The Smut Book

by Tito Perdue

  Wrong about the radio and wrong about home, he found Naomi waiting for him by the gate. He was flattered, he supposed, but had tried so hard to keep out of view during the past few days that he was shocked to be reminded of her actual presentation. In mathematical terms, she was perhaps twenty percent as beautiful as Barbara and about thirty-five of Gwen. On the other hand, she was a good one hundred fifty percent of certain others he could have named. He was thinking about this, marching straight forward with the girl at his side, when he espied his own appearance in the dime-store window.

  “Want to go to the post office?” he respectfully inquired.

  They turned in that direction. The building was open at all hours and had the finest collection of wanted posters anywhere. Just then, Preston breezed past on his bicycle, almost coming to a stop when he remarked these two in company with one another. And now the town knew, too. The movie theater was open already, but Lee had no need for this particular feature. Cary Grant? Not when for the same money he could have seen The Bowery Boys’ most recent film.

  They moved past the old Roman wall where for the past years a team of archeologists had been digging. They passed the tobacco shop, inside it one or two old men trying to read some of the material without paying for it. And then, finally, just before they arrived at the post office, a grocery store with a lonely-looking man in an apron among his fruits and vegetables.

  It was unnerving in those days to enter this building owing to the three grim men, triplets perhaps, who sat looking out from behind their bespoken grilles. A person could buy a stamp in this place, or receive a package, or take advantage of the restroom, but what he could not do was discover any inflection whatsoever in any of those faces.

  “Hi,” Lee said.

  The posters themselves hung from a hook on the wall. Standing on tiptoes, Lee rifled hurriedly through the first three or four of them until he came to a person of such empty eyes and abysmal-looking character that he knew very well he would be dreaming about him tonight.

  “Look at that one,” he whispered to the girl next to him.

  “Gosh. What did he do?”

  “Mail fraud,” Lee answered somewhat disappointedly. “But he probably did lots of other things, too.”

  “My uncle, he . . .”

  Lee cut her off. Amazingly, the next poster featured an individual even worse than the prior one.

  “Dang! Shoot, he’ll cut your throat for you so fast you won’t even have time to think about it.”

  They lingered over the photograph for a considerable time. The man was evil, but yet willing to carry out actions that most people wouldn’t have dared even in causes that were good—this was Lee’s thinking at that particular time. He noted then that Steven, his friend from school, had entered the place with pad and pencil and had begun taking information from the posters.

  “Hi,” Lee said.

  The next picture was of a woman—Lee jumped back—a woman who among other behaviors was most certainly a whore, whether they mentioned that or not.

  “Poor thing.”

  “Poor thing! Look at her!”

  “Maybe she can’t help it.”

  The next individual was a negro, and the one after that had no photograph at all, so successful had he been. Reading the text, Lee discovered that he had committed crimes both in North and South America, and likely other places as well.

  “What did he do?” the girl asked.

  “I don’t know. Something about stocks and bonds.”

  That was when the middle postman, the one whose facial expression was the most unchangeable, said, “Okay, I reckon you people have been hanging around here long enough.”

  It was the first time Lee had heard him speak. He was about to comply, Lee, when his girlfriend spoke up loud and clear: “We have just as much right as you do!”

  “No, you don’t.”

  Steven had disappeared.

  “You get on out of here, or I’ll put the police on you. I mean it.”

  “Anyway, we were just fixing to leave anyway.”

  “Good.”

  The day had clouded in their absence, but not so much that the weather was not still bright and chill, a few fast-running clouds hastening past overhead. This unimportant moment for no good reason subsumed itself into Leland’s mind, there to fester for the next five hundred years.

  “It’s not fair! We have just as much right as he does!”

  “I know it. Hey, you want to go over there?”

  It was, of course, the pawnshop, Leland’s third-favorite location in the entire city.

  “If you want to,” said she, after they had arrived there.

  “Look at all those things!”

  His eye was for the knives, devilish objects, some of them with scenes and mottoes inscribed on the blade. Her eye, by contrast, was for a small, white puppy who had been set up in the adjoining window with a ribbon about its neck. The next he knew, she had gotten down on one knee and was striving to converse with the animal. This had the effect of showing off her shoes, oversize objects that, apparently, had come down to her from her brothers and/or father. He was in this situation, Lee, that she was what she was, and yet he was in love with her, presumably. That was when his vision ran up against a pile of coins that glinted in the Sun, some of them with particular inscriptions. Pressing at the glass, he was able to make out the graven portraits and brief texts that described their value. The girl meantime had arisen and was gazing in at a tray of jewels and earrings and the like. It occurred to Lee that their tastes ran naturally to very unlike objects. She had fixed upon a brooch that Lee would have said was perfect junk, had anyone asked.

  There were guitars and other instruments, also a gaunt proprietor trying to signal them inside. Suddenly (he jumped back) his eye ricocheted off a pudgy stamp album left open at New Caledonia. A thousand years might go by, and still he’d not have as many stamps as that. It pained him, especially a certain imperforate with the portrait of an ostrich on it.

