American Boy

by Larry Watson

  Johnny drove to my house. He pulled into the driveway, and I unloaded the beer from the backseat and carried it into the garage through the side door. I wanted to be sure old Mrs. Darden didn’t see what I was doing.

  While I was covering the bottles of beer, I heard Johnny back the car out of the driveway. I ran out of the garage, but only in time to see the Valiant’s taillights fading into the night. I was shocked, as I’d assumed all along that after the beer was hidden we would all return to the Dunbar house, and that Johnny and I would resume working on our science project, as strange as that schoolboy activity might seem at this point.

  A misunderstanding, I told myself, but that didn’t make me feel much better. I suppose I could have pulled my stocking cap down over my ears and buttoned my coat and set out for the Dunbars’. If I ran I would arrive there only minutes after they did. But I didn’t. Instead, I took two bottles of beer and carried them into the house.

  I didn’t bother turning on the lights in my room. I just sat down on the bed and drank my cheap beer. When I turned on the radio, that fucking song was playing again. But now the guitars sounded more like the high, nasal taunts of the playground than signals beamed down from space.

  9.

  I’D HOPED THAT THE REMAINING BOTTLES of Blue Lake Lager would go the way of the first three, but since such a set of circumstances was unlikely to arise again, I could hardly argue for saving the beer when another occasion arose. Otis Unwin’s parents were leaving town for a few days, and so he would have the house to himself. He didn’t want to throw a full-scale party—he was worried that the neighbors would call his parents or the sheriff or both—but Otis did invite a few friends, including Johnny and me, over for a weekend of poker and beer. And so one Friday evening not long after our outing to Frenchman’s Forest with Louisa, Johnny picked me up and we drove to Otis Unwin’s along with nineteen bottles of Blue Lake Lager.

  Our arrival completed the short guest list. Only ten of us were in attendance, a small gathering, as Otis had hoped for. The poker game had already started, and Johnny sat in. I joined the rest of the kibitzers standing a safe distance behind the players.

  Johnny and I and some of the other fellows in Otis’s kitchen played poker often, and we took the game seriously. Our preferred game was stud, either five- or seven-card, and we scorned wild-card or split-pot games. We didn’t show hole cards when the privilege wasn’t paid for. If a player ran out of money he was finished for the night; there were no loans at the table. The stakes were quarter, dime, nickel, with a limit of three raises, and while that might not seem like much, it was still possible to win or lose enough over the course of an evening to make a difference to your wallet or your spirits for days to come. Outsiders occasionally sat in on the game, and they invariably lost. They drank too much or they didn’t keep track of the cards, they couldn’t stand to fold or they called bets they shouldn’t have, they chased pots or their faces gave away their good hands and their bluffs, and often they relied more on luck than on skill. We called those interlopers “squirrels,” though not to their faces.

  Not long after he sat down, Johnny had the largest stack of chips on the table. This was not a surprise. Of our group of regulars, he was acknowledged to be the best player. He was good at math and could figure odds quickly. He didn’t have a poker face, but there was another reason he couldn’t be read—he never stopped laughing and talking and taunting the other players. He kept up a running commentary on the cards and how players were likely to play them. The passivity he displayed in every other kind of competition was absent from the poker table. He had no trouble at all taking another player’s last nickel.

  But what really distinguished Johnny as a player was his understanding that money wasn’t money in poker. For him it was merely a way to keep score, a tool to be used in playing a game, much like a racket, bat, or ball. On more than one occasion he’d said to me, “You play poker with money, Matt, not cards.” And with that remark he identified exactly what prevented me from being a better player. I couldn’t get past the fact that chips represented money, and that made me a conservative player. I seldom bluffed, I folded all but the surest hands, and I didn’t know how to buy pots or sandbag players into playing hands they shouldn’t. I usually won for other reasons, to be sure, but in contrast to Johnny, my winnings were modest. In any case, I’d decided not to sit in on the game at Otis’s because I wanted to drink more than a single beer, something I’d never do if I were playing.

