The Smut Book

by Tito Perdue

  “Hey, how come you got two bunches?” Lee asked.

  “In case the first one don’t work,” said he, holding up what looked to Lee like a spray of daffodils. (The other hand held roses.)

  “Well, who are they for?”

  The boy indicated vaguely toward the girls at large, a considerable array of seventh-, eighth-, and ninth-graders in well-shod shoes and evening dresses. Some detested the sight of him, some didn’t, and some were potential wives of his. He focused in upon an older girl in brown velvet whom at first Lee suspected of having been the girl on the bus. (She wasn’t.) He then waved to Mildred Weston, who actually looked rather good tonight despite herself. She had removed her glasses and put them away where she would no doubt take them out again when the night was done. But she did not wave back.

  He entertained no hope that he might meet up with the high school girl who had molested him in the Canteen—she would be attending other parties this season, older ones where he himself had no chance of an invitation. Thinking of her, his mind began to drift, drifting back to her and to the strange affiliation he seemed to have with older girls. He turned to watch one of the chaperons, a thirty- or forty-year-old woman who had preserved at least some portion of her quondam appeal, as he called it. To kiss a woman of that kind he would need a chair or ladder, and even then would have to stand on tiptoes. He didn’t want that, not with a woman whose upper arms were as heavy as hers and in addition bore a vaccination mark.

  He had avoided all thought of Naomi, even though three several persons, friends of hers, had advised him she’d be here. That was when the music shifted over to one of the better songs of that year, a Mel Tormé production that ranked among the best. Slowly and slowly he could feel himself softening and romanticizing, the inexorable result on him of music, darkness, and girls in pastel dresses. They comprised, those people, a phantasmagoric scene, so much so that he strove to ward off one of his most constant and unwanted thoughts, namely that in days to come they’d all have turned into a few hundred bones scattered about at large. His future wife, was she among that group? No, probably not, not as long as none of them had that high forehead and unique expression of the face that he required in wives of his.

  Naomi also was wearing an iridescent gown of some description, a multi-colored garment that compared and contrasted her with a certain species of dragonfly. Pretty soon he’d have to go to her and make an utterance, a friendly remark, or something to make her laugh. Thinking about it (and going over his inventory of witticisms), he strolled to the punchbowl and ladled himself a full steeping glass of a bark-colored fluid that had lemons floating in it. He knew nothing of “steeping” in other contexts and therefore now put this down also into that other inventory of his, his list of words. Cecil, he saw, had migrated over toward the Christmas tree and had engaged himself in what either was an argument with Gwen or else an enactment of passion coming to the surface at just this time. On the other hand, his friend Smitty was still holding to his flowers, yellow ones and red.

  He had been waiting for “My Foolish Heart” as sung by Billy Eckstine, hoping to exploit it as the backdrop for his approach to Naomi and the two or three friends grouped protectively around her; so much the greater, then, was his disappointment when instead of serious music, an inane little tune came on, a cheerful business representing the most negative aspect of 1950. Let the world be romantic and dark, let it make Lee tremble, or let there be no world at all! Steve came up.

  “I didn’t know if you was coming tonight,” he stated.

  “Yeah.”

  “Because of Naomi?”

  And so that was it; even Steve knew more about his affairs than did Lee himself.

  “I guess.”

  “She’s not so bad. I took her to the movies couple of years ago.”

  “Which movie?”

  “You better go talk to her. She’s waiting.”

  “Yeah.”

  “When?”

  Lee pushed off. As he drew nearer to her (and further from the wall) his vision improved, and he could see that she was wearing a little tiara of some sort, a preposterous appliance that had slipped off to one side. He had not yet come up with any kind of witticism, and by this time he had hardly three seconds to find one. Still furrowing through his inventory, he went and stood just next to her in such a way as that both of them could view the dance floor in its entirety.

