Kinflicks (19 page)

“Nice party.'

‘Yeah,' I agreed, vowing never again to participate in a party of any sort.

‘Got the third cut of hay in on the south forty yesterday.'

‘Did you? How many bales?'

‘Same as last cut.'

‘Great.' We lapsed into strained silence. One of the boys outside hooted, ‘Hurry up and finish, you two. Your time's almost up.'

We glanced at each other with dismay. Finish? We hadn't even begun, had no idea what we were supposed to be in the middle
of.
Clem leaned over and ground a kiss onto my tightly closed lips, holding my shoulders intently. ‘There!' he said proudly, wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his work shirt. I looked at him in horror. ‘Well, in'nt that what we're
supposed
to be doin' in here?' he demanded.

Just then the door burst open.
‘Caught
you!' everybody screamed.

‘You did
not,'
I said sourly, standing up and walking out.

From then on, Clem Cloyd was my arch enemy. Both he and I began playing football with the boys in Magnolia Manor. We always tried to be on opposite teams so that we could smear each other into the dirt. Clem was often the quarterback since he was so small and fast. There was nothing I savored more than dodging my blockers and racing into the backfield and hitting Clem's hips and bringing him crashing to the ground under me. Or being opposite him in the line and locking shoulders with him when the ball was snapped, both of us gritting our teeth ferociously and grunting with exertion. Or straight-arming him as he closed in on me during an end run. Sometimes after he had tackled me, he would lie on top of me longer than necessary, his chin resting on my stomach and his dark eyes looking slyly up at me over my shoulder pads. At such times I would wrap a leg around his hips and gouge him with my cleats until he rolled off me in pain.

This went on until his accident, at which time he supposedly ceased to be a factor in my existence. He was disking a new field on a hillside when the tractor tire hit a buried boulder and reared up like a startled horse. The tractor rolled over on him, crushing one of his legs.

I visited him once in the hospital. He lay swathed in white linens, his injured leg suspended from a pulley arrangement and encased in a full cast. We had nothing to say to each other. My life was all football now, and Clem would never play football again.

From then on Clem Cloyd was very much on the periphery of my life. He limped around school in his orthopedic motorcycle boot that had a four-inch sole for his injured leg; his dark greasy hair hung in his scowling face. He wore tight blue jeans, which had pegged legs and were studded down the leg seams and around the rear pockets with bronze upholstery tacks; and a faded dark green T-shirt; and a red silk windbreaker Floyd had brought him from Korea. The windbreaker had the island of Korea embroidered in garish yellows and greens on one breast, and an Oriental dragon all across the back. It was a masterpiece of tackiness.

To compensate for his injured leg, which was now somewhat shriveled with its foot twisted inward, his entire body alignment had altered. He dragged the injured leg, and the shoulder on that same side hunched down and forward. Because of this deformed gait, he preferred, whenever possible, to roar around on his dark green Harley motorcycle, which he'd bought with the prize money he'd won in the state fair with his show steers. The Harley had jeweled mud flaps and two huge chrome tail pipes. The seat was covered in imitation leopard skin, and a raccoon tail hung from the antenna. When he was riding, he sometimes wore a molded plastic helmet of metallic green (the color of the cycle), which was decorated with a large Confederate flag decal. Other times he wore only yellow-tinted goggles and no head covering, so that his pomaded pompadour quivered in the breeze. Unfortunately, his thug image was undercut by the fact that he reeked of manure. From his barn chores, his body and all his possessions were permeated with the acrid odor, and the less kind students at Hullsport High, to be funny, sometimes held their noses after he had walked past.

Before long, I was flag swinger for Hullsport High and Clem was the town hoodlum Sometimes I nodded coolly to him as he lurched along the hall. He never acknowledged me.

In the morning before school, when the popular students like Joe Bob and me and all our friends and fans were sitting in the gym, Clem sat outside in his leopard-skin cycle saddle with one or two lesser hoods. They smoked Lucky Strikes and stomped out the butts with their boots on school property. One morning after Joe Bob and I had decided that I had to dredge up some dates in order to throw Coach and my father off the scent of our trunk-bound liaisons, I went up to Clem where he slouched in his saddle smoking.

‘Say hey!' I said with my brightest flag-swinger smile.

He glared at me glumly and spat into the scruffy grass in the parkway that was struggling to grow up among the cigarette butts.

