Me too. Being a smart-ass runs in the Simpson family. It’s what you call hereditary, like a disease. That’s why all of a sudden, before I even think for chrissakes, I hear myself lecturing the old man in this fruity voice that’s a halfway decent imitation of old Clarkie, and I am using the exact words which I’ve heard her say myself.
“Come, come, surely by this day and age everybody has progressed to the point where we can all agree on the necessity of freedom of worship. If we can’t agree on anything else, at least we can agree on that.”
I got news for her. My old man don’t agree to no such thing. He up and bangs me one to the side of the head. A backhander special. You see, nobody in our house is allowed an opinion until they’re twenty-one.
Of course, I could holler Religious Persecution. Not that it would do any good. But it’s something I happen to know quite a bit about, seeing as Religious Persecution was my assignment in Social Studies that time we studied Man’s Inhumanity to Man. The idea was to write a two-thousand-word report proving how everybody has been a shit to everybody else through the ages, and where did it ever get them? This is supposed to improve us somehow, I guess.
Anyway, as usual anything good went fast. Powbrowski got A. Hitler, Keller put dibs on Ivan the Terrible, Langly asked for Genghis Khan. By the time old Clarkie got around to me there was just a bunch of crap left like No Votes For Women. So I asked, please, could I do a project on Mr. Keeler? Keeler is the dim-witted bat’s fart who’s principal of our school.
For being rude, Miss Clark took away my “privilege” of picking and said I had to do Religious Persecution. Everybody was avoiding that one like the plague.
Actually, I found Religious Persecution quite interesting. It’s got principles too, number one being that whatever you’re doing to some poor son of a bitch – roasting his chestnuts over an open fire, or stretching his pant-leg from a 29-incher to a 36-incher on the rack – why, you’re doing it for his own good. So he’ll start thinking right. Which is more or less what my old man was saying when he told me I can’t go out of the house on Sundays any more. He says to me, “You aren’t setting a foot outside of that door [he actually points at it] of a Sunday until you come to your senses and quit with all the Baptist bullshit.”
Not that that’s any heavy-duty torture. What he don’t know is that these Baptists have something called Prayer, Praise and Healing on Wednesday nights. My old man hasn’t locked me up Wednesday nights yet by no means.
I figure if my old man wants somebody to blame for me becoming a Baptist he ought to take a peek in my older brother Gene’s direction. He started it.
Which sounds awful funny if you know anything about Gene. Because if Gene was smart enough to have ever thought about it, he’d come out pretty strong against religion, since it’s generally opposed to most things he’s in favour of.
Still, nobody thinks the worse of my brother for doing what he likes to do. They make a lot of excuses for you in a dinky mining town that’s the arsehole of the world if you bat.456 and score ninety-eight goals in a thirty-five-game season. Shit, last year they passed the hat around to all the big shots on the recreation board and collected the dough for one of Gene’s liquor fines and give it to him on the q.t.
But I’m trying to explain my brother. If I had to sum him up I’d probably just say he’s the kind of guy doesn’t have to dance. What I mean is, you take your average, normal female: they slobber to dance. The guys that stand around leaning against walls are as popular to them as syphilis. You don’t dance, you’re a pathetic dope – even the ugly ones despise you.
But not Gene. He don’t dance and they all cream. You explain it. Do they figure he’s too superior to be bothered? Because it’s not true. I’m his brother and I know. The dink just can’t dance. That simple. But if I mention this little fact to anybody, they look at me like I been playing out in the sun too long. Everybody around here figures Mr. Wonderful could split the fucking atom with a hammer and a chisel if he put his mind to it.
Well, almost everybody. There’s a born doubter in every crowd. Ernie Powers is one of these. He’s the kind of stupid fuck who’s sure they rig the Stanley Cup and the Oscars and nobody even went up in space. Everything is a hoax to him. Yet he believes professional wrestling is on the up and up. You wonder – was he dropped on his head, or what? Otherwise you got to have a plan to grow up that ignorant.
