Welcome to Fred (The Fred Books) (16 page)

“But I’m not the preacher’s kid.”

“What difference does that make? You go to church, don’t you? You consider yourself a Christian, don’t you?”

“Of course, but my dad’s not the preacher. Right, Bubba?”

“Right.”

I don’t know which drove me to greater distraction, Ralph’s relentless but irrelevant logic or Bubba’s monosyllabic echo. I stormed off the path and kicked at a rotted branch. It crumbled silently in a cloud of fungi. The fact that it made so little noise frustrated me further.

“So what?” My voice cracked like a yodeler. “A Christian is a Christian. What difference does it make what your dad does for a living?” I wanted my words to echo through the woods with the ring of truth. Instead they fell flat like a feeble excuse, hushed by the cloak of pine needles, moss, and algae that covered everything. I turned on Ralph, shrieking. “Why is it any more wrong for me to swear than it is for you?”

Ralph winced. “It just is. I don’t know why.”

I would have poured forth a fountain of profanity, but I didn’t know enough cuss words to make up more than a trickle. Words failing me, I sputtered an inarticulate retort, stomped off in a rage, and promptly fell from another log. Ralph declared this a sign from God that he was right. And perhaps it was.

At the camp I sat on a stump in my underwear, my pants hanging from a branch in a futile attempt to dry them out in the humid air. The excuse for a fire that we built with damp rotting wood produced a vile smoke that hung around the camp in the still air. We rolled up baloney slices, impaled them on sticks, and attempted to roast them over the smoldering mound.

Ralph pulled out his Red Man and offered it around. I declined, Bubba accepted. “I seen Parker the other day at the gas station.” He put away the pouch. “That scar is wicked lookin’. And that patch don’t help none.”

“Makes him look like a regular pirate,” Bubba said. “He looked pretty scary at the fi—” He cleared his throat and changed directions. “I’d hate ta meet that in a dark alley some night.” We sat in silence for awhile. Smoke curled around the baloney slices.

“He was drunker’n Cooter Brown too,” Ralph said. “Not sure how he drives that pickup, but he seems ta do it OK anyhow.”

“Yep, it’s kinda amazin’,” Bubba agreed. “But I think I’d hate ta meet that even more on a dark alley.”

“Ain’t seen Sonia much. Since the funeral, that is. I think ever’body saw her there.”

I decided to join the conversation, having recovered from my fit. “I’ve seen her.” Bubba and Ralph looked at me expectantly. “Just sell her papers, that’s all.” We stared at the baloney for awhile; the only sounds were Bubba and Ralph spitting and the mosquitoes buzzing. “Seems kind of nervous though.”

“Janet says she heard that Sonia showed up at the beauty shop with a black eye. Or at least what looked like might be a black eye under all that makeup,” Ralph said. “That would explain it.”

Bubba nodded. “Yep, Jolene heard the same thing, plus somethin’ about bruises.” He pulled his baloney slice up to his nose, sniffed it, and slapped it into a hot dog bun. “I don’t think this sucker’s gonna get any warmer.”

Ralph followed his example. “Probably could get it warmer just by rubbin’ on yer pants leg.”

“There’s no accounting for taste,” I said, and ate the baloney right off the stick, like a corny dog.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
After my four years’ hard labor in the cultural assimilation chain gang, another inmate with the unlikely name of C. J. Hecker was transferred to the Big Thicket Unit. He arrived from Houston wearing a paisley shirt, bell-bottom jeans, and boots that looked like they had been stolen from Van Morrison’s hotel room on his last tour. Before the end of the day he was informed his collar-length, dark-brown hair was in violation of the dress code. He returned the next day with a haircut that required a micrometer to measure compliance.

With the innate caution of the outsider, I maintained a polite distance, both intrigued and amused by the discontinuity Hecker must have been experiencing. It was an echo of the cultural whiplash I had experienced back in the time when Nixon was hounding Johnson out of office, but now amplified by adolescence and the fact that this was the first move of C. J.’s life.

During those four years, Tricky Dick had slowly schemed his way toward Watergate, and I had slowly accommodated my wardrobe to local custom. As a result, I was not immediately identifiable as the outsider I really was. But it didn’t take more than a few weeks in algebra and English classes for me to realize that C. J. was as close as I was likely to come to finding a replacement for M. We eventually joined forces in our shared fate as outsiders.

C. J. had an air of confidence about him, as if there were no question in his mind that the environment in which he found himself was the anomaly and he was the norm. He had a dark complexion that was more Latin than the name
Hecker
allowed, and his left eye had a silver-gray fleck that ran vertically across the iris. It made me wonder if he could see out of it at all, but I was too timid to ask.

