“Yeah. It does.” Though I wasn’t quite sure what “x” referred to.
“Everybody should have a convertible.”
“Can’t disagree with you there.”
“Even the pig shit smells sort of good tonight.”
“Yeah, I was just thinking that myself. Boy, this pig shit really smells good tonight.”
She slugged me on the arm.
She didn’t say anything for a time, we were just cruising along the river, and there was this houseboat then and even from here you could hear the Latin music and the people all laughing, and she said, “I wish I was out there.”
“On the houseboat?”
“Uh-huh.”
“How come?”
“Oh, I’ve got my reasons.”
“What you’ve got is some sort of secret, don’t you?”
She laughed. “Cliffie Sykes, Jr.,
Herpetologist. Samuel McCain,
Mind Reader.”
“So you going to tell me what it is?”
“No. Because if I do I’ll get sad again.
And I don’t want to be sad for a while.”
“I don’t blame you there.”
“Sometimes, it feels sorta good to be sad.
You know what I mean?”
“I think so.”
“But most of the time it just feels like shit to be sad.” Then, “Could you turn up that song? I love it.”
Fats Domino. “Blueberry Hill.”
I got her home about half an hour later.
She lived in a cottage isolated on the edge of a creek and snuggled between elms. There was an old swing set in the side yard. You could almost hear the happy squeals of kids from other times.
Every once in a while, tired of newspapering, she’d say, “I should just pack it in and have some kids, McCain.” She hadn’t said that for some time.
The house was dark. Her road-weary
Dodge sat in the grassy drive. Chad’s car wasn’t there. Chad taught English at the University of Iowa, forty- five minutes away. He was one of many grad students there writing a novel on the side. We’d never cared much for each other. He was this big, blond guy who dominated every room he was in with his harsh opinions and uncharitable evaluations of everybody around him. I think the word I’m struggling for here is jerk. He caught me reading a Gold Medal paperback by Charles Williams at the Rexall lunch counter one time and has ever since called me, with great scorn, “The Gumshoe.”
I planned to tell him someday that Williams was a better stylist than he or his fellow wanna-bes would ever be. But I was waiting till I got my full growth before I did. He was something like six-two.
“Guess Chad’s still in Iowa City, huh?”
I said.
“Yeah,” she said.
“Probably working on his novel.”
“You know better than that.” Not looking at me.
Just staring at the dark house.
“I do?”
“You’re not exactly an idiot, McCain.”
“I’m not?”
“Chad’s got himself a girlfriend.”
“Oh.”
“That’s what he’s doing in Iowa City.”
“You sure?”
“I skipped work one day and went to Iowa City and followed him around. She lives off-campus.
They spent all afternoon in her apartment. She’s a junior. Really beautiful.”
“Maybe it’s not what you think.”
“All afternoon and it’s not what I think?”
“So what’re you going to do?”
“Kill him is what I should do.”
It was a night of fireflies and frogs on the cusp of the creek and boxcars rattling through the darkness up in the hills. The ragtop idled a little rough. Tune-up time.
Then she was up and gone to the dark cottage, cursing when the key didn’t open the front door first try, exploding into sobs once she was inside.
I thought of going in after her but she probably wanted to be alone. I liked her and I felt sorry for her. The good ones always get it.
Maybe the Reverend Thomas C. Courtney could explain that one in one of his sermons. Why the good ones always get it. Or maybe I could put in a long-. tance call for John Paul Sartre and he could tell me.
I went home.
Judge Whitney called me early the next morning and told me what she wanted. Soon after the call I ate breakfast at Also
Monahan’s. Al lost both his legs on Guam but the way he gets around in his wheelchair should qualify him for the Indy 500. People, including the wasp Brahmins, started going to Also’s out of duty and pity. But they kept coming back because the food’s so good. Al and his harried crew have the most successful restaurant in town.
When I got outside on the street again with my toothpick and my Lucky, my easy-over eggs and toast sitting just fine and dandy in my stomach, I saw three middle-aged men standing beside a small black car, assessing it. There’d been an advertising sign for the Edsel-? Rock and Roll, Sputnik, Flying Saucers, and now the Edsel!”-t had irritated the old-timers. But that was because it reminded them of their age, and seemed to exclude them from driving such a youthmobile.
The Volkswagen this trio was looking at was controversial for another and far more serious reason.
Men their age had fought hard to defeat Germany, leaving many of their friends behind on European soil.
Now here came the krauts insinuating their way into the American economy with their undersized, underpriced cars that were threatening to displace a segment of the American car market. The fear was that these little cars would ultimately throw a whole lot of American workers out of jobs. I didn’t have to stop to hear the dialogue. I knew it by heart.
And agreed with it. “This was the car that Hitler had built for his people. They shouldn’t be allowed to sell it over here.”
I was glad to get into my red Ford and head out to the edge of town. It was a butterfly morning.
In places beneath heavy branches the shaded areas still gleamed with dew. All the early-morning kids on their trikes and bikes looked fresh and alert at the top of the day. A skywriting plane was writing “Make it Pepsi!” The radio was wailing a great old Elvis tune “I Want You, I Need You, I Love Y.” The Church of
Elvis. I was a faithful communicant.
I tried not to think about rattlesnakes or Kylie’s unfaithful husband or my loneliness.
I just tried to enjoy the day, the way all the positive-thinkers like Pat Boone tell you to. His best-seller of advice to high-schoolers “Twixt Twelve and Twenty” had teenagers laughing from coast to coast.
And I did, too, all the way out to the trailer behind the church where Muldaur had died last night. The exchange of gunfire, however, took the day down a notch. Even Pat Boone would have to admit that gunfire tends to put a pall on a nice day.
