That Was Then, This Is Now

  "Boy, I hope I see someone I know," Cathy said. "Here I sit, surrounded by beautiful boys."

  She gave me a teasing grin. Mark raised his eyebrows. "Well, if you feel that way about it . ." He put his arm across her shoulders. We were sitting pretty close together because all four of us were in the front seat. Cathy was next to me, Mark on her other side, and M&M was hanging out the window, gravely watching people, waving if he was waved to, yelling back if he was yelled at, always slightly surprised at the crudity of the calls, as if he hadn't heard the same things a hundred thousand times before.

  I put one arm across Cathy's shoulders too She beamed. "It's so nice to feel wanted."

  A couple of blondes in an orange Camaro came by on M&M's side of the car and made him an indecent proposition. I thought that kid was going to fall out the window, he was so shocked. The rest of us laughed.

  The Ribbon was a two-lane street with an extra lane at the traffic lights for left turns. When we stopped at the light we were in the middle lane, with cars on both sides of us. The blond chicks in the orange Camaro were on our right, and they were still talking to M&M. I didn't catch much of the conversation, but Mark did and he was talking to them too, trying to see around M&M, who took up a lot of the window. On our left was a green outasite Corvette with a couple of guys in it, waiting for a left-turn signal. They looked like real snobs. You can tell just by looking that some guys are snobs. Especially ones with Corvettes. The one on the passenger side glanced over at us and--I still don't understand why--popped off with a really obscene remark. I sat stunned for a minute--the thought of Cathy's hearing such a thing just froze me. Then, so quick I didn't even realize what was happening, Mark reached past M&M, opened the door, pushed M&M out of the way, ran around to my side of the car, and punched the foul-mouthed guy in the nose, literally smashing his nose in. It was their turn to be stunned. Before they could move, Mark was back in the car. He jumped into the back seat and yelled, "Take off!" The light had turned green so I stepped hard on the accelerator. The Corvette was supposed to turn left, and all the cars behind it were honking, so they turned left. I thought maybe they'd come after us--they were older guys, maybe eighteen years old--but they didn't. We drove up and down the Ribbon without seeing them again.

  "You're a fast worker," Cathy said. I wondered if she was mad at me because I hadn't been the one to punch that guy. She was my girl friend, I should have done it. I was halfway hacked off at Mark for showing me up.

  "Well," Mark said in a mock serious voice, hanging over the front seat, "I get these impulses."

  "Impulses to jump out of cars and hit people?" Cathy said dryly, and I realized she didn't think Mark was a hero for what he'd done. As a matter of fact, she didn't think too much of it.

  "They hit us first," Mark said, sitting back in the seat. "A hit don't have to be physical. I couldn't hit them the way they hit us without hitting you, too."

  I had always known that, in spite of his lousy grades, Mark was every bit as smart as I was. But it was still surprising whenever he proved it to me. Cathy was quiet. Then she turned around and looked at Mark for a long time. "I never know what to make of you, Mark."

  "Why make anything of anybody? Why not just take people or leave them?" Mark was in a funny mood. I could tell; I had seen him in that mood before. He was never that way with me, but I'd seen him suddenly turn on people, like a teased lion who's had enough. I remembered the night Charlie was killed--Mark grabbing up the shotgun and firing away. I don't think I could have done that, even if I had known Charlie was dead at the time.

  "I don't like being analyzed, baby," Mark said. "So don't."

  I couldn't tell him to lay off, because he had a point. Cathy did like to turn everyone inside out and look at him. It didn't bother me, but I could see where it might bug some people.

  "I'm sorry," Cathy said, even though she wasn't. I had to say something, so I said, "Let's get a hamburger."

  We turned into a big drive-in called Jay's, which was always crowded. It was a set up with a stall for each car and a little deal that had a menu and a button on it. You pushed the button and a voice came out of the deal and said, "Order, please," and you told the speaker what you wanted--in this case it was three hamburgers, one steak sandwich, a cherry-pineapple Seven-up, and three Cokes--and about ten minutes later a chick appeared with the food. It was slightly spooky.

