“Hold the ladder, Tots,” Mom said. “It looks wobbly.”
I stood holding the ladder while Mrs. Hollings placed a tattered little doll precariously on the top. It looked as though Syl had been chewing on the ornament and it gave our ratty tree the final comically tacky touch.
Junior and I had discussed it and decided that we’d get nothing for Christmas. No matter how much care Mom and Dad took in not letting us know our financial situation, it was apparent that we were at just about the lowest ebb we’d ever been. Mom’s hospital and doctor bills took the last of what we may have arrived with in Clovis—it turned out that Dad wasn’t even getting twenty-five cents an hour from Mrs. Hollings. She may have been as looney as a bird-dog, but she was a hard and cagey bargainer. Everybody worked by the piece or by the grape, as Dad said. “She’s Mrs. Simon Legree. Not Hollings or head. Why, she’s paying old Stroud less than what the wetbacks get for picking grapes. And she’s chargin’ him rent on that chicken-coop.”
But we, Junior and I, did get a present. One between us. A clarinet. A clarinet is not the easiest thing to divide up, though it does come apart in pieces—three, to be exact—but one is no good without the other. For example, I couldn’t practice the lower scale with the bottom half of the instrument while Junior practiced the upper register with the top because there is only one mouthpiece and it fits only on the very top. Junior was thrilled. It was what he wanted. I was thrilled for him and figured that a real silver twirling baton and tap shoes was asking too much of our poverty-stricken Santa Claus in the first place. It was greedy and there was something basically tacky about the idea of working up a routine of tap-dancing and twirling the baton at the same time. I could see Ronnie’s shrug and hear his voice say, “I don’t know, Tots. Tap-dance, yes. Twirl a baton? Well, yes … sort of. But together?” He’d be pursing his lips and shaking his head, “Tacky.” Well, maybe I could be a drum-major and lead the High School band.
So I feigned inordinate interest in the clarinet and when Junior had learned the rudiments of the fingering, having joined the High School Band, he passed his knowledge along to me. The squawks and squeaks were intermingled with our squabbling— “Let me try now, it’s my turn.” “You just bit the reed.” “Well, you get it too wet and soft.” “That’s not the right fingering.” “Can’t you count?” “It’s a delicate musical instrument, dummy, not a cracker-jack toy.” And so on until Mom would threaten to take it back to Santa Claus. Santa Claus being the Columbia Music Emporium downtown next to the movie house where we’d seen this second-hand instrument in the first place. We also knew that it was being paid off at so much a month and that knowledge curtailed our quarrels. Knowing the sacrifice Mom and Dad were making for us shamed us into serious practice and Junior made extraordinary progress and I even got to the point where I could squeak squawk and squeal my way through a vaguely recognizable rendition of “Home Sweet Home.”
Junior became a full-fledged member of the High School Band in no time at all. We were all terribly proud and decided he’d be the next Artie Shaw, even though he was barely through the first exercise book. “If you must know the truth, Tots,” he confided, “they had forty-nine instruments and there was this hole in the rear right corner of the marching formation that had to be filled. I’m the plug.” He grinned. “And I can’t play all those trills and fast stuff yet, but the band director says fake it. I’m not quite sure how I’m going to do that.”
“Just run your fingers up and down the stops and keys. Nobody’ll know you’re not blowing air into it. Just puff out your cheeks.” I poked him on the shoulder. “But for heaven’s sake don’t get carried away and be playing along like crazy when everybody else has stopped.”
“It’s a cheat, but they need me for the big county fair parade in Fresno. I don’t know whether you actually have to have a fifty-piece band to qualify or it’s just because they have fifty uniforms.”
Once the grape season was over, Dad was only doing odd jobs around the place to pay for our rent. But if we were broke and in debt, the poor Strouds were all but starving. Naomi’s dream of being a champion baton-twirler was the only thing that kept her from sinking into the dull torpor that the rest of her family had allowed to creep over them as hope faded. Hope faded at about the same rate that shoes wore out, that dirt became imbedded into skin and scalp, that runny noses gave way to deep chest coughs, croup, and the constant gnawing hunger was a condition of life. Her dream was kept alive by her baton and the chewed-up, scruffy remains of her cheap majorette boots.
