“From a man named Roland LeBay,” I said, thinking of LeBay’s brother telling me that LeBay did all the maintenance himself at some do-it-yourself garage. “He’s dead now.”
Darnell stopped cold. “LeBay? Rollie LeBay?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Army? Retired?”
“Yes.”
“Holy Christ, sure! He brought it in Here just as regular as clockwork for six maybe eight years, then he stopped coming. A long time ago. What a bastard that man was. If you poured boiling water down that whoremaster’s throat, he would have peed ice cubes. He couldn’t get along with a living soul.” He gripped my shoulder harder. “Does your friend Cunningham know LeBay’s wife committed suicide in that car?”
“What?” I said, acting surprised—I didn’t want him to know I’d been interested enough to talk to LeBay’s brother after the funeral. I was afraid Darnell might repeat the information to Arnie—complete with his source.
Darnell told me the whole story. First the daughter, then the mother.
“No,” I said when he was done. “I’m pretty sure Arnie doesn’t know that. Are you going to tell him?” The eyes, appraising again. “Are you?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t see any reason to.
“Then neither do I.” He opened the door, and the greasy air of the garage smelled almost sweet after the cigar smoke in the office. “That sonofabitch LeBay, I’ll be damned. I hope he’s doing right-face-left-face and to- the-rear-march down in hell.” His mouth turned down viciously for just a moment, and then he glanced over at where Christine sat in stall twenty with her old, rusting paint and her new radio aerial and half a grille. “That bitch back again,” he said, and then he glanced at me. “Well, they say bad pennies always turn up, huh?”
“Yes,” I said. “I guess they do.”
“So long, kid,” he said, sticking a fresh cigar in his mouth. “Say hi to your dad for me.”
“I will.”
“And tell Cunningham to keep an eye out for that punk Repperton. I got an idea he might be the sort who’d hold a grudge.”
“Me too,” I said.
I walked out of the garage, pausing once to glance back but looking in from the glare, Christine was little more than a shadow among shadows. Bad pennies always turn up, Darnell said. It was a phrase that followed me home.
15
FOOTBALL WOES
Learn to work the saxophone,
I play just what I feel,
Drink Scotch whisky
All night long,
And die behind the wheel…
School started, and nothing much happened for a week or two. Arnie didn’t find out I’d been down to the garage, and I was glad. I don’t think he would have taken kindly to the news. Darnell kept his mouth shut as he had promised (probably for his own reasons). I called Michael one afternoon after school when I knew Arnie would be down at the garage. I told him Arnie had done some stuff to the car, but it was nowhere near street-legal. I told him my impression was that Arnie was mostly farting around. Michael greeted this news with a mixture of relief and surprise, but that ended it… for a while.
Arnie himself flickered in and out of my view, like something you see from the corner of your eye. He was around the halls, and we had three classes together, and he sometimes came over after school or on weekends. There were times when it really seemed as if nothing had changed. But he was at Darnell’s a lot more than he was at my house, and on Friday nights he went out to Philly Plains—the stock-car track—with Darnell’s half-bright handyman, Jimmy Sykcs. They ran out sportsters and charger-class racers, mostly Camaros and Mustangs with all their glass knocked out and roll bars installed. They took them out on Darnell’s flatbed and came back with fresh junk for the automobile graveyard.
It was around that time that Arnie hurt his back. It wasn’t a serious injury—or so he claimed—but my mother noticed that something was wrong with him almost right away. He came over one Sunday to watch the Phillies, who were pounding down the home-stretch to moderate glory that year, and happened to get up during the third inning to pour us each a glass of orange juice. My mother was sitting on the couch with my father, reading a book. She glanced up when Arnie came back in and said, “You’re limping, Arnie.”
I thought I saw a surprising, unexpected expression on Arnie’s face for a second or two—a furtive, almost guilty look. I could have been wrong. If it was there, it was gone a second later.
“I guess I strained my back out at the Plains last night,” he said, giving me my orange juice. “Jimmy Sykes stalled out the last of the clunks we were loading just when it was almost up on the bed of the truck. I could see it rolling back down and then the two of us goofing around for another two hours, trying to get it started again. So I gave it a shove. Guess I shouldn’t have.”
It seemed like an elaborate explanation for a simple little limp, but I could have been wrong about that too.
“You have to be more careful of your back,” my mother said severely. “The Lord—”
“Mom, could we watch the game now?” I asked.
“—only gives you one,” she finished.
“Yes, Mrs Guilder,” Arnie said dutifully.
Elaine wandered in. “Is there any more juice, or did you two coneheads drink it all?”
“Come on, give me a break!” I yelled. There had been some sort of disputed play at second and I had missed the whole thing.
“Don’t shout at your sister, Dennis,” my father muttered from the depths of The Hobbyist magazine he was reading.
“There’s a lot left, Ellie,” Arnie told her.
“Sometimes, Arnie,” Elaine told him, “you strike as almost human.” She flounced out to the kitchen.
“Almost human, Dennis!” Arnie whispered to me, apparently on the verge of grateful tears. “Did you hear that? Almost hyooooman.”
And perhaps it is also only retrospection—or imagination—that makes me think his humour was forced, unreal, only a facade. False memory or true one, the subject of his back passed off, although that limp came and went all through the fall.
I was pretty busy in myself. The cheerleader and I had broken it off, but I could usually find someone to step out with on Saturday nights… if I wasn’t too tired from the constant football practice.
Coach Puffer wasn’t a wretch like Will Darnell, but he was no rose; like half the smalltown high school coaches in America, he had patterned his coaching techniques on those of the late Vince Lombardi, whose chief scripture was that winning wasn’t everything, it was the only thing. You’d be surprised how many people who should know better believe that half-baked horseshit.
A summer of working for Carson Brothers had left me in rugged shape and I think I could have cruised through the season—if it had been a winning season. But by the time Arnie and I had the ugly confrontation near the smoking area behind the shop with Buddy Repperton—and I think that was during the third week of classes—it was pretty clear we weren’t going to have a Winning season. That made Coach Puffer extremely hard to live with, because in his ten years at LHS, he had never had a losing season. That was the year Coach Puffer had to learn a bitter humility. It was a hard lesson for him… and it wasn’t so easy for us, either.