  The place was crawling with kids. It was mainly a Soc hangout. There used to be a drive-in over on our side of town where the "hoods" went, but the Dingo was bombed and had burned down so we had started coming over here. Kids were driving through the parking area looking at the kids who were sitting in their cars. It was the same thing that was going on in the street, only on a smaller scale. They had a cop stationed at the drive-in to prevent trouble. He was on a first-name basis with a lot of the kids there; he was a friendly, good-natured cop who didn't mind getting splattered by a water pistol now and then. I didn't much care for him though, due to my feelings about cops in general. I began telling Cathy about the time the cops had beaten me up when I was thirteen.

  "You shouldn't have been running around drunk in the middle of the night," she said.

  "I never thought of it that way," I said.

  "Who would?" came Mark's voice from the back seat. I realized right then that whatever chance Mark and Cathy had ever had of becoming friends was gone. I had already sensed in Cathy the same hostility toward Mark that he had for her. That put me in a really great position.

  "Hey, there's Terry Jones. I'm going over to see him," Mark said suddenly. He gave the cop a quick glance--you weren't supposed to get out of your car at the drive-in. They came up with this rule about a year ago because all this switching from car to car was causing fights, and what was worse, cars were left empty in the stalls for hours at a time while the owners were running the Ribbon in someone else's car. This doesn't make money for the drive-ins.

  "Mark doesn't like me much, does he?" Cathy said. M&M looked at her, astonished. For the first time I was sick of her honesty.

  "You don't like him either," I said.

  Not used to having her honesty turned back on her, Cathy was silent for a minute. "I guess we're fighting over you. Isn't that funny?"

  "A real riot," I said dryly. I looked across the street, watching some little twelve-and thirteen-year-old teenyboppers make fools of themselves--smoking, trying to act cool, pushing each other, screaming and swearing so loud I could hear them. I had a sudden recollection of Mark and me at twelve, smoking our heads off, clowning around, hoping someone--usually some little long-haired chick--would notice us and see how cool we were. All of a sudden it seemed like I was a hundred years old, or thirty at least. I wondered if, when I got to be twenty, I would think how stupid I was at sixteen. When I remembered us, it didn't seem possible that we had looked as silly as these teenyboppers, but I guess we had. At least then we weren't worried about looking silly. We were sure of ourselves, so sure we were the coolest things to hit town. Now I wasn't so sure.

  That was strange too: in the past I thought in terms of "we," now I was thinking in terms of "me."

  "There sure isn't anything to do in this town," Cathy said, breaking in on my thoughts of the good old days.

  "We could go to a movie," I said, even though I didn't have the money to go to the movies. Or money to go bowling, or money to go out to dinner, or money to ride go-carts, or to go to the amusement park.

  "No, I don't want to go to the movies. There's nothing to do in this town except drive up and down."

  "That takes gas," M&M said, "and gas takes money," even though neither Cathy or me had mentioned money.

  "Well, let's go drive up and down some more," I said, flipping a switch on the magic dealie that signals a car-hop to appear and pick up our tray.

  I was thinking about what Cathy said. There was nothing to do except drive up and down the Ribbon, even though we lived in a fairly large city. It wasn't New York, but for our part of the country it was a
good size. All the adults in town screamed about the kids driving up and down, but what did they expect us to do? Sit and twiddle our thumbs like they probably did when they were young? No, thanks.

  We drove up and down the Ribbon again--it was getting hard to find a place to turn around. Usually the shopping center at the far end was good for a quick turn-around, but somehow the cops figured out that that was against some law that had been gathering dust for years, so they sat in the shopping-center lots giving out tickets. If a kid got a ticket he immediately went around collecting money from friends and strangers. Usually he got at least a nickel or a dime from each person. I have never known anybody who took advantage of this custom by collecting money when he didn't really have a ticket. This would have been like squealing on someone you saw cheating, or refusing to lend or give or sell your senior theme to some promising junior.

  A block beyond the shopping center, under the bypass, the Ribbon ended as suddenly as it began at a movie theater two miles back. Abrupt and unexplainable. There was another shopping center beyond the bypass but for some reason it was not considered part of the Ribbon, so it wasn't full of cops. We turned around there to head back, which is against the unwritten rules of the Ribbon, but I didn't feel like messing around, sitting in the left-turn lane for half an hour waiting to turn.