Thirteen is not an unlucky number. At least I’ve decided that it isn’t. I turned thirteen—finally a real teenager—in March 1940 and the world turned up-side-down. Up the right way for a change. The dam burst. Friant Dam burst through with a job for Dad. Uncle Ernest’s promise was fulfilled. Dad went to work on April Fool’s Day which also became a good omen for us. Within a month, Dad had passed his apprentice-status tests and was a full-fledged pipe-steam fitter. Celebration followed celebration followed celebration.
Another celebration when Junior was the first Clovis High School freshman to make the varsity team. Mrs. Hollings’s house fairly rocked with the music and dancing—music via radio, dancing by all of us. Things were looking straight up and we all agreed that the only thing we needed to make us totally content was a decent house to live in. Even that little need was soon to be filled beyond all possible dreams.
Uncle Ernest was promoted to head foreman on another construction job and we could now take over the lease on his house. All that luxury. Ours. Mom burst into tears, Junior beamed and hugged me. Dad tossed Becky in the air making her gurgle with delight. I put a whole nickel into the slotted box at the Catholic church when I lighted that second candle. God had outdone himself.
We hadn’t lost our knack for packing the Ford. In our eagerness to see the last of the B. V. Hollings (Ranch), we speeded up our routine jobs so we resembled characters in a silent movie played at the wrong speed. It was a silent and swift packing-up. We seemed to be afraid to speak for fear of breaking the magic spell of good luck.
The only one who seemed upset was Mrs. Hollings.
“I can’t find that boy of mine,” she called as we were settling into the car. “Is he in there with you?”
That was a thought that struck terror in our hearts and we all darted nervous looks around us.
“Well,” she went on, moving closer to the car, “he can’t hardly stand it that you’re movin’. He just loves you folks.” She stuck her head in the window, causing Dad to flinch and turn his head away. “And well, so do I,” she said violently as if it were something shameful. Dad gunned the motor impatiently and Mrs. Hollings jumped clear of the car. We all waved merrily, callously untouched by her declaration, feeling no shame at our joy of leaving as Dad roared out the drive and onto the road into Clovis town.
We all tended to tiptoe around for the first few weeks. The silence of carpeted floors after the clatter of feet on cracked linoleum all our lives bordered on the spooky. Junior and I opted for the big screened-in back porch as our room. A curtain divided it from a little breakfast corner at the other end. The front bedroom was called the “guest room” and although it wasn’t mentioned, I rather gathered Mom hoped for a paying guest. The rent was high and we’d be able to save a bit of Dad’s new wages if we had a lodger.
By the time school was out and we’d been in the new house over a month, we felt like real city folks. Clovis was hardly a metropolis, but it was the biggest community we’d ever lived in and we were anxious to become a part of it. Dad surprised us all by joining the Masons. He’d always referred to clubs and lodges as “Amos and Andy” crap. He sported an odd-shaped ring on his finger and talked importantly about secret handshakes and greetings. It all sounded childish to me but I was pleased that Dad was making an effort to “belong.” I couldn’t help but wonder if the Saturday night poker games he organized with his new friendly lodge brothers hadn’t been one of the Mason’s chief attraction
s.
Junior not only joined the Boy Scouts of America, he embraced the movement with the fervor of a religious convert. The Boy Scout handbook became as sacrosanct as his dictionary and all his trousers were stretched out of shape with the two books perpetually shoved in his hip pockets.
We even had our first bank account. Not to squirrel away our family fortune, I soon realized, but simply as a clearing house so that checks could be sent back to Galena and Crane and Oak Grove to pay off long-standing debts. Frugality was still the key word at home. Even in this new house where I wasn’t ashamed to have my teacher come visit.
“You used to never bring any friends home,” I pointed out to Junior one day.
“To the pee-stained house? Going through the Scott’s front door to get upstairs to our three rooms? Those two tiny rooms in Crane?” His eyes bugged comically. “Or how about the motor court in Ventura? Wouldn’t you love to have had a class party in that one room?”
