American Boy

by Larry Watson

  “He’ll understand.”

  “Don’t be too sure of that.”

  The twins came in wearing their matching red wool coats. As a concession to individuality, however, Janet wore white furry earmuffs and Julia a blue knitted cap.

  “What kind of cake do you want?” Julia asked Johnny. “We’ll get you any kind you like.”

  This was no empty promise. Every year at Saint Bartholomew’s Carnival the twins bought ticket after ticket at the cakewalk. And their perseverance always paid off. The previous year they brought home five cakes.

  “Chocolate,” said Johnny, “with chocolate frosting.”

  “Hey,” I added, “don’t I get to put in an order?”

  “Oh Matt. Everyone knows you’ll eat anything.”

  Did they? I didn’t even know that about myself.

  “Remember,” said Mrs. Dunbar, guiding the twins out the door and then linking her arm in her husband’s. “Cold chicken in the refrigerator.”

  Halfway out the door, the doctor turned back to us to add with a smile, “And I don’t want to come home to the smell of cigars.”

  As soon as they left, I questioned Johnny about what had happened after I was kicked out of the house, both that night and in the days since.

  “I don’t remember much,” Johnny said. “After I fell out of the baby buggy, everything’s sort of a blank. When I woke up the next day I didn’t feel too bad. Thirsty as hell, but that was about it. No headache. No upset stomach. Then I had a bowl of soup and I puked my guts out again.”

  “What about Louisa putting you to bed? What was that like?”

  “Damned if I know. I woke up in my own bed, but I don’t remember how I got there.”

  “Were you dressed? Under the covers?”

  “Dressed. Except for my shoes. Someone had put a quilt over me and a pan next to the bed. But it could have been my dad or mom who did that.”

  “She hasn’t said anything to you since?”

  “I’ve hardly seen her.”

  “Is she in trouble with your folks?”

  “Not that I know of.” He pushed a lump of clay in my direction. “What if we just painted a lung black for lung cancer?”

  “Wouldn’t that be black lung? That’s a different thing.”

  “Maybe we could have just one model for all the lung problems? Emphysema. Black lung. Cancer.”

  “That’d work. Are they all fatal?”

  “They’ve got to be, don’t they?”

  “I guess.” I rolled the clay between my palm. “Your parents didn’t ground you or anything?”

  “They gave me the talk. You know, we’re disappointed in you, we expect better from you, we hope you’ve learned something....”

  I wanted to know whether my name came up during the course of that talk, but before I could ask him, Johnny turned back to the poster board. “I think the models of the organs should be to the same scale as the drawing. So it looks like they’ve just been removed.”

  “Or could be put back.”

  “Yeah, like you’d want to put a diseased liver back.”

  “Well, if there’s no hope...”

  The Dunbar house had a narrow staircase that led from the floor above down to the pantry off the kitchen. They called it the maid’s staircase, though the Dunbars had never employed anyone in that capacity. Coming down into the kitchen through that entrance enabled Louisa to arrive without our having heard or seen her approach. We looked up, and she was there.

  Without a word of greeting, she walked over to the sink and filled a glass of water from the tap. She was dressed exactly as she had been on New Year’s Eve, right down to the slippers. After she drank, she leaned back, crossed her arms, and watched us as intently as we watched her. She seemed bored but a little on edge, as if even a quarrel would be a welcome distraction.

  “Don’t mind me,” she said finally. “Go ahead with whatever you were doing.”

  “A science project,” Johnny explained.

  “Yeah? Looks like you’re performing a—what do you call it?—an autopsy.”

  “Nope,” said Johnny. “The patient is still alive.”

  She came over to the table and looked down at our unfinished work. “Maybe you should call in a specialist.”

  “Won’t do any good,” I said. “He’s doomed.”

  “Might as well sew him up and send him on his way then.” Louisa bent over and looked closely at me. “The doctor sure did a nice job with your stitches.” She touched her own eyebrow.

  I pointed to her midsection. “How’d he do with yours?”

