reason, I didn’t like the drift of the conversation.

  “Yeah, I guess so, if I don’t get drafted.”

  “My brother’s in the Army. He’s in the Artillery.” Her brother, Bud Hickey, was a tall, laconic type four or five years older than both of us.

  “Yeah, I heard. Does he like it?”

  “Well, he doesn’t write much,” she said. “But he’s gonna get a pass next September, before he goes overseas.”

  “How come he’s in the Artillery?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. They just put him there. I guess because he’s tall.”

  “What’s that gotta do with it? Do they have to throw the shells, or something?”

  “I don’t know. They just did it.”

  Then it happened. Without thinking, without even a shadow of a suspicion of planning, I heard myself asking: “You going to the prom?”

  For a long instant she said nothing, just swung her tennis racket at the air.

  “I guess so,” she finally answered, weakly.

  “It’s gonna be great,” I said, trying to change the subject.

  “Uh … who are you going with?” She said it as if she really didn’t care one way or the other.

  “Well, I haven’t exactly made up my mind yet.” I bent down unconcernedly and pulled a giant milkweed out by the roots.

  “Neither have I,” she said.

  It was then that I realized there was no sense fighting it. Some guys are born to dance forever with the Daphne Bigelows on shining ballroom floors under endless starry skies. Others—well, they do the best they can. I didn’t know that yet, but I was beginning to suspect something.

  “Wanda?”

  “Yes?”

  “Wanda. Would you … well … I mean … would you, you see, I was thinking….”

  “Yes?”

  Here I go, in over the horns: “Wanda, uh … how about … going to the prom with me?”

  She stopped twitching her tennis racket. The crickets cheeped, the spring air was filled with the sound of singing froglets. A soft breeze carried with it the promise of a rich summer and the vibrant aromas of a nearby refinery.

  She began softly, “Of course, I’ve had a lot of invitations, but I didn’t say yes to any of them yet. I guess it would be fun to go with you,” she ended gamely.

  “Yeah, well, naturally, I’ve had four or five girls who wanted to go with me, but I figured that they were mostly jerks anyway, and … ah … I meant to ask you all along.”

  The die was cast. There was no turning back. It was an ironclad rule. Once a girl was asked to the prom, only a total crumb would even consider ducking out of it. There had been one or two cases in the past, but the perpetrators had become socials pariahs, driven from the tribe to fend for themselves in the unfriendly woods.

  Later that night, hunched over the kitchen table, still somewhat numbed by the unexpected turn of events, I chewed thoughtfully on a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, while my mother, hanging over the sink in her rump-sprung Chinese-red chenille bathrobe, droned on monotonously: “You’re just going to have to stop squirting Randy.”

  “Yeah,” I answered, my mind three light-years away.

  “You got his new Flash Gordon T-shirt all wet.”

  “Sorry,” I said automatically. It was a phrase I used often in those days.

  “It shrunk. And now he can’t wear it.”

 
“Why not?” I asked.

  “It comes up around his chest now.”

  “Well, why can’t he stretch it?”

  “You just stop squirting him, that’s all. You hear me?”

  “It’s a silly T-shirt, anyway,” I said truculently.

  “You heard what I said. No more squirting.” That ended the conversation.

  Later, in bed, I thought briefly of Daphne Bigelow, but was interrupted by a voice from the bed on the other side of the room.

  “You rotten crumb. You squirted my T-shirt!”

  “Ah, shaddup.”

  “You wait I’m gonna get you!”

  I laughed raucously. My kid brother wailed in rage.

  “SHUT UP, YOU TWO! CUT OUT THE FIGHTING OR I’LL COME IN THERE AND DO SOME HEAD KNOCKING!”

  The old man meant what he said and we knew it. I promptly fell asleep. It had been a long and tumultuous day.

  I broke the news to Schwartz the next morning, after biology. We were hurrying through the halls between classes on our way to our lockers, which were side by side on the second floor.

  “Hey, Schwartz, how about double-dating for the prom?” I asked. I knew he had no car and I needed moral support, anyway.

