Petrogypsies (24 page)

“Hey, Henry Lee. You were pretty hot on that guitar.”

“Yeah, I was, wasn’t I?” I said modestly. I sat down and blew out a big breath. “I was also on the edge of complete mental destruction for a while, too.”

He laughed and motioned a waitress over and ordered us a couple of beers. We talked for a minute about how great I had been and were the dactyls all right. When the beers arrived, I picked mine up and invited him to sit in over at our table.

My chair was taken by a disgustingly handsome Joe College-type guy who was talking real friendly at Star. She was smiling at whatever he was saying.

Beside me, Stevie muttered, “Uh-oh. I knew I was having too much fun for it to last.”

“Beg pardon?” I said, looking around for an empty chair, not finding one right off hand.

“That guy, talking to the cutie with the long hair.”

“Yeah?”

“He’s the captain of the varsity football team. Unbelievable pussy-hound. Obsessed. Gets more than any other four guys on campus. Fucks ’em and forgets ’em. A real nickel-plated asshole. Also the Stone Magnolia’s favorite nephew.”

The fella leaned forward and casually put his hand on Star’s knee while he made some particularly important point. They both broke out laughing.

“Great. What’s his name?”

“Billy Bob Dartmouth.”

A couple of guys vacated the table next to us, and I scooped up their chairs and wedged them in between Star and Billy Bob.

“Howdy, folks.” I said. “Sorry about being gone so long, Star.”

“That’s all right, Henry Lee. I was just talking with—”

I stuck out my hand and he reflexively shook it. “Yes. You’re Billy Bob Dartmouth. Captain of the football team. Heard
all
about you. My friend here, Professor Stevie Goolsby, I believe y’all know each other, Billy Bob. Stevie, this is Star, Star, this is Stevie.” I grinned at him with every single tooth in my mouth and squeezed on his hand a little less than I figured would take to crunch a couple of bones. He just smiled back. And squeezed back.

“Delighted to meet you, Henry Lee,” he said. We both smiled and squeezed some more. “I was admiring your guitar playing earlier.” He glanced down between us. “Must make for strong hands, staying in practice on that thing.”

“Why, thank you, Billy Bob. You got a firm grip yourself.”

“Appreciate you sayin’ so, Henry Lee. I’m a quarterback. Lots of quarterbacks got delicate hands, but I never had that problem. Not even a little bit.”

We both bore down a bit harder, our hands still pumping up and down a couple of inches.

“So. You been hanging out with the Herring, huh?” Billy Bob said.

“The Herring?

He nodded at Stevie, who blushed furiously. “My biology lab professor there. Known as the Red Herring of Romance around the campus.” He smiled maliciously. “Way he got the name is—”

Stevie was squirming in his chair, looking miserable. So I quit taking it easy on Billy Bob and gave his hand a medium strangulation.

Sweat broke out on his forehead and he went pale.

Star’s hand overlaid both ours and stopped the up and down motion. “Looks like you boys ought to have introduced yourselves enough by now.” I gave Billy Bob one last squeeze, along with my best lazy smile, then let go.

“Well, Star, it sure was a pleasure chatting with you,” he said. He scraped back his chair and stood up. “I need to get back to the dorm. The team’s workout starts at six in the morning. We got the big exhibition game against TU next weekend, and Coach is taking it serious.”

“Maybe I’ll see you on campus sometime soon.”

“I’d like that a lot. ‘Bye.”

We watched him pick up a couple of friends from a table near the south-side stairway and leave with them.

Star quit smiling and turned on me, furious. “Goddammit, Henry Lee, don’t you ever—”

“Aww, Star. I was only—”

“I know what you was only! You ain’t
about
to start choosing for me who I talk with. Or do anything else with, for that matter!”

“Okay! I’m sorry.”

