Welcome to Fred (The Fred Books) (17 page)

The night of the homecoming dance I was home early. I had plenty of excuses for being there instead of the school dance. After all, wasn’t my dad the Baptist preacher? Where was I going to learn to dance? And if I did somehow clandestinely learn how to dance, why would I think I would be allowed to go to a dance? After all, we don’t dance, drink, or chew, or go with girls that do. But the main reason was that a guy who doesn’t have the nerve to tell a girl he likes her certainly isn’t going to have the nerve to ask her to a dance, particularly when he doesn’t even know how to dance. So, lay off, will ya? I was at home soon after we lost the football game, and that’s all I have to say about it.

I was sitting in the garage trying to figure out how to play “Honkytonk Woman” when an old F-150 pickup truck rolled to a stop in the driveway. I was in the middle of singing “She blew my nose” when Sonia climbed out. The words died, leaving the sound of the guitar amp buzzing loudly in the night. I almost didn’t recognize her. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, and she had a black eye that would have been visible even on Cassius Clay. A large bruise covered half of her forehead.

“I did it. I did it,” she said in a rush, running to me and handing me the truck keys and a set of cowboy boots. I had no idea what she had done and was too stunned to ask as I stood there, keys in one hand, boots in the other, and a beat-up pawnshop Silvertone hanging from my shoulder.

Sonia looked around distractedly and then seemed to realize all at once where she was. Her face crumpled from frenetic animation to hopeless despair, and she began to cry with such a piercing wail that I dropped the boots and keys. The garage door opened and Dad appeared. He took in the truck, the boots on the floor, and the weeping Sonia in an instant. He stepped into the garage in his stocking feet, something I had never seen him do, and guided her into the house by the shoulders.

I discarded the guitar, pocketed the keys, and took the boots to the truck. In the back I found a pile of shoes and boots, all evidently belonging to Parker. I threw the boots in with them and went into the house to see what was going on. Dad was in the wingback chair, leaning forward, elbows on his legs, hands clasped between his knees. Sonia was sitting in the middle of the couch on the edge of the seat, as if about to jump up and run off. Her orange dress was extremely short. There was barely enough of it available for her to sit on. She was in the process of giving a halting explanation, her shoulders shaking when she paused between phrases.

“He’s passed out. He’ll be out for a good while.” Mom walked in with a plastic bag of ice wrapped in a thin dishtowel. “Thanks,” Sonia said distractedly, and held the ice to her black eye gingerly.

“So, this isn’t the first time he’s done this?” Dad asked.

“No.” She suddenly stood up, dropping the ice and looking around like a hunted animal. “What will he do when he wakes up? What if he finds me here?” Then she noticed the bag of ice at her feet. “Oh, I’m sorry.” She crouched down to pick up the ice and wrap it in the towel again. She sat back down and pulled at her dress self-consciously, trying to cover at least some of her thighs. “I shouldn’t of come here.”

“Of course you should have come here,” Dad said. “The first thing we have to do is make sure you’re OK. Do you need to go to the hospital?”

“Oh, no.” She put the ice back up to her face. “It’s not that bad.”

“Good. Now, the next thing is, do you have a place to stay? You obviously can’t go back home. Can you go to your parent’s house?”

“My parents?” She seemed confused. “I don’t think so. They wouldn’t be any happier than him to find out I come here.”

“How about the Harmons’? You know them well, don’t you?”

At this suggestion Sonia became frantic. “Oh, no! I couldn’t go there!” She jumped up again, dropping the ice, and headed toward the door.

“Sonia,” Dad called as she rushed through the garage.

“Don’t worry.” I held up the keys. “She’s not going anywhere in that truck.”

Dad nodded at me, followed Sonia outside, and convinced her to come back in. She sat down on the arm of the couch, pulling at her skirt.

Dad stood next to her. “Sonia, I’m going to pray for you. You don’t have to do anything but just sit there.” He put his hand on her head. “Father,” he said in a quiet voice, “I ask you to surround Sonia with Your Holy Spirit, clear her mind of anxiety, and give her the peace that only comes from You.”

