by Geoff North
Jessie’s Girl played on the radio as he waited. The first two buses pulled in and a crew of familiar faces piled out. Fresh haircuts and styles, new clothes and binders. Most of the kids were smiling and chatting excitedly as they entered the collegiate double doors. A smaller amount walked alone, hugging their new books tightly to their chests. These were the loners, the ugly kids, the outcasts. Hugh felt for them. School was and always had been for him, a momentous struggle. He was smart, his grades exceptionally high, but he never enjoyed going to school. It was a twelve year popularity contest that for some was destined to be a losing battle. And for an unfortunate few, the results would be life-lasting.
He kept a close look to the building’s northwest corner. That’s where all the town kids that walked came from. Tonya Reynolds, Gary’s two-hundred pound, five foot tall niece waddled around into view and Hugh wondered how the kid managed to stay so overweight considering her half-mile trek each morning and each afternoon. Freddy Thomms and Conrad Fultin, two asshole jocks now in Grade eleven followed, snickering and pointing from a safe distance. A third bus unloaded, and a forth. More kids came from around the corner. Daryl Meads, a quiet kid who would turn drug-pusher in the mid-nineties and commit suicide during a millennium new-years party, trotted along with his little sister. Melinda? Belinda? She was starting Grade seven. She would find her brother on a cold January morning sitting in his car, the engine running and the garage door shut.
The 8:55 buzzer sounded and Hugh jumped. It was the five minute warning for all students to get to their home classes, prepare for another day, another semester, another year of learning, competing, and private suffering at Braedon High.
The last bus pulled away and Hugh’s heart sank. She hadn’t come. He waited until the second buzzer went off before getting out of the car. Being late for math was the furthest concern from his mind. He was half way across the parking lot when a girl came running around the corner of the building.
My God, she has eighties hair!
It was all bangs and poof, enough hairspray there to hold up a small building without nails. Her jeans were tight and tapered in at the bottom. She wore ankle high white sneakers, the kind that went out of style with mullets and Mohawks. Her new textbooks were held tightly against her ample chest. She always was self-conscious about that. A pencil case was clamped between her teeth.
She caught him staring at her and slowed to a fast walk. Her high cheek bones were a healthy pink from running, her dark blue eyes sparkled in the early sun.
She’s beautiful.
He smiled dumbly at her. He’d never been so happy in his life…in his lives. She was no longer a distant, fading memory. She was real and he’d her missed her so much. He wanted to hold her, to smell her skin and kiss the end of her nose. He wanted to tell her how much he loved her and how sorry he was.
She walked by and turned her head to see if he was still watching. She spit the pencil case out on top of her books. “Take a picture, it’ll last longer.”
Yes!
He should’ve taken a picture of her into the past instead of a lottery newsletter.
Hugh had met Cathy once again.
***
He had to wait until his third class of the morning before seeing her again. She was sitting by herself near the front of the room, a ring of empty desks around her. Students never felt that comfortable cozying up to the new kid on day one. He sat at the desk beside her and opened up a new binder filled with fresh loose-leaf. She watched as he scribbled his name on the first page. He glanced over and she looked away.
“I’m betting you don’t like history too much.”
She stared at the blank chalkboard in front of her. “What makes you think that?”
Because I always had to help you with it.
“If a kid likes a subject, they’re usually ready to get cracking at it. You’re just sitting there with your arms crossed and your books closed, so I’m betting you don’t like history.”
“So my books are closed and that’s why I hate history?”
“I never said you hated it.”
Kids were beginning to fill up at the desks around them. Cathy, forever shy in public, lowered her voice. “So what else do you know about me? Probably got a head full of ideas from the way you were staring at me this morning.”
“Yeah…sorry about that, I just hadn’t seen you before” Hugh had to think for a moment. He had to make her laugh, had to make himself appear less creepy. “Hey, I’m the first one that noticed you, right? That makes me kind of special.”
“Special needs maybe.”
“That’s pretty clever. My name’s Hugh.”
She blushed and finally looked at him. The tight-lipped, jaw-jutting scowl vanished. “I’m Cathy.” She held out a delicate hand and he shook it gently.
Seven years he’d waited to touch her again. Seven long years.
“So was I right?”
“About what?”
“That you don’t like history?”
She gave him her first genuine smile and Hugh’s heart warmed. “I detest it.”
Hugh knew she detested recent history the most, her own in particular. Her step-dad was an abusive alcoholic, her mother a pathetic enabler. “Well hopefully I can brighten the subject up for you this year, Cathy.”
“Don’t count on it.” She was still smiling.
Mr. Bragg entered the room and introduced himself to the class. Hugh didn’t bother to listen to a single word the stuffy old fart said in the following forty minutes. He spent most of the time with his eyes closed, smelling her perfume and re-imagining a new history, a better history. Bragg may have been competent in the subject, but Hugh was a master.
Chapter 20
June 1982
“I can’t take it anymore, I just can’t stand him.”
Hugh nodded without saying a word. What could he say to make her feel better? He knew what Andy Alexander was like. Everyone in town knew what a dick Cathy’s step-father was. He didn’t earn the nickname Andy Asshole for nothing.