He lived in Warren, so getting together meant twenty minutes if I was driving or fifteen minutes if he was driving. Of course, there was nothing to do at either his house or mine, so we usually followed prevailing custom and haunted Beaumont, which meant another hour on the road. Our relationship was formed in the cocoonlike security of a car ripping through the piney woods at seventy-five miles per hour. We probed each other’s minds and souls, our faces illuminated by the green glow of the dash lights.

Both being addicts to music, our deep and searching discussions were carried out at the top of our lungs, shouting over the eight-track as it blared out the Stones, the Beatles, Guess Who, Grand Funk Railroad, or, when I couldn’t hide the tape before he got in the car, the Doors. We tunneled through the towering pines with the windows down, headlights shooting into the darkness and ZZ Top’s “La Grange” echoing through the woods.

In those hours of traversing the cultural wasteland of the Big Thicket in search of diversion, I found a confidant for my dilemma with Becky. I cautiously divulged the outlines of my obsession. C. J. had a solution at the ready.

“What you have to do is act like you’re not interested in her. Then she’ll get interested in you.”

“But I am.” I tried to hold my hand steady. The washboard dirt road we were bounding down made the car rattle like a kid dragging a stick down a picket fence. It not only had the effect of setting up standing waves in my bottle of Dr Pepper, it also made Bob Dylan sound like he was auditioning for the Bee Gees. “Interested in her, I mean.”

“I know that and you know that, but she doesn’t have to know that. You pretend like you’re not.”

I paused to listen to the closing bars of “All Along the Watchtower.” “Why would she become interested in me if I ignore her?” I asked before the next song started.

“Because that’s how it works,” C. J. hollered over the stereo. “Look, I didn’t make up the rules. That’s the way girls work. Hormones and all that stuff.”

“But why should I play all those games?” I hollered back. “Why not just be honest?”

“Major mistake. Remember Hecker’s Rule of Romance #1: Never tell the truth. It’s too boring.” He took a sharp curve in a four-wheel skid and whipped the car back straight. I held my breath but didn’t panic. C. J.’s driving may have been aggressive, but it was nothing to a person who had been privileged to ride with Darnell Ray.

“Besides, you know how you start talking for no apparent reason and continue with no apparent motive for an indefinite period of time?” He squinted through his aviator glasses in my direction.

“I beg your pardon,” I replied with asperity, tossing my head from habit, even though my hair wasn’t in my eyes.

“Well, that doesn’t go over with icons of beauty anymore than it does with mere mortals. Better to appear unattainable. Then they’ll kill themselves trying to get your attention.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” I complained, deciding in the interest of romance to ignore the insult to my conversational skills.

“Since when do girls make sense?” I had to admit he had a point there. “Girls aren’t supposed to make sense. Remember Hecker’s Rule of Romance #1: Women should be obscene and not heard.”

“I thought Rule #1 was ‘Never tell the truth.’ And I thought Groucho said that.”

“OK, so there’s two rules numbered one. Forget the numbers! Just trust me; I’ve seen it happen lots of times. You play hard-to-get and it’ll drive her crazy.”

Well, that only seemed fair. After all, she had been unwittingly driving me crazy for months. For the next three weeks I remained cool and aloof. By the end of the month even C. J. had to admit it wasn’t working. Neither of us realized that from outward appearances there was little difference between playing hard-to-get and being scared into inaction by the fear of rejection.

C. J. fell back on plan B. “Write her a song,” he suggested as we were returning from the mall in Beaumont where we had picked up an eight-track of Neil Young’s “Harvest.” “That’ll do it.” While I had been playing hard-to-get, he had been teaching me to play guitar. I had almost reached the point where I could change chords without inadvertently changing the time signature of the song. “I’ve never seen a girl yet who could resist a love song written especially for her. They tend to throw themselves on the floor in abject submission to your every whim.”

I never thought to ask C. J. how many girls had flung themselves at his feet upon hearing a song written for them. Instead, I was petrified at the thought of addressing the matter so directly. This approach seemed to smack too much of the danger of rejection.

“Right. How subtle is playing a song to her?” I grabbed the dash as we rounded a curve thirty miles per hour faster than recommended by the Department of Public Safety. “I might as well just walk up in the hall and kiss her between classes.”

“Hey, there’s an approach I hadn’t considered!” He squinted at the reflectors. “It just might work.”

“Don’t be ridiculous! I can’t just walk up out of the blue and kiss Becky in the hall.”

