The girls, dressed in pastel taffeta and netting, huddled on one side of the room so the boys couldn’t read their hands as they signed. The boys did the same thing, acting like they could care less, but glancing over their shoulders to see if any of the girls were looking their way.
The Victrola was placed on the hardwood floor of the basketball court, the volume turned up full blast. You couldn’t hear yourself, but not many cared. “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B” blasted out, the sound pounding in my head and vibrating through the soles of my shoes up to my knees.
My feet started tapping all by themselves.
Hursey’s best friend, Billy, black pompadour slicked high with Brylcreem pomade, took the long walk across the oak floor to a girl in a yellow gown. He led her onto the open floor where he started twirling her out and back and under his arm, all the while shifting his feet to match the beat.
“I didn’t know Billy could jitterbug like that!” Mother said.
I’d never heard of the jitterbug before, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the two of them. When the song ended, they walked off to stomping feet and waving hands. Other couples ventured out for the next dance, a slow number Billy danced with a pretty dark-haired girl. Hursey sat on the sidelines and moped the whole time, begging until Mother agreed to take him back to the dormitory. When Vonnie and I complained about having to leave early, Mother said it was time to go anyway. She wouldn’t want Grandma getting herself all in a tizzy about us being out half the night.
Still sulking about missing the extra point the day before, Hursey hardly said a thing when we picked him up for breakfast. Hardly ate anything either, which was a shame because Mother always treated us to breakfast at a pancake place before we left.
After we said our goodbyes and promised to write, although I never did that I remember, nor did Hursey, we started for home.
It was a trip we made many times over the years.
One that started out full of promise, but always ended feeling empty.
Even though Hursey hadn’t started to school at Romney until he was seven, he still managed to graduate when he was seventeen, skipping a couple of grades along the way.
After he graduated, Hursey got a scholarship to Gallaudet College in Washington, D.C., where again many of his classmates were several years older. As part of freshman hazing or maybe it was a fraternity, he had to stand on a busy street corner holding a sign with a picture of a naked woman on it. And he got arrested. Well, not really arrested, but picked up by the police. The local police gave the Gallaudet kids some leeway, so they simply escorted him back to campus and left him with the dean, who gave him a talking to. My brother’s black-and-white sense of justice required that everyone involved be punished, but for some reason he was the only one who got in trouble, or so he claimed.
That’s when he decided to leave.
Unable to realize how that foolhardy decision would affect his life, leave he did. Mother had sent him money to buy a typewriter for his birthday. Instead, he bought a one-way Greyhound ticket home.
No matter what Mother said, he refused to go back.
So my brother would not be a doctor, lawyer, merchant, or chief.
Instead, he got a job working as a printer. He was good at it. Good at layout, and lightning fast on the linotype machine. So good that when his supervisor left, he was asked to train the new one.
“If I can train a new boss, why can’t I be one?”
It was a question he asked many times over the years.
But there was no good answer—at least none that satisfied him. Haunted by his deafness and his dreams, my brother lived between what he called the living and the deaf, never feeling at ease in either world.
21
Lonely Hearts Club Man
The man standing at our front door clutched a forlorn bunch of posies in his fist. Through the screen I watched the small animal squatting on his head scooch forward, ready to leap onto my face and chew my nose off. I took a quick step back and stepped on Aunt Lila’s toe, causing her to yelp—or it could be the varmint caused it. Then I realized it was only a ratty toupee, no longer matched to the graying tufts that stuck out over his ears.
I admit to feeling a little let down.
Aunt Lila smiled her toothiest smile. “I’m Kathleen, Lila’s twin,” she lied. “No doubt you’d be the gentleman from the Romeo Lonely Hearts Club.” She kept right on lying, not allowing time for him to answer. “Lila felt terrible she couldn’t be here to meet you in person, but she had to travel to Bluefield to get the children on real short notice. Of course you wouldn’t know a thing about them, now would you? Our Aunt Pearlie went on to Glory sudden-like, rest her soul, and left her brood to Lila, her being barren and all. Eight boys, and quite a handful if I do say so. Be a nice ready-made family for some lucky man, don’t you think?”
He squirmed and inched back toward the steps as she spoke.
“I’d ask you in for a cup of coffee, but of course you’ll be wanting to get back to your busy life in Wichita. If you back-track up that red dog to Worley Road, you can catch the same bus back to town if you don’t dawdle. It does a turnaround over by the Pinecrest TB Sanitarium and ought to be heading this way any minute now. I’ll be sure to give Lila your regards. Don’t you be a stranger now,” she hollered after him.
He practically tripped over his feet scurrying down the porch steps. Aunt Lila closed the