Cathy looked away, out through the passenger window overlooking a sleepy Braedon at sunset. They’d driven up there a lot in the last nine months. There was a little path, less than a road, but more than a trail that led out to an open spot on the north hill. It was a good spot for young couples to come and park with little fear of being caught, (if being caught by kids with the same idea in mind posed any kind of threat). “He’s drinking more than ever now, which is probably a good thing. He’s usually too drunk nowadays to beat my mom.”
“He got fired from his town dump job, didn’t he?” Hugh hadn’t wanted to ask, but didn’t know what else to say.
“Yeah,” she said. Her bottom lip quivered. “I should’ve told you days ago. Sorry. Who gets fired from a shit job like that?
“I guess that explains why he’s drinking more.”
“You make it sound like an excuse. That’s something my Mom would say.”
“No, not an excuse, just a reason. Has he ever…has he ever hit you, or well, touched you in any other kind of way?” Hugh knew the answer was no, or at least he was sure he’d never touched her in his first life, but now? Had something changed to make the prick an even bigger threat?
She looked into his eyes and he saw the truth there. He hadn’t laid a finger on her. “No. He called me a lazy bitch because I did a half-assed job of vacuuming the house.”
“Did you do a half-assed job?”
She smacked his chest and smiled through a face wet with tears. “It’s not funny! Don’t make me laugh when I’m crying.”
Hugh reached for a box of tissues behind the driver’s seat. “So what do you want to do about it?”
She blew her nose into one and pulled out another for her eyes. “What can I do? My hair-dressing course doesn’t start for another three months, and even then I don’t know if I’ll be able to afford to live in Winnipeg when the time comes.”
Hugh desperately wanted to make the move with her.
There was no way he was letting her out of his sight now, not after all this time. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her away in the city on her own, he just wanted to make certain no one or nothing else could get in between them. There was still so much for them to do. So much could go wrong.
“We graduate in two days. Why not move into the city right after that?” She started to shake her head but he didn’t give her time to say no. “What’s keeping us here? I got some money put away, enough to pay for rent and groceries until fall, and I can get a construction job long before then.”
“They’d never let me leave, not like that anyway.”
Oh yes they would, especially Asshole Andy. It will give him more money for booze.
“It’s a crazy idea, Hugh. We’re only eighteen. We’d never make it on our own.”
“So you like the way things are now?” He kept pushing. “Seriously, we could make it work. As long as we’re together we can make it work.”
She leaned across the seat and he wrapped his arms around her. “How much money have you got ‘put away’?”
***
Hugh didn’t tell his parents the entire truth. As far as they knew, the two were only going into Winnipeg for a few days to celebrate completing school. He only had one suitcase packed in the trunk of the car. A few changes of clothing was all any kid needed for a day or two away, or a few months.
“Call us when you get to your brother’s,” Marion Nance said. She kissed him on the cheek and stepped back as Hugh’s father clapped him on the shoulder.
“Drive carefully, son.”
Another lie, Hugh thought. There was no way in hell they were going anywhere near Gordo or his bitch wife, but his parents didn’t need to know that just yet. He would feed them bits and pieces at a time. A phone call on Sunday night to let them know they’d be staying a few more days, another call on Wednesday telling them he was considering looking for work. Another call at the end of the month informing them that he’d found a cheap apartment, and maybe a few days after that he could tell them that Cathy was moving in with him.
It was better than saying goodbye to them now, easier to break away without explaining how a couple of teenagers could make it on their own.
He hugged his mom and shook his father’s hand. “Don’t worry about me, Dad. I’m a good driver.”
A minute later he was on the road for Braedon. There were a couple of stops to make before picking up Cathy. Hugh pulled into the local Shell gas station first and filled up with sixteen dollars, then a quick trip across town to say goodbye to his best friend. Billy met him on the small porch of their trailer home. The farm had been gone for a few years, land and house gobbled up by a bank that didn’t share or give a damn about Tom Parton’s religious beliefs.
“I still can’t believe you’re leaving before me,” Billy said. “You got time to come inside for one last drink?”
By drink he meant pop, or perhaps iced tea. Alcohol had ruined too many lives in Braedon already, and Billy, wise beyond most people three times his age in a small town had decided to go the rest of his life without. “Better not. Cathy will be expecting me soon.”
“You want me to come along? Make sure everything goes okay?”
Hugh shook his head. Unlike his parents, Cathy’s had no idea they were leaving for the weekend, a very long weekend. Most of her belongings had been packed up and smuggled out during the night of grad. As far as they were concerned, or cared, the two were just going out on one of their regular Sunday afternoon dates. They wouldn’t even suspect something was up until well after they’d checked into a hotel room within the city limits, four hours and two hundred miles away. “We’ll be alright.”
Billy sat on a porch step. “We had some good times together, eh?”
Hugh nodded again and smiled. He was glad he’d played a part in saving the boy’s life. Even though he’d fucked things up in so many other ways, the fact that this good-looking kid could now sit here and reminisce made him feel that it had all been worth it. “You still planning on backpacking across Europe?”