“Fine.” She stood up. “I got a headache. I believe I’ll go lie down in my room. See you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Pleasure meeting you, Professor Goolsby.” Some kind of invisible signal passed between her and Sabrina, who was snuggled up against Doc on the other side of the table. Sabrina unhooked herself from Doc, gave him a peck on the cheek, and followed Star away.

Doc saluted me with his beer bottle. “Way to go, Slick. You have definitely got the magic touch.” He took a sip and burped contentedly.

* * *

I woke up alone in my room the next morning to the smell of bacon and eggs frying on an open fire.

About the time I finished buttering my biscuit, Star came out of Lady Jane’s mouth, marched over, and plomped down on the bench beside me. Doc and Sabrina and Razer made a big obnoxious deal out of quietly getting up and moving away so’s as to give us a little privacy, twitching their eyebrows and nudging and whispering at each other and making comments that I couldn’t quite hear.

Star got her own breakfast, without saying a word, stealing a piece of bacon off my plate in the process. That encouraged me. Finally, I got up the nerve, just as I was using my last piece of biscuit to finish sopping up the egg yellow left on the plate.

“I’m just sorry as hell, Star,” I said. I had figured that the smartest thing was unconditional surrender. “I was completely wrong. I won’t never do it again. Even if I see you talkin’ with Jack the Ripper, I’m gonna stay outa your business.”

“Actually, it was kind of sweet of you, Henry Lee.” She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.

It seemed like a natural thing for me to turn over my plate then and start banging it against my forehead. Star didn’t seem to mind. She patted my knee and kept on eating.

* * *

We rode Sprocket over to the Vet Building and parked him for more tests by Hillary and her assistants. Lady Jane followed into the slot next to him to get a general check-up. Both crews bailed out and headed a couple of blocks over to the administration building to register for the fall semester at P&A.

Doc had had me send off for a copy of my school transcript from Hemphill, but it hadn’t arrived yet at P&A administration.

Star sat next to me and helped me fill out the application forms, of which there seemed to be a plenitude. Her own paperwork, and that of most of Sprocket’s and Lady Jane’s crews, consisted of one form, since they already had a record there. They merely needed to officially apply to continue their schooling, rather than having to start up completely new like me.

The forms generally made me feel stupid, since I couldn’t answer half the questions. What was a SAT, anyway? And I didn’t have a SS number that I knew of. I didn’t even know what address I lived at.

We got to the section about educational background and began to fill in what I could remember without the transcript. I was embarrassed to let her see that I had only finished tenth grade, although I had thought it was pretty damn good at the time. When you work a farm, you take school when you can, and don’t when you can’t.

“Don’t you worry about that, Henry Lee,” Star said. “We’re gonna enroll you in GED classes in the evening. You’ll have your high school diploma in a couple of months.”

“Hold it. How can I go to college before I got a high school degree?”

“Trust me.”

“I don’t want no special favors.”

“Don’t worry about it. This is all part of a deal P&A cut with the API. They ain’t doin’ you no favors. They just recognize that gypsies ain’t exactly the normal type of college student. Half of us have bounced around the country all our lives.” She looked at the clock on the wall and began to gather up the papers. “Let’s finish this later. We can’t really complete it until we get your transcript from the school in Hemphill. We need to get next door for our exams.” Part of the application process included getting a clean bill of health from the school’s clinic.

“What’s your degree gonna be in, anyway?” I said when we were back out on the sidewalk. “You never have told me.” I never even knew until a couple of days before that a
segundo
needed a degree. I figured it was all vocational training, and it turned out I was right for regular hands on the crew. But Doc had explained to me that I was going to have to learn everything from accounting to reservoir engineering to moderately advanced physics if I planned to keep my new job. I was beginning to wonder if I could hack it. I hadn’t mentioned to anybody that the reason I never got past the tenth grade was I failed the eleventh. Papa said it looked like I had reached about as far as I should try. I was just as glad that the transcript hadn’t arrived yet. I wouldn’t have wanted Star to see about me failing.

