by Lisa Alther
The other cars accompanying us in this rite contained either established couples from school, or a bunch of unclaimed boys on the prowl, or a bunch of unclaimed girls trying to feign lack of interest. Occasionally, at a stop light, as though compelled by cosmic signals, half the unclaimed girls in one car would leap out and exchange places with half the unclaimed boys in another car in an adolescent version of fruit-basket-upside-down; it was as though each car were an atom exchanging electrons with another atom so as to neutralize their charges. From the air it would have looked like an intricate square-dance figure. It was the modern American adaptation of the old Spanish custom in which the single young people stroll around the town plaza eying each other with scarcely concealed desperation and desire, in full view of placid but watchful adults. In this case the chaperones were the highway patrolmen, not long ago students at Hullsport High themselves, but gone over now to the enemy. Taking their revenge on us for their no longer being young and unfettered by families, they liked nothing better than to ticket someone for driving in the wrong direction around the church circle. Their formerly athletic bodies gone to flab under their khaki shirts, they now cruised for a living and delighted in breaking up back-seat tussles on dark dirt roads. As I soon learned — which was why I finally “went all the way,” as the teen jargon discreetly put it, only when locked securely in the bomb shelter in my basement. But I’m getting ahead of myself again.
After half a dozen trips up and down Hull Street, Joe Bob pulled into a parking spot. We got out and sauntered along the sidewalk and looked in the shop windows at the latest in teen fashions, each subtly instructing the other on what outfits to buy next. We lingered long in front of the display windows of Sparks Shoe Store, owned by Joe Bob’s father. We both agreed that it had the nicest selection of shoes in town. I noted with approval that, each time we came to a Dixie cup or a candy wrapper wantonly discarded, Joe Bob would pick it up, wrist weights clanking on the sidewalk, and deposit it in a trash can saying “Keep Hullsport Beautiful.”
“You can hardly walk down the street anymore without tripping over somebody’s garbage,” I said appreciatively.
“Do whut?” he asked with a grin, chomping on his Juicy Fruit with his front teeth.
“Garbage. People throw it all over the place.”
He nodded serenely, munching.
We got back into Sparkplug and did another half dozen circuits of Hull Street. After which we pulled into the parking lot of the most popular drive-in restaurant, the Dew Drop Inn. The Dew Drop had asphalt ridges in its parking lot to discourage its inclusion in our cruising route. Joe Bob went over the bumps reverently, careful not to scrape his chrome tail pipes. But the following year Clem and I raced over them on his cycle, leaning from side to side, like Eddie Holzer negotiating moguls on cross-country skis on the slopes of Vermont.
Through the microphone next to the car, Joe Bob ordered six half-pints of milk in waxed cardboard containers for himself and a small Seven-Up laced with cherry syrup for me. When the carhop brought them, Joe Bob said, “Thank you, ma’am,” in his soft babyish voice with his mad contorted smile, all the time eying her ample chest out the window. Then he removed his wad of Juicy Fruit and stuck it on the dashboard. One after another, he opened the cartons and tossed down the milk, scarcely pausing for breath. He winked at me and smiled dementedly and said, “Trainin’.”
I had just begun to sip my cherry Seven-Up by the time he had drained all six of his milk containers. He stuck his Juicy Fruit back in his mouth and turned to watch me drink. The be-bosomed carhop whipped by, and Joe Bob’s eyes followed her chest. Finally he said, “One time I was here with this cousin of mine. Jim, he’s got him this Fairlane 500 with push-button windows. Well, that girl over yonder — I think it was that ole girl — anyhow, she brung him this pack of Pall Malls. The window was partway down, and ole Jim, he reached over to roll the window the rest of the way down. Well, he wasn’t watching’ what he was doing’. He was lookin’ at his change to see if he’d have to break a bill to pay her.” I nodded frantic encouragement. I’d never before heard him say so many words at one time. He took a deep breath and continued in his scarcely audible voice. “Well — it turns out he’s not rollin’ the window down, he’s rollin’ it up!’ His grin was pushing his crew cut up. I hadn’t caught the joke yet. I smiled uncertainly, hoping for a punch line.
