American Boy

  “That’s where you work, right?” Louisa asked me.

  “Right.”

  “But not tonight? How come?”

  “To be with you.” Why was it that every time I said something to Louisa with the hope of impressing her it came out sounding as if it should have been spoken ironically? And the laugh it elicited sounded like pure mockery.

  Johnny and I waited in the car while Louisa went into the Red Hawk Bar.

  “Okay,” I said. “Enough with the suspense. Where are we going?”

  “I thought we’d drive out to Merchants.” Merchants was a public golf course situated on the hills north of Willow Falls.

  “How the hell is that any different from parking in Frenchman’s Forest?”

  “Think back. Last October? The key?”

  I needed no more than that. One Saturday the previous fall, Dr. Dunbar, Mel Howell, Johnny, and I had played the season’s final round of golf. The weather was wretched—wind, cold, and an occasional gust of sleet. We teed off late, and before we did, Ernie Russell, who owned the place, told us that if we needed to get back inside the clubhouse when we finished our round, we could use the key that was always kept in the hollow of an oak.

  “What do you think?” asked Johnny. “The locker room?”

  “It’s not even heated.”

  “At least it’s inside.”

  “Okay. I guess.” Then I lowered my voice, though Louisa had not yet exited the bar. “Do you suppose you could do me a favor? If it looks like she’s getting tight, could you make up a reason for leaving? Just for a while?”

  “Where would I—”

  “Come on. Give me a turn.”

  Johnny drew back, and while I knew him and his moods quite well, I wasn’t sure whether he was bewildered or offended. “A turn? A turn at what?”

  “You know, being alone with her.”

  “What the hell do you think the two of us have been doing anyway?”

  “I have no idea. Since you haven’t told me a goddamn thing.”

  “Because there’s nothing to tell! Her bedroom is on the third floor. Mine’s on the second. She sits across from me at dinner. We hardly see each other.”

  “And yet I keep hearing about the conversations the two of you have.”

  “Conversations? What conversations? What the hell are you talking about?”

  I pulled off a glove and held my hand down by the heat vent in order to feel if the air was warming up. “You said the two of you were talking about school....”

  “I was doing homework, okay? And she asked which subject was hardest. She never finished high school, okay? She wants to know how it works.”

  “And you’re willing to fill her in... .”

  “Why the hell wouldn’t I?”

  “Is she like your big sister or something?”

  “She’s—”

  “Go ahead—she’s what?”

  “She’s ... she’s nothing. Nothing more than a woman who’s living with us for a while.”

  “For how long?”

  Johnny gripped the top of the steering wheel, leaned forward, and rested his head against his hands. “Jesus, Matt. Do you know how you sound?”

  “Suppose you tell me.”

  “Like an asshole, all right? A real asshole.”

  “Gee. When even your best friend won’t tell you.”

  He sat back up, but kept his grip on the steering wheel and his gaze on the Red Hawk. “Yeah, well. Maybe it’s just a phase you’re going through.”

  I pulled up my sleeve as if to look at my watch. She should have reappeared by now. “I wonder what’s taking her so long.”

  Then Johnny asked, “Suppose I do leave you alone with her. Where the hell am I supposed to go, anyway?”

  “Forget it. Sorry I asked.”

  We sat in silence, staring hopefully at the entrance of the Red Hawk Bar like a pair of dogs waiting for their owner to reappear.

  A Ford station wagon pulled into the lot and parked near us. Its doors opened and Johnny said, “Get down, get down!”

  I slumped in my seat, prepared to drop all the way to the floor if necessary.

  “Mr. Veal,” Johnny whispered. “And a woman.”

  Merlyn Veal was our algebra teacher, a tall, lanky, humorless young man a few years out of college. Mr. Veal was a demanding, difficult teacher, and it was rumored that his high standards had put his job in jeopardy. The high school principal, Mr. Linton, had supposedly reprimanded Mr. Veal for the many low grades he dispensed. A teacher was free to give as many Cs as he or she wished, and Ds and Fs could be assigned to the Darrell Knapps and Barbara Turchiks without concern—after all, even if they managed to graduate, they wouldn’t be going any farther than Northland Screens—but when a teacher failed Mary Wynn, the daughter of the principal of Emerson Elementary School, or Bobby Karlstad, the son of the school board president, then that teacher had to be reined in.