“I was going for Chemical Engineering, like Sabrina’s degree. It’s a good one for somebody on a Casing Critter. But I’m thinking of switching to being a music major. She’s been pushing me to pursue the violin more seriously. Wouldn’t mind getting a Composition degree like Doc.”

“Composition degree?”

“Sure. Didn’t you know?”

“I’m beginning to believe that nobody ever tells me anything. I just seem to find out stuff accidentally.”

“Well, he has a Doctorate in Classical Composition. Sabrina says he’ll be on visiting faculty while we’re here this year, teach a couple of small-group seminars and participate as a student in a couple of others.”

I felt my IQ drop a couple of more points.

* * *

At the front desk of the clinic, we handed over the papers that the admissions clerk had given us to authorize the physicals and were asked to seat ourselves in the medium-crowded waiting room down the hall, which we did.

A few minutes after Star’s name got called and she went off with a nurse through a swinging door, Stevie Goolsby stuck his head in through the entrance to the waiting room and looked around like he was trying to find somebody.

He spotted me and waved and looked around some more before he wandered over in my direction.

He sat down next to me on the couch. “Going to get a going-over by the vets, huh?”

“Vets? You mean veterinarians, like Hillary?” He nodded. “They don’t use vets in medical clinics. I ain’t falling for that one.”

“Students, actually. If you’re in for a physical, you got a fifty-fifty chance of drawing a vet student.”

“Naw! You’re just messing with me.”

“Uh-uh. People are just monkeys that got too proud to walk on their knuckles. The school trains vets to take care of humans in case of emergencies like floods and earthquakes and the occasional nuclear war. Interning in the clinic for a couple of months is part of the training. You’ll know it’s a vet student if he tries to strap you down and take your temperature rectally. Some of their habits die hard.”

I must have looked alarmed. He smiled. “Just kidding, Henry Lee.”

“I ain’t a complete moron, actually,” I said, though I wasn’t sure anymore that was true. “It’s just—I been running into so much new stuff at P&A that I don’t know what to take serious yet.”

“I’ve been here three years, and I haven’t gotten that entirely straight myself. I’ll try not to kid you too much until you get your feet on the ground.” He patted me on the head.

“Thanks a whole bunch,” I said. I stuck out my hand. “Shake on it, buddy?”

He looked at my hand, then my face. Then back at my hand. “Uh—no thanks.” We both grinned.

“So—how come you’re hanging out in the clinic?” I asked.

“I’m a scientist. I’m looking for people to experiment on.”

“Beg pardon?”

“No, not really experiment on. I’m participating in a government research project where I need to obtain a broad range of biological samples. Blood, hair, urine, feces, perspiration, that sort of thing. I pay twenty-five bucks per subject.”

I sat up straighter in my chair. “Oh, really? What sort of subjects?” Being in a scientific experiment kind of appealed to me. Not to mention the twenty-five bucks that could go toward the purchase of a Stratocaster.

He shrugged. “I have a fair amount of latitude. The project is funded and controlled by the National Institutes of Health. They want samples from varied somatotypes in order to get a significant nationwide demographic cross-section.

“Uh … okay.”

“I personally like to put information into the ends of the bell-curve, not the middle. I try to recruit real mutants.”

If I had thought he was deliberately trying to fuddle me, I might have got mad, but it was obvious he honestly thought I understood him.

“Great!” I said. “Well, guess that let’s me out, huh?”

“What makes you say that? A fella as large as you, you’d be perfect. Are you interested?”

“Huh. I guess … What’s a mutant?”

Right then, Star came back through the swinging doors at the end of the room, and Stevie and me both sat up straighter. The nurse behind the desk called my name out. Stevie gawked at Star as she glided toward us. “She is also definitely on the far end of the bell curve,” he said out of the side of his mouth. “Mind if I recruit her?” He absentmindedly reached up and started toying with his earring.