After waiting for an appropriate amount of time, I said hesitantly, “I’m not sure I get it.”
He blushed. “Well, she was standin’ right up against the window of the Fairlane, see? The window rolled up without him knowin’ it, and he like to chopped off her — you know.” I flinched reflex-like, imagining the pain of having a push-button window close on my breasts; then I too blushed at this open reference to crucial female anatomy, even though it was obviously the cornerstone of our impending relationship; then I grinned idiotically as the tale began to appeal to me; then I smiled sweetly at Joe Bob for his delicacy in referring to tits as “you know.”
Joe Bob pushed back his left wrist weight and glanced at his watch. He sat up straight, hurriedly flashed his headlights, and started up the motor with a roar. The carhop, blessed with chest, sauntered out to retrieve the tray. As Joe Bob threw the car into gear and backed out, he said anxiously, “I like to forgot training. Lord, Coach’ll kill me!” We roared down Hull Street in the direction of my house.
“What do you mean?” I demanded, injured.
“Got to be in bed by ten,” he notified me grimly, weaving Sparkplug in and out of the frivolous cruising traffic.
“You’re kidding?” My heart sank. A ten o’clock curfew definitely dampened the possibilities for lingering exchanges of sweet nothings. He dumped me at the foot of our driveway and left me to find my own way through the magnolia thicket to the house.
Our courtship was like a silent movie. In those days before the raising of the public’s seat-belt consciousness, the progress of a couple’s relationship could be gauged by the distance between them as they drove down the street. Who knows how many budding romances have been nipped by the surge in popularity of bucket seats? I started out that first night of cruising crammed next to the door with my hand on the handle so that I could leap out if Joe Bob were transformed into a rape-strangler. But he didn’t so much as shake my hand for weeks, first to my relief, and eventually to my distress. Gradually, I began scooting over slightly on the seat after he let me in and before he got back around to his side. In a month’s time I had worked my way over almost to his side, under the guise of constantly tuning the radio.
And then it happened! We were at the city-wide Preaching Mission, being held in the cavernous gymnasium of the Civic Auditorium, which, on less sacred occasions, hosted roller derbies and wrestling matches. Joe Bob and I sat on bleachers along one wall with the rest of the student population. The adults sat in rows of folding chairs set up across the floor. It was a Friday night, the climax of the week-long mission. The speaker tonight was Brother Buck Basket from Birmingham, Alabama, come all the way to Hullsport just to spread the good news to his Tennessee brothers and sisters that Death had lost its sting. Joe Bob was all ears. Brother Buck was his idol. He had been a famous All-American guard from the University of Alabama a decade earlier. And then a Baltimore Colt, until he had run into a goal post and suffered a head injury, which had left him unconscious for days and then bound up in gauze for a month or more, with every football fan in the country in a frenzy of anxiety. Upon returning to the land of the living, however, Brother Buck had renounced his gridiron glory and dedicated his life to Christ.
His massive, dedicated frame dwarfed the podium. He wore a tan western-cut suit and a string tie and cowboy boots. I knew that soon Joe Bob would own a tan western suit and a string tie.
“Death! Where is your sting? Grave, where is your victory?” Brother Buck thundered. The steel I beams that held up the roof seemed to tremble. He was holding up one fist in a gesture of defiance and was gazing intently at a spot near
the rear ceiling. All of us automatically turned in that direction, expecting to see at least the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, if not the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame.
“Ah know what you think,” he assured us quietly, returning his fist to the podium and his fervid blue gaze to the audience. “You think: It don’t matter none what kind of a life ah live. Ah can read these here pornographic books, and look at nasty pictures, and defile my body with all manner of vile corruption. Ah can stay up all night drinkin’, and ah can run around with fallen women and sleep through church on Sundays. It don’t matter none. That’s what you think, don’t you, now? Admit it right here tonight to ole Brother Buck. You think, ah’d better just live it up today cause tomorrow ah may lie dyin’ in a pool of black gore, with mah bones smashed and pokin’ up through mah flesh; with mah guts trailin’ out and tangled round mah twisted car; with mah brains dribbled acrost the highway like cornmeal mush…”
I glanced wearily at Joe Bob. I’d had enough of this from my Cassandran parents to last me a lifetime, which lifetime was apparently predestined to brevity and a bloody ending. But Joe Bob was grinning insanely and was mincing his Juicy Fruit, thrilled at this proximity to his hero.