So it was just like Einstein to bet Gene ten dollars he couldn’t take out Nancy Williams. He did that while we were eating a plate of chips and gravy together in the Rite Spot and listening to Gene going on about who’s been getting the benefit of his poking lately. Powers, who is a very jealous person because he’s going steady with his right hand, says, oh yeah sure, maybe her, but he’d bet ten bucks somebody like Nancy Williams in 11B wouldn’t even go out with Gene.
“Get serious,” says my brother when he hears that. He considers himself irresistible to the opposite sex.
“Ten bucks. She’s strictly off-limits even to you, Mr. Dreamboat. It’s all going to waste. That great little gunga-poochy-snuggy-bum, that great matched set. Us guys in 11B, you know what we call them? The Untouchables. Like on TV.”
“What a fucking sad bunch. Untouchables for you guys, maybe. If any of you queers saw a real live piece of pelt you’d throw your hat over it and run.”
“Talk’s cheap,” says Ernie, real offended. “You don’t know nothing about her. My sister says Miss High-and-Mighty didn’t go out for cheerleading because the outfits was too revealing. My sister says Nancy Williams belongs to some religion doesn’t allow her to dance. Me, I saw her pray over a hard-boiled egg for about a half-hour before she ate it in the school lunch-room. Right out where anybody could see, she prayed. No way somebody like that is going to go out with you, Simpson. If she does I’ll eat my shorts.”
“Start looking for the ten bucks, shitface, and skip dinner, because I’m taking Nancy Williams to the Christmas Dance,” my brother answers him right back. Was Gene all of a sudden hostile or was he hostile? I overheard our hockey coach say one time that my brother Gene’s the kind of guy rises to a challenge. The man’s got a point. I lived with Gene my whole life, which is sixteen years now, and I ought to know. Unless he gets mad he’s useless as tits on a boar.
You better believe Gene was mad. He called her up right away from the pay phone in the Rite Spot. It was a toss-up as to which of those two jerks was the most entertaining. Powers kept saying, “There’s no way she’ll go out with him. No way.” And every time he thought of parting with a ten-spot, a look came over his face like he just pinched a nut or something. The guy’s so christly tight he squeaks when he walks. He was sharing my chips and gravy, if you know what I mean?
And then there was Gene. I must say I’ve always enjoyed watching him operate. I mean, even on the telephone he looks so sincere I could just puke. It’s not unconscious by no means. My brother explained to me once what his trick is. To look that way you got to think that way is his motto. “What I do, Billy,” he told me once, “is make myself believe, really believe, say… well, that an H-bomb went off, or that some kind of disease which only attacks women wiped out every female on the face of the earth but the one I’m talking to. That makes her the last piece of tail on the face of the earth, Billy! It’s just natural then to be extra nice.” Even though he’s my brother, I swear to God he had to been left on our doorstep.
Of course, you can’t argue with success. As soon as Gene hung up and smiled, Powers knew he was diddled. Once. But my brother don’t show much mercy. Twice was coming. Nancy Williams had a cousin staying with her for Christmas vacation. She wondered if maybe Gene could get this cousin a date? When Powers heard that, he pretty nearly went off in his pants. Nobody’ll go out with him. He’s fat and he sweats and he never brushes his teeth, there’s stuff grows on them looks like the crap that floats on top of a slough. Even the really desperate girls figure no date is less damaging to their reputations than a date with Powers. You got to
hold the line somewhere is how they look at it.
So Ernie’s big yap cost him fifteen dollars. He blew that month’s baby bonus (which his old lady gives him because he promises to finish school) and part of his allowance. The other five bucks is what he had to pay when Gene sold him Nancy Williams’ cousin. It damn near killed him.
All right. Maybe I ought to’ve said something when Gene marched fat Ernie over to the Bank of Montreal to make a withdrawal on this account Powers has had since he was seven and started saving for a bike. He never got around to getting the bike because he couldn’t bring himself to ever see that balance go down. Which is typical.
Already then I knew Ernie wasn’t taking the cousin to no Christmas Dance. I’d heard once too often from that moron how Whipper Billy Watson would hang a licking on Cassius Clay, or how all the baseball owners get together in the spring to decide which team will win the World Series in the fall. He might learn to keep his hole shut for once.