He took his hand off her head and smiled at her. “Why don’t you sit down in this chair?” he said, pointing to the wingback chair. She sat down in the chair; Dad sat on the couch.

“Have you talked to the Harmons since the wreck?” Dad asked. Sonia shook her head slowly, staring at him. Dad continued, “I have. You and Peggy grew up together, and they always thought of you as their fourth daughter.” Sonia nodded slowly, saying nothing. “They still do.”

Sonia never took her eyes from Dad. Tears welled up, coursing down her bruised face. Not wild, hysterical tears, but quiet, calm tears of some other kind. Pain? Sorrow? Relief? I wasn’t sure.

Dad stood and held the bag of ice out to Sonia. She took it.

“Why don’t you sit there and relax while I make a phone call.” Sonia nodded and Dad left the room. I stood there, still processing the transformation.

When he came back it had all been arranged. The Harmons picked up Sonia. Dad and I drove the F-150 to Fred Grocery and parked it on the side in plain view of the highway. Brown Watkins, the proprietor, agreed to hold the keys. We walked back home. I was a little curious.

“So, what happens when Parker wakes up?”

“He either calls somebody to give him a ride, or he walks barefoot in search of his truck. Either way, he’s bound to pass the grocery store.”

“And what happens when he finds out where Sonia is?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“There are two places in this world that Parker will never go. One is Peggy’s parents’ house.”

He didn’t have to tell me the other. The image of Mac, now in a wheelchair, was vivid in my mind. “So, is that the reason you picked the Harmons?”

He looked at me speculatively. “It’s one reason,” he said quietly.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The next night was the first party at Mac’s house since the wreck. During his extended absence another couple had taken on the duties of the high school Sunday school class. They were better than Mac at the classroom part, actually making it interesting, something I thought was impossible. But Mac was irreplaceable as confidant to the confused.

When we arrived at the farm, Mac greeted us on the large porch that spanned three sides of the house. As I walked through the rooms, I was intrigued to see countertops lowered and ramps spanning the split levels between the sunken living room and the rest of the house. It was a little unnerving to see the pictures of Peggy and Kristen in their accustomed places. A few rectangles of the original wall color revealed that some pictures had been removed. I tried to remember what pictures had been there, but couldn’t place them. I looked around to see Mac watching me examine the gaps. Our eyes met for a brief but electrifying second, and then he wheeled away to the kitchen to direct the logistics of the cookout.

The unmistakable intensity of that look caused me to scan the room a second time. There were no pictures of Parker or Sonia anywhere. I seemed to recall some shots from fishing trips, vacations, even high school football shots. All gone. But my reflections were swallowed in all the activity of Frisbee, football and volleyball games, cooking, eating, and the languorous aftermath.

Somebody lit the bonfire and we sat around singing “Kumbaya” and “Pass It On.” Eventually the big group splintered into smaller conversations, and the singing disintegrated into Ralph trying to figure out the chords to “Stairway to Heaven” while Bubba tried to play “In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida” on a series of feed buckets, gas cans, and oil drums.

I sat on a telephone cable spool at the edge of the circle of light cast by the bonfire. Mac sat nearby, silently gazing into the ever-morphing shapes of the flames. We both chuckled as Ralph emitted an eerie laugh and Bubba joined him in screeching “Wipe Out.” We continued in silence as they attempted to cover the song on a cheap mail-order guitar and an assortment of farm implements.

Mac was the first to speak. “I hear tell Sonia has moved in with the Harmons.”

“Yeah.” I wasn’t surprised, even though the news was only twenty-four hours old. After all, he was close to his in-laws. Or were they former in-laws?

“I also hear she was beat up pretty bad.”

“Yeah, she had a black eye and some bruises.” We both continued to look into the fire.

Mac cleared his throat. “You know, I dated Sonia before I dated Peggy. I told her I loved her. I thought I was goin’ to marry her.”

Not only was this news to me, I couldn’t imagine why he was telling it to me. It was usually the other way around, us confiding the details of our lives to Mac. “No, I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah, but she dumped me and started datin’ . . . him.”

“Ah.” I didn’t know where this was going, but the role-reversal made me uncomfortable.

