“Specially her. What is your name, girl?”
“That’s Carol,” said Ted Herring. “Isn’t she amazing? Carol — you were great.”
Carol looked even sexier swaddled in her silky purple choir robe. “Thank you, Ted. I guess some people just can’t handle realism.”
Passworth said, “I told you to cover up that costume, Carol Ann.”
“Yes ma’am. But the T-shirt just looked so silly, you know?”
I felt proud of Passworth, sticking up for us so loudly. That went a long way toward making up for the fact that we were out on the highway again, in the dark, walking back to Itta Bena.
Eddie sagged along at the end of the group, as if most of his helium had been let out. He said he thought the show was playing very well when they stopped it, who knows with a nip here and a tuck there . . . his voice trailed off and he said nothing more.
Walking back didn’t feel as long as walking out there, since we knew how far it would be. Chorus members talked in low voices. I followed the skittering flashlight beams.
We topped a rise to a glad sight, the homey yellow lights of the Leflore Motor Court. Parked in front, idling, waiting for us, was a glowing Greyhound bus, lit up cool blue from inside.
Mrs. Passworth said, “I got half a mind to just put us on that thing and go home right this minute.”
We groaned. For us, spending the night was the whole point of the trip.
“Oh, I suppose you poor children are exhausted. All right. Go to your rooms now, and shut out the lights. I don’t want any trouble, you hear? And listen — y’all did great tonight. Never mind that old man. You made me proud. Give yourselves a nice round of applause.”
We clapped politely, but it was not like having other people clap for you.
“Good night, all. Eddie, get some sleep.” She slipped into her room and shut the door.
We all watched Eddie fumbling his key in the lock. Finally he got the door open and fell into his room. He slammed the door shut with the key dangling from the outside of the lock.
We watched and waited until he opened the door, snatched the key from the lock, slammed it shut again.
Everyone filtered off to their rooms. Some of the boys wanted to play cards, and there was a rumor that some girls had a bottle of wine.
“Poor Eddie,” I said.
Tim sniffed. “Yeah. So what.”
The fluorescent light gave our room a ghastly flickering pallor. I turned on the TV — a swimmy black-and-white picture. Miss Kitty’s image rippled like gasoline fumes on a hot day.
“Oh please, Gunsmoke?” said Tim. “The most boring show in history. What else is on?”
“That’s it. One channel. Flip around if you don’t believe me.” I threw myself across my bed. The mattress had no bounce. “Mm, nice bed.”
“You can watch this crap if you want, Skippy. I’m going to sleep.” He kicked his shoes off, pulled the covers halfway up his face, and closed his eyes.
“Wait — that’s it? You’re just going to sleep?”
One eye opened. “Yes.”
“You don’t need to pee, or anything?”
“No.” He snuggled into his blanket.
“Shouldn’t you at least brush your teeth?”
“More like my mother every day,” Tim said.
I rummaged in my duffel bag for my toothbrush. “Here we are with nobody around to make us go to bed for like the first time ever — and you want to sleep?” I filled my mouth with Crest foam and made burbling gargling sounds.
“Well, Sluggo, if you had brought the whiskey and cards and ceegars, we could have us a good old-fashioned poker game!”
I bared my rabies-foamed fangs at him. “Yarrrrghhh.”
“Lovely.” Tim snapped off the lamp, flopped onto his other side.
“Excuse me for living,” I said.
He didn’t reply.
“Tim?”
“What is it, Durwood?”
“I don’t know. Go to sleep.”
“With who?” he said.
“Hmm, let me think . . . Carol Nason. But I don’t think I can afford it.”
“Oh sure you can, she looked like about ten bucks to me. No, but really. That’s who you’d want to go to bed with? Of all the people here?”
“I guess so,” I said. “Yeah, why not?”
“Okay then. Carol’s in Room twelve. You may have to wait, though. There’s probably a line at the door.” He feigned sleep.
No amount of wheedling could get him to say anything more. He affected a deep, steady sleep.