The thing is I’d made up my mind to take the cousin. For nothing. It just so happens that, Gene being mad, he’d kind of forgot he’s not allowed to touch the old man’s vehicle. Seeing as he tied a chrome granny knot around a telephone pole with the last one.
Gene didn’t realize it yet but he wasn’t going nowhere unless I drove. And I was going to drive because I’d happened to notice Nancy Williams around. She seemed like a very nice person who maybe had what Miss Clark says are principles. I suspected that if that was true, Gene for once was going to strike out, and no way was I going to miss that. Fuck, I’d have killed to see that. No exaggeration.
On the night of the Christmas Dance it’s snowing like a bitch. Not that it’s cold for December, mind you, but snowing. Sticky, sloppy stuff that almost qualifies for sleet, coming down like crazy. I had to put the windshield wipers on. In December yet.
Nancy Williams lives on the edge of town way hell and gone, in new company housing. The mine manager is the dick who named it Green Meadows. What a joke. Nobody lives there seen a blade of grass yet nor pavement neither. They call it Gumboot Flats because if it’s not frozen it’s mud. No street-lights neither. It took me a fuck of a long time to find her house in the dark. When I did I shut off the motor and me and Gene just sat.
“Well?” I says after a bit. I was waiting for Gene to get out first.
“Well what?”
“Well, maybe we should go get them?”
Gene didn’t answer. He leans across me and plays “Shave and a haircut, two bits” on the horn.
“You’re a geek,” I tell him. He don’t care.
We wait. No girls. Gene gives a couple of long, long blasts on the hooter. I was wishing he wouldn’t. This time somebody pulls open the living-room drapes. There stands this character in suspenders, for chrissakes, and a pair of pants stops about two inches shy of his armpits. He looked like somebody’s father and what you’d call belligerent.
“I think he wants us to come to the door.”
“He can want all he likes. Jesus Murphy, it’s snowing out there. I got no rubbers.”
“Oh, Christ,” I says. “I’ll go get them, Gene. It’s such a big deal.”
Easier said than done. I practically had to present a medical certificate. By the time Nancy’s father got through with me I was starting to sound like that meatball Chip on My Three Sons. Yes sir. No sir. He wasn’t too impressed with the horn-blowing episode, let me tell you. And then Nancy’s old lady totes out a Kodak to get some “snaps” for Nancy’s scrapbook. I didn’t say nothing but I felt maybe they were getting evidence for the trial in case they had to slap a charge on me later. You’d have had to see it to believe it. Here I was standing with Nancy and her cousin, grinning like I was in my right mind, flash bulbs going off in my face, nodding away to the old man, who was running a safe-driving clinic for yours truly on the sidelines. Gene, I says to myself, Gene, you’re going to pay.
At last, after practically swearing a blood oath to get his precious girls home, undamaged, by twelve-thirty, I chase the women out the door. And while they run through the snow, giggling, Stirling Moss delays me on the doorstep, in this blizzard, showing me for about the thousandth time how to pull a car out of a skid on ice. I kid you not.
From that point on everything goes rapidly downhill.
Don’t get me wrong. I got no complaints against the girls. Doreen, the cousin, wasn’t going to break no mirrors, and she sure was a lot more lively than I expected. Case in point. When I finally get to the car, fucking near frozen, what do I see? Old Doreen hauling up about a yard of her skirt, which she rolled around her waist like the spare tire on a fat guy. Then she pulled her sweater down to hide it. You bet I was staring.
“Uncle Bob wouldn’t let me wear my mini,” she says. “Got a smoke? I haven’t had one for days.”
It seems she wasn’t the only one had a bit of a problem with the dress code that night. In the back seat I could hear Nancy apologizing to Gene for the outfit her mother had made her special for the dance. Of course, I thought Nancy looked quite nice. But with her frame she couldn’t help, even though she was got up a bit peculiar. What I mean is, she had on this dress made out of the same kind of shiny material my mother wanted for drapes. But the old man said she couldn’t have it because it was too heavy. It’d pull the curtain rods off the wall.