  There was a player that night who wasn’t one of the regulars, but he was no squirrel. Tim Van Dine’s older brother, Glen, had flunked out of Moorhead State College, and he was back in Willow Falls, pumping gas at the Mobil station and waiting until fall, when he’d enroll in a junior college and try to get his grades up so he could return to the university. Glen had played a lot of poker at his fraternity house, and his skill showed. His pile of chips was almost as large as Johnny’s, but in contrast to Johnny, who chattered as much as an infielder during the game, Glen Van Dine said next to nothing. He wouldn’t even announce called or raised bets; he simply tossed his chips into the pot. He knocked on the table to indicate a check, and he shoved his folded cards away as if he could barely stand to touch them. And when he had a winning hand he turned over his cards, pulled in the chips, and began to sort and stack them, all without saying a word.

  It was close to ten o’clock when Gary Krynicki returned from the garage where the beers that wouldn’t fit in the refrigerator were chilling. “Hey, there’s a carload of girls out in the driveway,” Gary announced. “Mary Gwynn, Bonnie Wahl, and Daniels and McCarren. They want to come in.”

  “No!” shouted Otis, jumping up from the card game. “Jesus, if this gets out of hand ...”

  While most of us would have welcomed the girls, it was Otis’s party, so no one tried to argue with him when he went out to shoo them away.

  Minutes later, Otis returned. “Garth? Debbie wants to talk to you. I think she’s drunk, but I told her I’d give you the message. You can go out there if you like, but they can’t come in. Got that?”

  “Shit,” I said. Then I finished my beer and walked out into the cold without bothering with a coat.

  As soon as she saw me coming, Debbie rolled down the back window of Mary Gwynn’s father’s cream-colored Oldsmobile. She leaned out and waved, as if she were trying to catch my eye from a great distance. When I arrived at the car, however, Jilly Daniels pushed her way in front of Debbie in order to issue a warning on behalf of her friend. “Matt, don’t say anything that’ll hurt her. Really—”

  “I’m not supposed to hurt her? Who do you think—Oh, forget it. Hey, Debbie.”

  Debbie extended a mittened hand in my direction. “Matt, I miss y-o-o-o-u-u!”

  She was drunk, all right. I’d only seen her in that condition once before, at a party after the Homecoming Dance, but I remembered the signs. Debbie McCarren was vivacious and seldom had trouble making her moods and feelings known. But after a few drinks every expression of emotion seemed artificial and overwrought. Now, for example, she had furrowed her brow and pursed her lips in an attempt to look sad, but the effect was closer to a little girl’s pout, and an unconvincing one at that. That said, her mascara was smeared as if she had been crying, and her cat’s-eye glasses were askew. Her dark brown hair, usually lacquered into a smooth helmet, was mussed as well.

  I used the cold as an excuse to jam my hands into my pockets. “Do you?”

  “I mean it, Matty. I do.” She leaned even farther out the window, and Jilly pretended to attempt to pull her back into the car. From the front seat, smart-ass Bonnie Wahl said over her shoulder, “Matty? That’s cute.”

  “Shut up,” Debbie snapped at her friend. “Can we talk, Matt? Please?”

  “About what?”

  “About us.”

  “I didn’t think there was an ‘us.’”

  A light snow was falling, and Debbie batted at the flakes as if they were the only obstacle to agreem
ent between us. “Please, Matt? In private?”

  The Valiant was parked around the corner, and I nodded in its direction. “We can talk in Johnny’s car.”

  Debbie scrambled out of the car and immediately linked her arm in mine.

  Before we could walk away, Bonnie Wahl asked, “What the hell are we supposed to do?”

  Debbie shrugged and said demurely, “You can go.”

  Jilly Daniels leaned out the window again. “Hey, Matt. If we can’t go in, can you at least bring some beer out? We’ll pay.”

  “Sorry. Our supplies are limited.”

  “Oh, who needs them,” said Bonnie. “We still have some vodka left.”

  Debbie McCarren was short, full-breasted, and widehipped, and she walked with a kind of waddle. She had large brown eyes, a pug nose, and an upper lip more prominent than the lower. She never would have been mistaken for beautiful, but somehow she worked what she had to her advantage. Or at least it worked for me, and Debbie knew as much.