I pondered Miss Kitty on TV, painted up just like Carol Nason as a grandmother. I wondered if real-life prostitutes had to retire at a certain age, or were there men who paid to have sex with old women? I banished that thought and decided to close my eyes, just for a minute.
I don’t know what time it was when Tim got up to turn off the TV, but the sudden silence and darkness woke me a little. I heard him bumping around in the bathroom.
I slid back down into my dream — one of those long exhausting dreams where you’re late for every class, you keep missing the bus, the phone keeps ringing, the floor is too slippery to stand, and everyone is mad at you. I woke up in a knot of frustrated tension, let out a big sigh, slumped down in the bed.
I heard voices outside. A dim streetlight glow filtered in through the plastic-lace curtain.
I heard the toilet flush. Tim shuffled in and dropped face-first onto his bed.
Something about those voices made me want to hear what they were saying, way in the middle of the night. Was that somebody laughing, or — crying? Who was speaking in such a low urgent voice?
I padded over to the window. “Tim. Something is weird. Listen.”
He said, “Hmm?” but didn’t really wake up.
I opened the door to hear better. At once I recognized Passworth’s voice. Someone behind her was crying.
I went out. They made a little huddle on the far side of the parking lot. A white police car. They were gathered around a green suitcase. Passworth was there, and the motel manager. One of the chaperone dads. A policeman.
That was not a girl I’d heard crying. That was Eddie.
Every so often he got louder, but not loud enough for me to make out what he was saying.
I glanced down the wall of rooms and saw three or four guys in the doorways, watching this scene: Ted Herring, and two doors down from him Mickey and Ben, and there was Matt Smith.
The manager seemed to be arguing with Passworth. Why would Eddie be crying? My brain tried to make sense of it. Somebody close to Eddie had died, his mother or father. That would account for hysterics in the middle of the night.
I turned back to our room. “Tim, you might want to wake up for this.”
He didn’t stir.
Eddie pushed Passworth away and started screaming in a high, delirious voice. The policeman wrestled him into the back of his car. The motel manager put the green suitcase in the trunk and closed the lid. The cop got behind the wheel and drove off. The windows were rolled up, but I could hear Eddie’s screams trailing off down the road.
Ted Herring went into his room, shut the door.
I walked over to Mickey. “What is it, man? What’s going on?”
“Too weird, huh? The son of a bitch woke me up.”
“Who did?”
“Eddie. Didn’t you get the call?”
“What call?”
“Hell, I thought he called everybody in the whole motel.”
“He called you?”
“He woke me up, and he asked if I —” He didn’t want to say it. “If I wanted a blow job.”
“Eddie said that? No way.”
“Yeah, I think he dialed every damn room,” said Mickey. “What did he think, we wouldn’t recognize his voice? Incredible.” He shook his head. “Later, man.” He went into his room, closed the door.
The small hairs on my neck prickled up. I felt a cold weight in my stomach.
I drift
ed back to our room. My first thought: Of course Eddie was queer. Of course! It hit me like water in the face. How could I not have known it before?
I did know it. I knew all along. Tim and I had even joked about it. I just didn’t want to think about it as something that might actually be true.
I thought all queers were like that man who kissed me outside the emergency room in Alabama — hasty, lonely, desperate. Twisted men who got pleasure from forcing themselves on boys they found stranded on the roadside.
And maybe that’s who Eddie secretly was. But I never thought he was crazy enough to do this. Oh, poor Eddie.
I didn’t care how upset he was about his show. It seemed incredibly dangerous to call guys on the phone, guys who knew him, and ask that question, straight out. Someone was bound to recognize his voice and turn him in.
Maybe he had tried it before, and someone had said yes. Maybe he got a thrill just from calling.
I didn’t like thinking about it.
Poor Eddie. How could he do something so stupid? Tomorrow, everybody would know.
Poor Eddie.
I went back to bed. Tim was still unaware, sound asleep in his clothes and his shoes. I fell on my bed and crashed down into sleep. I did not have any more dreams.