  “Look at this one,” he called.

  She came, looked, looked at him, and went away again. It was almost four o’clock in the afternoon and he had to make haste if he hoped to get to the drugstore before too late.

  It smelled of ice cream in there, not to mention cheeseburgers and Orange Drinks. Putting on a bored face, Lee bellied up to the counter and began reading through the menu with an air of disappointment.

  “How much,” he asked, “are these nutritious, delightfully fresh banana splits with three different kinds of ice cream?”

  She cited the price, the woman behind the counter, doing it in a style even more impatient than Lee’s.

  “Well, how about one of these yummy vanilla ice cream sodas?” he asked.

  “Just like it says. Fifteen cents.”

  “What do you want?” he asked the girl.

  “Nothing. You got lipstick on your shirt.”

  “Okay, how about an Orange Drink?”

  She nodded enthusiastically. For all he knew, she, too, might have money in case he ran dry. Having submitted his order, he again searched the menu, but came up with nothing further that lay inside his budget. Watching the girl, he determined that she might actually end up as the prettiest girl in school. But he doubted it. A man in a hat had entered the place, but whether he had come for contraceptives or medicine or to flirt with the clerk, Lee could not right away declare. He had missed the two best radio shows of the day, but was confident that Carl would bring him up to date later on.

  “Well,” he said, once they had vacated the place. “Guess I better get on home.”

  “Me, too. We’re having meatloaf tonight.”

  “And I got lots of homework, too. Which is not even to mention Smitty’s.”

  “And sweet tea.”

  “I don’t know what we’re having. Liver, probably.”

  They laughed, both. They were getting along very well, it seemed to Lee, and appeared to share a number of things. They shook then, and parted, she
to her place and he his.

  Ended thus Leland’s first recorded date.

  Fourteen

  And so on Wednesday next, while breakfasting on toast and jelly, he learned that he was being withdrawn from school and sent to school in another city. Lee was stunned. Was it purely on account of his smutty behavior or had his father, as they claimed, actually contracted some sort of business arrangement down there?

  It was a poor sort of day with rain threatening, a tepid Sun, and his brother following warily at a distance of about two hundred yards. He waited only briefly for Cherise to come along, and when she failed to do so, he took a detour between two of the homes and came out at the intersection of Twelfth and Quintard. No longer did he carry whole books with him on his trek to school; on the contrary, he had learned to snip out the relevant pages and carry these alone. It was an easier thing, and the weight was lighter, too. He also preferred to slip those pages into his vest pocket, a tactic that increased his mobility and left both hands free for self-defense. Now, putting on an astute expression, he took up with his long-time habit of memorizing the town and its people against the time when he would no longer live there.

  The schoolyard was full of people organized in little groups. By hap, Lee found himself standing just next to Cecil, wearing a new black leather jacket never seen before. Where did that boy get his money? Leland asked himself. By working for it, he replied. Moving around to Cecil’s other side, he was able to stay out of Naomi’s view.

  “Looks like it’s going to rain,” Lee said. “Anyway, we’re moving.”

  “Get out.”

  “No, we really are. Moving to ———.” He gave the name of the little country town that possessed neither any movie theater nor ballroom classes, nor people like Cecil or Sandra or even himself.

  “You ain’t going nowhere.”

  “Got no choice.”

  “And how about Naomi? You just going to run off and leave her, is that what it is? And who’s going to do my math for me?”

  “I could come visit her.”

  “Yeah. But you won’t.”

  “And Steve is a lot better at math than me.”

  “He dudn’t share with people. It’s just the way he is.”

  Lee looked down. Steve was good at health and civics, less so with long division.

  “I’m getting real mad at you Slade. Just thought you might want to know.”

  “Yeah, but . . . !”

  “We’re all mad, all of us.” (He indicated around at the schoolyard, a gesture that included several of Leland’s enemies as well.) “No, I think you need to reconsider, that’s my advice.”

  “Okay, I will,” quoth Lee hurriedly. Gwendolyn was standing close by amid a circle of girls; going to her, Lee took off his cap and addressed the group: “Well, looks like we’re leaving, my family and me.”

  “Oh, gosh. I hope you’re just kidding again.”

  “No! No, we’re leaving alright. No question about it.”

  She seemed somewhat saddened. The others seemed amused.

  “And now you and I can’t never go steady, can we? And you were just getting to get so tall, too!”

  He wanted to weep. He had not seen that he was getting taller.

  “I could visit.”

  “You won’t.”

  “I could write.”

  “But I’ll be going with somebody else by then. Don’t you think?”

  “Yeah, but . . .”

  “But we won’t forget you, Lee. None of us will.”

  “They will,” he said, nodding to the others who, some of them, appeared to have forgotten already.

  It had begun to rain, but not so precipitously as to drive the people into the building itself. Moving on to Steve, Lee stood next to him for a moment, adding: “We’re moving, my parents and me.”

  “Did you listen to Jack Armstrong yesterday? I didn’t get to.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What happened?”

  He explained, Lee, in shortened form what had happened, and then passed on toward Smitty, whose strands of peroxided hair had begun to run down over his forehead owing to the drizzle.

