by Ron Koertge
“Were you spying on me?”
“Why, do you have something to hide? Anyway, Bradleyville’s a small town. Everybody knows everything about everybody else.” I thought of my mom. “Or almost everything.”
“Then why don’t they know that I almost always go to dinner with my dad when he’s doing business?”
“Some business, using his daughter as a —”
“He wants to buy some land from Mr. Thompson, that’s all.”
“Don’t you know what kind of person he is?”
“Mr. Thompson?” she asked.
“No, Tommy. God, he —”
“Of course I know. What do you think girls talk about in the bathroom? The political situation in the Middle East?”
“And you went anyway?”
“Walker, it was just for dinner.”
“Don’t forget those hot fudge sundaes.”
“Oh, well. Bring out the firing squad. That is incriminating.”
“I don’t want you to go out with him anymore.”
There was a long pause, maybe thirty seconds, which seems like an eternity when you’re just holding a phone and your hand keeps getting sweatier and sweatier. When she did say something, she sounded really serious.
“We probably shouldn’t talk about this right now. You’re upset and I still don’t feel well. It can’t be a good time.”
There was another pause, but I could feel something building.
“I’ve got to say one thing, though, Walker. I don’t want you to tell me who to see or what to do. If I want somebody to run my life, all I have to do is talk to my dad, okay?”
It was my turn to make her wait. I felt terrible, like my chest had turned to stone.
“Walker? Are you there?”
The best I could do was grunt. Lord, if I got any more primitive, I’d go in the kitchen and the pilot light would scare me.
“Okay, then,” she said. “I’ll say it: let’s not see each other for a little while. Now I’m upset, too, and… oh, I don’t know.”
We waited again, and pretty soon I heard the line go dead. I sat down next to the phone on this little milking stool that nobody ever uses. My mother glided by carrying a cup of coffee in one hand and a ten-pound book in the other. I had to hand it to her. She always reads stuff that’s hard, never anything with a caped rogue on the cover. She asked if I was okay.
“I guess Rachel and I broke up.”
“Honey, I’m sorry.”
“Well, maybe we weren’t really going together, anyway. It was just kind of an assumption. We’d only been out a couple of times, really, if you don’t count the passion by the lockers.”
She smiled at me and pointlessly straightened my T-shirt. “You’re such a sensible kid,” she said. “Such a good, sensible kid. You know when I came in the other night and I’d been crying? There was this guy at the club and we’d had coffee a couple of times and then the next thing I know he’s leaving with this twenty-year-old singer who takes off her clothes so fast you’d think she had a rash. I mean, no class at all, just ‘Hey, here I am’ and ‘Hey, look, I’m naked.’ Tony hadn’t said anything to me; he didn’t make any promises. But what do I do when he goes out with Little Miss Fiery Pants? I cry.”
It made me nervous to hear about my mother’s private life, her other life, the one away from home and me and Dad, or at least his memory. I guess I am a pretty sensible kid. I didn’t expect her not to have another life and go out with guys and, I guess, make love and even think about getting married. But I didn’t like to hear about it.
As for me, it was pretty clear the kissing had stopped.
As I drove toward the outskirts of town, I put the Rachel conversation on rewind. Boy, parts of it really frosted my balls, especially that stuff about her period.
Girls have all the breaks. They get to wait to be asked out, they get to say no all the time, and they have their famous periods.
I mean, there are mothers who cry for happiness when their daughters start. It’s a regular celebration.
What does a guy do with his first hard-on? It’s not like he runs to Dad and they shake hands enthusiastically and Dad hands over a bunch of condoms and says, “Now you’re a man, son, because you’ve got this dandy tool. Treat it carefully. Don’t stick it in a sheep or a blender, okay? And gosh darn it, your mother and I are real proud of you.”
I was a little late, and the water truck had made a round or two by the time I pulled up. I watched the wide spray sizzle, turn coffee-colored, and trickle into the furrows I’d made.
“Are you all right, son?” asked Mr. Kramer.
“I’m having a little trouble with my girlfriend.”
“Why don’t you call her and say you’re sorry?”
“Sorry for what?” I barked. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You know best.” He looked out across the damp earth.
“Look, is it okay if I pay this guy with a check?”
“No need for that. While ago one of my boys disced that section of Hugo’s over by the waterworks.”
“I’m sorry I yelled.”
“You’re just riled about your girlfriend.” He touched my shoulder so lightly it was like he was testing wet paint. “Why don’t you go on up to the home place and switch that plow there for a single disc. Once we see what that does, we’ll sit down and talk about what to do next.”
I took off, full-out at twenty-five miles an hour, waving at the other farmers who waited patiently behind me until it was safe to pass and just endured the blaring horns of the city slickers who swept past, their faces as tight as if they’d been rubbed with alum.
All that afternoon I sliced through furrows I’d made just the week before, running more or less perpendicular to them, transforming the easy currents of earth into a stammery chop.
Mr. Kramer was just climbing into his old Chevy when I finished. “This place is so poorly,” he said, “the fowl don’t even bother. I’d sure like to see a nice fat wren come down here and get himself a bite to eat. Look.”