“What? No. Of course not!” He looked at me like I’d suggested we turn off Neil Young and listen to Perry Como instead. The silver fleck in his eye glinted in the dark as he appraised me by the dashboard light. “You couldn’t pull it off, being a PK and all. Isn’t there a talent show next week?”

“Yeah.”

“You could write Becky a song and play it at the talent show.”

“Right! I might as well write her a valentine and read it over the P.A. during announcements!” I cupped my hands around my mouth. “The FHA is having a bake sale. The girls will be selling hot buns in the hall during lunch. Let’s all get behind our girls and give them our support. And now this announcement from Mark Cloud. Dear Becky Tuttle: I am hopelessly in love with you and will wither away if you don’t reciprocate. Please respond by carrier pigeon within the hour.”

“Well, you don’t have to make it that blunt! You don’t even have to use her name.”

“Then how will she know it’s for her?”

“You can do something like . . .” He ejected the tape and cleared his throat.

She might have braces and short brown hair
She could have a harelip for all I care; she’s mine
People don’t you see what she’s doing to me
Hanging around this town looking up and down for her

She won’t have braces all her life
But even if she does I’ve found me a wife; she’s mine . . .

I pushed the tape back in and turned it up. “That’s OK. I’ll come up with my own.”

I spent the rest of the weekend struggling over a song. By Sunday night I had come up with something I thought was a proper blend of candor and subtlety. It went something like this.

There’s something in you that I like
And I think you know it
There’s something about you I like
And I think I show it
Your eyes or your hair? I couldn’t swear
Maybe it’s your personality
The way that you stay when everyone else goes away
The way that you set me free

I’m not quite sure how but I think you know by now
That I’d like to tell you how I feel
The feeling is so real and it’s one that I can’t conceal
And it’s mine and nobody can steal it
I love you and I think you know it
I love you and I think I show it

I played it for C. J. the next day. He sat in silence for a long time and then cleared his throat.

“Well. Hmm. Yes, that certainly will work. Yup.”

I looked at him uncertainly. “Do you think it’s too corny?”

“Oh, no,” he answered too quickly. “It’s got a certain character about it. Very . . . original.”

I took his words at face value and entered the talent show. C. J. was also in the show, playing “Old Man” from the Neil Young tape we had bought the week before. He did a great job as usual and received a respectable amount of applause from a room full of George Jones fans.

The next thing I knew the emcee was announcing that Mark Cloud was going to perform an original song. I trembled my way out on the stage and set the music on the stand. I let my hair fall down over my eyes as a protective screen, buffering me from the intimidation of the audience, did a little last minute tuning, and then started playing. Just as I got out the first line, the paper slipped off the stand and into the orchestra pit. With a silent cry of despair I watched it flutter into the abyss. I squinted at the crowd through my hair and my mind went as blank as the music stand. I played the same chord for a few seconds and then started improvising.

And I think you know it because I show it

Is it your hair? I swear I don’t care

But she’s got a good personality

It’s how you stay out of the way

With the bare necessities

This feeling is real and I can’t conceal

How much you steal from my heart

Don’t you know that I got to go

And I’m through before I start

I jumped up and stumbled off stage to stunned silence, followed by a trickle of applause mixed with laughter and coughing.

At lunch I was informed that Thelma Perkins had interpreted my song as a secret confession of love for her. Thelma—sister of Jimbo; the sarcastic write-in for homecoming queen; the forged signatory on hundreds of practical-joke love letters; the one girl in the school who, like me, had yet to experience a date. In Fred, if you want to win awards at being ugly, you have to really be ugly. Merely homely girls need not apply. The years had done nothing to soften Thelma’s harsher features. She still had a face as wide and flat as Jimbo’s, teeth like a set of ivory dominoes yellowed with age, and short hair as stiff and coarse as a broom.

I was horrified beyond words to receive this bulletin, particularly as Becky was the one to bring the tidings from the uncharacteristically shy Thelma. Becky delivered Thelma’s professions of love with poorly concealed amusement and waited for my response with a smile that, for once, didn’t seem quite so angelic.

Attempting my utmost to wear the mask of indifference, I couldn’t help being reminded of John Alden delivering a similar message to Priscilla Mullens in behalf of the love-stricken but shy Miles Standish. As you no doubt remember (although it doesn’t matter if you don’t because I’m going to tell you now), the task was all the more difficult for John because he, too, was in love with Priscilla.

Like Priscilla I wanted to say, “Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?” but it would have only confused Becky for two reasons. One, she wasn’t harboring a hidden passion for me and, two, her name wasn’t John.

This development marked the end of C. J.’s career as advisor to the lovelorn. I returned to my daily routine of pining away for Becky while flunking typing.