  "Drive by the hot-dog stand," M&M said, so I pulled in to drive through the parking lot, which was filled with kids sitting on their cars. We got tied up in a long line of cars driving through the hot-dog-stand lot. M&M suddenly got out of the car.

  "Where are you going?" Cathy asked.

  "I got some friends around here," M&M said. He should have. At least three quarters of the guys out there had hair to their shoulders.

  "Well, when can we pick you up?"

  "Not ever. I'm not going home," M&M said and walked off toward a group of kids sitting on a station wagon.

  There were cars honking behind me so I had to drive on, even though Cathy was yelling, "Stop, we can't just let him walk off like this."

  "I'll drive back through," I said, trying to hush her up, because I don't like hysterical chicks. She calmed down right away.

  "That little mess. Wait till I get a hold of him."

  She didn't though. When we came back through he was gone, and nobody seemed to know where. I parked the car and Cathy and me ran around asking different kids. We drove up and down the Ribbon until one o'clock in the morning looking for him. I found Mark sitting on Terry's car--Terry had gone somewhere with a couple of girls. We picked him up and drove home in silence.

  Cathy was crying without making any noise, and, for the first time in my life, I wasn't annoyed with a girl for crying.

  Instead, I felt really bad. It was the first time I'd ever felt bad for anyone except Mark.

  7

  I went with Cathy to break the news about M&M to her parents and to explain why we were so late. Her father was sitting up waiting for us, and when I saw his face I was glad that I had a real good excuse, even though I was quite a bit bigger than him. Her mother got up and came into the front room in her housecoat. She got real upset when we told her what had happened, but her father said, "He'll be home tomorrow--that kid's been going through this stage for months now."

  "It's not just a stage!" Cathy cried. "You can't say, 'This is just a stage,' when it's important to people what they're feeling. Maybe he will outgrow it someday, but right now it's important. If he never comes home it'll be your fault--always picking on him about silly, goofy things like his hair and flunking gym!" She sat down and began to cry again. Her father just looked at her and said, "Honey, I know it's because you're worried that you're talking like this. M&M'll be home tomorrow. He's a sensible kid."

  "Then why didn't you ever tell him so?" Cathy sobbed irrationally. "I don't think he's coming home tomorrow. He doesn't do things on the spur of the moment; he thinks things out. He's not going to come home!"

  By now two or three younger kids had wandered in, dressed in their underwear or not dressed at all. They got enough out of the conversation to gather that M&M was gone and they began crying too. It was a big mess and I felt really uncomfortable. Mark was waiting out in the car, and, as it was two in morning and I had to go to school in a few hours, I wanted to leave; only I just didn't want to leave Cathy. I wished I could take her home with me. Her father said, "Bryon, thank you for your help. I think you'd better be going home, your mother is probably worried."

  I could have told him that Mom never worried about Mark and me--she loved us but let us run our own lives--but I only said, "Yes, sir." I suddenly noticed that where he wasn't bald his hair was charcoal-colored too and that his eyes, though smaller with age, were the same as Cathy's and M&M's. I wondered if it was strange, seeing your eyes in someone else's face. I was tired and thinking funny.

  "Everyone uptight?" asked Mark when I got back into the car.

  "Yep," I said. "I don't blame them."

  "They don't have nothin' to worry about," Mark said. "Half the kids on the Ribbon are living in someone else's car or house or garage. Shoot, I remember last summer, you and me sometimes didn't come home for weeks--we were bumming around the lake or somebody's house. Remember when Williamson rented that apartment for a couple of months with two other guys? I bet half the kids in town stopped there overnight."

  "Yeah, but M&M is just a kid."

  "So are we. Nothing bad happens to you when you're a kid. Or haven't you realized that?"

  "Youth is free from worry," I said sarcastically. "You've been listenin' to too many adults."

  "I don't worry. I'm never scared of nothing, and I never will be," Mark said, "as long as I'm a kid."

  "You can get away with anything," I said, because that phrase came through my head whenever I really thought about Mark.