Sure enough, not a quarter mile away the sky was full of punctuation. High above us, dark birds moved in pairs or flocks. If they looked down at my place, they rejected it and I began to feel protective and a little hurt, like having a child so plain he was always chosen last.
Anyway, the birds were probably all over at the Thompsons’, with Rachel feeding them off golden plates.
It was getting late when I saw Sully’s big white car come up the frontage road, turn, and park next to mine.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “I was over at Peggy’s.”
“Any news about Rachel?”
He shook his head. “Why don’t we go out tonight, just two guys on the town.”
“I’d probably bump into her and then kill myself. I think I’ll just hang around the house.”
“You know you’re better off without her, don’t you?”
“No.”
“Who needs a girl like that, anyway?”
“Like what? A girl like what?”
“A girl who lies.”
“She didn’t lie, exactly. We just had this communication breakdown. I wasn’t home when she called.”
“If my wife ever lied to me, I’d kill her.”
“Great. Some psychiatrist you’re going to make. Why don’t you just open a gun shop.”
“My dad says everybody lies and cheats.”
“Oh, screw your dad.”
“Hey, watch it.”
“You watch it. Whatever happened is between Rachel and me. I don’t need your stupid advice, and I sure don’t need to hear about your old man.”
“Well, at least my father makes a lot of money.”
“Compared to mine, you mean, who’s busy decomposing for the minimum wage?”
“And at least my mom stays home and doesn’t take off her clothes.”
“We’re all grateful for that.”
“She’s pretty enough.”
“Get serious. She only leav
es the house on Halloween.”
When Sully gets mad, his freckles sort of light up, and right then he could have stopped cars at a railroad crossing. I thought he might take a swing at me, but instead he whirled on one heel like a drill-team captain and marched back to his car.
Two arguments in one day. Maybe it was in the air, like flu.
When I came slumping into the house, Mom said, “Perk up. We just had a nibble on that property of yours. I was hearing the kind of figures that would send you to college three or four times.”
“Oh, God, now I’m going to lose that, too?”
She gave me one of those critical looks mothers are so good at. If she’d been a Geiger counter I’d have crackled like crazy.
“What else have you lost lately?”
“I just had a fight with Sully, and I already told you about Rachel.”
“You and Sully have fought before and it’s always been okay. What’s going on with Rachel, if it’s any of my business?”
“It’s just this stupid argument. We’re both wrong.”
“But she’s wronger.” She looked me up and down like a forester inspecting a stunted tree. “Are you eating enough? You look thinner.”
“You may find me tomorrow passed out in the House of Pies.”
“That bad?”
“Well, what if I was a little late getting home? That’s no reason to start dating the biggest Don Juan in school.”
“Are you sure this isn’t a little lovers’ quarrel that’ll work itself out in —”
“And we’re not lovers, so don’t give me your birth-control speech.”
She pushed my hair back in the brusque mother-lion way she has. It’s affectionate enough, but about half the time it hurts, too. “I have to go,” she said, “but could you maybe not overeat and call Rachel instead? What’s the worst that could happen?”
“She could say she couldn’t talk now because she was underneath Tommy Thompson.”
“I used to feel that way, about your father,” she said. “I was really jealous. I’d imagine the craziest things, like he’d go away to a convention for the phone company and meet an ice skater. I guess I thought she’d be whizzing through the corporate offices in her flouncy little skirt. God knows what I thought. And it was always an ice skater or…”
I looked up. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“C’mon. Either an ice skater or what?”
“A stripper. Do you believe that?”
“Nothing much surprises me today.”
I sat in the tub and the soil melted off me. I experimented briefly with my johnson: sure enough, it floated, just like Sully said.
Then I wondered about Rachel. Was she having a good time? With somebody else? Did she realize what a mistake she’d made by going out with me? Would she use her father’s powerful connections to put out a contract on me so that no other girl would ever waste her time?
It’s funny about jealousy. You never imagine the beloved sleeping and drooling onto her pillow, never sitting on the toilet with an upset stomach, or even just standing around in her underwear and staring into the refrigerator. It’s always her laughing gaily and tearing off her blouse in mad abandon while she thinks, Walker? Walker who?
As I dried off, I ran down my list of the things I would take into any bomb shelter with me in case of a nuclear attack:
Häagen-Dazs blueberry swirl
Reese’s peanut butter cups
Ruffles potato chips
Trader Joe’s almond butter
New York–style cheesecake
Then I stood in a towel by the phone and thought about calling Rachel. What would I say if I got her? What would she say? Maybe I was afraid she would say she never wanted to speak to me again, ever, and then she’d blow a police whistle in the phone and deafen me for life.
I dialed anyway and got, naturally, that machine. There was her father’s big bow-wow voice; there was the beep; there I was not knowing what to say. I sure wasn’t going to apologize to a piece of magnetic tape, and who said I was going to apologize at all? I got mad all over again. She could at least have been home, hunched over the phone anxiously. I hung up.
Then I went into my bedroom to get some money and do some serious eating.
Monday morning was gloomy, with big, swirly, gray clouds off in the west looking like half-hearted erasures on a chalkboard. Even the kids seemed cloudy, drifting through the halls, not saying much.