  She was shorter than Lee, and he gave thanks for that. Glancing peripherally at her, he could see the outer perimeter of her translucent eyeball, a convex gel of about the size of his own such organ. Ten seconds having passed, her perfume, which was of a certain wavelength, reached him where he stood. Generally, Lee preferred woodland smells—lavender and rue—but he found hers quite as good. (Next to lavender and rue, he liked honeysuckle, magnolia, and gardenia respectively, and in that order.)

  “Hi,” he said, turning upon her without premeditation, causing her to jump back two inches. He yawned. “I wasn’t sure whether I’d come tonight or not.”

  She continued to look straight forward, her vision fixed upon a certain spot. Across the way Steve was urging him on with hand signals, a series of movements that Lee soon gave up trying to interpret.

  “When are they going to hand out the presents? Naw, I was just wondering.”

  Now she turned. It was the first time he had seen her at that range, and he had only a moment to make his appraisal before he’d have to speak again, or look away, or take out a cigarette. In that brief time he saw a good deal of what her appearance looked like, and what he saw looked all right to him. Putting aside her nose and perhaps chin, she was a reasonable person, and well-matched with Lee at Lee’s current developmental stage. He was taller than she.

  “Cecil and me, we were over to the Canteen yesterday.”

  “Yes, and got into trouble, too. That’s what Jean said.”

  “Oh, good Lord. I don’t care about stuff like that anymore! I’m used to it.”

  Never had he seen such admiration in the eyes of a female standing face-to-face with him. All previous experiences with women now faded into things that were small and far away.

  “Yeah, we don’t even notice it anymore.”

  The girl came closer. Her perfume might have some magnolia in it, a little bit.

  “Want to dance? Naw, you don’t have to.”

  He led her out to the center of the floor and put his hand, first, on two or three ribs on this side and then, secondly, the other side. He reckoned her as of about twenty pounds lighter than the high school girl who had assaulted him in October. He did not know, Lee, the size of the girl on the bus. In the meantime, a piece of decent music had just come on. Together with the dark and the surrounding vision of his friends, of presents heaped up under the tree, and Tony Bennett, he was in real peril of falling in love four or five years too early.

  They danced three dances in quick succession and then went off to one side in order to talk about it. She was not as pretty as Gwen, nor yet even as Sonya with her milk-colored hair; she was, however, a better-looking human being than some. And then, too, her father was a carpenter and a part-timer roofer, occupations that served a more indisputable need than some he could have mentioned.

  The floor was crowded by now, and the music had settled into a song cycle by Patti Page, Jo Stafford, and the rest of that school. Suddenly he locked eyes with Mr. Debardeleben, a bleak figure who had taken up in the exact center of the room. There was very little that man failed to see, not excluding Leland and the mediocre-looking girl sitting just across from him. Putting on a boyish smile, Lee threw up his hand and waved at him enthusiastically, getting absolutely nothing in return. Meantime the girl’s hand lay at random on the table, where Lee could see that she had suffered from a broken finger at some juncture, leaving the thing askew at that particular place. She removed her hand from sight and positioned it under the other.

  “Naw, it’s alright,” Lee said. “Heck, I had a broken leg when I was nine.” />
  “Did it hurt?”

  “I guess. But I don’t pay attention to stuff like that anymore.”

  She came nearer. There was now no question but that Cecil and Gwen had gotten into a disagreement of some sort. He hated to see it—the two of them standing ten feet apart and staring hotly at each other. For one brief moment there came to him the unworthy notion that perhaps he could pick up with her where Cecil had left off, an impossibility if ever any was. Suddenly, out of nowhere, “Now and Then There’s a Fool Such as I” came on. Taking Naomi by the wrist, he pulled her to her feet and to the edge of the floor, where they danced together happily for the next three minutes. Such moments were so rare, a mere hour or two out of an entire month. It pointed to the essential unfairness of things and his recurring theory that life was a “two percent solution,” so to speak, and the rest all misery and waste. A thousand years might go by, and still he’d be waiting to hear that particular song again.

