Within the same daze that had sent her searching for this terrible book in her hand, she opened it, to a place Eulah had marked, with a piece of sturdy cardboard stuck between the pages. She saw highlighted words:
“And on her forehead was the name written, Whore—”
She shut the book, pushed it back with all the boxes into the closet.
When had it turned so goddamned hot?
Why was she clinging to it again, clutching Eulah’s Bible and waiting for Lyle to come home from his job?
What am I doing? That sudden clarity came to her when she saw that Clarita was watching her intently and she realized she had spoken words aloud—“waiting for Lyle to come home.”
She dropped the Bible.
Clarita picked it up. Was it possible that Sylvia had been preparing to go to that thing they called the Gathering of Souls—and to take Lyle with her?
Sylvia inhaled and shook her head as if in answer to Clarita’s silent question, No, she would not go there.
But, Clarita thought with apprehension, the evangelists would be back again in six months.
3
On the perils of not being a geek.
Among the malicious boys who marveled at the fact that someone who otherwise would have been tortured as a “geek” could make their own girls drool over him, there was one who was lying in wait for Lyle. Spud was planning to humiliate him by knocking the shit out of him in front of everyone, and then the geek would be shoved off his pedestal. The conniving young man was nicknamed Spud because his face, his friends said, looked like one—with blemishes that never disappeared, only multiplied. Still, he was hefty, a tackle on the football team, and so he was popular.
He met up with Lyle when Lyle was doing his daily pushups in the playing field, apart from the others.
“Hey!” Spud called out. His friends gathered, including the one Lyle had shaken outside the classroom. Spud’s girl was there, too, with others, several of whom had expressed the opinion that Lyle was not only “gorgeous” but cute as well. A few of the girls upheld that he was conceited, though he was not. They thought that only because that allowed them to dismiss why he might not be interested in them.
Lyle stood up, wiping with his shirt the perspiration the 250 pushups had inspired. “Hi,” he greeted Spud, whom he felt sorry for because he knew it hurt him to have such a blemished face. “Whatya up to?”
“This!” Spud aimed his fist at Lyle’s jaw.
Lyle fell back. Everything went pitch-black, and then he saw glittery flashing stars. He shook his head, his vision clearing. “Wow!” he said to Spud, who stood over him, inviting catcalls aimed at Lyle from his friends, including the girls who thought Lyle was conceited. “Wow, that really hurt.” Lyle rubbed his jaw, shook his head. “Hey, how’dya do that?” He stood up.
Was the guy really so fuckin’ dumb he was asking him how he’d managed to knock him down?—and giving him another chance to show how tough he was before the others. “Look, stupid,” he said, “you hold your fist like this.”
Lyle did.
“Not like that, stupid,” Spud corrected, basking in the laughter he was inciting.
“Like this?” Lyle asked.
“Tighter at the thumb, dumbo, don’t you know nothing?” Spud said, and demonstrated with his hand, aimed menacingly at Lyle.
“You mean like this?” Lyle’s fist shot out at Spud’s jaw. Spud toppled to the ground.
Lyle looked down at him, waited until Spud, too, had shaken away glittery stars and was rubbing his own jaw. “Thanks for the tips,” Lyle said as Spud got up, saying only, “Shee-it.”
“Ooooh, my God,” a girl squealed, “he’s so strong—and so kind—and he’s so cute!”
Wait a minute, wait just a fuckin’ second! What the fuck was going on?
That’s what Tim—“ole Tim,” his cohorts called him, in buddy-camaraderie—thought as he ambled onto the scene and saw his friend Spud wiping away dust from his ass where that fuckin’ geek had just knocked him down. Ole Tim was a hefty wrestler who lifted weights and thought he would be Mr. America although he was flabby.
That son of a bitch Lyle was too fuckin’ smart-ass for a geek—and, goddammit, he was a geek. But why the hell weren’t the girls laughing at him? The geek was odd, right?—took some guys’ lunches to give to geeky Mexicans who hung around him like he was king geek, with those boots and cowboy hat. How was it that a geek—a fuckin’ geek—could get the best grades when he didn’t listen to anyone? Smart-ass geek!—punching out Spud and shaking that other guy. Odd? Shit, he carried that guitar with him to that vacant lot and sat there serenading himself.