I could tell poor old Nancy Williams sure was nervous. She just got finished apologizing for how she looked and then she started in suckholing to Gene to please excuse her because she wasn’t the world’s best dancer. As a matter of fact this was her first dance ever. Thank heavens for Doreen, who was such a good sport. She’d been teaching her to dance all week. But it takes lots and lots of practice to get the hang of it. She hoped she didn’t break his toes stepping on them. Ha ha ha. Just remember, she was still learning.
Gene said he’d be glad to teach her anything he figured she needed to know.
Nancy didn’t catch on because she doesn’t have that kind of mind. “That would be sweet of you, Gene,” she says.
The band didn’t show because of the storm. An act of God they call it. I’ll say. So I drove around this dump for about an hour while Gene tried to molest Nancy. She put up a fair-to-middling struggle from what I could hear. The stuff her dress was made of was so stiff it crackled when she moved. Sort of like tin foil. Anyway, the two of them had it snapping and crackling like a bonfire there in the back seat while they fought a pitched battle over her body. She wasn’t having none of that first time out of the chute.
“Gene!”
“Well for chrissakes, relax!”
“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Don’t swear.”
“Who’s swearing?”
“Don’t snag my nylons, Gene. Gene, what in the world are you… Gene!”
“Some people don’t know when they’re having a good time,” says Doreen. I think she was a little pissed I hadn’t parked and give her some action. But Lord knows what might’ve happened to Nancy if I’d done that.
Then, all of a sudden, Nancy calls out, sounding what you’d call desperate, “Hey, everybody, who wants a Coke!”
“Nobody wants a Coke,” mumbles Gene, sort of through his teeth.
“Well, maybe we could go some place?” Meaning somewhere well-lit where this octopus will lay off for five seconds.
“I’ll take you some place,” Gene mutters. “You want to go somewhere, we’ll go to Zipper’s. Hey Billy, let’s take them to Zipper’s.”
“I don’t know, Gene…”
The way I said that perked Doreen up right away. As far as she was concerned, anything was better than driving around with a dope, looking at a snowstorm. “Hey,” she hollers, “that sounds like fun!” Fun like a mental farm.
That clinched it though. “Sure,” says Gene, “we’ll check out Zipper’s.”
What could I say?
Don’t get me wrong. Like everybody else I go to Zipper’s and do s
tuff you can’t do any place else in town. That’s not it. But I wouldn’t take anybody nice there on purpose. And I’m not trying to say that Zipper and his mother are bad people neither. It’s just that so many shitty things have happened to those two that they’ve become kind of unpredictable. If you aren’t used to that it can seem pretty weird.
I mean, look at Zipper. This guy is a not entirely normal human being who tries to tattoo himself with geometry dividers and India ink. He has this home poke on his arm which he claims is an American bald eagle but looks like a demented turkey or something. He did it himself, and the worst is he doesn’t know how homely that bird is. The dumb prick shows it to people to admire.
Also, I should say a year ago he quits school to teach himself to be a drummer. That’s all. He doesn’t get a job or nothing, just sits at home and drums, and his mother, who’s a widow and doesn’t know any better, lets him. I guess that that’s not any big surprise. She’s a pretty hopeless drunk who’s been taking her orders from Zipper since he was six. That’s when his old man got electrocuted out at the mine.
Still, I’m not saying that the way Zipper is is entirely his fault. Though he can be a real creep all right. Like once when he was about ten years old Momma Zipper gets a jag on and passes out naked in the bedroom, and he lets any of his friends look at his mother with no clothes on for chrissakes, if they pay him a dime. His own mother, mind you.
But in his defence I’d say he’s seen a lot of “uncles” come and go in his time, some of which figured they’d make like the man of the house and tune him in. For a while there when he was eleven, twelve maybe, half the time he was coming to school with a black eye.
Now you take Gene, he figures Zipper’s house is heaven on earth. No rules. Gene figures that’s the way life ought to be. No rules. Of course, nothing’s entirely free. At Zipper’s you got to bring a bottle or a case of beer and give Mrs. Zipper a few snorts, then everything is hunky-dory. Gene had a bottle of Five Star stashed under the back seat for the big Christmas Dance, so we were okay in that department.
Man Descending Page 10