“…and tomorrow that there bomb ah’m always hearin’ about will go off and blow us sky high in little red pieces, like chaff before the whirlwind. Tomorrow mah plane flight will smash into the side of some mountain, and there’ll be jagged bloody chunks of mah body strewn all acrost the forest floor for the wild animals to feast on. Tomorrow some madman with a telescopic sight will use mah eyes for target practice. So ah’d better live it up now while ah can. Ah’d best titillate mah flesh ever which way, cause this breath ah’m takin’” — he paused to take a deep illustrative breath — “may be mah last.
“Oh, Brother Buck knows how most of you folks live, friends.” The suspicion that this might be true, that Brother Buck really did know all about my feminine napkins and my padded bra, filled me with the same outraged sense of exposure I used to feel as a child at the line in ‘Santa Claus Is Coming to Town’ that goes, ‘He sees you when you’re sleeping./He knows if you’re awake.’
“How does Brother Buck know? He knows because he’s been there hissef. He knows because he’s thought corrupt thoughts. Because he’s broken heavenly trainin’ and lived a pre-verse life hissef, friends, usin’ ever chanct he got to provoke tinglin’ sensations in his mortal flesh. Yes, Brother Buck has lived a lustful life full of sin!
“When he played pro ball, he went to all the fancy places where wicked women sold theirselves up to vile corruption. The temptations were many and wondrous to behold for a country boy from Alabama, and Brother Buck failed the test, friends. Yes, he did. He tried ‘em all.” I looked over at Joe Bob and discovered that a thin line of saliva was drooling out the corner of his mouth as he munched his Juicy Fruit. His eyes were gleaming.
“But do you know what happened to Brother Buck with his wretched ways, friends? He ran into the goal post one night on a football field in Baltimore, Maryland. Yes, he did. And he landed up in Baltimore hospital. Yes, friends, ah lay with mah entire head wrapped up in bandages for one solid month, alone there in mah private darkness, unable to speak, unable to see. And that solitude, brothers and sisters, that lonely month there in the dark on mah back in bed all alone, was the turning point in mah pre-verse and sinful life!
“Ah want to tell you what happened to me as ah lay there, not knowin’ if ah’d ever see again, much less play ball.” We were all hanging on the edges of our bleachers waiting for the punch line. “Jesus came to me! Yes, he did! He come to me and He says, ‘Brother Buck, don’t you fret none, son. We’re gonna clean out the temple of your soul, buddy, that body of yours whose pleasures you set so much store by. The devil has been lyin’ in wait for you, brother, behind them rhinestone pasties. But ah got plans for you on mah team, fella!’
“And that’s why ah’m here tonight, friends, Brother Buck right here in — ah — here with all you fine people tonight in — uh — this lovely town of — uh -.” He turned around quickly to the clerical-collared men on the stage behind him. Then he turned back around and said casually, “Here in Hullsport, Tennessee. Yes, ah’m here to let you all in on a li’l ole secret.”
Joe Bob and I strained forward in our seats, since all the world loves a secret. As we did so, our thighs rubbed together. I hastily moved my legs to one side — and bumped into the thighs of the strange boy next to me. I appeared to have no choice but to allow my left thigh to nestle up against Joe Bob’s muscled right one. We sat rigid, pretending not to notice, as Brother Buck told us his secret in a voice that boomed to the rafters: “You don’t have to die, friends!”
He paused until the echo faded, then continued in a shout: “That body you’re abusin’, buddy, with your liquor and your lusts, that body,” he roared, then instantly dropped his voice almost to a whisper so that the audience strained forward as one to hear him, “is the sanctuary of your soul.” He stopped, sweat glistening on his forehead beneath his light brown crew cut. “Your soul!” he shouted again, so that everyone sat back, startled. “The Bible says, ‘Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God? Ye are not your own.”’
By now Joe Bob’s and my thighs were pressed together tightly and were generating hot secrets within our respective soul sanctuaries.