I took roundabout ways to classes, half afraid I’d run into Rachel. Instead I bumped into Sully.
“I saw her” was the first thing he said.
“Yeah. So?”
“She looked sad.”
“Probably lost her new panties in the back of a Trans-Am.”
“I don’t think Rachel’s like that.”
I took a deep breath. “I don’t either. Look, I’m sorry about the other day.”
“Forget it. I told Peggy about what happened and she said I was way out of line. I guess this calls for an apology.” He looked up quickly and snapped his finger. “Waiter, bring my friend an apology and be quick about it.”
I don’t think we knew exactly what to do next. Girls can cry and hug and kiss when they make up. If we’d tried that, they’d have our parents on the phone and us down at the school nurse for sedation.
“How’s Peggy?”
“Peggy’s okay. I’m taking your advice. Que sera sera, right?”
“So Rachel looks sad, huh?”
“Uh-huh. I thought about you last night. Was it Pig City?”
“That was the plan. Instead I lay down on my bed for a minute just to get up enough strength to call Pizza Man, He Delivers, and the next thing I knew it was one-thirty and everything was closed.”
“Will you be around later?”
“Yeah, or out at the Land Time Forgot.”
“Maybe I’ll see you, except…”
“You might go over to Peggy’s?”
“Yeah. Peggy says you ought to talk to Rachel.” He held up an index finger like a teacher shushing a class. “Even if it was Rachel’s fault. She says the guy —”
“So Peggy says, huh? What does Peggy say about what your father says?” I wasn’t being mean; Sully and I were just tossing the ball back and forth.
“Well, Peggy says that what my father says is mostly bullshit.”
“And I say she’s right. Look, I gotta go.” My English teacher was holding the door open for me; he was sort of bowing from the waist and inviting me in with his free hand. Very droll.
“Look,” Sully said, backing away and talking fast like someone reasoning with a mad bomber, “you’ll bump into her and it’ll be fine.”
But it wasn’t fine. I not only didn’t bump into her; I didn’t even see her, not for four days. I admit that on Tuesday I took some roundabout paths to a class or two myself, mostly because I still wasn’t sure what I’d say to Rachel if I did see her, and I was kind of afraid of what she’d say to me; but on Wednesday and Thursday I started loitering seriously, propped up supercasually all over the place. But still no Rachel.
To my great relief I saw Tommy Thompson, and to my even greater relief he was with Sheila Webster, who was hanging all over him. But no Rachel.
I dragged myself to work every afternoon, and it was on Friday that I looked up from fiddling with the carburetor on the tractor to see Sully’s dad’s Cadillac glide down the frontage road and slip in beside my mom’s old Saturn. Peggy got out and waved, then Sully, and then right out of the back seat came Rachel, wearing a blue sundress with a huge white daisy on the skirt and two more on top. I walked toward them slowly, watching my step on the uneven ground; I sure didn’t want to blow this reconciliation by tripping and falling on my face.
“Hi, you guys,” I said. I’d taken off the leather gloves Mr. Kramer had lent me and I waved one. Then I said self-consciously, “I’ll get my shirt, it’s over —”
“That’s okay,” said Rachel.
Could I have for
gotten how soft her voice was?
“Rachel,” Sully said formally, “this is Walker Davis. He doesn’t own a shirt, but otherwise he’s a nice guy. And Walker, I’d like you to meet Rachel Gardner. Rachel just transferred from New York and has never seen dirt before, so I thought we’d bring her by your place here because you’ve got tons of it.”
“Yeah, well. This is it, all right.” I made a sweeping ringmaster’s gesture.
“It’s looking better,” said Rachel. “Sitting up and taking nourishment.”
“Sully,” Peggy said. “I think these two might want to talk privately.”
They ambled away, both pointing elaborately. I put my hands in my pockets. Rachel linked hers in front like a little kid in church. Then we looked at each other again.
“I’m really sorry,” I said.
“God, me too. Really.”
“It was all my fault,” I said.
“No, it was all my fault.”
“Honestly, Rachel, it was me.”
“Okay, you win. It was all your fault.”
“Huh?”
She had this enormous smile and her teeth were whiter than the daisies on her dress. “Just a little humor,” she said, “to lighten the situation.” She reached for my right arm, taking hold of it with both hands like she was going to shake a kite out of a tree, then sliding down until both her hands held one of mine. “We were both wrong,” she said. “You shouldn’t have been late; I should have called from the restaurant….”
We tugged at each other, both stepping forward at the same time. We stood, swaying, just inches apart. I couldn’t believe how good she smelled. We both licked our lips slowly, two cats who got the cream.
“I hate people who can’t settle their differences,” said Sully, coming up behind us.
“Shut up,” Peggy said mildly. “You spoiled it.”
“Are you guys okay?” I said, turning away reluctantly.
“Fine,” they said in unison.
“Nice place you’ve got here.” Peggy was wearing green pedal pushers, a man’s green shirt tied at the waist, and a green hat with a veil. She looked like every string bean’s idea of beauty. “It makes a girl want to get down there in the dirt and grow things.”