“Just before the Sadie Hawkins dance that year. Best thing that ever happened to me,” Mac said. We both sat in silence for a long time, then he turned his wheelchair and disappeared into the darkness toward the house.

On Sunday I asked Jolene about the dance. After Bubba’s debut as a fireman in drag, there was some question as to whether Jolene would survive long enough to go to the dance. Marianne loaned Jolene a dress and even ended up going with Bubba after all. It seems that Judy made so many jokes about him fighting the fire with a dress on that he broke the date. He asked Marianne, who accepted with surprising but gratifying enthusiasm. And, somehow, Bubba convinced Jolene to call a cease-fire for one date, so to everyone’s surprise, Turner was spared the trial-by-ordeal on his first date with Jolene.

Emboldened by his success, Turner asked Jolene out again, and she accepted. She told me the details between Sunday school and church.

“So, are you getting soft on this guy? I mean, you didn’t even spill punch on him or anything.”

“That was Bubba’s fault!” She tossed her long, black hair back in irritation. “I don’t want Turner ta get any ideas. I need ta come up with somethin’ big, somethin’ really dramatic, ta make up for the first date.”

“What about the trick where you disconnect the distributor, and when he opens the hood to check it out, you honk the horn? That’s a good one.”

“No, it’s not enough. I mean somethin’ big. Somethin’ new.” She concentrated, staring across the branch at the elementary school, and then shook her head. “Can you think of anythin’?”

“Me? I don’t want to get mixed up in this. Turner seems like a nice enough guy. This is your war against the opposite sex, not mine.”

“Oh, come on. It’s not a war. It’s just a joke. Where’s yer sense of humor?”

“Hiding behind my loyalty to my own sex.” In the end I was powerless in the face of her appreciable charm. I racked my brain for ideas and struck pay dirt in the pages of Damon Runyon.

“It’s called ‘The Brakeman’s Daughter.’ You get this guy worked up on asking out a girl, but you tell him terrible stories about how jealous the old man is and how he shoots at the guys who try to take her out. You tell him he can only come when the old man is gone. Then you set up a time for him to come, and when he shows up, somebody comes roaring from the back of the house shooting a gun in the air, and you holler, ‘Oh, no, he found out!’ and the guy loses it.”

“Great! He hasn’t ever met Daddy. We can do it this Friday when he comes ta pick me up.”

“We?! No, siree, Bob. I just supply the ideas. You’ll have to find somebody else to do your dirty work.” I grasped desperately for a way out. “Get Bubba to do it.”

“Oh, don’t be silly. You know Bubba has no sense of humor.” She shook her head. “And we’re twins. How could that be?”

“I can’t imagine. Maybe you got both doses by mistake.”

“Anyway, you’ll have ta do it. Bubba would never go along with it, and I don’t know any other guys who would do me any favors.”

The following Friday night found me crouched in the shadows on the side of the Culpepper house behind a pallet of roofing shingles. The damage from the fire had been primarily to the roof, and with the help of all his crews Mr. Culpepper had made rapid progress in restoring the house to its former glory. I was wearing an oversized coat and a big, black cowboy hat. I cradled a shotgun loaded with rock salt in my lap and was sandwiched between two very smelly hound dogs. Jolene had arranged every detail. Bubba was playing in a softball league and her parents were with him at the game, so there was nobody to get disturbed about the gunshots. Except our intended victim, of course. And we expected him to get very disturbed.

I checked my watch for the sixth time in half as many minutes. “Where is that boy?” I muttered to the hounds. They were lying in the dirt, ears making an L on either side of their heads like bookends. One of them rolled his eyes up in my direction and whacked his tail on the ground a few times. I shook my finger in his face. “If I had a date with a girl that looked like Jolene, you can bet I wouldn’t be late. I might come a few days early, just to make sure she didn’t forget.” The dog snorted, blowing up a little cloud of dust.

As if in answer to my question, a pair of headlights veered off the highway one hundred yards away and wound through the trees toward the house. “Uh, oh. Looks like we’re on.” My pulse quickened.