  “Great! I’ll help you clean up the car.”

  “I’ve already simonized her. She’s all set.”

  “Are you gonna send Daphne an orchid, or what?”

  “Well, no …” I said lamely, hoping he’d forget what he asked.

  “What do you mean? Ya gotta send a corsage.”

  “Well, I am going to send a corsage.”

  “I thought you said you weren’t.”

  I just couldn’t shake him off. “I never said I wasn’t gonna send a corsage.”

  “Are you nuts? You just said you weren’t gonna.”

  “I’m not gonna send a corsage to Daphne Bigelow. You asked me if I was gonna send a corsage to Daphne. I’m not”

  “She’s gonna think you’re a real cheap skate.”

  It was getting ridiculous. Schwartz was being even more of a numskull than usual.

  “Schwartz, I have decided not to ask Daphne Bigelow to the prom.”

  He looked directly at me, which caused him to slam into two strolling freshman girls. Their books slid across the floor, where they were trampled underfoot by the thundering mob.

  “Well, who are you taking?” he asked, oblivious to their shrieks of dismay.

  “Wanda Hickey.”

  “Wanda Hickey!”

  Schwartz was completely thrown by the bit of news. Wanda Hickey had never been what you could call a major star in our Milky Way. We walked on, saying nothing, until finally, as we opened our lockers, Schwartz said: “Well, she sure is good at algebra.”

  It was true. Wanda was an algebra shark in the same way that Clara Mae was a spelling nut Maybe we both got what we deserved.

  Later that day, in the study hall, after I had polished off a history theme on some stupid thing like the Punic Wars, I got to thinking about Wanda. I could see her sitting way over on the other side of the room, a dusty sunbeam filtering through the window and lighting up her straw-colored hair. She was kind of cute. I’d never really noticed it before. Ever since second grade, Wanda had just been there, along with Eileen Akers, Helen Weathers and all the other girls who—along with me and Schwartz and Flick and Jossway and the rest—had moved together step by step up the creaky ladder of education. And here I was, at long last, taking Wanda Hickey—Wanda Hickey—to the prom, the only junior prom I would ever attend in my life.

  As I chewed on the end of my fake-marble Wearever pen, I watched Wanda through half-closed eyes in the dusty sunbeam as she read The Lady of the Lake. Ahead of me, Schwartz dozed fitfully, as he always did in study hall, his forehead occasionally thumping the desk. Flick, to my right, struggled sullenly over his chemistry workbook. We both knew it was hopeless. Flick was the only one in our crowd who consistently flunked everything.

  The prom was just five days away. This was the last week of school. Ahead our long summer in the sun stretched out like a lazy yellow road. For many of us, it was the last peaceful summer we were to know.

  Mr. Wilson, the study-hall teacher, wandered aimlessly up and down the aisles, pretending he was interested in what we were pretending to be doing. From somewhere outside drifted the cries of a girls’ volleyball game, while I drew pictures of my Ford on the inside cover of my three-ring notebook: front view, side view, rear view, outlining the drawings with ink.

  That morning, on my way to school, I had gone down to the Cupid Florist Shop and ordered an orchid. My 24 dollars were shrinking fast The eight-dollar bite for the orchid didn’t help. Schwartz and I were going to split on the gas, which would come to maybe a buck apiece. After paying for the summer formal I’d have a fast ten dollars left for the night. As I sat in study hall, I calculated, writing the figures down, adding and substracting. But it didn’t come out to much, no matter how I figured it.

  Schwartz passed a note back to me. I opened it: “How about the Red Rooster afterward?”

  I wrote underneath, “Where else?” and passed it back. The Red Rooster was part of the tribal ritual. It was the place you went after a big date, if you could afford it

  I glanced over across the room at Wanda and caught her looking at me. She instantly buried her head in her book. Good old Wanda.

  On the way home from school every day that week of course, all we talked about was the prom. Flick was double-dating with Jossway and we were all going to meet afterward at the Rooster and roister until dawn, drinking deeply of the sweet elixir of the good life. The only thing that nagged me now was financial. Ten bucks didn’t look as big as it usually did. Ordinarily, ten bucks could have gotten me through a month of just fooling around, but the prom was the big time.

