The Smut Book

by Tito Perdue

  By 9:30 they had broken out of the city altogether and were sailing through a brown and umber countryside characteristic of November in 1950. These were historic lands, these, where not so long before red Indians would have been seen traveling back and forth. Today he was rejoiced by barns and scuppernong arbors, a worn-out mule pressing at the fence, a piece of abandoned machinery where twenty years ago someone had run off and left it, and then, finally, best of all, a farmer’s wife who had come down to the highway to look into her mailbox. This woman might almost have been his own grandmother, except that in place of a calico bonnet she had opted for gingham blue. How many children had she not raised, how many cows and vegetable gardens, and would ever she be given credit for it by the big city commentators who cared nothing for such things?

  She would not, and when they came to the top of the next hill, Lee’s attention was taken by Cecil and Gwen so entangled in the back seat that they were beginning to look like one person. It is true that it was dim aboard the bus, that the windows were tinted, and that someone had brought along a radio now playing “Now and Then There’s a Fool Such as I.” It was private, this thing that Cecil and Gwen were doing, but as one of that person’s best friends, Lee felt he was entitled to turn from time to time and monitor what was going on. He had not seen smooching on this scale in a long time; never, in fact, and it interested him to see how it was done.

  “Hey!”

  “Naw, I’m just looking.”

  “Well, get your own girl!”

  “Where?”

  Cecil indicated about with his free arm, a gesture that seemed to encompass the whole bus. “Linda.”

  “Naw, she doesn’t even like me anymore.”

  Nevertheless, Lee stood and scanned the seats. She was there, the girl called Linda, but she sat near the front of the bus where there was too much light and where the band director was reading in a publication of some kind. Even so, he went forward and took up the place just behind her.

  “Hi!” he said.

  “No, no, and no!”

  Lee went back. There were at least four other persons (other than Cecil and Gwen) seated behind him on the back bench, and one of these was an eighth-grade girl, assuming he remembered correctly from the last time he had seen her. Yawning and putting on a bored expression, he turned fully around and tried to discern her in the dark.

  “Hi.”

  She smiled. It was dark back there, especially in the corners, and he could see only the least part of her face and the contours of her bell-shaped head.

  “Boy howdy,” he said, nodding toward Cecil. “They sure are smooching over there.”

  She laughed. “Well, don’t look at them, then.”

  “It’s private?”

  “Yes!”

  “Oh.”

  Nothing more to be said, Lee turned again and faced forward. It surprised him to see that Michael, previously a shy person, had seated himself next to the xylophonist and had his arm about her shoulders. But were these two truly congruent with each other? Meantime the music had rotated over to the beautiful “Tennessee Waltz,” and once again Lee could feel himself succumbing to the magic of that particular voice. They, however, were running to the South, further from Tennessee and toward New Orleans. Suddenly, just then, the noise of thunder broke out overhead, bringing with it the promise of dimness abetted by opaque rains.

  Could anything be more welcome than this? No, and when he thought about it, looking back over the waste of years, it came to him that all the best things that had come to him, when they came, came in spates and spades. He shivered violently, largely because a new thought had just now come into mind, namely that they were running, not simply through countryside but time as well, and that in days to come no one would be left alive to remember any of it. Could anything be less welcome than that? To have been given the half-life of a molecule ricocheting among girls? He took out a stick of gum that bore a substance on it designed to calm his nerves. Of rains, he gave this one a “six” on his ten-scale. It was dense enough to make a noise on the roof, and fluid enough to drain off down the windowpanes; it was not, however, remotely like those Old Testament deluges of his desire. Hewing to the window, he observed a field full of smiling cows exulting in the stuff. Those barns and farmhouses, were their roofs in good repair? Suddenly, just then, a bolt of jagged lightning plunged to earth and lodged there in an upright position for what to Lee seemed a very long time.

  Toward the front, someone was practicing on an English Horn, a mellow sound that sorted so well with the rain that it saddened Lee to think that it must end someday. He turned to speak with Cecil, but then turned back again when he saw the boy was engaged. At this rate the boy and girl would be married, figuratively speaking, before they came to Tuscaloosa. Thinking of it, Lee then turned again and, in spite of things, spoke up in a soft but still audible voice: “Cecil?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What y’all going to do when we get there?”

  “I don’t know. What, you getting nervous again?”

  “No! Shoot, no. Maybe we could get something to eat.”

  The boy said nothing. He had gotten his left arm about the girl’s neck and, although she didn’t seem to mind, had forced her face into a “star-gazing” position, as it were. Lee came closer, observing how he kissed her about the nose and eyes, and then the lips themselves.

  “We could go to a restaurant. Get a cheeseburger.”

  “Right.”

  “So I guess I’ll just link up with you and Gwen then.”

  “Figured you would.” (His right hand reached toward the girl’s sweater, but then drew back just in time.)

  “Maybe an Orange Drink, too.”

  “Sloan?”

  “Yes?”

  “Shut-up, okay?”