Suddenly Brother Buck burst into the feverish pitch of revival preaching. It was like a thunderstorm finally breaking after hours of black clouds amassing. “Ah came here to save souls! Ah came here to share with you mah joy in the Lord! Yes, Jesus!” Brother Buck could have been quoting stock prices now and none of us would have noticed.
“‘The Lord is mah Shepherd! Ah shall not want!’ Yes! The Lord says, He says in that last awful day of reckonin’, brothers, on that day when your lungs fill up with blood, yes, and you can’t call out to no one to come hep you! On that day, friends, when the film of death draws acrost your eyes and you can’t see the loved ones around you! Yes! On that day, friends, when your ears are roarin’ with the sound of your own organs collapsin’ inside you! Yes! On that day, oh dear God that day, when your teeth won’t stop chatterin’ from fear, and your bones turn to jelly and your legs collapse underneath you! Oh, friends! That day when your precious body is crumblin’ into dust and swirlin’ away! Yes! ‘Behold!’ Isaiah says. ‘Behold the Lord maketh the earth empty.’ Yes! ‘And wastes it, and turns it upside down, and scatters abroad the inhabitants thereof!’ Oh yes, sweet Jesus! ‘The land shall be utterly spoiled,’ Isaiah says, ‘for the earth is defiled under the inhabitants thereof!’ Yes, praise God!”
The emotional climate in the auditorium was rising now, particularly in the immediate vicinity of Joe Bob and me. Our thighs were positively aglow. People in the audience were starting to shout back at Brother Buck: “Yes, Jesus!” “Praise God!”
“Think about it,” he invited us, suddenly quiet. He was playing us as though we were hooked fish, giving us emotional slack now in order to reel us in more quickly later. “You’ve broken trainin’ all your life. Your body’s a stinkin’ sewer of ever vile corruption you can name. Your team has lost the game because you’re all just reekin’ with sin. You’re slouchin’ toward the dressin’ room thinkin’ bout the hot shower that’s gonna feel so great on your bruised body. But as you walk into the locker room, friends, you hear your teammates weepin’ and howlin’ with anguish.
“What’s waitin’ for you there in your dressin’ room, friends? Do you know? Let’s listen to the Bible and see,” he suggested, holding up a black book as though fading back to pass it into the audience. Flipping through it nonchalantly, he stopped and read slowly, “‘Behold,’ Isaiah says, ‘the Lord will come with fire, and his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire.’”
His tempo and pitch were picking up again. “‘The people shall be as the burnings of lime, as thorns cut up shall they be burnt in the
fire,’ says Isaiah. Oh dear God! ‘Ah will tread them in mine anger!’ Yes! ‘Ah will trample them in mah fury!’ Yes! ‘Their blood shall be sprinkled upon mah garments, and ah will stain all my raiment!’ Oh sweet Jesus! ‘They shall go forth, friends, yes, and they shall look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me,’ says the Lord. ‘Their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched!’ No! ‘And they shall be an abhorrin’ unto all flesh!’ Oh woe! Woe! Listen to this from Corinthians, brothers and sisters, ah beg of you! ‘Be not deceived: neither fornicators, no, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves, shall inherit the kingdom of God! The body is not for fornication but for the Lord!’ Yes, praise Jesus! ‘Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ?’ Know ye not? ‘Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid,’ says Corinthians! Rather, ‘Flee fornication!’”
Joe Bob and I were unable to sit still. Blood was throbbing in my thigh along the area where it contacted Joe Bob’s. The entire audience was squirming. If Brother Buck had told us all to go burn down the Major’s munitions factory, we probably would have.
Sweat was dripping from Brother Buck’s face as though he had been standing under a shower. “On that horrible last day, friends, when the losin’ team is howlin’ in the locker room, what about the winnin’ team? What happens to them, do you think? ‘We need not fear,’ says the Psalm, ‘though the earth be moved, and though the hills be carried into the midst of the sea; though the waters thereof rage and swell,’ friends; ‘though the mountains shake at the tempest. We need not fear.’ We need not fear!” he announced, his face expressing delighted astonishment through its layer of sweat. “‘Be not afraid of them that kill the body and after that have no more that they can do!’