  “We’re moving,” he started to say before then changing his mind and continuing on toward the larch grove at the further end, where Mildred was standing in partial shelter under the leafless branches. He let a moment go by before explaining to her, “We’re moving, my family and me.”

  “Oh? Then you’ll have a chance to start over again. Good.”

  “Yeah, but . . . !”

  “I just hope they can teach you something, that’s all I have to say.”

  He spent the morning playing two sets of Nine Men’s Morris with Preston. Finally, with ten o’clock fast coming up, he arose from his place and, moving slowly backwards, let himself out into the corridor. Someone was smoking at the far end, but whether it were a student or a member of the faculty, he couldn’t be certain. It appalled him that someone had tried to enhance the pornographic artwork in the boys’ room, changing it from a more or less normal experience, he supposed, into a creature with adventitious arms and legs. This time they were throwing dice, the half-dozen seventh- and eighth-graders gathered there.

  “Well,” said Lee, yawning and putting on a blasé expression. “Looks like we’re moving, my parents and me.”

  “That’s right, we ain’t good enough for you. Shit, I knew you’d be leaving, first time I saw you!”

  “Naw, he’s alright.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “He’s had more licks than you ever had!”

  The boy rolled. Lee moved closer to read the yield, but wasn’t able properly to interpret it.

  “How many you had?”

  “Well,” said Lee. “I had twenty-five the first time.”

  “‘First time?’ How many times you had?”

  Lee counted. It had taken this long to accrue the respect that he had earned.

  “Well, shit, I’m sorry you’re leaving.”

  “Me, too; I’m sorry, too,” said the Navy veteran. “And boy howdy, the women sure do like you, too! Here, Sloan, take a look at this.”

  Lee accepted the device, a thing that looked like a telescope, only about two inches long. Bringing it up to his eye, he viewed something that he had never seen before, a fully undressed woman with her legs up in the air. He lauded it loudly and raved about it, but even so was a little bit disappointed that her pubis wasn’t any more complicated than she was. Herebefore he had always construed the female orifice as like a camera shutter.

  The afternoon was spent in the usual way, and by three o’clock the whole town knew his fate. Sitting in place with his instrument, he was given a reed by one of the other clarinetists, a piece of generosity that was followed by an invitation to a Saturday night dance being sponsored by a crowd of girls who, most of them, were already well-known to him. That dance and those girls, they supplied the material for the next and final chapter.

  Fifteen

  The last day of his life, he climbed the stairs and took his place among the dozen boys standing with their backs to the wall. It was dark enough and that, together with the Nat King Cole edition of “Mona Lisa,” had already put him in his favorite frame of mind. It is true that his nerves were poor, whereas his headache, never entirely absent, had coagulated at the bottom of his mind where he could ignore it.

  “You have to give them credit,” he said to the pale individual standing next to him. “It is dark.”

  They looked at each other. This person was from another town or school, as Lee could see by looking at him. Even so, he offered to shake with him. Would they or not play “My Foolish Heart,” as rendered in the molten voice of Billy Eckstine? He could not have counted the girls whom he would have enjoyed dancing with to that particular tune—nine of them at least. He looked to Sandra who, however, appeared to have gone blissfully to sleep on Cecil’s shoulder. Suddenly Lee jumped back, avoiding Naomi’s inquiring glance.

  She was in a
green satin dress that, to be truthful about it, really did go rather well with the sort of person she was. Comparing and contrasting that girl and dress with those of Barbara, he was reminded of the sway that beauty and personality exercise over those as know how to appreciate such matters. Let him have Gwen’s facial features, Barbara’s figure, Mildred’s grey cells, and Lizabeth’s laughter (she hasn’t been mentioned yet), and he might still have some happiness before too late. That was when “Ebb Tide” came on, a new interpretation sung in an accent. Those old Europeans! No one knew more about love than they.

  “You going to dance? Or not?” (Smitty talking.)

  “Sure!”

  “When?”

  “Well, what about you? When are you going to dance, for example?”

  “Ain’t nobody going to dance with me!”

  That was true.

  “Besides, this here is probably the last dance you’ll ever have. Since you’re leaving us, I mean.”

  He was dressed in a white shirt and tie, together with last year’s dungarees. Looking into his face, Lee could see no future for this boy save perhaps as a grocery clerk or gasoline attendant. And yet, all in all, he would have preferred to associate with this one than with the greater part of the people in his own neighborhood.

  “I’ll get somebody to dance with you,” Leland in his rash way then volunteered.

  “Who? Hey, I don’t want any of them real fat girls, okay?”

  Lee agreed to it. Barbara was busy, and Gwen was, too; going therefore to Naomi he drew her aside. “Want to dance?”

  “All right.” (Her eyes sparkled.)

  “But I’m worried about Smitty. Nobody ever dances with him.”

  Her eyes traveled over to Smitty, whom of all boys she most despised.

  “Please, Lee.”

  “Think how it feels. He’s never, never, never, ever danced with anybody at all.”