The Novels of Lisa Alther

by Lisa Alther

  ‘Good luck with the baby,’ Ginny called. And as she walked with Joe Bob toward the Jeep, she said, ‘Guess who’s in the room next to Mother at the hospital?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Coach.’

  Joe Bob’s face sagged with grief. ‘I know. In’nt it pathetic? I been up to see him a time or two, and he didn’t anymore know who I was! Law, it like to broke my heart. He’s a great athlete and a fine human being, Coach is.’

  Could they be talking about the same coach? Ginny nodded reverently and climbed into the Jeep.

  ‘Listen, Ginny,’ Joe Bob said urgently. She looked at him. His face was tense with effort. ‘There’s somethin’ I been wantin’ to say to you all these years. I’ve felt real bad about standin’ you up in the darkroom that day.’

  ‘Which day?’

  ‘That day we was supposed to meet and decide whether or not to — you know, run off and get married. And stuff.’

  Ginny looked at him in amazement. That wasn’t how she recalled things. ‘What do you mean you stood me up?’

  ‘Well, to tell you the truth, I just couldn’t face you. I took up with Doreen the day before we was supposed to meet. I don’t know how it happened. Somethin’ just clicked and we got carried away, and — well, you see what’s come of it.’ He gestured to his house. ‘But I’ve felt real awful about the way I let you down that day, not even showin’ up to explain or nothin’. I’ve always felt like it was my fault you took up with that Cloyd creep and let him almost kill you on his cycle, to try to get over me.’

  ‘Please, Joe Bob,’ Ginny said, nurturing male ego as she had been trained to do since infancy, ‘don’t apologize. Sometimes I feel I let you down that day.’ But basically she was outraged. The bastard had stood her up! And she hadn’t even known it because she’d stood him up too.

  ‘I’m glad we can still be friends, in spite of it all,’ Joe Bob said, tears filling his eyes.

  ‘Me too,’ she said, extending her hand for him to shake, knowing she’d probably never see him again.

  Ginny continued up Joe Bob’s road until it dead-ended. Then she took a right across the ridge, intending to check out their old parking spot. What had been a Jeep track then was now a well-maintained gravel road. It ended abruptly where it always had. Dead ahead was a discreet sign saying ‘Valley View Slumberland.’ The vacant field their spot had overlooked was now filled with sunken brass plaques and plastic flowers and miniature American and Confederate flags. Below in the smoky valley was Hullsport. Ginny was startled to see how the town, in her time away from this spot, had crept up all the surrounding foothills.

  She turned the Jeep around. As she drove slowly down the hill past Joe Bob’s house, she reflected that the demise of their relationship had been utterly foreseeable to those not blinded by lust: The requirements of romantic love are difficult to satisfy in the trunk of a Dodge Dart.

  5

  Harleys, Hoodlums, and Home-Brew

  I had always known Clem. We were inseparable throughout childhood, riding our ponies all over the farm and swimming in the pond and building forts in the woods. There was an old springhouse on a hill above his house; it was a weathered board construction that sheltered the spring, which bubbled out of the hillside and flowed across the stone floor in a wide channel, exiting into a pipe leading to the Cloyd kitchen. It had formerly served as a refrigerating area for the farm’s milk until the truck came to get it. It was deliciously cool and damp there during the endless sticky Tennessee summers, and Clem’s parents let him have the ramshackle shed for a playhouse. He had built crude furniture from scrap lumber — a table and benches and shelves. He had installed a lock and knocker on the door, and he kept all his most cherished possessions there on the shelves — his Swiss army knife, a hatchet, his marbles and comic books and magic stones. I was the only other person allowed inside. Because, in a secret pact in which we pricked our index fingers and mingled our blood, we were married. I gathered pieces of bark for dishes and twigs for silverware. He made me a broom with his knife by peeling and tying a small witch hazel limb. I cooked ghastly concoctions from berries and nuts and mud, and cleaned more zealously than I’ve ever cleaned a real house since; and Clem stalked the woods pursuing manly activities, returning for our mock meals and for bedtime, in keeping with our abbreviated time scheme in which six play days might very well pass during one real day.