  Friday night, as I sat in the kitchen before going to bed, knocking down a liverwurst on whole wheat and drinking a glass of chocolate milk, the back door slammed open and in breezed the old man, carrying his bowling bag. Friday night was his big night down at the Pin-Bowl. He was a fanatical bowler, and a good one, too. He slid the bag across the floor, pretending to lay one down the groove, his right arm held out in a graceful follow-through, right leg trailing in the classic bowling stance.

  “Right in the pocket,” he said with satisfaction.

  “How’d you do tonight?” I asked.

  “Not bad. Had a two-oh-seven game. Damn near cracked six hundred.”

  He opened the refrigerator and fished around for a beer, then sat down heavily, took a deep drag from the bottle, burped loudly and said:

  “Well, tomorrow’s the big day, ain’t it?”

  “Yep,” I answered. “Sure is.”

  “You takin’ Daphne Bigelow?” he asked.

  “Nah. Wanda Hickey.”

  “Oh, yeah? Well, you can’t win ’em all. Wanda’s old man is some kind of a foreman at the mill or something, ain’t he?”

  “I guess so.”

  “He drives a Studebaker Champion, don’t he? The green two-door with the whitewalls.”

  The old man had a fine eye for cars. He judged all men by what they drove. Apparently a guy who drove a two-door Studebaker was not absolutely beyond the pale.

  “Not a bad car. Except they burn oil after a while,” he mused, omitting no aspects of the Studebaker.

  “They used to have a weak front end. Bad kingpins.” He shook his head critically, opening another beer and reaching for the rye bread

  I said nothing, lost in my own thoughts. My mother and kid brother had been in bed for an hour or so. We were, for all practical purposes, alone in the house. Next door, Mrs. Kissel threw out a pail of dishwater into the back yard with a swoosh. Her screen door slammed.

  “How ya fixed for tomorrow night?” the old man asked suddenly, swirling his beer bottle around to raise the head.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, how are ya fixed?”

  My father never talked money to me. I got
my allowance every Monday and that was that.

  “Well, I’ve got about ten bucks.”

  “Hm.” That was all he said.

  After sitting in silence for a minute or so, he said,

  “You know, I always wished I coulda gone to a prom.”

  How can you answer something like that? He had barely gotten out of eighth grade when he had to go to work, and he never stopped for the rest of his life.

  “Oh, well, what the hell” He finally answered himself.

  He cut himself a slice of boiled ham and made a sandwich.

  “I was really hot tonight. Got a string of six straight strikes in the second game. The old hook was movin’, getting a lot of wood.”

  He reached into his hip pocket, took out his wallet and said:

  “Look, don’t tell Ma.” He handed me a $20 bill.

  “I had a couple of bets going on the second game, and I’m a money bowler.”

  He was that. No doubt of it. In his early teens, he had scrounged out a living as a pool shark, and he had never lost the touch. I took the $20, glommed onto it the way the proverbial drowning man grabs at a straw. I was so astounded at this unprecedented gesture that it never occurred to me to say thanks. He would have been embarrassed if I had. A miracle had come to pass. There was no doubt about it—the prom was going to be an unqualified gas.

  The next day dawned bright and sunny, as perfect as a June day can be—in a steel-mill town. Even the blast-furnace dust that drifted aimlessly through the soft air glowed with promise. I was out early, dusting off the car. It was going to be a top-down night. If there is anything more romantic than a convertible with the top down in June going to a prom, I’d like to hear about it Cleopatra’s barge couldn’t have been much more seductive.

  My kid brother, his diminutive Flash Gordon T-shirt showing a great expanse of knobby backbone and skinny belly, yapped around me as I toiled over the Ford.

  “Look what you done to my T-shirt!” he whined, his runny nose atrickle. He was in the midst of his annual spring cold, which would be superseded by his summer cold, which lasted nicely to the whopper he got in the fall, which, of course, was only a prelude to his winter-long monster cold.