by Diane Munier
“She can sit on my lap,” Easy says to Cap and Cap turns to get in.
“I don’t know,” I say cause I just do not.
Easy sees my not knowing right away. “Get in back,” he says to Cap knocking him on his shoulder.
Cap looks at me and grins again. I want to apologize, but he doesn’t seem to mind, stepping onto the rear wheel and hopping over the side and he was always like that, I remember, moved like that.
Next I know Easy is holding the door for me and I climb in but here’s the deal, I don’t get close to Disbro. I barely give Easy enough room and he laughs, and he squeezes in and he gets the door closed, and I don’t mean to force him into squeezing next to me, but I can’t go any further.
But Easy keeps his hands to himself and Disbro says, “Told you she was too good.” Then he takes off and he says dumb stuff like usual, under his breath, “She’s just too good for us boys, just too good. Too good.”
“Hey,” Easy says to Disbro and he moves his cramped arm enough to put it along the seat behind me and for a minute I get so nervous I feel a little swimmy.
So Disbro pulls out, right in front of one of the buses and he squeals his tires and makes a crazy turn that practically throws me into Easy’s lap and I put my hand on his leg and I briefly see the faces of students in the bus windows all along that yellow submarine as we pass.
“Watch what you’re doing wild man,” Easy says. He puts his arm more around me then and squeezes a little like it will be okay. “Sorry,” he says and I snatch my hand off of him.
Leave it to Disbro to nearly kill us right after I’m finally with Easy again. But still I’m not as aware as a normal girl might be. Even near death hasn’t brought me down to earth.
I can’t even speak. I’m sitting bird dog straight and looking out the window then watching the speedometer. Easy moves his arm back onto the top of the seat. I know it’s all wrong, but all I can think is I’m sitting beside Easy and my heart is taking off so hard I can barely breathe and behind me, other side of the glass sits Cap Caghan in a too thin jacket in dead of winter and I have no memory of how I left “The Quill’s,” office and got here, but I am…we are here, and it’s now, and I have entered a new phase of my life on what was supposed to be a very ordinary day and I am no less surprised than the apostles probably were when Jesus called them away from their nets.
A new door has opened to take me from the ordinary and it’s got heaven on the other side. That’s if Disbro Peak doesn’t kill me before I can get my Bloody Heart regulation loafer over the threshold.
Cap knocks on the window then and Easy shifts and looks back at him and says, “Shit. You got a pig on your tail asshole. Pull over.”
I just think of my granma then, she flashes in my mind. I hope I’m not going to jail. One of the school buses passes again, maybe the one Disbro pulled out in front of, or maybe my own. Yep, I see that forty-nine on the back. That’s me. Faces gawk at us out the back window as they go on down the road and we sit pulled over, red lights flashing as we await our fate.
Disbro practically lays over my lap as he rummages in the open glove box and grabs a Baggie of green crumbs, frantically pulls the cover off the middle of his steering wheel and shoves the baggie in there and fumbles to get the cover back on.
“You kidding me, son?” Easy says to him, slamming that glove box closed, the old anger I’ve seen before in his face and heard before in his voice that maybe replaces the punch there’s no time to give.
I hear Cap saying something to the cop and Cap hops out street-side and the cop knocks hard on Disbro’s window and looks in and we’re told to get out of the truck.
Darnay Road 46
“It’s okay,” Easy says to me and I know it’s surely not okay but I smile at him and I don’t think anything bad can happen to me with him around anyway which is probably why we didn’t die when Disbro nearly killed us in front of the bus.
So Cap and I and Easy get behind the truck and the cop is already getting stern with Disbro. “What I tell you about driving with your head up your ass?” he yells. “You really think you can afford another citation?”
Disbro is mumbling dumb stuff and the cop is mad. He has Disbro put his hands on the side of the truck and he walks back to the three of us.
“Where you headed?” he says to Easy.
“I just got home,” Easy says going for his wallet.