  Clem as a little boy was short and slight, with a tangled mat of black hair that hung in his dark serious eyes. He was an ideal subject for a Save the Children ad. His family was part Mel-ungeon, members of a mysterious, graceful, dark-complexioned people whose ancestors were found already inhabiting the east Tennessee hills by the first white settlers. Admirers of the Mel-ungeons claimed for them descent from shipwrecked Portuguese sailors, from deserters from DeSoto’s exploring party, from the survivors of the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island. Detractors portrayed them as half-breeds, riffraff from the mating activities of runaway slaves and renegade Indians. The truth was anyone’s guess. And in any case, the Cloyds themselves couldn’t have been less interested. Their forebears having endured various minor persecutions due to being labeled ‘free persons of color,’ the present-day Cloyd family longed to forget all about their obscure origins and get on with the business of living. All that remained to mark them as Melungeon was their gypsy-like good looks.

  Clem’s older brother, Floyd Cloyd, even as a child was tall and slim and elegant — and mean as hell. He was Clem’s and my sworn enemy, forever devising ways of wrecking our games and destroying our property. His specialty was known as the Floyd Raid. It required that both Clem and I race into the springhouse, gathering up scattered comic books and other treasures lying outside. Once inside, we barred the door and quaked in the corner until it became clear whether or not the raid was a false alarm. Floyd, like the wolf in the ‘Three Little Pigs,’ used a variety of tricks to get us to let down our guard. Once he caught us and tied us to trees and tickled us mercilessly for half an hour, until he lost interest and took Clem’s keys and left to ransack the springhouse and steal our favorite Scrooge comic books.

  The farmers in the area several times a summer organized wagon trains. Their families, in horse-drawn wagons or on horseback, would travel in huge groups over dirt roads and logging trails for several days at a time, covering a hundred miles or more. They camped out along the trail at night, cooking over campfires and then gathering around one huge fire to tell stories and sing and play instruments and barn dance. I often went with Clem’s family, and Clem and I shared a double sleeping bag. Until we hit the age of nine or so and found this inexplicably prohibited.

  Once, about this same time, we stripped to our underwear in the springhouse, which involved removing shorts in my case and baggy bib overalls in his, since we wore nothing else during those sweltering summers. We inspected each other uncertainly in our respective white cotton briefs. Then we hastily started whooping an Indian chant and danced around each other with writhing hops.

  When the dance was over, we painted each other’s back and chest with paint made from squishing pokeberries. Clem said as he was painting purple concentric circles around my nipples, ‘I betcha won’t go around without a shirt when you’re seventeen!’

  ‘Ha! I will too!’

  ‘Wanna bet on hit?’ he asked, holding out his purple hand.

  ‘Yeah,’ I sneered, seizing his hand. ‘Five dollars?’

  ‘It’s a deal.’

  By the time we were ten, Clem wasn’t available so often in the summers. His father had started putting him to work. I tailed woefully along for a while, helping where I could. We were riding on the tractor cutting hay one afternoon when we felt the mowing attachment lurch and heave. Looking back as the machine continued laying down alfalfa in neat swaths, we saw a doe bounding toward the woods on the far side of the field. At the edge of the woods, she stood still for a few moments, looking back and snorting asthmatically with fear. Then she leapt neatly over the barbed-wire f
ence and disappeared behind the mountain laurel.

  Clem and I noticed some thrashing in the piled grass. Clem cut the motor, and we hopped down and ran back to it. About fifteen feet behind us, to one side of our path on the tractor, the cut grass was matted down and splattered with blood. A small fawn, still spotted white, lay on its side, its head raised. It froze when it saw us, its eyes wide and rolled back. Looking around with frantic dismay, Clem bent down and picked up a sticklike object that was dribbling long threads of black gore. It was the better part of one of the fawn’s legs. There was a tiny dainty pointed hoof on one end.

  Clem and I stood paralyzed with horror, Clem clutching the tiny leg. Clem’s father, who was working on the fence in another part of the field, saw us and came sauntering over.

  ‘What a shame. Poor l’il fella,’ he muttered. He drew his hunting knife from the leather sheath on his belt.

  ‘Wait!’ Clem ordered. ‘Me and Ginny, we want to keep hit, Pa. We’ll fix it up and take care of hit good, Pa. Ain’t that right, Ginny?’ I nodded.