  She set down her water glass, backed up from the table, bent over, and grabbed the hem of her dress. While Johnny and I watched in disbelief, Louisa Lindahl slowly pulled and gathered up material until her dress rose above her knees, above her pale thighs, above her once-white-nowgraying cotton underpants, above that navel into which my fingertip had once inserted itself, and still higher, until the scar that traversed her abdomen was exposed, a puckered pink slash that looked more like a healed-over knife wound than a bullet’s track. She let us gape for a moment—not knowing that she had been bared to us previously in a similar way—and then she dropped her dress and smoothed it down the front.

  This little act apparently provided the amusement she’d been seeking. Louisa clapped her hands and laughed. “You are a pair, you know that? You should see the look on your faces!”

  Johnny and I glanced quickly at each other as if to verify what she had seen. His face was pure amazement.

  “Well?” Louisa asked. “Did you want to look or didn’t you?”

  “He did a nice job,” I said. “Wouldn’t you say, Johnny? Your dad did a nice job?”

  “He knows how to pull a stitch tight, that’s for sure.”

  Only seconds had passed, but I was already making demands on my memory. Had I seen a mound at the front of her underpants, a springy little swelling underneath the fabric? Had an inch or two of cotton torn away from the elastic waistband and left a triangle of flesh uncovered? If she had only given us some warning, I would have known to focus even more carefully.

  Louisa walked over to the refrigerator and opened it. “Suppose anyone would notice if one of these beers went missing?”

  “They’d notice,” said Johnny. “But they’d blame me.”

  “Or me,” I added.

  Still peering around the refrigerator’s interior, Louisa replied, “Really? I thought you two were brandy drinkers.”

  “Beer, when we can get it,” I said.

  “When you can get it?”

  “A couple guys will buy for us sometimes,” Johnny said. “But they’re not always around. It’s kind of hit or miss.”

  She closed the refrigerator. “Hell. I’ll buy you all the beer you want.”

  “Are you serious?” Johnny threw down his pencil. “What are we sitting around here for? Let’s go.”

  “Now?” said Louisa. “All right. What the hell. Let me get my coat.”

  Before she exited the kitchen, she paused in the doorway. “They’re just underpants, you know. Everyone wears them.”

  “But not everyone has a bullet wound,” said Johnny.

  8.

  LOUISA LEANED FORWARD TO TURN the radio dial. She was trying to steady the signal from Fargo’s KFRG, but just when it seemed as if the Four Seasons’ high harmonies had finally found their way to us, Johnny would turn a corner or round a curve and the radio would resume its guttural hiss.

  When Louisa wasn’t cursing the radio reception she was complaining about the lack of heat in the Plymouth Valiant. The car was officially Johnny’s mother’s, but he was free to take it anytime the keys were hanging on the hook next to the back door. I had similar privileges with our old DeSoto, but since my mother usually drove the car to work, I seldom had access to it in the evening.

  We were shoulder to shoulder in the compact car, and every time Louisa shivered I felt it. “If there’s any heat coming out down there,” she said, wavi
ng her foot back and forth under the dashboard, “I sure as hell don’t feel it.”

  “I need to keep the defroster running full blast a little longer,” explained Johnny, as he rubbed the heel of his gloved hand at the frost forming on the windshield. We were on our way to a little roadside tavern about five miles outside town. Louisa didn’t want someone in a liquor store or bar in town seeing her carry a case of beer out to a car that looked like Mrs. Dunbar’s.

  “By the way,” said Louisa, “the guys who usually buy your liquor for you—how much do you pay them?”

  She looked to Johnny first. He didn’t answer, and I knew why. But what were we thinking?—that she offered to do this because she was so fond of us? “Sometimes we give them a six-pack,” I said. “If it’s a big order.”

  “A six-pack. Gee.” Louisa huddled deeper inside her plaid wool mackinaw. It was another ill-fitting garment, but in this case it occurred to me that its original owner had probably been Lester Huston.

  “It’s usually someone’s older brother,” Johnny added. “But we’ll pay you. What’s fair?”

  “I don’t know. A case of beer ... Five bucks?”