  Once we were ensconced in the Valiant, she scooted across the backseat and, in contrast to the way Louisa Lindahl had brusquely removed my hand from her body, Debbie pulled my arm around her and fitted herself snugly to my side. “Doesn’t this feel ... right?” Her breath smelled like vegetable soup mixed with rubbing alcohol. “What if we never broke up? What would we be doing tonight?”

  I didn’t know what to say. First of all, we hadn’t broken up. Debbie McCarren had dropped me. Second, we likely would have been doing exactly what we had been doing—playing poker and drinking beer in my case, riding around with a pack of girls and handing a bottle of vodka back and forth in hers. And if we had passed on those activities for each other’s company, we almost surely would have been doing exactly what we were doing now—seeking each other’s heat in a parked car.

  Debbie proceeded as if I had already answered. “And would we be going to the Frost Festival Dance tomorrow night?”

  I knew then what this reconciliation was all about. I pulled her closer, and she rose to meet my kiss with all the old familiar ardor and intensity.

  After a few minutes of running our tongues around each other’s mouths, I decided to test the depth and sincerity of her renewed fond feelings for me.

  Trying to negotiate around and under coat, muffler, sweater, blouse, and brassiere seemed too complicated. It also presented too many opportunities for Debbie to stop me along the way. So I opted for a different route. I slid my hand up her skirt, high up her thigh. I was surprised she didn’t immediately grab my hand or clamp her legs together to halt my progress. She squirmed under my touch, and while she might have been trying to wriggle away from my exploring fingers, it was also possible that she was writhing with passion. I chose to accept the latter interpretation.

  Thanks to the hours Johnny and I had spent poring over Dr. Dunbar’s anatomy books, I was pretty familiar with the parts and purposes of female genitalia. Unfortunately, however, I had no such familiarity with their undergarments. While I might have known what to do if my hand had been inside Debbie’s girdle, I was baffled now, and I couldn’t do anything but probe and poke dumbly around its tightly banded borders.

  My quest soon came to an end in any case. Debbie’s first “no” was spoken in the middle of a kiss, and because she said the word right into my mouth, it was almost completely unintelligible. Then she deftly rolled her hips in a way that made it imperative for me to remove my hand from between her legs.

  “God,” she said, breaking away from our embrace and sliding back across the seat. “I might have known. Here I am thinking about all the wonderful, romantic times we had together, and all you care about is what you can get. You haven’t changed a bit.”

  Not changed? How could she say that? I’d seen Louisa Lindahl’s bare breasts. I’d gotten drunk with her. She’d lifted her dress to show me her scar. She’d even advised me on what I should do in the backseat with a girl like Debbie. How could I not be changed?

  Debbie tried to make a dramatic exit, but the door handle wouldn’t cooperate. And as she yanked ineffectually on it, she became increasingly angry. “And to think I told Art Graber that I couldn’t go to Frost Festival with him. Art Graber, for Chrissake!”

  I reached across to help her with the door, and this prompted Debbie to fling her arm out violently in my direction. I pulled back, and she almost slid to the floor of the Valiant. But somehow something in that contortion caused the door to pop open, and Debbie scrambled out, trying to recompose herself in the process.

  She must have felt that she hadn’t adequately expressed her disgust, for she leaned back into the car’s interior. “Another thing, Matthew, Matthew Garth . . .” She spoke my last name as if giving voice to it was a sufficient curse. But then her vocabulary failed her and she had to settle for something less subtle. “Oh, fuck you. Just fuck you!”

  I watched Debbie McCarren walk away through the scrim of the falling snow. It was not quite as reckless a departure as it might have seemed. Both she and Bonnie Wahl lived less than three blocks from Otis Unwin.

  I hadn’t been in the best of moods when the evening began. In my mind the remaining Blue Lake Lager belonged to Louisa, Johnny, and me. We were supposed to drink it together, and I begrudged sharing it with the guys. And then just when I felt finished with Debbie McCarren, she had come back into my life, only to push me away again. By the time I walked back into the house I was clenched tight with anger and frustration.

