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Authors: Mary Glickman

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BOOK: Home In The Morning
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Jackson was not yet old enough to possess the bit of self-knowledge required to inform him he was a flat-out sucker for the simplest of feminine wiles. His adolescent romances were one instance of manipulative disaster after another, although Jackson was the last individual on the planet to view them that way. When in tenth grade Amanda Riley dumped him the day before Christmas vacation so she could go to the Reindeer Ball with the dimwitted star of Stonewall High’s wrestling team rather than the boy who’d done her homework all year with barely a kiss to show for it, Jackson was crushed but forgiving. Mama was not. The first morning of vacation when he arrived to the breakfast table late, glum and red-eyed, she won from him the sad tale of his broken heart at the first prodding.

Well, she pronounced, at least now I can rest easy that you’re not stuck on stupid. I was worried how that yellow-haired sack of vacuity would affect your mind. You’ve got to upgrade your taste, boy. You need a gal with a little more upstairs and a little less down there. Someone who knows what you’re worth and won’t throw you over for the first mess of muscles wrapped around a stick that comes along.

Hot-cheeked and wretched, Jackson defended his Jezebel using much the same argument as Amanda Riley employed when she broke the news. Mama, I don’t think she could help herself. She’s a junior
squad cheerleader. A cheerleader can’t say no to a varsity man. Why, that would ruin her career before it half started.

Oh, you don’t say? Are you sure it wasn’t going to the big dance with the class Jew she thought might ruin her almighty cheerleading career? Now, don’t give me that “Please, Mama” look. I know more than you think and my considered advice to you is to stick with your own kind. A nice Jewish girl would cherish a young man like you. Positively cherish.

Yes, Mama, Jackson agreed, mostly to end the conversation so that he could continue his bout of lover’s grief in peace. What Mama didn’t know was that Jackson harbored in his wicked heart a long and lasting lust for the idea of a Jewish girlfriend, principally because all the boys swore they were easy. Apparently it was as painless for a Christian boy to get his hand down a Jewish girl’s blouse as it was to slice ice cream on a July afternoon. Mama’s advice took root. He sought one of his own kind out.

First he talked to Mickey Moe to determine which of the girls of their tribe might soothe the torments of a young man gone mad from frustration. Mickey Moe informed that he wasn’t certain, he didn’t have personal experience here, but he’d heard from reliable sources that Frieda Mae Baumgold was easier to invade than a banana split was to swallow. Jackson set his sights for her.

The pursuit was the easy part. Frieda Mae Baumgold collected boyfriends like other young women collect hair ribbons. Curvaceous and big-eyed, black-haired, honey-voiced like Stella, she was more than willing to accept Jackson’s attentions. But getting her to sit still long enough to be the object of his much considered, much rehearsed advances strained his imagination. She was one of those young ladies who hop out of chairs and flit across a room, who busy themselves at the turntable then bend over in their tight tweed skirts to pick through records on the bottom shelf of the bookcase just long enough to glaze
the eyes of a virgin lad like Jackson Sassaport. They kneel and stretch their backs until their breasts point up and a young man’s hands itch to shoot forward for a grab. But too late. In the last moment, they jump up to fetch something suddenly necessary from another room. Frieda Mae Baumgold was a temptress, alright, but tempting was about as far as she went. Jackson courted her for four months, until she tired of him and cast about for fresh bones to add to her collection. Not one to give up in this essential quest, Jackson pursued two other Jewish girls but neither of those would accept a third date. He tried another Christian girl, from his school. He struck out there, too.

The next time Jackson saw Mickey Moe, the two of them leaned against the back end of Great-Aunt Lucille’s two-stall barn after a Cousins Club dinner smoking cigarettes. What if I never get to touch a girl, Mickey? he asked his childhood hero in the desperate notes of the hormonally tortured. Not in my whole life? Ah, his cousin said, you gonna get lucky someday, son. Everybody does sooner or later. Jackson went into a long rant bemoaning his piss-poor luck with Amanda and Frieda Mae, Sarah Celeste, Rachel, and Mary Rose. I swear to God, if I don’t get to touch something female sometime soon it’s gonna kill me. I can’t think of anything else most times, I don’t sleep right, and my schoolwork’s suffering. Mickey Moe inhaled deeply on his smoke, blew it out in a thick blue cloud against the black night. That bad, huh? The family genius can’t study? Ole Mr. Head of His Class? Well, don’t you tell nobody I told you this, Jackson, but if you’re in that much pain, you can always go down to the village. There’s gals there make their living easing the pain of a boy like you.