  I peered cautiously out the windshield. “They’re going into the Red Hawk,” I said.

  “The woman with him—is she pregnant?” asked Johnny.

  “Big as a house.”

  Johnny sat up again. “That’s Mrs. Veal. Dad thinks she’s going to have twins.”

  “Why the hell would they drive out here just to go to a bar?”

  “Think about it. How often have you seen a teacher go into a bar in Willow Falls?”

  “Well, I don’t sit around keeping watch at the entrances to bars.”

  “You’d want to watch the back doors, anyway,” Johnny said. “Plenty of teachers won’t let themselves be seen going in or out of a bar. Mr. Gregory”—Barney Gregory coached high school football and track, and taught world history—“will only go in or out of a bar through the back door.”

  “But it’s okay to be seen inside? Fucking hypocrites.” If the adolescent mind delights in any abstraction, it’s recognizing hypocrisy in the world. And even though it exists in such abundance that not seeing it would require real effort, somehow its discovery always felt like real insight to us. And then it helped justify our own rude or lawless behavior—after all, who were they to judge us?

  “What the hell do you suppose Mr. and Mrs. Veal do at the Red Hawk?” Johnny asked. “Sit at the bar and chug beers all night? Play pinball?”

  “Nope. With that stomach she couldn’t get close enough to the machine to work the flippers.”

  “You wonder why don’t they just get a goddamn bottle and stay home.”

  “Because she nags him, I bet. ‘You never take me anywhere.’ When all he wants to do is stay home and work on algebra problems.”

  “She didn’t get knocked up from him doing equilateral equations.”

  “I guess it’s not a hell of a lot different from Louisa wanting to come out here to buy beer.”

  Johnny twisted around in his seat to look at me. “I’ve been thinking. Maybe we should have a signal or something. You know, for when I’m supposed to take off tonight. And how long do you want me to stay away?”

  “No, man. I said forget it. It was a stupid idea, anyway. I shouldn’t have brought it up. Like I’d ever have a chance with her.”

  Just then Louisa came out of the Red Hawk, toting a case of beer. And a paper bag. This time the beer was Budweiser.

  “What took so long?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Just shooting the shit with the bartender. We’re old friends now.”

  Smells traveled easily in the small warm cave of the car, and I could smell Louisa’s breath. She’d had a drink in the Red Hawk. And it was probably on the house.

  Johnny put the car in gear and began to back away from the bar. “What’s in the bag?” he asked.

  She reached into the bag, took out a bottle, and held it aloft. It was Regal House Red, a cheap sweet wine. “Lester used to mix beer and wine. ‘Fucked-up juice,’ he called it. Pardon my French.”

  “Literally mixed together?” I asked. “In the same container?”

  “Sure. You open a beer, drink a
little, then fill the can back up with wine. The more you drink, the more wine you pour in.”

  Johnny saw the advantage of this concoction right away. “Like an everlasting beer!” he said with delight.

  “Exactly. Only stronger.”

  “But doesn’t it taste like shit?” I asked.

  Johnny and Louisa both groaned at my question, then laughed. It was the conspiratorial laugh again, and though I’d heard it often, it was never in chorus with my own laughter.

  14.

  THE MERCHANTS CLUBHOUSE SAT at the top of the highest hill in the county, and looked down on both the first and ninth holes. The ninth, a par five, climbed up from the valleys and flatlands below, so that golfers often finished their rounds panting with effort, especially in the summer. But the fairways and greens—sand until two years earlier—were covered with more than a foot of snow now.