16
TIM WAS SHOCKED when I told him. “Wow. Poor Eddie.” What else could he say?
We loaded our luggage into the hold of the bus. Most of the boys had these odd, furtive looks, shifty eyes and hands jammed in pockets. The subject of regular sex was unsettling enough, but sex between boys? Unimaginable. I felt sorry for Eddie, but even more disgusted by what he had done. What an appalling way to bring up the subject, calling boys and asking them flat out what they might like. Hey, want a blow job? Of course I wanted a blow job, name me one boy on this bus who didn’t want a blow job — but the question was, did you want it now? At the Leflore Motor Court? From Eddie Smock?
Everyone slept on the drive home. No one put ice cubes down anyone’s back. Passworth sat up front with her eyes on the bus driver, who had the good sense to be white. Tim dozed in the aisle seat. Cool air came up from slots beneath the window, chilling my arm to a pleasant numbness. I pressed my cheek to the glass and watched the green fields go blurring by.
The bus flashed past the Minor exit, the last stretch of I-20 into Jackson. Tim yawned. “Are we there yet?”
“Just passed Minor. Gee thanks, you were great company on the ride.”
He stretched. “What did I miss?”
“Not much.”
He squinted at me. “You sat there looking out the window the whole way?”
“Yep.”
“How come, Durwood?”
“Thinking about Eddie. What do you think made him do that?”
“He’s a queer. Does that come as a big surprise to you?”
“No, but — he knew he’d get caught. He had to know. That’s what I can’t get over.”
Tim stared at me for a while. “I guess some people can’t help it,” he said. “Even if they might get caught.”
We left the interstate at Robinson Road. Passworth had the driver turn up the lights, and she stood at the head of the aisle. “Children, I talked it over with Reverend Fain on the phone this morning,” she said. “For now we’re going to postpone our other performances.”
We groaned.
“Postpone?” cried Alicia Duchamp. “What does that mean?”
“We’ll just have to wait and see, Alicia. I knew y’all would be disappointed. You all worked so hard. But this is not the first incident with Eddie, they’ve had all these phone calls at the — well, anyway. Let’s try to have some sympathy for him. Sometimes a person doesn’t know how to handle his feelings appropriately. Obviously Eddie has some problems. We need to pray for him. All right? Now let’s get off this bus in an orderly fashion.”
We hissed to a stop in the Full Flower parking lot. Parents leaned against their cars, waiting for us. We stepped down into hot soggy air. I spotted Mom’s station wagon, smoke rising from the cigarette she held out the window.
But wait, that wasn’t Mom. That arm was hairy.
That was Dad, driving Mom’s car. But Dad didn’t smoke. “Timmy, I gotta go.”
“Don’t forget, Sonny and Cher Saturday night. I’ll pick you up at six.”
“I’m going to Arnita’s now. I’ll make sure she knows.”
“Okay,” he said. “Later, gator.”
That could not be my father smoking, but yes it was. I threw my duffel in back and got in the passenger side. He made no move to start the car.
He looked exhausted, disheveled. He wore a ratty blue knit shirt, paint-spattered Saturday pants, and flip-flops. First time I’d ever seen him in flip-flops.
“Thanks for coming to get me,” I said. “What’s going on?”
“What do you think is going on, son?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve never seen me smoke before, have you?”
“No.”
“Well? Were you gonna say something about it? Or just sit there and not say a word?”
I shrugged. “Why are you smoking?”
“I smoke all the time when I’m out of town,” he said. “You didn’t know that, did you? Maybe I’m different than you think. Maybe I’m not just your mean old daddy. Some people happen to think I’m a lot of fun.” He was acting so strange that I wondered if he had taken up drinking too.
He started the car. I glanced across the parking lot. Mrs. Passworth’s Nova was already gone. Tim was folding himself into the Pinto.
Dad pulled out onto Van Winkle Road.
“I thought Mom was coming to get me.”