  “Yeah, I think I’ll just . . .” He turned around. He had by no means forgotten the eighth-grade girl, who continued to sit prudentially in the extreme corner of the bus where the rain was heaviest and had set up a veil of sound, so to describe it, between himself and the person. Thinking of her, he waited five seconds before again turning about in his seat and, shielding his eyes, searching for her in the dark.

  “Boy howdy,” he said, “it sure is coming down out there.”

  She smiled. Half an hour had gone by, and he knew no more about her than if they had not both been woodwind players.

  “The rain,” I mean.

  “Yes.”

  “Lightning, too.”

  “I know.”

  Lee nodded. So far they were in agreement about everything.

  “I guess you’re in the eighth grade, probably.”

  “I used to be. But I’m in the ninth grade now.”

  Lee reeled. He had seen it before, this abnormal appeal that older women exercised upon him. He stretched lazily and putting on a bored expression, said, “I have a lot of respect for ninth-graders. I guess I’ll be there pretty soon myself.”

  She laughed out loud at him, a gesture that brought her face out into the light where he could see it. He had to admit that she was pretty, prettier even than he had construed from the sound of her voice. As for her hair, always one of his favorite substances, it was the color of chocolate and had a barrette in it. But what if he were to do to her what Cecil was doing? Meantime their two faces were only twelve to fourteen inches apart. And so of course that was when the radio, after a lengthy hiatus of advertisements, began playing the incredible Billy Eckstine version of “My Foolish Heart.”

  He couldn’t stand it. Up front, Michael had left off with the xylophonist and was sitting next to Sonya Hunter. As for the conductor, he appeared to have gone to sleep, either that or he wanted to give his musicians their one good chance to behave as if they were no longer on school property. Smitty was smoking cigarettes. Lee’s eye then traveled to the driver, a tired-looking individual who appeared wholly indifferent to the things going on in his mirror. Nothing was surprising anymore, and for him life had come to a stop many year
s ago. This conformed to Lee’s general theory about the world—that it had a great deal more deterioration in it than the other way around.

  They went on until just past ten, never stopping until the piccolo player, a girl not much smaller than Lee, went forward and whispered into the conductor’s ear. Lee was not averse to a toilet break at this particular time, although it disappointed him that the girls, even the prettiest of them, were subject to the same imperatives as the males.

  The rain was not as dense as before, and the boys, most of them, were able to dash quickly enough into the nearest trees. Craig meantime had headed off in the wrong direction but then soon turned around and came to the boys’ side of the highway. He could urinate now, Lee, or continue on for another hundred miles—it didn’t matter to him. Indeed, he enjoyed testing himself against these “requirements,” so-called, that excited only his contempt. Far more important to him was it that his pencil box was getting wet. Nor was he much affected by the rain, a natural phenomenon, portending nothing, that he had witnessed ten thousand times before. Moving through the cows, a bored expression on his face, he joined up with Cecil and Holly Parker, peeing collaboratively on a disused ant hill. Gwen was not with them, Lee was pleased to see. In fact they could not be seen by any of the girls, nor could Lee see them, and finally gave up trying. Suddenly he jumped back, nonplussed to find that the band director had come with them and was peeing as well.

  “Sir?” Lee said.

  “Yes?” (He sounded impatient, though it was only just past ten o’clock.)

  “My reed is broken.”

  “Don’t tell me that.”

  “It is.”

  “Oh, boy. You’ve had two months to get ready for this!”

  “Yeah, but . . .”

  “Two months! What are you going to do, Lee, when you get to be a grown-up man? Go through life with a broken reed? That won’t work!”

  Lee looked down, declining to speak of the brevity of the life that he foresaw for himself. “Maybe I could just pretend to be playing.”

  “And why not? After all, that’s more or less what you’ve been doing ever since I let you in the band.”

  “Yeah, but . . .”

  “Borrow one from Craig.”

  Lee thought. It was possible that person might lend him one.

  “What if he doesn’t have an extra one?”

  The man stopped, looked at him, and then tucked himself back in and zipped his fly. It was a new experience for Lee to witness an adult talking and urinating at the same time.

  “Lee?”

  “Sir?”

  “What happened to you? Your father is a fine man, real fine.”

  “Yeah, but . . .”

  “And just look at you standing over there. No reed, nothing.”

  A crow flew over, its voice as hoarse as the conductor’s. Far away he thought that he could see some of the girls, much refreshed, squealing through the rain. They had come not even partway to Tuscaloosa and already the man was mad at him, his hair was wet, and he had lost account of the ninth-grade girl who used to sit behind him.

  The next twenty-three miles were comparable, save only that they had turned off onto a tangential highway that was narrower but longer, and that on one occasion had them riding above the level of the encompassing trees. But Lee had been mistaken about the girl; fact is, she had returned to her place at the back of the bus and had positioned herself in darkness once again. Lee yawned and stretched, and after putting on a bored expression, glanced back to verify that it was she. As to Cecil, he had dropped off to sleep, as also the girl Gwen—they were in need of rest—reclining on his shoulder. Lee came nearer. He had suspected for some time that she wore a bit of make-up about her eyes, a habit that he was to discover more and more often among girls progressing from grade to grade.