“Keep your hands where I can see them,” Cop says. “Put them up here on the truck. Not you young lady, but these two.” He means the Hardy Boys should put their hands on the top of the tailgate. I just stand there. I want to say they didn’t do anything, none of us did, but I can’t talk again.
Easy is telling his name and Cap’s name and they just got in town to see the folks before he has to go back to Fort Ord, Callifornia. I am thinking what in the world? California is as far away as you can get. Last I heard from him he was telling me he wasn’t going back to school but he was going in the army like he planned. I wrote back and told him all I was reading and hearing about the war and I said maybe he should wait, but he never replied.
The cop asks if he’s going to ‘Nam and Easy says not directly. Not yet but soon as he hits seventeen he figures they’ll send him.
I can’t believe it. I figured as soon as I saw the uniform that Easy would end up there but until I hear these words I guess I just pretend I don’t know. So now I’m staring at him. He looks at me and smiles and winks and it makes me gulp.
“I can see you’re from the school up there. Your parents know you are with these fellas?” The cop says this to me and it pulls me out of my worry about Easy.
I clear my throat hoping to scare up some voice. I know I have to do my own talking. “Yes…um Easy is my friend. And Cap.” I point to Disbro who is almost glaring right about now. “And he’s my neighbor. Giving us a ride home.”
“Well I can see this young man is headed for duty,” he nods at Easy, “but I’ll bet you’re supposed to be on a bus and not in the truck with these boys.”
I swallow. But then I’m kind of mad. Well I think of Stanley, and that’s what I call him, Stanley or Officer Stanley or a couple of times in my mind, Pig Stanley. I am a free American and I can choose to ride with anyone I please. “We,” I have to change my pronoun because what I’m about to say doesn’t include Disbro, “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
The officer shifts a little. “How old are you?”
“Fourteen,” I say and I have to clear my throat again.
“What’s your name?”
“Georgia Green,” I say. Strangely, I am not afraid.
“I could take you to the station right now and call your parents and we’ll see how you haven’t done anything.”
“You’ll have to call the cops in Chicago if you want to talk to my dad.”
“Why’s that?” he says, hands going to his hips.
“My dad’s a cop,” I answer like what does he think.
“That right? What’s he doing in Chicago?” Cop says.
“Maybe harassing people, I don’t know,” I say.
I hear Cap snicker, but he’s keeping his head down.
“Something funny young man?” Cop says.
“No,” Cap says laughing, then I hear Easy from behind me clearing his throat and I think he wants my attention, but I don’t look. I’m standing pretty much between them, and they both have their hands on the truck but I’m facing the cop who is standing on the side of the bed beside Disbro. He is almost a dead-ringer for Stanley, not in looks but attitude, and he’s making me mad.
“Where do you live?” he says to me more firmly, just like Stanley would.
“Darnay Road,” I say, and I think to myself, calm down. He likes uniforms, mine and Easy’s, and I can get us out of this, I know I can.
“With?”
“My Granma.” I admit that doesn’t sound very fierce. It’s not like saying I belong to the Students for a Democratic Society or something. He wants me to be inno
cent, and I am, but he still makes me mad.
“I wonder what Granma will think when she has to come to the station to pick up her granddaughter who should be on that bus and not running with this lot,” he says and I have this wild urge to laugh but I stay quiet.
“Look it’s my fault, Sir,” Easy says.
Cop turns his buggy eyes on Easy.
“She wanted to get on her bus but I haven’t seen her in four years and I talked her into going with us,” he says.
I look back at him like shut up. I was raised to do my own talking and I admit he’d about stolen my words ever since I laid eyes on him but my words are back now and I think I’m doing fine with this nit-wit.
“She’s an old friend and I know her granma. I’m just going home is all. They’re like my family,” he says nodding at me and I’m thinking, we are? You could have written more then or heard me out about Vietnam before you signed up, but I don’t say all that of course.