“A slight change in plans. I hope you don’t mind, I was dispatched to serve as your chauffeur. If that suits your high standards.”
“Yes sir. I said thank you.”
“How was your little trip, son? What’d you think about that Delta country up there?”
In my entire life, I can say with certainty, Dad had never once sought my opinion on anything. It felt strange to have this chatty, unkempt man smoking a Camel at the wheel of Mom’s station wagon.
How could I begin to explain what had happened in Itta Bena? Even if he cared, which he didn’t. “It was okay,” I said.
“Good.” He smiled. “Always want our Daniel to have himself a good time. Don’t want anything getting in the way of your fun, no sir.”
This new Dad was strange, but not altogether unpleasant. He was only pretending to be nice, but it was better than his usual dark silence. “Hey Dad, would you mind dropping me at Arnita’s? I promised I would help with her homework.”
“No. I need you to come home with me. Gonna help me with a little project. If that doesn’t inconvenience you too much.”
“What, the grass? I swear, Dad, this whole weekend I’ll do nothing but —”
“Not the grass. More important than the grass.” This was indeed something new, for there was nothing more important than the grass.
“Dad, where is your car?”
His eye twitched. “It’s not my car. It’s a company car. It belongs to the company.”
“Is it in the shop or something?”
“We don’t need to talk about the car,” he said. “See, the thing is . . . TriDex has just been taken over by this German company. Beiden something. I swear to God, we beat the hell out of ’em in the war, and now they’re over here buying up the durn country. My line of work — I mean, the job I’ve been doing . . . they’re phasing out our division.”
“What does that mean?” I knew what it meant but I wanted to make him say it.
He stared straight ahead. “Means I’m taking some time off while they look for a new assignment for me. I’m first in line for any openings. It’s not exactly good times in the petrochemical business, unless you happen to be an A-rab. Everybody’s cutting back. I understand their position.”
“You got fired?” I said.
He shook his head, gave out a
small laugh like, can you even believe this level of disrespect? He turned a baleful gaze on me: “Not fired. Laid off. Fired is when you don’t perform. There was no problem with my performance. District Salesmanager of the Year, three years in a row. I worked my butt off twenty-four years for those sonofabitches.”
Dad was not a natural cusser. It made me feel sorry for him, and that was not a natural feeling.
“Let’s talk about you, son. How are you doing? Is your life turning out like you hoped it would?”
That was a facetious question, like Do you want me to stop this car? I said, “Sure. I mean — so far, so good.”
“Fine, fine,” he boomed, as if I were one of his sales prospects on the phone. “Real good, very happy to hear it.”
He took the Minor exit. At the top of the ramp I said, “Dad, listen — I can walk to Arnita’s from here. I’ll get a ride home.” I made a move to unlock the door.
He put out his arm to stop me. “Oh no. You’re coming with me. I need you today.”
“For what?”
“We got a job to do.” The tires squealed as we pulled away.
“Where’s Mom?”
“At the hospital with Janie. Don’t you even remember? Your sister had her tonsils out this morning. While you were off doing your own thing. I guess you were too busy to remember.”
Mom had told me that was going to happen, but it had passed straight through my brain without stopping. “Sorry, Dad. How’s she doing?”
“She’ll live. She’s got a hell of a sore throat.” He swung the wagon onto Buena Vista Drive. I hadn’t mowed the front yard in nearly two weeks. The old Dad, the non–flip-flop-wearing Dad, would have had plenty to say about the white trash who must live in a house with a yard like this. This new Dad pulled into the driveway and switched off the engine. He took the house key off the ring, left the others in the ignition. He told me to leave my overnight bag in the car. “And bring those boxes in the trunk.”
I carried a stack of flattened moving cartons to the house. He sent me to the kitchen for strapping tape.
There I found Jacko eating a bowl of cornflakes off his little table, under the supervision of Mrs. Wagner, our neighbor from across the street.
“Oh good, y’all are home!” She got up from her chair. “Well I must say, Jack Otis was no trouble at all. Just as pleasant as he could be.”