  ‘Nope. Got to put hit out of hits misery. Just die slowlike anyhow. Can’t function no more like the good Lord meant.’ And with a deft stroke of his sharp knife, he slit the fawn’s quivering throat. The small animal jerked and twitched, and its eyes clouded over. It shuddered spasmodically and then lay still.

  Clem and I glared at his horrible father and dragged the fawn, in a trail of blood, over to the woods. We scooped out a grave in the leaf mold and buried the fawn and its severed leg, muttering imprecations against Mr. Cloyd.

  One day when Clem and I were playing in the woods near the springhouse, we came upon a blacksnake lying among the leaves devouring a large frog. The unfortunate frog was half in the snake’s mouth and half out, and was kicking its legs crazily. It seemed impossible that the struggling amphibian could fit down the snake’s throat. But as we watched, the snake drew the thrashing frog, a fraction of an inch at a time, farther into its mouth. Finally, unable to stand it any longer, Clem raced to the springhouse, came back with his army knife, and plunged the blade repeatedly into the long black snake while it thrashed and twitched. When the snake finally lay still, Clem wrenched open its jaws and pulled out the kicking frog. With horror we discovered that the frog was already dead. It lay twitching mindlessly next to the dead snake on the forest floor, its head and neck lacerated from the snake’s fangs. Clem and I looked at each other with despair and ran as fast as we could to the springhouse and locked ourselves in.

  I filled the playmate vacuum by seeking out some of the girls in the nearby development, Magnolia Manor. We played house in our bomb shelter. One afternoon we girls decided to have a party. Each of us five picked one boy to invite. For lack of anyone else, I named Clem while the other girls groaned with distaste.

  Two afternoons later, when our five chosen knights arrived, we descended to the family room/bomb shelter with a pitcher of Kool-Aid and an economy pack of Oreos, and a stack of records with names like ‘The Twelfth of Never.’

  Clem and I were the only ones who didn’t live in split-level ranch houses in Magnolia Manor. That put us at the bottom of the pecking order. Besides, the others were obviously old hands at boy-girl parties. So much so that they quickly became bored with eating Oreos and listening to records and watching the girls dance with each other. Someone suggested Spin the Bottle, and everyone groaned. ‘That’s so corny,’ one Magnolia Manor sophisticate moaned. “How about Five Minutes in Heaven?’

  In the face of unanimous enthusiasm, Clem and I nodded our consent, though neither of us had any idea what it would entail. What it did entail was that each couple vanished into the chemical toilet cubicle while the others sat outside and timed the tryst (and, in my case, wondered what the couple inside could possibly be finding to do with each other for five minutes in a dark closet). Clem’s and my turn came last. They shut us in, our faces burning with embarrassment. I sat down on the lid of the toilet, while Clem leaned up against the wall with an effort at world-weary nonchalance.

  “Nice party.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I agreed, vowing never again to participate in a party of any sort.

  ‘Got the third cut of hay in on the south forty yesterday.’

  ‘Did you? How many bales?’

  ‘Same as last cut.’

  ‘Great.’ We lapsed into strained silence. One of the boys outside hooted, ‘Hurry up and finish, you two. Your time’s almost up.’

  We glanced at each other with dismay. Finish? We hadn’t even begun, had no idea what we were supposed to be in the middle of. Clem leaned over and ground a kiss onto my tightly closed lips, holding my shoulders intently. ‘There!’ he said proudly, wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his work shirt. I looked at him in horror. ‘Well, in’nt that what we’re supposed to be doin’ in here?’ he demanded.

  Just then the door burst open. ‘Caught you!’ everybody screamed.

  ‘You did not,’ I said sourly, standing up and walking out.

  From then on, Clem Cloyd was my arch enemy. Both he and I began playing football with the boys in Magnolia Manor. We always tried to be on opposite teams so that we could smear each other into the dirt. Clem was often the quarterback since he was so small and fast. There was nothing I savored more than dodging my blockers and racing into the backfield and hitting Clem’s hips and bringing him crashing to the ground under me. Or being opposite him in the line and locking shoulders with him when the ball was snapped, both of us gritting our teeth ferociously and grunting with exertion. Or straight-arming him as he closed in on me during an end run. Sometimes after he had tackled me, he would lie on top of me longer than necessary, his chin resting on my stomach and his dark eyes looking slyly up at me over my shoulder pads. At such times I would wrap a leg around his hips and gouge him with my cleats until he rolled off me in pain.