  In the half hour or so I’d been away, Johnny’s fortunes had changed significantly. His chip pile was much lower, while Glen Van Dine’s was much higher. It also seemed as if they’d exchanged playing strategies. Now Johnny sat impassively, his smile and banter both gone. And while Van Dine didn’t keep up a nonstop commentary on the cards as Johnny usually did, he asked questions, very specific questions. And when I walked in he was asking them of Johnny.

  “Did you know what a whore she was right away? I mean, she doesn’t look like a fucking whore, so I could understand if you didn’t get that.”

  Johnny said nothing. He just sipped from the bottle of Blue Lake at his side.

  “She looks like a goddamn schoolteacher, don’t you think?”

  Johnny looked at his hole cards again. I’d never seen him do that once the cards were dealt.

  “But Lester always said there was nothing she wouldn’t do. I mean, nothing.”

  The bet was fifteen cents, and while I didn’t know what Johnny had down, he was beat on the board. He called the bet.

  “She’d suck cock. Hell, she loved to suck cock.” Glen Van Dine raised a quarter.

  Johnny tossed in a blue chip to call.

  “She’d probably take it up the ass.”

  The last card was dealt down, and Van Dine, with a pair of tens showing, bet a quarter. “Hell, she’d probably take it up the ass while she’s sucking cock.”

  Gary Krynicki folded, and Johnny called. Glen Van Dine turned over a third ten, and Johnny just shoved his cards away. The blotches on Johnny’s cheeks had turned from their usual pink to white, as if he were the one who’d come in from the cold.

  “Hey,” I said to Glen Van Dine, “how come you know so much?”

  He looked up at me for a long moment, then he turned back to the cards being dealt. And to the table Van Dine said, “Anybody sitting on a stool next to Lester at PeeWee’s Bar was sure to get an earful about his piece of meat.” He had a queen showing, and he opened the betting for a dime. Everyone called.

  The fourth card came around, and this time Van Dine bet fifteen cents. Once again addressing no one in particular, he said, “I wish I would have been there the night Lester made her give a guy a hand job right there in the bar.”

  Another card was dealt, and this time Van Dine bet a quarter. “Yeah, three of them were sitting in a booth, and Lester had her sit next to this guy and jack him off while they just sat there drinking their beers.”

  The fifth card was dealt, and once again Van Dine threw a blue chip into the po
t. While Otis Unwin and then Johnny were debating whether to fold, call, or raise, Van Dine said to Johnny, “Here’s what I’m wondering. Do you and your old man take turns with her? Him one night and you the next? Or do you get her the same night? First he nails her and then you take your shot? Or maybe it’s like I said before. She sucks you off while he rams it up her ass.”

  Otis Unwin folded. Johnny’s fingers trembled slightly as he took a blue chip from his stack and tossed it into the pot.

  I walked around the table until I stood behind Glen Van Dine. Before the next card was dealt, I kicked the back of Van Dine’s chair hard enough to jolt him forward against the table. The ashtray at his side jumped and spilled out a load of ashes and cigarette butts. Gary Krynicki grabbed his wobbling beer bottle before it toppled to the floor.

  Van Dine spun around. “What the fuck ... ?”

  “I liked you better when you were quiet,” I said.

  Van Dine surveyed the room as if he were trying to understand not only who I was, but also if I were part of an alliance that had been formed without his awareness.

  I nodded in Johnny’s direction. “I’m his friend, if that’s what you’re wondering. But he’s too nice a guy to tell you what a fucking prick you are. So that’s my job.”

  “Like a fucking bodyguard?” he asked with a laugh.

  “That’s pretty close. And now I’m the one who’s telling you you don’t know shit. Not about him. Not about his father. And not about her. So either shut the fuck up or cash in your chips and get out.”

  Glen Van Dine rose from his chair, but as he did so he backed up, careful to put some distance between us. He was a college man, all right, with his penny loafers, corduroys, and blue oxford shirt rolled above his elbows. His blond hair was already thinning, and his front teeth were a little too prominent. But girls, I knew, found both him and his brother desirable properties.