‘Can I speak to you?' I asked, undaunted.

‘Why?'

‘It's important,' I assured him, as though he might imagine that anything I involved myself with could possibly be unimportant.

He glanced over at me, his dark eyes unhappy and unfriendly — surly, in fact. Then he got off his cycle with exaggerated effort and limped over to me. ‘Whaddaya want from me?'

‘Would you do me a favor, Clem? For old time's sake?' I asked with a winning smile.

‘Screw that. But whaddaya want?'

‘Will you ask me out?'

He looked at me with suspicious amazement. ‘Ask you out?' His eyes narrowed. ‘You tryin' to put the screws on what's his name — that fairy you run around with? Or what?'

‘It would be a favor to Joe Bob, too,' I assured him, certain that pleasing Joe Bob Sparks would appeal to Clem. Then I explained the situation.

Clem took a big drag on his Lucky Strike and let the smoke drift out his nostrils and waft around in front of his face. ‘If I
do
take you out — and I ain't sayin yet that I will — hit won't be as no favor to that fairy creep of yours. Hit'll be cause I happen to
want
to. Got that straight?'

‘Okay.' I was prepared to accept almost any terms in order to accomplish the deceit.

‘Okay, then. I'll pick you up some time Friday night. You can wear my helmet so's you don't get blown around none or nothin.'

Joe Bob was delighted when I told him of Clem's cooperation as I jerked him off in the darkroom that afternoon. ‘Maybe he's not such a bad guy after all,' Joe Bob gasped hopefully as he spurted into the sink.

Friday night when Clem's cycle came roaring up the driveway, the Major sat scowling behind his newspaper. I had been waiting by the window for Clem for about two hours. Occasionally during my vigil, the Major had interjected a remark about brain damage and amputation and the various other occupational hazards of motorcycle riding.

‘He has a helmet for me.'

‘For your entire body?' he'd asked.

‘Look! If I didn't do anything that might hurt me, I'd sit in this house in a rocking chair all day. Maybe not even that — a rocker might break, or the ceiling might fall in.'

‘Yes, but you don't have to court disaster,' my mother had said.

I ran out and slammed the door on her as she called, ‘You can't be too careful!'

Clem sat there revving his motor with one gloved hand, on the wrist of which hung a silver-plated identification bracelet He didn't greet me or look at me. He merely inclined his head toward the rear seat and handed me the Confederate flag-decaled helmet. I put it on and climbed on behind and experimentally put my hands on his narrow hips. I inhaled deeply of his manure scent, hoping soon to become oblivious to it through proximity.

Over his shoulder, he said, ‘All right. Where to?'

I was speechless. I was accustomed to being taken places by my dates, not to deciding where myself. ‘I don't care,' I said meekly. ‘You decide.'

Spraying a shower of white quartz pebbles onto the front porch, he threw the Harley into gear and scratched out. We cruised Hull Street a few times. Once at a stoplight we were next to Doyle's Dodge. I looked over and saw Joe Bob staring at me wanly, his nose pressed against the window. I smiled bravely over my shoulder as the Harley roared off, leaving the Dodge behind as though it were standing still. The skirt of my madras shirtwaist billowed like a sail.

On another circuit of Hull Street, I glimpsed Coach in his black DeSoto. I waved gaily. He scowled back.

Then we turned in at the Dew Drop, where Clem roared over the asphalt ridges, leaning from side to side as the cycle careened madly under us. I wrapped my arms tightly around his waist and clung in terror. He pulled up in front of a microphone and said over his shoulder, “What'll ya have?'

‘A cherry Seven-Up, please.'

‘Two cherry Seven-Ups,' he said scornfully into the speaker.

When the drinks came, he tossed his down in one gulp; I sipped mine demurely, trying not to notice the heads of classmates in nearby cars, all turned to stare in disbelief at Ginny Babcock perched on the back of Clem Cloyd's Harley. After I had finished my Seven-Up, we drove home slowly. He stopped in front of the porch to let me off. ‘Did everyone who was supposed to see us together see us?'

‘I think so.'

‘Good.'

‘Well, thanks a lot,' I said brightly. ‘I'd love to do it again if you feel like it sometime.' This seemed a painless enough fashion in which to sidetrack the opponents of Joe Bob's and my passion. I turned to walk toward the house.