“Is it against the law to ride home with people I’ve known all my life Officer?” I say.
I look at Easy and he’s not smiling at me now, but come on.
“Is it prudent for a fourteen year old girl not to be where her Granma expects her to be?” Barney says. “Maybe a ride to the station is what you need.”
“Don’t get in his car,” Disbro says to me or to Easy.
“Sir she don’t need…,” Easy starts to say.
“I ask you, Soldier?” Then to Disbro, “And you keep your mouth shut.”
“I mean I can’t let you…,” Easy says.
“You can’t let me, Soldier?”
“I can’t let her go off alone when I’m responsible….”
“Let me tell you this, Soldier, I can do whatever I decide needs doing.”
“Yes Sir. But I’ll ask you to take me too cause she is my responsibility,” Easy says. “She didn’t do….”
“I’m my own responsibility,” I say just so we’re all clear. I don’t need Easy getting in more trouble for me, and I am not going to go along with being taken to the station either.
“Just let us take her home,” Easy says. “Please Sir. We’ll take her right home.”
We all wait and try not to fidget, I try. I’m trying to give Barney the wide eyes because I do not want Easy to get in trouble over me.
“Well you get in and get this girl home. Fourteen year old girl ain’t got no business with you boys.”
Then he turns from them and reads Disbro the riot act. He seems to know Disbro quite well.
Disbro pretends to be some kind of choir boy and I just hope and pray he’ll shut up and get in this truck and drive us home in one piece.
So I follow Easy to the passenger’s door and he opens it for me and I look at him and he is looking at me, just a sober expression, but last minute he winks, and I almost smile and I climb in and he is behind me and Cap gets in back and we wait while the cop warns Disbro and hits him between his shoulder blades with his stick, then pokes at Easy’s big green dufflebag and what I guess is Cap’s knapsack, and then my bag and books and all the while he’s telling Disbro off.
So finally Disbro yanks the door and gets in and the cop is walking back to the police car.
“I was ready to kill that mother-fu…,” Disbro nearly says but Easy says, “Hey,” before he can get it out.
Disbro puts the keys in the ignition and starts the truck. “He’s always up my ass. Always up my ass. He’ll beat the shit out of you. He beat the shit out of me before.”
“Can’t imagine why,” Easy says.
“You got a mouth,” Disbro says to me.
“Me?”
“You better watch it now. You better look back. He’s gonna be up your ass now.”
“Hey,” Easy says. “Shut-up.”
“He don’t like it when you talk back. Don’t ever get in his car. You get in his car he won’t take you to the station. No sir.”
“Hey,” Easy says again.
Once Disbro pulls into the road we ride in silence cause the cop is following us and he stays pretty much on our tail all the way to Darnay and I wouldn’t want to be Cap sitting back there having to face that car and look like he doesn’t have a care in the world.
Once that cop goes left and we go straight onto Darnay we all let out a breath.
“He ain’t gonna bother you,” Easy says to me, but he leans forward, “What you doing with weed in the car, man? You get pulled over all the time and you got contraband in here?”
“A friend left that,” he says. “He don’t ever look in the steering wheel.”
I knew it was wrong, that baggie, but I hadn’t seen it before—marijuana. But this is just a day of firsts.
We get to my granma’s and I can’t wait to get away from Disbro. He pulls up there, stops in the middle of the road and Easy gets out, then me and he slams the door then Cap hands Easy my stuff, then he jumps out and goes around me and grabs the door. He gives me a big smile. “Power to the people,” he says.
“Right on,” I answer. We laugh a little.
“Hey,” Easy says, and Cap is already in and he slams the door and Easy kicks the door cause his hands are full and Cap opens it again. “Hey…behave.”
There’s some words from Cap but I don’t hear and Cap slams the door and Disbro pulls off.
Easy smiles at me, kind of shy. “Did you have…plans or something? I mean…I wanted to…is your Granma…?”