“Applied for my passport last week. Should be London bound before fall.”
“I still can’t figure out how a guy with four hundred bucks can travel across the Atlantic in the first place.”
“Dad had a bit of cash stored away. When I told him I was going church-hopping from country to country he gave me another thousand.”
Hugh laughed. “Church-hopping? You? I can’t see it.”
“Stonehenge was a kind of church, wasn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t say that too loud if I were you.”
Billy stood up and hugged his friend tightly. “Sure you can’t come with me?”
“Maybe next time, in a few years.” He held his friend out at arm’s length. “I won’t have to pay for a guide by then.”
Hugh started down the path toward his car when Billy called out. “Hey, Hank! Thanks for whatever it was that you did.”
He had to think for a moment what he was talking about. “Hank was just a story.”
“Yeah, but a damn good one.”
“I never finished it, did I?”
“And I hope you never do.”
Hugh jumped in his car, gave him the thumbs up and drove away. There were other friends to say goodbye to, other places he wanted to take one last look at, but the car clock told him it was time to get moving. Besides, he thought, the less amount of people that knew what they were up to, the better.
They weren’t out of Braedon yet.
Cathy lived three blocks from Billy’s. His heart began to pound when he saw her waiting outside the house, pacing nervously near the road. No sooner had he turned the car off, he heard the screen door slam shut and the yelling started, or at least the yelling he was there in time to hear.
“Go on then, you little bitch!” Andy Alexander was screaming from the porch step. He threw a handful of old teen magazines into the air. They scattered onto a growing pile of Cathy’s things strewn about the front yard. “Take all this shit with you! Why the fuck should I be stuck cleaning your room out?”
Hugh stood out of his car and watched the overweight alcoholic pitch more stuff out. A glass figurine of a unicorn broke into pieces, followed by a dozen framed pictures. Glass exploded against the cement walkway, a faded picture of a Cathy as a child enjoying a campout fluttered across the grass.
She ran to the car and jumped in the front seat. “Let’s get out of here! Now!”
Hugh took a few steps toward the lawn and hesitated. A box of cassette tapes crashed onto the ground. Next came a monstrously large ghetto blaster, all black and chrome plastic. It made a bigger explosion than the pictures did.
Probably made in China.
Funny what goes through your head in times of crisis, he thought.
“Hugh!”
He looked back at her, questioningly. A small chest toppled out from the house. The top snapped off and landed a few feet away from him. An old teddy bear with one eye stared up at him from the inside. “But--but what about your stuff?”
“Leave it! I don’t need anything else!”
Andy Asshole swayed in the doorway. His arms hung limply at his sides like a brain-damaged ape. He was obviously out of throwing ammunition. “Have fun with the little whore, jackass.” His lips puckered out and formed a little ‘o’ as he pronounced the word in proud redneck fashion. Hoo-er. “Take her good and far away, and don’t go bringing the little slut back!”
Hoo-er, bitch, slut. What a great dad.
“Please, Hugh,” Cathy pleaded through the half-opened car window. “Don’t make things worse. Please just get me out of here!”
Hugh wasn’t listening. He took a few more steps toward the house. The porch door behind Andy Asshole was still open. Was that Cathy’s mom sitting in the living room watching television? Yes, it was. The volume on the set cranked so high she either couldn’t hear her wonderful husband yelling or maybe just high enough to drown out most of it. She would plead i
nnocence later on; maybe even chastise her husband a little bit for letting her girl go.
Alexander continued to sway in the doorway as Hugh approached. His gut hung over the top of his pants, the piss-stained work pants he no longer needed. He didn’t bother wearing a shirt at home. A lot of fat guys with hairy bellies and hairier nipples went around like that. It didn’t seem quite fair to the rest of society.
Hugh stopped a few feet in front of him. “You’re going to have a massive stroke in four years.” He said it in a low voice that Cathy wouldn’t be able to hear. “It’s going to leave the left half of your face a droopy, dead joke. You’ll be stuck in a wheelchair, but that won’t be the worst of it. You’ll have to quit drinking and smoking, and your life will leave you. You’ll be placed in a personal care home and the orderlies will treat you like shit. No one will lift a finger to help you. You’ll be too fucking useless to even kill yourself.”
“What the fu--?” He stared at Hugh through a drunken, hate-filled haze, a hint of fear glimmered behind the half-shut, bloodshot eyes. Was the kid crazy? What kind of little fuck says shit like that?
Hugh gave him the finger and walked back to the street.
“What was that all about?” Cathy asked after they started to drive away.
“I just wanted to say goodbye.”
They pulled onto Main and headed south, past Reynolds Liquor Mart, past the old drugstore where Hugh had bought thousands of comic books over the years, past the new Small City Food Store where Billy Parton had been working after school for the last three months. He picked the speed up a bit as they drove by the residential houses; the giant elms lining both sides of the street shadowed the road. Sterling’s two-story home on the left, the old McFarlane house on the right. The elementary school another block ahead.
The McFarlane house?
Hugh slammed on the brake hard enough that Cathy had to jam her hand out against the dashboard. “What is it? Did you run over a cat?”