The dogs perked up. When the car pulled up in front of the house, they started growling. The car door slamming set them both to barking, and I had to grab their collars to keep them from bolting to the front of the house. When Turner started up the walk, they pulled me off balance. The gun fell to the ground, and I was dragged a few feet. “Come on, Jolene!” I muttered through clenched teeth.

I heard the screen door slam, and Jolene’s voice exclaiming with unexpectedly convincing agitation, “Watch out! Daddy came back!” So convincing that I looked behind me to make sure he wasn’t there. Then I realized she was talking to Turner.

With a sigh of relief I released the dogs. They tore around the corner, baying like they’d treed a coon. I fumbled for the shotgun, scrambled to my feet, and came staggering around the corner, shooting and hollering.

BOOM! “Where is that no-good, mealymouthed, son of a motherless flea-bitten, egg-suckin’ cur?” BOOM!

Turner stood frozen in terror, his eyes open almost as big as his mouth, his eyebrows disappearing under his cowboy hat. I lowered the gun in his direction. He turned and ran faster than I thought was possible in boots, the dogs trailing him like clouds of glory. I fired at the space where he had been. He dove through the passenger window and had the car started before he was even behind the wheel. In less time than it takes to tell you, he was burning rubber on the highway, his presence no more than a memory and a cloud of dust.

Jolene and I burst out in laughter, the deep, exhausting laughter that leaves you weak and helpless. She fell against me and we hugged each other to keep from falling over, which was the closest I ever got to embracing Jolene. After several minutes we regained a semblance of composure and staggered into the house.

I collapsed on the couch and had a relapse for several minutes. Eventually the gale of laughter passed, and we were blown by occasional gusts as we recalled the look on Turner’s face when I came around the corner. It was the most intense sensation of euphoria I had ever experienced, exceeding the fit of laughter M and I had shared on our meeting. I looked across the coffee table at Jolene and studied her for a minute or so through the hair that hung in my eyes, too tired and contented to bother clearing my line of vision.

“What?” she asked reflexively at my stare.

“Does it always feel this way?”

“Does what always feel this way?”

“You know. When you pull tricks on your dates. Does it always feel like this?”

She considered the question for awhile. “Not really, because I usually can’t laugh at the time. Sometimes it gets close.” She chuckled. “But this was really the best. It tops them all.”

“Now I think I have some idea of why you do it. I always wondered how you could keep it up. You know, after awhile I figured you’d get tired of it.” A grin crept across my face. “Shoot, this could be habit-forming.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

We basked in the glory of it for a little while longer, telling each other the details and reliving it once again. Then I put up the hat, coat, and gun, extracted the car from its hiding place behind the barn, and went home. The worst part about it was that I couldn’t tell anyone. The only person who could share that moment with me was Jolene. It somehow made me feel even closer to her, more intimate, which was frustrating.

That feeling served to accentuate my own lack of romantic success. Unable to bear it any longer, upon my return to the house, in a rare fit of vulnerability, I told Heidi of my abiding obsession with Becky. To my amazement, instead of laughing me out of the room, she welcomed this sign that her bookoholic brother was perhaps turning human.

“So, when are you going to tell her?”

“What?!” I stared at her in amazement. “Tell her?”

You know how some people talk to foreigners, as if by just talking slower and louder the foreigner will suddenly understand English? That’s how she started talking to me, like I was a little slow on the uptake.

“You have to tell her. How else will she know?”

“But what if she laughs or gets sick?”

“Tell her,” she repeated. “No girl can resist the idea that someone has such a passionate devotion.” I expressed my doubts that any girl would find me difficult to resist. “Don’t be silly. Any girl would die to have an admirer who wrote poems about her.”

At last her insistence won out. I resolved to bare my soul to Becky the next day. I stayed up half the night composing a poem worthy of the occasion.

Becky, how it beckons to my soul and

Summons forth a yearning for your kisses

Tuttle, aye now that name I would rather,

With your heart, transform into my own

I left for the bus early that morning and stopped by a rosebush to arm myself for the quest. To my dismay it was empty. Looking around in panic, I spotted a dogwood tree. I stowed several blossoms in my notebook. On the bus I tried to memorize the poem, being careful not to let anyone else see it.