“Alligator ranch wasn’t too bad,” realizing as I said it that the few pieces of second-hand furniture were pretty tacky and we’d only had the Scrits to visit out in the yard. “Well, nothing could have been worse than Mrs. Hollings’.”
“Grandpa Woods’ smoke house had more style.”
I was puzzled. “I didn’t think that sort of thing … you know, houses and decoration and that sort of thing … Well, I just thought they didn’t interest you all that much.”
“I’m not blind, you idiot,” he said poking me on the shoulder. “It’s just that if you can’t help it … help where you live and you’re not particularly proud of it, well, you just don’t have to let everybody know, that’s all.” He was quiet for a bit. “I’ve been in a lot of kids’ houses that were worse than anything we ever lived in—look at the poor Strouds in that shack on the Hollings place, pitiful— and I always felt sorry for them. I didn’t want anybody feeling sorry for me. So, I just didn’t ask anybody back to those places.”
“But the Jones’s in Phoenix—that was a lovely place. The gardens …”
“Yes, honey-chile, but remember we’as just pore live-in help there.”
With the missionary zeal of the true believer, Junior convinced me to join the Boy Scouts too. We went to weekly meetings at the VFW Hall—the recreation room downstairs—that were pretty boring except for the games period at the end of the evening. All the knot-tying, presentation of badges for various accomplishments, first-aid demonstrations—since the war in Europe was heating up daily, this activity became particularly important—had a tendency to put me to sleep.
I caused myself considerable embarrassment one evening when the scout master, Mr. Watson, one of Junior’s high school teachers, demonstrated artificial respiration with me as the drowned one. He had me flat on the floor on my belly, straddling me from above and the moment he put his hands near my ribs, my old problem about being tickled came back. I got hysterical and wiggled and screamed until Junior had to tell Mr. Watson that I was an impossible “victim” because of my affliction. My ticklishness. This seemed to amuse Mr. Watson and he started at me in the same way Ronnie used to, just to watch me giggle and wriggle away from his reach practically everytime he saw me.
The recreation period after the “serious” part of the meeting was usually a rough and tumble game called “Hunt and Capture.” We’d choose up sides, clear the slick hardwood floor of furniture, take off our shoes and then turn out the lights. It was pitch dark and the object of the game was to sneak across the floor and “capture” as many of the other team as possible by dragging them back to your side of the room. It was great fun and I loved it. Sometimes you’d get one of your own team members but wouldn’t know it because of the dark and of course if you spoke, your voice could give you away. There was a lot of giggling and grunting and rolling around in the dark. Junior allowed as how it could get pretty silly. This was one game Mr. Watson always participated in and I’d hover in a corner to make sure he didn’t get his hands on me. I knew he’d try to tickle me and my screams would give away my whereabouts and I’d be dragged off to the opponents’ side of the room, thus helping my side to lose the game, and ending the game for me.
I have to confess that there were one or two boys with whom it was sort of understood that we’d grope around a bit in the crotch area and I’d even been hard with one or two of them briefly during the game and the only thing that kept us from exploring further was the thought that the light would go on at any moment. That was the fun. There was a referee-lightkeeper and when he wanted to count the captives, to keep score, he’d turn on the lights and you could be caught in very compromising positions. But I soon learned that it was one boy in particular who enjoyed exploring my body and we soon became good friends both in the scouts and outside.
His parents were Dutch and ran the local bakery. He was Artur Von Leer and was one grade behind me at school but bigger and the same age. All his family worked very hard, getting up at dawn to get the bread baked and the hard work had given him extraordinary muscles.
“Just feel that,” he was always saying, flexing his biceps. “I can lift hundred pound sacks of flour from the truck with one arm.”
We nicknamed him Justfeelthat and he took it with sweet good humor. But it wasn’t just his biceps he wanted me to feel, nor was he remotely interested in my less developed arms. We’d meet in our garage when we could and make each other hard and compare those particular muscles. In that department we were on a more equal footing. His cock may have been a bit larger than mine, but I had the advantage in that I could come and he couldn’t manage it yet. We both worked as diligently as possible, but it just didn’t happen. He was very discouraged, but from my lofty mature position I calmed his fears explaining that it would just happen one day and everything would be all right. In the meantime, just keep trying. I even suggested that if he could find somebody to suck it for him—that had certainly helped me—it might facilitate matters, but good friends or no, I resolutely refused to help him to that degree.