  “What do you think, Matt? Five okay with you?”

  “Sure, fine. I’ll kick in.” I knew if I didn’t agree, Johnny would pay it all himself.

  Louisa pointed toward the glowing blue neon of a Hamm’s beer sign on the right side of the road ahead. “There it is. Just pull into the lot and leave the engine running. Maybe the car will be warm by the time I come out.”

  Before she got out of the car, we each gave her five dollars.

  “Okay,” she said, pocketing the bills. “And you said Budweiser?”

  “Or Schlitz.”

  About five minutes later, Louisa Lindahl exited the Red Hawk Bar with a case of Blue Lake Lager, everyone’s beer of last resort. “This was what they had cold,” she explained. “I thought we could have a few before we go back to the house. Unless you have to get right back to your homework.” She offered no change from the purchase.

  “As long as I’m home before my folks and the twins get back from the carnival,” Johnny replied cheerfully.

  “I’ve got all night,” I added.

  “So let’s go,” said Louisa. “You know some out-of-theway place we can park?”

  Before he put the car in gear, I knew where Johnny would take us.

  Johnny stopped just short of the pine trees that seemed planted to hide the entrance to Frenchman’s Forest. We were not far from the clearing where Lester Huston and Louisa Lindahl had lived together in their ramshackle cabin. I knew he’d drive to the Forest, but I didn’t know he’d choose a spot as loaded with memory as those pine boughs were laden with snow.

  Louisa recognized the significance of the site, but it didn’t appear to present any emotional difficulty for her. As soon as the car was parked, she twisted herself around, got up on her knees, and reached over into the backseat to pull out bottles of beer for each of us.

  I had a moment of panic, but she pulled a church key out of her pocket, and opened each of the bottles in turn. Then, after a long pull at her beer, Louisa said, “Lester ... You know why he wanted to live here? In the woods, I mean.”

  “Because it was cheap?” replied Johnny.

  “Lester thought he’d be able to hunt for our food. ‘These woods are full of game,’ he’d say. No shit. Raccoons ate our garbage, and every morning I’d see deer outside our bedroom window. But they were safe from Lester. The only gun he had was that little .22. Not that he could hit a goddamn thing.” She laughed and patted her stomach. “I mean, obviously. The sonofabitch damn near missed me at point-blank range.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been meaning to ask,” Johnny said. “What does it feel like to get shot?” Sometimes his naïveté brought him effortlessly to just the right question.

  Louisa leaned away from Johnny, as if she needed a little distance to see who was asking her such a question. “It hurt like hell. But you didn’t need me to tell you that, did you?”

  “Like being burned?”

  “Just trust me: you don’t want to get shot.”

  “Do you miss him? Lester?”

  “Hell, no. You don’t miss someone who tried to kill you, for Chrissake.”

  Johnny’s questions emboldened me to ask, “Why’d he try to shoot you?”

  “Not try. He did shoot me. I showed you the goddamn scar. Because he thought I should have fixed him a Thanksgiving dinner that was more substantial than a bowl of soup. You bring something more than soup home, I told him, and I’ll fix it. Like pointing a gun at me was going to make a Thanksgiving feast magically appear on the table. Lester Huston ... Good riddance, I say. Hey, turn that up.” She pointed to the radio. “Telstar,” a charttopping instrumental by the Tornados, was playing. I was sick of the song, but I did as she said.

  “Now, is that supposed to be a real satellite signal in the song?” Louisa asked. “I thought I heard that somewhere.”

  “It’s guitars,” I said.

  She twisted herself around again, but this time it was merely to make herself more comfortable. She lifted her legs, extended them across Johnny’s lap, and rested her back against me. Then she reached over, turned up the radio, and settled back to listen to the song. When it was over, Louisa asked, “Do you ever park here with your girls? I know this is a big make-out spot. Lester used to complain that we couldn’t get back out to the road some nights because love cars were blocking the road. That’s what he called them. Love cars.”

  “I have,” I said. “A few times.”

  Johnny leaned forward. “Yeah? With Debbie?”