  Standing in this snow, Johnny, Louisa, and I huddled around a massive oak, keeping its trunk between us and the biting north wind. We were in the tree’s shadow, as an almost-full moon slanted its light across the hilltop. Johnny groped inside a head-high hollow in the tree. “I know it’s in here,” he said.

  “What makes you so sure?” I asked. “How do you know Ernie doesn’t take the key out at the end of the season?”

  “Because,” Johnny said, reaching farther in, “I’ve got it!”

  “Good thing the squirrels didn’t beat you to it,” said Louisa.

  “Squirrels would have trouble carrying this off,” replied Johnny, rapping against his gloved palm the six-inch length of lead pipe the key was wired to.

  Snow had drifted against the clubhouse door, and Johnny and I kicked through its hard crust, clearing enough room to pull open the screen door. He took off his glove to turn the key in the lock, and we opened the door and stepped inside. “Don’t turn on the light,” I said.

  “Why the hell not? Who’s going to be out here?” It was true. The golf course was at the end of its own quartermile drive, and we’d seen no sign of other cars on the road nor out in the lot.

  It proved to be a moot point anyway. When Johnny flipped the light switch, nothing happened. The power had been turned off for the season. Fortunately, enough moonlight found its way into the clubhouse for us to see, though dimly.

  Louisa was right behind us with the bottle of wine.

  No one in Willow Falls ever used the term “Merchants clubhouse” with irony or derision, but they might have. The dingy low-ceilinged cinder block building was longer than it was wide, and not much bigger than a trailer. Right inside the door was the counter where Ernie Russell took your money (unless you held a membership, as the Dunbar family did), and sold you a Milky Way and a Coke when you finished your round. Through a door was the men’s locker room (women also golfed at Merchants, but they had no restroom or changing facility), which had a sink, a toilet in an open stall, a urinal, a single shower, and a row of ten freestanding lockers that had been salvaged from the old junior high school. In front of the lockers a bench was bolted to the floor. Even in the middle of winter, the clubhouse still had its characteristic smell of analgesic liniment and urinal cakes.

  We went into the locker room, where I set the case of beer on the bench. Johnny was eager to try a wine-beer cocktail, and he had his own notion as to how it should be made. He opened a can of Budweiser and immediately poured half its contents down the shower drain. He refilled his can with wine. “We ought to have a funnel for this,” he said. But amazingly, he spilled very little.

  He took two long swallows. “Hey, this is my drink! I’ve never much cared for the taste of beer anyway.” He licked wine from his fingers, then put his gloves back on.

  Louisa didn’t mix the two in a single container. She drank from the bottle of wine and then chased that with beer. She held the wine out to me.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Wine on top beer, never fear,” said Johnny.

  “If you say so. I’ll stick with beer.”

  Louisa pulled up the collar of her coat. “Christ, it’s as cold in here as it was outside.”

  “At least we’re out of the wind,” I suggested.

  “You remember how it was howling last fall?” Johnny asked me.

  “I remember hitting a five iron into the wind, and it didn’t go a hundred yards.”

  “It’s like being inside a goddamn igloo,” said Louisa.

  I wondered again why Johnny felt this location was superior to his car, where we at least had a source of heat. This wasn’t what I had in mind when I suggested that we find someplace other than the car to drink. Louisa was right. The locker room’s whitewashed walls could have been blocks of ice.

  As if he could read my mind, Johnny asked, “You want to go back out in the car? It’s cramped, but there’s heat.”

  It had more than heat. It was the car—and much of the drama, danger, and excitement of our lives occurred in cars. Johnny had been trying to please me when he came up with this location. But what was I thinking? Cars were the realm of possibility, and in them we had power. Things that could never happen anywhere else happened in the front or backseats of cars.

  Louisa seemed to read my thoughts. “I’m getting a little old to be drinking beer in a parked car.”

  “Should we go back to Frenchman’s Forest?” I offered. “I bet we could get into that place where you lived with Lester. Didn’t it have a wood-burning stove?”

  “I’m never going back there.” Her tone was dismissive and resolute.