‘Wait
a minute,' he said sinisterly. He threw down his kickstand and got off the cycle. I froze in my tracks as he limped over to me.

‘What?' I asked nervously, turning to face him. I wondered if he was now going to require me to reimburse him for the evening with physical favors. I felt queasy at the thought. We stood facing each other, me in the visored helmet and him in his yellow-tinted goggles, like a spaceage Adam and Eve.

‘The helmet. You forgot to give hit back,' he pointed out with a grin.

‘Oh, how silly of me!' I gasped with relief, throwing it off and handing it to him.

‘You
let
me
know if you want to play your little game again sometime,' he suggested over his shoulder, as he limped back to the cycle. He leapt on and started it up with a lunge of his good foot.

In the darkroom the next day, Joe Bob inquired miserably, ‘Well, how did it go?'

‘Awful.
He's such a creep. I hate him really.'

‘You're a saint to go through all this for us,' he said, unhooking my Never-Tell. He pulled my shirt up around my neck and pinned me against the wall and devoted himself to chewing on my nipples as though they were wads of Juicy Fruit.

That afternoon as I walked out of the building, I just happened to pass the section of the parking area where all the hoods parked their cycles. Clem was lounging in his saddle, inhaling deeply on a Lucky Strike. I strolled over and said sheepishly, ‘Say hey, Clem.' He didn't answer or look at me. I stood shifting my books uneasily from arm to arm. ‘How about this Friday?' I finally blurted out. Without looking at me, he nodded assent and took another deep drag on his Lucky Strike. Then he snapped his hideous red silk windbreaker and removed his goggles from the handlebars and fitted them so that the elastic band didn't disturb his unguentary pompadour. I halfway expected him to offer me a ride home and was planning my haughty refusal, but he started up the cycle with a lunge of his foot, revved the motor with his hand, and then roared off without a backward glance.

‘Don't expect your mother or me to empty your bedpan when you're a paraplegic,' the Major called as I ran out the door that Friday night. I had been waiting for Clem two and a half hours.

I put on the green metallic helmet, which I was coming to regard as ‘mine'; and I clambered on behind him, putting my hands firmly around his skinny waist.

‘Last time we done hit
your
way,' he shouted over his shoulder. ‘Tonight we do hit
mine.'

Titillated, I pondered the topic of what ‘his way' would involve. We sped out the Crockett River road, the warm night wind whipping my London Fog like a flag in a hurricane, and whistling up under the skirt of my shirtwaist. I realized that there were practical reasons for Clem's outrageous wardrobe — his tight pegged jeans and windbreaker. I knew that I'd have to acquire some new outfits if our relationship were to continue. Looking down, I studied the tacky dragon embroidered on the back of his windbreaker. It evinced the inscrutable Oriental talent for busywork.

We pulled off the river road onto a dirt road. With alarm, I recognized it as leading to the parking spot along the river where Joe Bob and I had been discovered
flagrante delicto
by the highway patrolmen. But instead of turning left, we turned right onto two muddy tire tracks.

With almost any other Hullsport hoodlum, I would have been paralyzed with fear by now. But I knew that Clem couldn't be planning to rape and strangle me because his family's livelihood depended on the Major's continuing good will. Power, however obscene, did have its uses. Also, I knew, and knew that Clem knew, that Joe Bob would rip him limb from deformed limb should he in any way whatsoever displease me. It was like having a bodyguard
in absentia.

But the main reason I wasn't petrified to be whipping down a dirt track through a lonely stretch of woods with the most notorious thug in town was that I had a pretty good idea where we were going. Although I'd never been to the Bloody Bucket, it hovered like Gomorrah in my imagination, as in the imaginations of all the respectable townspeople. The Bloody Bucket was a country nightclub run by Clem's brother, Floyd Cloyd. By day Floyd was the industrious janitor at the state school for the blind and deaf in Knoxville, in the basement of which he reputedly ran the largest still in the eastern part of a still-strewn state. By night he crept around town in a black hearse with a false floor, delivering his bootlegged liquor to all the upstanding citizens of the dry town of Hullsport. The Major, for instance, bought all his Chivas Regal through Floyd. On the nights when he wasn't making deliveries, Floyd opened up his nightclub, dubbed the Bloody Bucket ever since a knife fight there in which the loser had had his head jammed into a metal pail. At the Bloody Bucket, Floyd sold his famous home-brew by the drink to those who ventured in.