  "Yeah, I can." He was quiet. "You used to be able to."

  I looked at him, and suddenly it was like seeing someone across a deep pit, someone you couldn't ever reach. It was like the car had widened into the Gulf of Mexico and I was seeing Mark through a telescope.

  "What's happening?" I said, half out loud, but Mark was asleep.

  *

  M&M didn't come home the next day like his father thought he would. Cathy and I ran up and down the Ribbon every night for a week, but it wasn't fun any more because we were looking out for M&M. We never did find him. We must have stopped sixty million little long-haired kids, thinking they were M&M, but none of them was. I began watching for him everywhere.

  I got a job in a supermarket and I did a pretty good job of changing my attitude, outwardly at least. I couldn't help thinking smart-aleck things, but I could help saying them. Sacking groceries wasn't the most fun job in the world, but I was bringing in money. Mark was bringing in money, too, more than he ever had before. I couldn't imagine him stealing all of it, so I figured he must have gone in serious for poker. I never asked him where he got it, and Mom didn't either. Of course, she would never think Mark was getting it dishonestly. Besides, none of us was in any position to turn away extra money.

  One night a couple of weeks after M&M disappeared, Mark and me went goofing around by ourselves again. It was almost as if we had never felt a gulf between us, never been separated by something we couldn't see. We drove up and down the Ribbon, trying to pick up chicks and get into drag races, even though our car wasn't all that fast. I was kind of halfhearted about picking up chicks, too, as I was more serious about Cathy than I let on, even to Cathy herself.

  "Hey," Mark said suddenly. "Lookit who's over there in the parking lot."

  It was Angela and a bunch of other chicks--her type, by the way they dressed and the way they were acting. You can always tell when a girl wants to be picked up.

  "Let's pull in," Mark said. He was smiling.

  "Sure," I said, feeling, with the old sense of thrill, that something was up, something was going to happen. We pulled into the parking lot, and immediately we were surrounded by girls.

  "Outa the way,"
I said superiorly. "I want to see Angela."

  "Bryon!" she yelled, and jumped for me the minute I got out of the car. "Bryon, I'm so glad to see you!"

  She was pretty drunk. I let her hug me though, catching Mark's wink. "Where ya been keeping yourself, Angel?" I said. "How's married life?"

  She let go with a string of swear words which told me pretty well what she thought of married life, her in-laws, and her husband.

  "I never cared about him anyway. I thought I was having--I mean, I thought I was, but I wasn't--and that's the only reason I married him, the louse." She was half-crying now, between obscenities. "You're the only boy I ever cared about, Bryon."

  "Sure," I said. I still hated the sight of her. She was as beautiful as ever, so striking that she could have been a movie star, but I remembered all the trouble she had caused, compared her to Cathy, and hated her. I let her hug me and bawl into my shirt front because Mark was winking at me.

  "Angel, let's go for a ride," Mark said. "You and Bryon can talk over old times and maybe I can get some more booze for you."

  "Sure," Angela said, always eager for free booze. I couldn't believe she was that glad to see me.

  We drove around for a while, Angela telling us all of her problems--her husband didn't have a job, her brothers were both in jail, her old man was drunk all the time, and her father-in-law was always slapping her bottom. I had always taken her family for granted--they weren't so different from most of the families in our neighborhood. But now that I had seen Cathy's home--not rich, not much more than poor, but where everybody cared about each other and tried to act like decent people--the picture Angela was painting was making me sick. I could hardly stand for her to be hanging onto my arm.

  At Mark's request I pulled into a parking lot across the street from a liquor store. Mark got out and disappeared. He was looking for somebody to buy the booze. You can't legally buy booze until you're twenty-one in this state, so we always have to get some old guy to buy it for us, usually somebody's big brother. If you can't come up with one of them, there was bound to be some rummy hanging around who was willing to buy it if you gave him a little extra to buy something for himself. I sat in the car and talked to Angela, who had completely given up to tears--it was the first time since I had known her that I had seen her cry. She was a tough little chick. Her eye makeup was running all over my shirt front, but that didn't bother me as much as the way it was running down her face in dark streaks. She almost looked like she was behind bars.