Jackson was shocked and excited at the same time. I never did think ... he started to say, then finished: Have you ever?

Me? Me? Mickey Moe, who by this time was twenty years old, strapping and handsome, a good old boy in flower, burst into gales of laughter, coughing out the smoke Jackson’s question had surprised
while still deep in his lungs. I don’t ever have to feel that much pain, boy. A long time now I’ve got me a lady who is very kind, very kind. He reached out and ruffled his hair as if Jackson was still a kid. Console yourself! I’m older than you. I have my moves. Then he pushed away from the barn wall with one foot and sashayed down the path that led up to the big house as if demonstrating said moves, dipping his hips and twirling his arms. Jackson hollered and laughed until Mickey Moe was out of sight, then slowly slid down to his haunches. He sat in the dirt for half an hour, gazing up at the big house, smoking cigarettes, titillated by impure thoughts about the girls of the village.

Thereafter, constant images of those dark angels of professional mercy preyed upon his young mind. He pondered all the different body types and shades of them. He thought of whole rooms of them naked. He imagined the things they did to men, things the girls he knew didn’t even realize existed. He suffered shame at his thoughts, squelched them good, but they were more potent than he understood and they always came back. Eventually, he was driven to ask questions as discreetly as he could to see what his classmates knew about hired love in the village. He determined a handful of names and a primary address. He found out the price of what he wanted, or rather a scale of prices ranging from four bits for the simplest of pleasures to five dollars for what the boys called the whole shebang. Fear of God and his parents forced him to redouble his efforts to tame his fantasies for a short while. But his unclean visions returned unbidden and with a vengeance. Once more, he tried to banish such thoughts and was successful in the daytime, although he reveled in them in the night when he was sure he was alone.

Months went by this way and then it was spring in Mississippi, he was sixteen, and the warming air, the thick scents of new growth and of the Pearl coming back to life, and the return of the insects—all of it increased his torment until he broke. Mama and Daddy went out one
Saturday for the annual Parents’ Night Pot Luck Dinner at Stonewall High. Mama made her special seltzer brisket or, rather, made sure that Eleanor followed the old family recipe to the letter. She browbeat the poor woman all afternoon. Sukie was getting old by then, so they hired a babysitter for Bubba Ray, a rambunctious, sturdy little fellow of nine who ran rings around any sitter that took him on, had them chasing him from room to room, playing by a boy’s rowdy rules and generally wearing them out. Once he had them good and tired, he’d sneak up on them from behind, snip at their hair with Sukie’s sewing scissors, steal a dollar from their wallets, or barge in on them in the bathroom. Mama heard quite a number of complaints about Bubba Ray, but her judgment on the matter was tainted. No one could say a word against Bubba Ray in her presence. They were that tight. The least she could expect from those spoiled young heifers, she said, was that they earned their dollars down to the dime. Not every child was a Jackson, upstairs peaceably reading a book from the time he was four. Some had spirit to get out of them.

That night they were breaking in a new sitter. Rebecca Headly was a college sophomore home for Easter vacation. Big-bosomed, big-boned, and red-haired, dressed in a pink shirt, a gray poodle skirt, and saddle shoes, she looked like she could take on Bubba Ray and have a chance at keeping up. Jackson was introduced to her. He stood tall with his chest puffed out when Daddy informed her that her charge was Bubba Ray, not this hulking lad. Jackson would be going out to the library most of the evening and return home likely after they did.

As soon as his parents were gone, Jackson warned her that Bubba Ray was a holy terror. He’s so close to evil, I can’t think around here when my parents are gone. The girl laughed and slammed a fist into an open palm. I’ll take care of him, don’t you worry. Jackson was much relieved. Well, then, if you think you’ll be alright, I’ll go on to the library.