  Always eager to lighten any situation, Johnny said, “If we keep moving, we’ll stay warm!” As if to illustrate his theory, he did a few jumping jacks. Then he ran from one end of the locker room to the other. I don’t know if all that activity really warmed him, but it accomplished his real purpose. By the time he finished his second sprint, Louisa was laughing.

  “I lived for a while in this tiny apartment over a hardware store,” she said. “The only heat was what came up from the store, and the owner would turn it way down when the store closed. Nights were so damn cold I swear to God I could have put milk on the kitchen table and it would have stayed as cold as in the icebox.”

  “Where was that?” I asked.

  “A little town in North Dakota. You’ve never heard of it.”

  “Try me.”

  “Haugen. It’s south of Fargo.”

  “You’re right. I never heard of it. Is that where you’re from?”

  “My dad was from Haugen, so I ended up there a few times. There and on the family farm.”

  “And now you’re going to live in Denver. Isn’t that the plan?”

  “That’s right. Someday. And what’s with the third degree?”

  I lit a cigarette from the pack of Pall Malls I’d stolen from my mother’s carton. “Just trying to get to know you a little better.”

  “Yeah? Why’s that?”

  “I think you and I have a lot in common.”

  Her laugh was like a stifled sneeze. She stepped close to me and scissored her fingers in front of my nose. “Here’s something we have in common. I need a cigarette, too.”

  I struck a match to light her cigarette, and as she puffed it to life she cut her eyes up at me. It was the kind of look that sends you to the mirror to see what someone else has seen in your face.

  Meanwhile, Johnny had opened another can of beer and was once again pouring part of it down the drain. This time it seemed as if wine made up more than half the drink.

  “What did Lester call this again?” he asked Louisa.

  “Fucked-up juice.”

  “That’s a good name. A very good name. I can tell already this stuff will fuck a guy up. ”

  But the term that Johnny and I were likely to use was “tight,” because it belonged more to the world of sophisticated adult consumption of alcohol than it did to the sloppy, stupid, beer-swilling behavior that characterized so much teenage drinking. And yet the word didn’t really apply to Johnny very well. The more Johnny drank, the looser he g
ot. His tongue flapped and his gestures became large, as if all his restraints were suddenly undone. I, on the other hand, could rightly be called “tight” when I drank. Because I didn’t like to lose control, I always kept a close watch on myself.

  Louisa followed Johnny’s advice and moved around the clubhouse to keep warm. “So is this some kind of exclusive men’s club? Am I in the inner sanctum or something?”

  “Nah,” said Johnny. “The public is welcome.” He spread his arms wide. “The entire goddamn public. Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses looking to break par.”

  Louisa continued to explore the locker room, and in a corner, behind a mop and bucket, she found a furled banner. I knew what it said without seeing it unrolled: “Merchants Golf Tourney: Three Days, Five Flights.” The banner hung over the clubhouse door every August.

  But Louisa obviously wasn’t interested in its message. She unrolled it only to drape it around her shoulders for warmth.

  “Now that,” Johnny said, “is how they should advertise the tournament.”

  Louisa struck a mock-seductive pose, as if she were wearing nothing under the banner. “Play golf with us,” she purred. The line and the pose were supposed to be a joke, and Johnny and I both laughed. But Louisa’s performance was so quick and sure that it also left me astonished. I had never seen her talent for mimicry before, and it was so impressive I realized in an instant that even if her talent was natural, it still must have been nurtured and developed with practice. I imagined Louisa in front of a mirror, imitating Edie Adams in her commercials for White Owl cigars. But then another thought occurred to me: Had I really never seen Louisa’s talent for mimicry before? How could I be sure?

  “Johnny’s played in that tournament a few times,” I said.

  “Is that right?” Louisa sat down on the bench, using the banner as a shawl. “Are you a good golfer?”

  “I’m not bad.” Johnny took a long swallow from his beer can, then shook it next to his ear, as if hearing were the only way he could tell whether there was any liquid left. “But Matt, Matt hits the ball a mile.”