  What did they want, girls? Whatever it was, they wanted it badly. He understood, of course, why it was that boys liked girls, but was never to understand how it could be the other way around. As for the towns along the way, the local economies would have collapsed long before except for the beauty parlors and dress shops in these places. Coming closer, he was then able to descry at the juncture of Gwen’s gingham sleeve what looked to him like the strap of a white brassiere. Why? She didn’t need that, not at this stage. It seemed that she was impatient and wanted to be a full-blown woman now. Such was Leland’s philosophy of women at that particular time.

  The rain had come back again and the radio was playing one of the very best songs of that or any other decade. Without any decent sort of voice himself, Lee remained silent as the rest of the bus joined their voices with Patti Page’s. It pleased him that Cherise, a restrained girl normally, was singing too, and that her face had taken on an appearance that was several degrees lovelier even than usual. Thousands of years might go by and still the song would be wending its way through space—Lee’s philosophy at that time.

  He slept briefly, but then was very rudely brought back to consciousness when he saw the rain had stopped. All his life it had been like this. Never would he understand it, how rains could be so short, days so long, and nights as hasty as they were. It was a long way to Tuscaloosa from his own hometown, and he had wanted to pass the whole of it in rain, darkness, music, and girls; instead, that moment, the bus began to sputter and then rolled to a stop.

  “Cecil!” he called. “The bus!”

  The boy immediately came awake, jumped up, and got into a defensive posture. He had forgotten, Lee, to rouse him by degrees.

  “What?”

  “Bus! We’re stuck!”

  Moving delicately, the boy lifted Gwendolyn’s head and put it elsewhere. A commotion had broken out near the front, and in the mirror, Lee could see the driver wearing a peeved expression. It might not be a bad thing, Lee philosophized, to be fixed here for several days and nights with some of these people, a more pleasing future than having to get up on stage with a broken reed.

  “Well,” he said. “I guess we’re stuck.”

  “Gosh, thanks for telling us, Lee,” Mattie Lou remarked, her sole comment the whole journey. Lee then followed Cecil out into the rain and stood about as the boy clambered up under the bus, stayed a while, and then came back out again. He found himself, the clarinetist, standing among the bus driver, the band director, and Cecil. There was a problem here, and their faces reflected that.

  “Blast it,” the director was saying. “It never fails. Never!”

  “Well, he ought to be able to fix it,” Lee reported, pointing at the driver. “It’s his job!”

  “Shut up, Lee. What d’you think, Cecil?”

  “I might be able to do it,” the boy said. “If I had me a flashlight. And wrench.”

  “Heck, he could do it easily!” Lee said. “If he had a wrench.”

  “I get paid to drive this bus,” the other man said. “I don’t get paid to wallow around in the mud.”

  “And screwdriver.”

  “Or, if we could find a telephone somewhere.”

  “That won’t do it. Need a wrench.”

  Four other boys had now departed from the vehicle, all wearing serious expressions. Lee’s philosophy was verified—how that men are at their best when there’s a job to be done. He would have gone under the bus himself, had only he but understood its workings.

  “Maybe we could borrow one.”

  “Naw, there ain’t any other buses around here.”

  Indeed, it was a long and level plain with only a very few farmhouses anywhere to be seen.

  “Borrow a wrench, I’m talking.”

  “Yeah, but what about a flashlight? Good Lord, you can’t expect him to do anything without a flashlight, for crying out loud.”

  “And nobody even mentions the screwdriver.”

  “Well. It’s a mess, that’s for sure.”

  The driver had gone back in, followed by two of the boys. Lee found himself standing about in company with the conductor, Cecil, two boys, and a girl. In just seven hours, th
e sky would begin to darken and night would be coming in. His shirt was full of mud, Cecil’s, and he had taken on a certain soldierly aspect that Lee had seen in him so many times before, whether on the football field or dancing with girls in the Teen Canteen.

  The Sun was weak and soon they would need flashlights just to find their ways in the dark. He, Lee, was about to go back in and reassure the girls; instead, that was when the bandleader came to his decision: “Okay, so be it; we need to ask these people”—he pointed off into the distance—“if we can borrow some tools.”

  Rather than venturing too far from the group, the same girl that only a moment ago had been peering beneath the bus now turned and reentered the vehicle where the seventh- and eighth-graders were singing a Nat Cole song. Already Cecil had begun to march toward the nearest farmhouse, an unpainted structure with an old-fashioned windmill bending to earth.

  “Now Lee,” the man went on, “I want you to volunteer to ask those people over there”—he pointed distantly toward a house with columns, a nineteenth-century plantation, as it almost seemed—“and ask those people for help. That will make up for a lot of things.”

  “Yes, sir. It’s raining.”

  “I know it is. And that will make up for even more.”

  He set out, Leland, moving forward for some fifty yards before coming back and handing off his pencil box. There were at least fifteen faces looking out at him from the bus with various expressions of sympathy and contempt. A pretty good deal, it seemed to him, inasmuch as there seemed to be more sympathy than contempt. And then, too, he had some curiosity about the plantation, a place fit for a Nathan Bedford Forrest, he would have said, or a Robert E. Lee.