Mom was having her hair done and I was feeding Becky one afternoon when I heard Artur calling me from the back door. “Come on in,” I answered. “I’m feeding the baby.”
The screen door on the back porch opened and slammed. Artur came bounding into the living room where I was sitting rocking Becky who was almost asleep with the nipple of the bottle just resting in her slack pink mouth. “I can do it, Carl!” he was all but screaming.
“Ssssh! for God’s sake. The baby was almost asleep. Now look what you’ve done.” I rocked her a little more vigorously as she rolled her eyes up to Artur and smiled at him from around her nipple.
“Oh. Sorry.” He stood impatiently while I encouraged Becky to take her bottle and made soothing sounds to get her to go back to sleep. “But, Carl, I can do it,” he whispered.
“Do what?” My attention was on Becky.
“Come! I can come!”
“Well,” I looked up at him and grinned. “Today he is a man. Thank God. We don’t have to worry about you any more.”
“You want to see?”
“Sure.” I was wiggling the bottle slightly and watching Becky’s eyes dropping. She was almost off. Then I was aware of movement in front of me and the baby. I lifted my eyes only slightly and there it was, Artur’s cock out, hard, and his hand pounding away on it practically in Becky’s face. “For God’s sake, Art, not now! Not in front of the baby! Are you crazy? She’s a little girl, for lord’s sake!” I picked her up and ran out of the room protecting her gaze from what Artur was doing. This could mark her for life.
I put her in her crib, propped the bottle on a pillow and smoothed the silken hair back from her brow. What an idiot Art was. What in the world was he thinking of?
“Carl! Carl!” he was screaming from the other room. “You’re going to miss it! Hurry!” I walked back toward the living room hearing Art groan with pleasure before I got there. Oh God, now he’s probably come all over the carpet! I ran the last few paces. “Oh Carl, look. You missed
it. Oh darn.”
“Where’d you do it?” I was searching the carpet all around him for spots.
“Here. Here in this hankie. See? I caught it. You’ve got to see it so you’ll know I’m not lying.”
There was a damp spot on his handkerchief. “You say it’s come, it’s come. Could be spit, you know.”
“Oh, Carl,” he looked stricken. “I wanted you to be the first to know. Now you’re kidding me.”
“I’m sorry, Art. Just put your thing away. Give it a rest for awhile and when Mom gets back, we’ll go to the garage and do a proper celebrating job. Ok?”
“Oh God, yes,” he sounded worn out. “I can lift dozens of sacks of flour, but I tell you, making myself come is the hardest work I’ve ever done.”
“OK. I’ll help next time.” After all, what’s a friend for?
The only thing left at the end of summer for most of the scouts to qualify for their tenderfoot badges was the required fourteen-mile hike. The plans had been made for weeks. There was an official Boy Scout camping site on the San Joaquin River out of town beyond Friant Dam. The property had been donated to the Boy Scouts of America by a rich rancher and was used by scout troops from all over the country. We’d get the hike under our belts and also fulfil other requirements for badges like campsite cooking, building fires, putting up tents, swimming, life-saving, canoeing (there was a caretaker and plenty of equipment), tracking animals and map-reading.
I don’t remember how I was chosen—eenie, meenie, minee, moe or by drawing straws, but I was. I won the envied opportunity to be credited for the fourteen-mile hike without having to walk it. All I had to do was to be driven to the site by one of the fathers along with all the heaviest equipment and guard it—from what, I wondered—until the hikers arrived. I was hooted and jeered at by the hikers as I drove off seated grandly next to my chauffeur. As it turned out, I’d rather have done the hike on all fours. It wasn’t that the pickup truck broke down every five minutes or we had flat tire after flat tire, it was just that my chauffeur got—in the words of the captain—pissed as a coot. We’d hardly got out of town before he stopped in front of a bar, hopped out with “I’ll only be a minute” and left me sitting for forty-five minutes according to the clock in a Miller’s High Life Beer sign in the window.
In Tall Cotton Page 29