  This went on until his accident, at which time he supposedly ceased to be a factor in my existence. He was disking a new field on a hillside when the tractor tire hit a buried boulder and reared up like a startled horse. The tractor rolled over on him, crushing one of his legs.

  I visited him once in the hospital. He lay swathed in white linens, his injured leg suspended from a pulley arrangement and encased in a full cast. We had nothing to say to each other. My life was all football now, and Clem would never play football again.

  From then on Clem Cloyd was very much on the periphery of my life. He limped around school in his orthopedic motorcycle boot that had a four-inch sole for his injured leg; his dark greasy hair hung in his scowling face. He wore tight blue jeans, which had pegged legs and were studded down the leg seams and around the rear pockets with bronze upholstery tacks; and a faded dark green T-shirt; and a red silk windbreaker Floyd had brought him from Korea. The windbreaker had the island of Korea embroidered in garish yellows and greens on one breast, and an Oriental dragon all across the back. It was a masterpiece of tackiness.

  To compensate for his injured leg, which was now somewhat shriveled with its foot twisted inward, his entire body alignment had altered. He dragged the injured leg, and the shoulder on that same side hunched down and forward. Because of this deformed gait, he preferred, whenever possible, to roar around on his dark green Harley motorcycle, which he’d bought with the prize money he’d won in the state fair with his show steers. The Harley had jeweled mud flaps and two huge chrome tail pipes. The seat was covered in imitation leopard skin, and a raccoon tail hung from the antenna. When he was riding, he sometimes wore a molded plastic helmet of metallic green (the color of the cycle), which was decorated with a large Confederate flag decal. Other times he wore only yellow-tinted goggles and no head covering, so that his pomaded pompadour quivered in the breeze. Unfortunately, his thug image was undercut by the fact that he reeked of manure. From his barn chores, his body and all his possessions were permeated with the acrid odor, and the less kind students at Hullsport High, to be funny, sometimes held their noses after he had walked past.

  Before long, I was
flag swinger for Hullsport High and Clem was the town hoodlum Sometimes I nodded coolly to him as he lurched along the hall. He never acknowledged me.

  In the morning before school, when the popular students like Joe Bob and me and all our friends and fans were sitting in the gym, Clem sat outside in his leopard-skin cycle saddle with one or two lesser hoods. They smoked Lucky Strikes and stomped out the butts with their boots on school property. One morning after Joe Bob and I had decided that I had to dredge up some dates in order to throw Coach and my father off the scent of our trunk-bound liaisons, I went up to Clem where he slouched in his saddle smoking.

  ‘Say hey!’ I said with my brightest flag-swinger smile.

  He glared at me glumly and spat into the scruffy grass in the parkway that was struggling to grow up among the cigarette butts.

  ‘Can I speak to you?’ I asked, undaunted.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s important,’ I assured him, as though he might imagine that anything I involved myself with could possibly be unimportant.

  He glanced over at me, his dark eyes unhappy and unfriendly — surly, in fact. Then he got off his cycle with exaggerated effort and limped over to me. ‘Whaddaya want from me?’

  ‘Would you do me a favor, Clem? For old time’s sake?’ I asked with a winning smile.

  ‘Screw that. But whaddaya want?’

  ‘Will you ask me out?’

  He looked at me with suspicious amazement. ‘Ask you out?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘You tryin’ to put the screws on what’s his name — that fairy you run around with? Or what?’

  ‘It would be a favor to Joe Bob, too,’ I assured him, certain that pleasing Joe Bob Sparks would appeal to Clem. Then I explained the situation.

  Clem took a big drag on his Lucky Strike and let the smoke drift out his nostrils and waft around in front of his face. ‘If I do take you out — and I ain’t sayin yet that I will — hit won’t be as no favor to that fairy creep of yours. Hit’ll be cause I happen to want to. Got that straight?’