“I say you’re a goddamned geek,” ole Tim stood right in front of Lyle and shouted.
“Yeah, geek!” Spud’s courage resurged. Shit, the geek had taken him by surprise earlier, that’s all. Shit.
“Yeah?” Lyle said to ole Tim, vaguely because—look!—the beautiful dark-haired girl Maria was suddenly there with her girlfriends.
“Don’t you like sports, geek?” Ole Tim touched the large REV on his jersey—Rio Escondido Varsity.
“Maybe sometimes,” Lyle said. The day was warm, the warmth felt good on his skin, especially since he had opened his shirt wide over his chest. He blinked up at the sun, not wanting any interruption from this wrestler during these pleasant moments. Besides, he was aware that Maria had sidled closer to him; he’d like to bask in the warmth with her.
“Not knowing if you like sports makes you a geek,” ole Tim said.
“It sure does,” Spud joined in, and his pals approved.
“Geeks don’t look like him!” A fluttery girl pointed to Lyle.
Among those who had gathered was a somewhat small Mexican boy with thick, long dark eyelashes. He followed Lyle around quietly all the time, trying to imitate him—trying to strut like him, even though he had to stand on tiptoes since Lyle towered over him. “He ain’t no geek, man,” the Mexican kid, Raul, said. “You’re the geek ’cause you’re jealous of him ’cause you’re so damn ugly.”
Maria giggled in approval, punching at the small boy playfully, an ally.
“What the fuck’s the matter with you, squirt?” ole Tim demanded of Raul. “I’ll take care of you later, creep-shit.”
“The little fag called you ugly, man, you gonna let ’im get away with that?” Spud encouraged ole Tim. He looked around to recruit several team guys, including the burly guy Lyle had shaken in the hallway.
“Yeah, fag, that’s what you are, a faggot, that’s why you hang around the geek all the time,” the red-faced wrestler said to Raul.
Raul winced and looked away, shuffling his shoes on the dirt.
Encouraged by the fact that Lyle was still smiling as if he wanted to placate this incident, ole Tim pushed on: “Maybe you’re both faggots.” He consulted his comrades. They elbowed their approval echoing him, aiming at Lyle: “Are ya?” … “Are ya a fag?” … “Hey, fag!”
“Maybe—” Lyle had not been listening. His cock had fluttered when Maria lowered her blouse and blew between her breasts, cooling herself.
“Goddamn! Are you admitting you’re a fuckin’ fag?” the boy Lyle had shaken crowed. “You are a fag.”
“So?” Lyle said, surrendering to the pleasure of being aroused, especially now that Maria had tilted her head and a portion of her blouse had slipped slightly over her shoulder.
“You gonna let ’im get away with that, Lyle?—calling us both fags?” the kid Raul demanded of his hero.
“What do you want me to do?” Lyle asked him, earnestly, for his opinion. He liked the Mexican kid. Although they’d never spoken, he’d noticed him trailing him, trying to become friends, and then dashing off.
“Punch him out,” Raul said.
“Okay.” Lyle’s fist moved forward and punched. Ole Tim reeled back, collapsing on all his weight. Three of his buddies, joined now boldly by Spud, advanced on Lyle.
“Cowards!” Maria threw herself in their path, one hand o
n her throat as if to still a scream of anguish. “You’ll have to go past me first.”
“What the hell?” Ole Tim was genuinely baffled as he turned to consult the others now standing with him.
“Yeah, what the hell?” one of his friends echoed.
Maria cried out, “Take one more step, you cowards, and I shall—I shall—” Not knowing what to threaten, she spread her hands out, extending the protected territory to include Raul.
Lyle bent down and helped the pudgy wrestler up and assisted him in rubbing the dirt off his jersey.
“You’re still a fag, fag!” ole Tim shouted at him.
“Hit him again, Lyle!” Raul coaxed.
Lyle’s fist did. Ole Tim reeled back again.