  “We’re going to visit my grandmother next week,” Lee mentioned after they had gone back, and the girl had again left her bent finger in view. “We’ll probably go fishing, too.”

  “We went fishing one time.”

  “Good.” Gwen had disappeared into the girls’ facility. Where was Cecil? Lee found him at last dancing with Margaret Bunting, the one single girl in Alabama who could have stood up to Gwen in terms of beauty and prestige. Lee yawned and, after pushing his punch off to one side, stood and strode halfway across the floor before returning and apologizing.

  “I need to see somebody,” he explained. “But I’m coming right back.”

  She agreed to it. The music was over, and he was able to find Cecil before the next record began.

  “What happened?” he asked somewhat belligerently.

  “Hm?”

  “Gwen!”

  “She has her way of doing things, and I have mine.”

  “Yeah, but . . . !”

  “Just calm down, okay? Hey, I don’t stick my nose into your business, do I?”

  “I don’t have any business! Besides, I . . .”

  “Anyway, shut up. What, you don’t like Margaret?” He nudged Margaret to the fore, allowing Lee to gaze upon her. Dressed as she was in a white gown that set off the residues of last summer’s suntan, she was a vision that seemed to have sprung fully formed out of angel food cake. He could not but offer to shake with her.

  “Hi.”

  She laughed. She was of his own precise height, but not comparable to him in other ways. More than that, she seemed to have a bust that drew his vision against his will. Her hand, too, was white, and had the tiniest little ring on it, holding a pale green stone.

  “Cecil and me, we sit next to each other,” Lee described. “Because of the alphabet.”

  She drew back and laughed out loud at him. God, she was pretty. To be laughed at, really that was about all he could expect at that particular time in connection with girls like that. He had always known, of course, that Gwen wouldn’t last. And then, too, this “Margaret” had wider hips and was better set-up for the duties of a wife.

  The space now had seventeen couples on the floor, some of them dancing with consummate skill. They had heard perhaps thirty pieces of music by now, among them some of the finest art products of 1950. His opinion of the chaperone, who generally ignored them, had also improved. The punch, too, was good, pretty good, even if the quality had begun to peter out as the level fell lower and the molten ice rendered the stuff less lemony than Lee would have preferred. It angered him further when the music stopped, the lights came on, and the students began to gather about the tree.

  Itself, the tree was ornamented with “angel’s hair” (so-called) that made him think of Margaret and Gwen. And yet the angel itself, a plastic item sitting atop the tree, was an ordinary blond with stumpy wings. Turning next to the gifts, a cantilevered hill of square and rectangular objects wrapped in papers of various sorts, he could feel himself growing more excited than was good for him. “Calm down!” he said to himself. “Easy now, just calm down, that’s right.” It was an anomaly, that his system still worked in such childish ways. Putting on a tired face, he walked off a distance, came back, and then waited about with his hands in his pockets while Mildred Weston, slowly and with an annoyed look (she was wearing her glasses now), unwrapped the gift given her by the unrevealed person who had drawn her name. It was, of course, a book.

  “Thank you,” she said to the crowd at large. A slight applause followed. Had she read that particular book already? Very likely, judging from her face. Came next Acedia, the most corpulent girl in town, who had been given a bottle of perfume large enough to suffice her for a very long time. Applause followed.

  “Shit!” said Smitty in low voice. “She won’t have to take no baths anymore! What is that, formaldehyde?”

  Mr. Debardeleben had also been given a present, a large object wrapped in blue which he preferred to set on the floor. He mistrusted it, Lee divined.

  Three or four other presents were unwrapped, the usual things for the most part, which is to say until Cecil’s turn came about. Putting his cigarette in the corner of his mouth, he quickly and efficiently unwrapped a box of shotgun shells, a logical gift for a person who already owned the pertinent weapon. Lee saw that his own gift of a billfold (destined for Earl Clechum) was near to the surface of the pile—he had wrapped it himself and placed it there. Picking daintily at the bow, the recipient proceeded to unwrap the thing with the most extravagant care, as if he might be more interested in the paper with the picture of the North Pole on it than in the gift itself.