Jackson stuffed deep in his pants pocket the five dollars he’d saved over two weeks along with a condom that Buck Deaver had slipped him at school for fifty cents. Conspicuously carrying a pen and bound notebook, he bid Rebecca Headly a pleasant evening and slipped out the door to run like heck into the woods that led to the village. Luck was with him. He’d had visions of tripping into a ditch in the dark, breaking a limb to lie there nibbled by bugs, gnawed by bobcats, but the moon was full and there was plenty of light, or at least plenty enough for him to wend his rapid way with safety. Somewhere along the path he dropped both pen and notebook and didn’t care.

He was nearly there, panting, out of breath before the disgrace, the indecency of what he was about to do ravaged his tender side and slowed his progress. How exactly does your desire, however strong, bestow upon you the right to buy a woman’s dignity? his better self asked. He took one step forward, turned, and took two back. Then he answered himself: They don’t have dignity! They’re whores! He turned again, stepped forward. But his conscience pestered him. He wondered what it was that made a woman a whore, whether nature, necessity, or despair. He stopped, stepped back, considering. At last, he raised his arms to the heavens as if at prayer and rationalized. My lust will put food on someone’s table, he told the moon, some little child who’d go hungry will not because of me. It’s alright. It’s alright. Dropping his arms, he marched on with the gravity of a soldier entering battle.

And immediately froze.

For a cloud had covered the moon and in the darkness the strangled cry of a creature unknown to him rang out. It was high-pitched, a shriek of inconceivable pain, the sound of a death struggle. It dried his mouth. A shiver afflicted his spine. Someone’s eating someone else, he thought. Eating ’em raw, still living but with its guts falling out. And he thought about innocence and victims and whether or not a man could
be better than an animal and he shouted out: Alright! Alright! I won’t do it! At that precise moment, the cloud over the moon parted and he found himself smack in the center of a broad shaft of silver light that made his very clothes sparkle along with the leaves of the trees and the grass at his feet.

A miracle has saved my soul, thought Jackson, and he muttered a blessing Rabbi Nussbaum taught him for the sake of the creature that was eaten, nature’s consecrated offering made to rescue him from sin. He resolved then and there that no matter how hard up he got in life, he’d never ever seek the company of bought women. Still, he figured he was out in the night with time on his hands and it wouldn’t hurt to just continue on his way to the whorehouse and observe as part of his general education what went on in such a place.

The shack he sought was unmistakable, set off from the rest of the village by a long dirt road, draped from its tin roof with a string of Chinese lanterns that lit up the place brighter than neon. Over the front door, which was painted haint blue, a mess of chicken bones tied together and hung with string clattered in the night’s soft breeze to keep bad juju away. There was a little cleared yard surrounded by underbrush behind which Jackson crouched to study his surrounds. Two pickups and a Chevrolet sedan were parked along the road next to trees disguised in kudzu bordering the woods. There were smells, too, wafting toward his hiding place, the scents of strong perfumes, liquor, and what seemed to him to be fresh biscuits and gravy, eggs, and bacon. He checked his new Timex watch, a gift from Aunt Gertrude Ann for his sixteenth. It was eight o’clock. He guessed sex made men hungry, and they cooked up light suppers within so the clientele could fortify themselves.

A new terror set in. There were men in there, real men, having their needs satisfied. What if they came out and found him? What if they laughed at him hiding there or, worse, what if the gals laughed?
How exactly was one supposed to behave while spying on a whorehouse anyway? He began to sweat crouching there in the brush when a whooshing noise not three yards away nearly startled him into a yelp. He flattened himself against the ground in a heartbeat and there was a pounding as of heavy feet chasing the whoosh, following its path exactly, then all came to a sudden halt. Slowly, Jackson picked up his head to peer over the top of a bramble of thorny branches bursting with thick, waxy leaves. He gasped, then held his breath.

It was L’il Bokay and a young woman he was certain was Katherine Marie. Jackson’d had even less to do with Katherine Marie than he’d had to do with L’il Bokay in recent times, but he’d seen her around town all these years, watched her grow into a lithe beauty, and always with a proud stab of fondness.

L’il Bokay had her by the forearm. She winced and struggled but he gripped it in his strong right hand and twisted. He spoke fiercely to her, quietly but with command.

You are not going in there.

Lemme go, lemme go, I’ll do what I want.

L’il Bokay twisted harder.

No. You won’t.

BOOK: Home In The Morning
7.77Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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