The four buddies stared at Lyle, then at Maria, and then at each other, puzzled. Rush Lyle?—past the bitch with her arms outstretched like that? Shove her aside? Fuck, man, this was getting too geeky. So they just said, “Shee-it,” and spat on the ground.
Lyle sauntered along. He turned back, waved at Raul—who was dashing away—and he waited for Maria to catch up with him.
Shaking her head as if to shed a decision she must nevertheless make, she ran away. Again!
Why was everyone wanting to punch him out and everyone else running away from him?
4
A lesson well learned.
Clarita got to thinking: Lyle needs to be taught what a father would teach him—she had just earlier noticed a bruise on his face—but he has no father. So—
“Today, I’m going to teach you how to fight—but only to defend yourself, only then.”
Lyle rubbed the bruise under his eye. “I already know how to fight,” he said.
“Oh? Who taught you?” Clarita felt a twitch of jealousy.
“A guy named Spud.” He smiled, not at the memory of Spud punching him out and being punched out but at the memory of Maria standing real close to him.
“All right. Show me!” Clarita demanded. She did not know how to go about it, but she assumed a position she had seen on a television series, her feet somewhat apart, her hands, gathered into fists, flailing about as if she was swatting flies, her large earrings bobbing.
“Clarita, stop, you look silly!” Lyle threw himself on the floor, twisting with laughter.
Clarita assumed her usual dignified demeanor, arranging her hair carefully, secure in the knowledge that Lyle was capable of learning some things on his own. She moved on to another lesson: “Now sit up and listen: Television is nothing but a telephone with pictures.”
5
The call of duty.
There was a woman named Rose who had lived for several years in Rio Escondido—some said for “at least twenty years,” in order to add to her age, which was forty; she was one of those whom time seems to indulge longer than it indulges others. She was, by all accounts, a very attractive woman, if not beautiful. But, oh, she was sexy, had a full, lush body that had survived as an object of desire even when fashions decreed otherwise. She had black hair—well, it wasn’t quite as dark as it had been once, and so she helped its color a little—and her skin was white, creamy white. She kept it that way with Noxzema moisturizer and Olay night cream. To celebrate the endurance of her desirability, and to assert her name, she almost always wore, in season, a fresh rose in her hair. In winter, she wore a felt rose. She often laughed a rich, full-bodied laughter.
She had lived in Dallas, and God knew where else, because she was reputed to have been, and who knew whether today she still was, a “whore,” according to some women in the City. That rumor was not true. But this was: At certain stages of her life, she had accepted presents, and those had included presents of money—“donations,” she called them; but she had never made her favors contingent on being paid. She brought up the subject of a “donation” casually, to be picked up or not. She might say, “Those bills pile up before you’ve had a chance to pay last month’s.” She heard rumors about herself and was not upset, sometimes they pleased her if they made her sound scandalous. She lived in a small house in a neighborhood that was neither good nor bad, “at the edge of everything,” she would have described it.
A man had brought her here on their way to be married somewhere, and he had left her in a motel. One place was as good as another. Besides, she liked the name of the city; it had a sense of mystery—“Hidden River”—and God knows that Rose appreciated mystery, because she was a very soulful woman who responded always to a sense of duty.
Lyle often passed her house on his way to work. What a splendid young man! she had marveled to herself, trying to gauge his age. Young people grew up so quickly, and he was already a man—look at him. She had noticed one pretty girl, especially her, going out of her way to cross his path. I wonder if she’s a virgin? she thought, and concluded, Yes, of course she is.
She wondered all that wistfully, remembering the young man who had lost his virginity with her—and had taken hers, clumsily, painfully, in St. Louis, mauling her, groping himself. When he was through, he had shoved her away. He screamed when he saw that she had, naturally, bled, and accused her of having somehow done that to herself. He had demanded that she tell no one what had happened, saying he regretted it all, and that—in some mysterious way—she had hurt him, right here—he clutched his groin. “That’s what I’ll say, that you’re a liar!” he shouted at her before he ran out. She had thought, I wish he’d known what he was doing so it would have felt good instead of terrible.