  “Ooh, Debbie—she sounds cute. Does she look like Debbie Reynolds?”

  “She has brown hair. That’s about as far as it goes.”

  “And why aren’t you with her tonight? Because you had to work on your science project?”

  “We broke up.”

  “I bet I know why. She wouldn’t get in the backseat with you.”

  “Because I fixed her soup for Thanksgiving.”

  “Oooo ... That’s very good. Nasty, but good. Now give us the juicy details about what the two of you did in your love car.”

  I regretted having brought up the subject, and I wasn’t going to make matters worse by going into detail about what Debbie McCarren and I did or didn’t do when we parked on the edge of Frenchman’s Forest. Nor would I tell them that the last time we were here, on a windy autumn night when sleet struck the car like the clicking of impatient fingernails, we didn’t spend hours with our tongues in each other’s mouths and my hand inside her unbuttoned blouse. Instead, I just sat behind the wheel with my hands to myself while Debbie went through the reasons we could no longer be a couple. “You push too hard,” was a phrase I heard more than once that night, referring primarily to my sexual advances. “Why can’t you let things be the way they are?” she asked. “Why do you always want more, more, more?” I didn’t have a good answer because I couldn’t really understand the question. Who didn’t want more?

  Louisa pushed herself back against me. “Come on. Did you even get past first base with her?”

  “A gentleman doesn’t talk about such things.”

  Louisa burst out laughing. “Ooh, that’s rich! A gentleman! Too bad Debbie can’t hear you say that. She might even let you do everything you want. And as long as we’re on the subject,” she went on, “let me give you two a tip. When you’re parking with a girl in the winter, leave the car running. I mean, obviously. You need to keep the heat on. She won’t give anything up if she’s freezing. And you want the radio playing, too.”

  In order to accommodate Louisa’s semiprone position across the front seat, I had put my arm up along the back of it. And now while she was talking I let my arm drop, knowing that my hand would fall near her breast, padded as it was beneath several layers of clothing. What did I have to lose? After all, Louisa didn’t believe in gentlemen anyway....

  When my hand landed where I hoped it wo
uld, Louisa didn’t startle or stop talking. But with an alacrity that indicated she had expected this move all along, she lifted my hand and put it back on the seat. She could not have plucked a piece of lint from her clothing with greater detachment or deliberation. “But make sure the tailpipe isn’t in the snow,” she continued. “Because if that happens, carbon monoxide will back up into the car. I heard about that happening once, and the guy and the girl were both killed. There. Don’t say you didn’t learn anything tonight.”

  It wasn’t what I’d hoped to learn about lovers in parked cars, but then her own experiences in Frenchman’s Forest probably produced more mixed emotions for Lousia Lindahl.

  “You have any more advice for us?” I asked.

  She sat up a little straighter. “Since you asked.” She took a long pull from her bottle of Blue Lake and said, “If you’re going to go fast, go faster. And if you’re going to go slow, go slower.”

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” asked Johnny.

  She pushed back against me again. “Should I tell him?”

  My first thought on hearing her advice was simple: who wants to go slow? But if I asked that, it would only prove that I didn’t have any idea what Louisa was talking about, and that wouldn’t do. Instead I said, as nonchalantly as possible, “Might as well.”

  She was silent for a long moment, while a commercial for a Fargo Ford dealer played on the radio. “What the hell,” she said finally. “He’ll know when the time comes.”

  “Fine,” said Johnny. “Be that way.”

  A long silence followed. It felt as if we were all waiting for something to fill the moment, but we were also all equally unsure of what that might be.

  Johnny finally spoke up, and I wasn’t happy to hear what he had to say. “We should get back.”

  Louisa finished her beer in one long swig, then replied, “Okay, let’s skedaddle.” She swung her legs off Johnny’s lap, and he put the car in reverse. Soon we were out from under the dark shelter of the trees. The winter sky was bright with stars.

  We had to cache the beer someplace, and I volunteered our garage. My mother was working, and I could hide what was left of the case under a canvas tarp against the back wall. The beer wouldn’t be found there and it probably wouldn’t freeze.