  “Get on with it!” Lloyd called out in loud voice. And yet the fellow continued with his tedious method. He had managed to save a good eighteen inches of glossy ribbon.

  “A billfold! A palpable billfold!”

  Lee blushed. Stolen at great risk from a well-known entrepot on Noble Street, he could feel himself becoming more like Clarence every day.

  “Hope you like it,” he said. “It wasn’t easy.”

  Naomi tugged at his sleeve. “You’re not supposed to tell who bought it.”

  “I didn’t! Buy it, I mean.”

  Came next Smitty himself, who had been given a set of toy plastic handcuffs—the whole room burst out laughing—toy plastic handcuffs that cost perhaps a quarter at the downtown Woolworth’s store. He was hurt by that gift, as Lee was surprised to see.

  “Shit. There waddn’t no call for that.”

  Came then the teacher’s turn. She was a confused and hapless individual with thick glasses that incorporated a great deal of fog in the prescription. Older than she should have been and with a voice like a crow’s, she was the most beloved woman in town. And yet some miscreant had actually given her a pair of panties about five sizes too large.

  “Good Lord.”

  Impossible not to laugh, even those who didn’t want to.

  “That’s not nice!” Naomi said. (Already Lee was getting tired of this person.) “Gollee!”

  The woman gathered them up and looked at them. Lee knew about the salaries of school teachers, and it occurred to him she might find a use for them after all. Applause followed.

  His own gift came due at just past nine o’clock. Screwing himself up for the hilarity that he expected, he unwrapped the thing quickly and held it up for all to see. He had learned long ago to meet personal abuses head-on and be done with them at once.

  They danced till ten, at which point the lights came back on. Cecil was going with Margaret now, and Gwen no longer was present. Looking back upon it from later on, the next he remembered he was waiting on the curb for Naomi’s parents to come and gather her up. He expected to be treated in a welcoming fashion by these people who no doubt had heard by now that his father was an electrical engineer.

  “You’ll have to come visit us sometime,” the woman said, smiling maternally. “We always like to see Naomi’s friends.”

  Lee smiled boyishly and shook with the old man, a rough-looking personag
e who appeared to be embarrassed by the situation.

  “You betcha,” he said, and drove away. His head looked like a box when seen from the rear, and had ears on it as big as human hands. Lee turned toward home. A pretty good chapter, it seemed to him, in which he had both carried out his first date, had learnt that Gwen was available, and had collected this year’s most outrageous gift.

  Nine

  Already he had seen at least one car with a Georgia and another with a Connecticut (it made his gorge rise) plate on it. The country was drawing together—he hated it—and soon one location would be like any other. That was when they came into a town and almost at once exited out the other side, leaving Lee with the memory of a blue hound lying half in the road and half in someone’s yard. It was still the South, he knew it for a certainty when they passed an aged negro in overalls hobbling down along the highway toward no conceivable destination. The land was cursed. God, he loved it.

  Next, he turned his notice upon his father’s head, a cubic manifestation mostly hidden beneath the brim of his crumpled hat. That hat sustained memories and much pessimism, enough to have pointed his children in the same direction. And in short, he was a wistful man with large pores in his nose. Next, he turned, Lee, to his mother, trying with but little success to guess her theories, her loves and past. Just then a large blue bat swooped down and glanced into the Chevrolet itself. The news came on. Lee’s father disliked hearing these matters reported in a woman’s (Pauline Frederick’s) voice, which tended to palliate matters and rob them of seriousness. He endured it for perhaps three seconds and then began tampering with the dial in a search for something better.

  The dashboard had lights on it—green ones, two that were red, and his favorite, pale blue, that mixed perfectly, both with his own personality and the outside black night that had come down around them. To push that darkness off to one side and continue forward required a car with broad sails, maps, visible stars, and perfect coordination on the part of the pilot.