“It’s fine,” I say taking my bag but leaving him the books. “She’ll want to see you.” She will. She loves Easy. But we don’t say maybe how much we want to see each other. I think he does or he wouldn’t have come and I know now that I’m coming back to earth, I know I want to see him.
He’s looking up at big white. “There it is,” he says. “Ain’t changed too much.”
I look with him. It aged some. No one has been around to care for it like he did.
“Still got that pink room?”
I laugh a little. “No. Purple now.”
“Purple Haze,” he says grinning.
I laugh a little. We’d better get out of the street so I lead the way.
He walks behind me and I ask, “Where are you staying?”
“Disbro’s,” he says.
“Really?” I hope he’s joking, but he’s not.
I don’t say anything more. Disbro’s granma is not well, but there are always kids there. It’s a hang-out.
At the door Easy puts his hand on my arm and I turn. When he looks at you, it’s like he isn’t looking anywhere else or even thinking about anything else. He knows how to pay attention and you feel like you’re the most important person he ever met.
I forgot that. I forgot how it felt.
“You know she’ll make supper,” I say like we’ve been talking about Granma all along.
I hope she will anyway. Some nights she doesn’t, but there are always leftovers. She doesn’t eat all the time. She says she does, but not like she used to. She tells me she’s on a diet, but it’s not that. She has gone to the doctor but they say she is doing fine and maybe she is, but it’s different.
“Georgia…you glad to see me?”
I have my hand on the door but it falls away now and I step back from him a little and I didn’t mean to, it just happened, like I’m afraid of that question, but I’m not. “Yes,” I say. “I’m glad to see you, Easy.”
“I’m glad to see you too. I came all this way…I wanted to.”
His eyes, I can’t even say, they are so beautiful. He’s taken off his hat and it’s on top of my books. His hair is shorn, but I saw that before. But he’s not all torn up like that boy was so long ago, the darkness of that house behind him. He looks healthy and strong. He looks….
“How…how long you staying?” I ask.
“I’ve got two weeks. I’ll just see.”
“See?”
“Well, you want me to stay?”
He smiles and I lean against the house a little.
I do want him to sta
y. My very blood seems to be happy he’s staying. But…, “I’ve got school. I mean…not tomorrow…Saturday. Well I’ve got a meeting in the morning. Junior Achievement.” I close my eyes in embarrassment. We are making Christmas wreaths out of used and worthless IBM cards. We fold the cards and put them on a Styrofoam circle, adding enough rows so it looks full, then we spray paint the thing red or green and add some holly. I think they are pretty cool but I’m kind of sick of the whole project. And it just seems dumb. I’m dumb to say this to someone like Easy, a real soldier. “But I’m not going. To the meeting.”
I just decided that. Granma won’t be happy but maybe she won’t know.
We’re just staring at each other. “You stay away from the boys?”
I laugh. This is like boyfriend’s talk. Oh God. “I go to a co-ed school in case you didn’t notice.”
He smiles. “I mean…you got a boyfriend?”
“No,” I answer like he’s crazy. “What if I did? What would you do?”
“Pay him no mind at all,” he says without even blinking.
I don’t have an answer to that.
“You had one…a boyfriend?”
I don’t say right off. It’s not exactly his business unless I allow it…is it?
“No.”
“You want to…spend time with me?”
“Like I’ll just ignore you now, living down the road with Disbro.”
“You could,” he laughs, “but I’ll make it hard.”
“What are you going to do, pop a wheelie in front of my house?” I think I’m doing pretty well with my answers but I don’t know where they are coming from.
He laughs at that. “Take you down to the trestle,” he says and there’s something to it, and he’s got this look, and it’s sex. I know it because I’m in high school, but with him it is nothing like what I’ve known around boys saying stuff. This doesn’t make me mad at all, but I’m pretty sure I’m blushing. He is. It’s like another door just swung wide open and it’s a jungle in there.
“I’m gonna ask your Granma if I can come around then. That okay with you?”