Now, in Rio Escondido, Rose stood at the window, waiting. This was the usual time that the fascinating young cowboy walked by. Look! There he was, on his way to his job. How to save that pretty young girl from the kind of awkwardness she herself had first experienced?—and, from what she saw in glimpses of them on the street, the threat would be occurring soon if, as she had come firmly to suspect, he, too, was a virgin.
Duty was calling her, and she would heed that call.
6
Out of the sad decline of Sylvia Love, a question about amazing grace.
Eventually Sylvia made not even the most cursory attempts to hide her drinking from Clarita. She pushed the bottle under the cushion of the sofa only when she heard the door and knew it was Lyle. Even then, she didn’t make much effort to conceal it if she had not managed entirely on the first attempt.
There were days, and they increased, when she fell into terrible dark moods. At work, she would sometimes walk away from customers who were sniffing perfumes. If it was a weekend, she might remain in her room with her bottle. She smoked so much that Clarita had to light some incense about the house to banish the odor.
Sylvia was aware that often Lyle stood outside her room, listening. She could tell his footsteps, easily. She tried to muffle her crying, but the thought that he was out there worrying about her made her sadder, and she couldn’t stop her tears.
Lyle would remain outside his mother’s door, listening to her sorrow. He wouldn’t knock, although he longed to assuage her. He knew she was drinking, but he didn’t want to let her know he knew. He would listen outside her door, trying to draw out her pain, into him.
She began appearing—he didn’t notice this until it had progressed far because it occurred gradually—began appearing in increasingly staid clothes, plain, darkening colors. Whereas, before, she had worn tight clothes that revealed her still-formidable figure, now she wore clothes that concealed it. It was as if she was slowly sinking into a state of mourning. For what? About what?
“Why does she cry so much? Why is she always so sad?”
Clarita was cooking some flavorful chicken rich with red and green peppers, one of Sylvia’s favorite dishes, to lure her to eat.
“Because of my goddamned son-of-a-bitch father,” Lyle said. “But there’s much more, isn’t there, Clarita?”
Clarita tried to shoo his questions away by indicating that he was interrupting her cooking. She would not break her promise to her beloved Sylvia.
“Have you noticed that sometimes she seems
to be brushing something awful off her body? Why?” Lyle asked.
Clarita shook her head. She had noticed that, and dismissed it as a nervous gesture. That was all it was.
“What’s the name of the song she hums?” Lyle asked. “She used to hum it to me. She hums it when she’s alone now.”
Clarita’s eyes grew misty. That song meant more to Sylvia than even she, Clarita, understood. “It’s called ‘Amazing Grace.’”
“What does ‘amazing grace’ mean?” Lyle asked.
“That’s your lesson.” She would consult a priest later to get an official answer. Now she needed to move away from the subject of Sylvia’s moods. She said: “I hear you singing in your room and playing your guitar, so sweetly; you deserve to learn a beautiful Mexican song, It’s called ‘Las Mañanitas.’” She stood very stiffly, a commanding teacher. “The song refers to the songs King David serenaded women with. Mexican men sing it now to pretty ladies, on their birthdays; they sing it at dawn, at their windows. Now you sing the words while I pronounce them.”
Lyle learned to sing “Las Mañanitas” in Spanish and learned what the words meant in English:
These are the morning songs that King David sang;
To beautiful girls, he would sing them like this. …
Humming, warmed by the romance of the song, Clarita leaned back, becoming the pretty lady at her window.
7
What is strange?
“You’re so strange sometimes, Lyle.” Maria said to Lyle. She added quickly, “but I don’t mind because, as you must have noticed, I’m strange, too, in a wonderful way, like you, don’t you think so, Lyle?—that I’m very strange?”
They were walking toward Lyle’s field, taking short steps there, to extend the anticipation of being together. Today, she had easily gotten up with him, to leave class—and the teacher just sighed and gave up.
To indicate how strange she was, Maria looked up at the sky—bursting with giant cumulus clouds like bolls of fresh-picked cotton. She assumed a rapt look, as is expecting a distant call that only she would be able to hear, perhaps share with Lyle, strange one to strange one—the latter possible sharing conveyed when she transferred her eyes onto him, the rapt look holding.